Three years ago a Palestinian friend sauntered down Broadway and said, I have only one goal in life, I want to end Zionism. I was shocked that a person would say something like that, I thought he must be a violent revolutionary. Well a lot has changed, and last night I went to an event at NYU where three Jews sat at the front of the room and said their goal is to end Zionism inside Jewish life and thought. The biggest battle field is still between powerful American Jews’ ears; and I know these young people are the vanguard and the Zionist brand is over. Theodor Herzl died in 1904 running from one European court to another, the Nakba happened in 1948, they dropped white phosphorus on the refugees in Gaza in 2008. I don’t see why a young Jew would embrace the brand if he saw what I saw at NYU last night.
The three Jews were Micha Kurz, Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana. When Saba Quraishi, a member of the audience, said that she didn’t understand why her well-educated Jewish friends were so quiet when she sent them links about the Gaza slaughter or the Mavi Marmara– “what is this magic brainwashing?” –Max Blumenthal said the “sclerotic Jewish establishment” is facing “impending collapse,” Abe Foxman and David Harris and Malcolm Hoenlein are “embalmed characters” who do not speak for young Jews. And Joseph Dana said that American Jewish identity is constructed on two faraway poles that have nothing to do with American life, Israel and the Holocaust.
Joseph Dana is a scholar of Jewish history. He has degrees from the Hebrew University and a university in Budapest, Herzl’s town. All that learning has made him an activist. For the next month or so, he will be touring the country selling tshirts for Anarchists Against the Wall, and talking to people about the Jewish history unfolding right now in Israel and Palestine with Jews reaching out across a deep divide to support brave Palestinian nonviolent resisters. The most important thing Dana thought he could do was to show the video above. That was his purpose last night, to talk about the Palestinian civil society movement that resists the occupation of their land, and the Israeli and international support for that movement. Oh lift them up.
The room was hot and it had gone on 2 hours when he showed the video. I don’t think I’ve seen a more powerful video about the Israel/Palestine conflict. You just have to watch it. It’s from the Bilin demo, back in August of 2008. Shot by Yisrael Puterman, an old Israeli guy.
Dana said the man in the video, Adeeb Abu Rahma, is a father of 9, and a few weeks after the video above, the Israeli security forces came to Adeeb Abu Rahma’s house in Ramallah and arrested him, and he hasn’t been out since.
When you see the video, you’ll understand why they did that. And you’ll understand what a Jewish democracy looks like to Palestinians.
You just have to watch Adeeb Abu Rahma. The amazing part is about 4 minutes in. I won’t even try and quote him. He’s talking Hebrew, Joseph Dana explained to us, talking the soldiers’ language. I may put this video up every day till everyone sees it. J Street should be showing this guy, B’nai Jeshrun should be showing this guy, Beth Elohim in Brooklyn and Rabbi Andy Bachman should be showing this guy to American Jews to see what we have perpetuated in Palestine out of our weak lame selfish Jewish identity–
and to see the nobility and great spirit that oppression has brought out in Palestinians.
“They ask where the Palestinian Gandhi is,” Dana said. “This is the Gandhi. There are many like him, sitting in jail.”
