West Side Highway is battleground in the Jewish civil war

by on January 16, 2009 15
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A banner drop this morning over New York City's West Side Highway,
carried out by members of Jews Against the Occupation/NYC, declared
"Jews Say: End Israel's War on Gaza NOW!" Says the press release:  "This action by Jewish New
Yorkers continued the wave of increasingly public Jewish solidarity
with the Palestinians… The banner… expanded the public presence
of the many New York Jews who strongly disagree with the self-appointed
community spokespeople who have repeatedly expressed support for the
bombing and invasion of Gaza. 'We are standing up for justice,' said
Niuta Teitelboim, one of the JATO/NYC activists, 'which is a Jewish
tradition that many Jewish organizations seem to have abandoned.  Too
many have vocally endorsed a war which has involved a continuous string
of Israeli war crimes…'"

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 15 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Paul says:
    January 16, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    Please change the color on your posting headings (or make them bold). For many of us the color change from the main body to the headline is too little to easily spot where the posting begins and ends. It all looks like one gigantic column top to bottom.

  2. D. says:
    January 16, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Please take Paul's advice and start paying more attention to making the blog readable.

    If you are going to employ multiple authors, you need to identify up front who is speaking.

    If you are going to quote articles, you need to learn how to ident blocks of text so that the quotation is separated from the analysis.

    Could you remove the misleading false links that show up every so often?

    How about repeating the date somewhere in each post's heading.

    Pictures are nice.

    Spelling has been excellent.

  3. Rowan Berkeley says:
    January 16, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    If these gals are so hot to trot, phil, why don't they march with neturei karta? That'd ruffle some feathers!

  4. D. says:
    January 16, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    I really do hate to bring this up, because it makes it seem like I'm ungrateful for these efforts, which I'm not, but what's with this "Jews say …"?

    Can't we just speak out against injustice AS HUMANS? Isn't there a bit of a contradiction in opposing tribalism in the name of one's tribe?

    As a strategy, it seems headed down a dead end.

  5. John Lewis-Dickerson says:
    January 16, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    *******************************************
    FROM ABOVE: "Can't we just speak out against injustice AS HUMANS?"

    ME: It is very important to get across to people the fact that Dershowitz, Bloomberg, Schumer, Foxman, etc do not speak for all Jews. That is why they identified themselves on the banner as Jews.

  6. A blogger from Lebanon says:
    January 16, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Arabs and Muslims and the rest of the sane world says (justifiably so) : end Israel's very existence. NOW.

    Israel is a genocidal project that must be destroyed. If it is not, it will bring ruin and death to the whole world, on a larger, unprecedented scale than it has already done so.

  7. A blogger from Lebanon says:
    January 16, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    D., You have a point. But I'm guessing they wanted to also show that Jews, too, condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza. While I think the statement is too limited and "moderate", I think that it is important for Jews to come out and distance themselves from Israel, and the only way for them to do so in a way that would demonstrate that not all Jews are pro-Israel or approve of all of Israel's actions, is to say that they are Jewish AND they condemn these acts…. The thing is, because Israel claims that it is the state of all Jews, Jews are , by default, and often unwillingly (but often also willingly) associated with Israel and its actions. The blame falls on Israel, because it is attempting to draw these people into a confrontation that they might not have wanted to be part of, just because they happen to be Jewish. So it is imperative for these people to, first and foremost, make a statement that they, as Jews, do not subscribe by default to Israel's agenda. Some would even go further and say they are not represented by Israel. All the more power to those. Honestly, I do not think the statement in the picture is a radical one. Israel's war has not been only on Gaza, and it did not start in December 2008. It started in 1948, and even before 1948. Jews are 60 years late. Or is it, 60 years TOO late? Maybe it is indeed too late for Jews to come clean from Israel and its genocidal actions. Who knows. Certainly the tide is against the Jewish people as far as Israel's actions in conjunction with its claims of being the state of all Jews, are concerned….

  8. Olive says:
    January 16, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    What exactly makes these people jews?

  9. Olive says:
    January 16, 2009 at 8:53 pm

    As a jew I say end the ARAB genocide against Africans in Egypt and Libya. End the ARAB genocide against Kurds in Syria.

  11. Me says:
    January 17, 2009 at 3:46 am

    @D.

    "Can't we just speak out against injustice AS HUMANS? Isn't there a bit of a contradiction in opposing tribalism in the name of one's tribe?"

    You're right, but it's not their fault. The fault lies with our elites and how they have conditioned us. They made us believe that whenever some Jewish person like Dersh or Foxman speaks, it's the voice of "the Jews". Plus, they always imply that they are speaking for "the Jews".

    The mere idea that there are Jewish people who don't support Israel was oppressed for centurys in the old media. Now with the Internet, where everyone can see the picture of a sign like the above, this wall is finally teared down.

    And to get the rest of society out of their preconditioned state of mind about Jewish people, those Jews have to speak in a tribal way.

  12. LanceThruster says:
    January 17, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    I saw that banner and was elated. It's like having our own in-house freedom fighters. No matter my humanistic universalist beliefs, it *is* important for mainstream Jewish voices to make themselves heard.

    Anytime a non-Jew mentions Neturei Karta, they're dismissed as fringe and grouped with Holocaust denier conferences.

    Everybody keep speaking out in this battle, but be grateful for Jewish voices taking the point position.

  13. Riveter says:
    January 18, 2009 at 5:03 pm

    Let's please distinguish between the progressive & radical Jewish critics of Zionism – like the folks who did this banner-drop (judging by their pseudonyms: all secular radical Jewish fighters for justice) – and the likes of Neturei Karta, who may be anti-Zionists, but are certainly no "freedom fighters".

    Neturei Karta are part of the Jewish religious right, just like the West Bank settlers. They don't seek justice, but theocracy. Both are misogynist, homophobic, and deeply anti-democratic.

    When it comes to Palestine, the two groups only disagree about when and how the "Land of Israel" should be "cleansed" of its non-Jewish inhabitants. The settlers say 'Right now, with our guns'. Neturei Karta say 'When the messiah comes; he'll be much more efficient at it'.

  14. LanceThruster says:
    January 18, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    THX riveter – I do not know much about Neturei Karta other than I see them stand shoulder to shoulder with Arabs/Muslims on every occasion and that the Zionist Jews essentially say their Jewish beliefs don't count. I am atheist so I reject anyone's god-view (as applicable to me), Muslims included.

  15. LanceThruster says:
    January 18, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    [additional note] – If they'll live peaceably with their neighbors until god shows up, I'm pretty cool with that.

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