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Props for the amazing political space OWS created (but who is talking about Palestine?)

I finally made it to Occupy Wall Street yesterday afternoon, and was bowled over by the occupiers’ achievement: they have successfully created an alternative political reality in America that is commanding mainstream attention. I thought these alternative realities only existed on the internet, in people’s heads. No, this one is in the heart of the beast that is Wall Street, and in America’s face, on the nightly news. A few hundred or few thousand daring people achieved this.

Theirs is a triumph of political imagination. The same way that Tahrir is a triumph of political imagination– these people were uncowed by the overwhelming media-constructed reality of our times and dared to offer a different vision. And they have created an important political space.

Walk around Zuccotti Park and you are stunned by how many different strains of protest are arising, at every hand, environmental to economic justice to spiritual awakening. The one thing these strains share is that they have been suppressed in our political culture. Every idea these people express has been marginalized by the neoliberal positivist media. Of course it is a cacophony. What would you expect? These people have been forced underground for many years. Now they are out and proud. And while I don’t think I require or can receive much political education, I found it inspiring that there were so many little groups of people engaged in earnest discussion. They are teaching one another. It is a wonderful thing to observe.

And face to face. The introversion and anonymity of the internet are being exploded in Zuccotti Park. The people know that they must speak to one another and see one another’s faces. Public speakers aren’t always great internetters.

It is of course a leftwing movement but I was pleased to see many different strains, including populists and unionists and libertarians. And my favorite demonstrator was standing by himself, holding up a sign. Addicted to Oil. Help Me. It wasn’t blame-game politics. This man was saying we are all responsible, but we can take control of our society.

As Egyptians gathered around a simple idea, get rid of Mubarak, these people also have a simple idea: economic justice, the 99 percent. I’m down with that!

My big problem with OWS is my big problem with all leftwing politics in the U.S. that don’t highlight foreign policy and the occupation of Palestine.

For a while I was engaged with a group from Jews for Economic and Racial Justice. They were having a workshop on spirituality and politics that I took part in. The workshop dealt with issues of vulnerability; and the distinct political strands were gay rights and a concern about the anti-Semitism in the protests.

When I spoke up about Palestine in the little circle people welcomed my view, but you will not see anything about Palestine on the JFREJ page. There is a lot of concern about antisemitism. One guy I talked to in the workshop said he was disturbed by the talk of Jewish bankers at the protests. He had come to be here in the OWS energy to counter that.

For me the best part of the JFREJ circle were two Protestants in it. They told me about having a Muslim deliver the call to prayer at St. Paul’s last month. When oh when will American Jews invite a Muslim to chant the call to prayer at a synagogue? That is the ball game, sisters and brothers.

OWS is part of the Jewish political identity crisis. We are a privileged group, by and large. We have been beneficiaries of the American neoliberal surge, as a group. We all have rich relatives. And the neoconservatives who arose inside Jewish life to justify the military occupation of Palestine and American military support for it  have helped to corrupt American politics. The neoconservative rise was aided by conservative Jewish wealth–in a word, the Israel lobby. I don’t think any analysis of our foreign policy can get anywhere without dealing with these facts; and because the Jewish rise was the largest sociological fact I have observed in my life, I’m damned if I’m going to shut up about it. Jews must find a way to talk about our wealth and privilege. 

But to repeat myself, there is no reference to Palestine on the JFREJ page. When Udi Aloni spoke at Occupy Wall Street the other day– I am told– he thumped the Palestinian issue and was booed by about 30 people in a crowd of hundreds. And of course the great Israeli Udi just thumped the issue again! But he was booed.

Many leftwing Jews just want the issue to go away. It won’t. At our workshop, they passed around a printout with a long teaching about Stonewall riots in 1969. A Jewish man wrote about kissing his boyfriend publicly for the first time. While it is only right to acknowledge my own retrograde presence on that issue, my own failure on the gay rights issue, my late awakening to it– Stonewall was a long time ago. And right now there is apartheid in Palestine. There is stateless rightslessness for 4 million people in a kind of prison and the organized Jewish community in the U.S. enables that.  

We’re a wounded community. There is a reason that so many of the Jewish progressive calls at the JFREJ page are vague: we all have neocons in our families and we understand them at some level, for we know that they operate out of fear for the Jews in Israel.

Of course you can say that all of Occupy Wall Street is unfocused, and that’s its charm. I agree. But our vagueness represents an identity crisis. We can’t come to terms with hard facts: our community’s overwhelming support for oppression in Palestine. We can’t come to terms with our American success that places many of us in the 1 percent.

In the middle of yesterday’s crowd, Peter Schiff came in, the commentator, in a fancy suit with a big sign saying I’m the 1 Percent, Let’s Talk. He was surrounded by angry protesters. Some of them had an analysis, and he came back at them with a capitalist libertarian analysis, morally vacuous. Still, I liked the fact that he was honest about where he sits. I think the Jewish community has to be honest about where our community sits, and then try and define community differently, not ethnocentrically. But I hated Schiff’s moral irresponsibility, his lack of concern for the many, many losers in his system. The left has better political imagination than that. Jews have better imagination. I’m waiting.

PS. Here’s Lisa Goldman’s post on the Kol Nidrei service at OWS. They did talk about Palestine a little there.

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“We all have rich relatives”.

Over to you, Mooser

Potential sign, in the oil-addicted guy vein: “The Ongoing Occupation of Palestine is an Accomplishment of American Jewry. Help Us.”

The issue is bigger than Palestine. It covers primarily how US society is structured, the finance industry and the war industry. Palestine is a symptom of that and where several issues converge but it is just bit part of the bigger picture.

-Congress is a whorehouse.
-The financial sector is out of control
-The Defense sector has America by the balls
-The rich are incompetent and there is no end to their greed
-US foreign policy is a sick joke
-Ditto US democracy
– neoliberalism has failed
-The environment is going to collapse without a change in the way we do things

These are the main issues IMO.

Jews active in this movement have strong records of activism on the Israel/Palestine issue. One need only point to the organizers of the Yom Kippur service at OWS, the one that explicitly referenced the issue of Palestine numerous times.

Peter Schiff rocks.
He just says as it is.
Great yt video to watch: “How to silence a Nobel Prize winning economist? Ask him a question about the economy.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdnA5UNmVw&feature=player_embedded