This New Orleans human rights site is raising money for a delegation going to Gaza in late May. Chip in, huh?
On May 29th, a group of New Orleans social justice activists, filmmakers, photographers, and journalists will attempt to cross the Rafah border into Gaza. We will be joining a CodePink delegation that is bringing medical supplies, playground equipment, and toys to the 140 square mile open-air prison recently devastated by the Israeli siege called “Operation Cast Lead.”
Among the bios is this one from Emily Ratner:
She is one of many Jews in the New Orleans area who are interested in starting a conversation among American Jews about their continued support for the Israeli government, and is going to Gaza in part to bring back photographs, footage, and experiential knowledge to share with the Jewish community here as we prepare to take a strong stand on our communities’ direct support for the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestine and the Palestinian people.
This is important, helpful language. It clarifies my own role. I wanted this site to be a crossroads to many different communities. And yes, you're welcome. Please come here. I aim to be in a very diverse community. But it seems that the discussion that I long have called for within the Jewish community over the horrors of the occupation and the Iraq war is really beginning in earnest, all over, and Ratner's language speaks to that. She's preparing to "take a strong stand." But first she must go there so as to bear witness. We aim to help her here; she is saying something of what I said last week when I said that Horowitz and I are part of AIPAC too. This anger at our own community has bubbled for years; in 1992 Jeff Blankfort wrote a paper on the Israel lobby that spoke of "American Jewish responsibility" for Palestinian suffering. (I know this responsibility caused me to be alienated from that community, Blankfort as well. Get over it; Marty Peretz doesn't make the rules anymore.)
Prepare to make Jewish history, but prepare too to work with other progressives to make American history.
