On Tuesday, June 15th hundreds of far-right Israelis escorted by Israeli police and the IDF will march to the Damascus Gate waving Israeli flags and staging an “Israeli Flag Dance”. Then they will march though part of the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem to assert Jewish superiority and intimidate Palestinians. It’s a postponement from the usual ugly nationalist march on “Jerusalem Day”.
Apartheid has been an international crime since the 1970’s. It is offensive to see Jewish communal spaces wave the emblem of a criminal system.
In sharp contrast more than a hundred Jews have signed a strong statement calling on synagogues and Jewish institutions to take down the Israeli flag. We don’t mince words. Just like the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and the famed international organization Human Rights Watch we see the Israeli government as an apartheid state. Apartheid has been an international crime since the 1970’s. It is offensive to see Jewish communal spaces wave the emblem of a criminal system. We specifically compare the Israeli flag to the Confederate flag of the secessionist South as an emblem of an unjust system, a flag whose display is now considered by most people as noxious support for racism. (Naturally, we’re not saying the Old South and Israel are identical.)
Here is the rather short but pointed statement.
We Jewish people internationally appeal to Jews and Jewish organizations around the world to remove Israel flags from communal spaces, whether at Jewish schools, Jewish Federation offices or synagogues. It is clear to us – and much of the world – as the reports of B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have demonstrated – that the Israeli State is an Apartheid regime and therefore, as international law correctly confirms, it is an ongoing crime against humanity.
The government of Israel, since its start, has been determined to totally subjugate or remove the indigenous Palestinians from the land they’ve lived in for centuries. The Jewish supremacist state of Israel is deeply discriminatory and necessarily violent towards Palestinians who naturally resist oppression and expulsion. Israel logically allies itself with Far Right and Anti-Semitic forces even though this endangers Jews worldwide. That may seem astounding, but these noxious alliances have long been the practice of the Zionist organizations that worked to create Israel.
It is increasingly important for Jews to distinguish between Judaism and the State of Israel and its policies. By featuring an Israeli flag prominently in our communal institutions, we permit anti-Semites to believe that our interests are inextricably linked to those of a state whose policies we abhor.
The Israeli flag has the status of the Confederate flag.
We are appalled at the idea that it represents us.
It should be taken down.
The signers include prominent people like Professor of Talmudic Culture Daniel Boyarin, Professor Judith Butler, Rabbis David Mivasai, Lucía Pizarro, and Gabriel, Hagai, Kohenet Rae Abileah, Attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Israeli-German actress Nirit Sommerfeld, and many lesser-known people identified in the statement by activist group, occupation or geographic residence.
Why are U.S. and Israeli flags routinely in synagogues and Jewish Federation offices in the first place? Muslims don’t have country flags in their mosques. Some Christian churches do, but the practice is far from universal. American flags crept into synagogues during World War I to honor war dead. Israeli flags came into some Conservative and Orthodox synagogues after 1948 as an act of solidarity, with the Reform denomination only displaying them routinely decades later.
Whatever the reason Israeli flags have flown in Jewish spaces they should be removed now. They should be removed because of the 15 families wiped out in Gaza in May. They should be removed because the IDF makes a living hell for the people of Bil’in on the West Bank. They should be removed because over 900 Israeli Jews have gone on record as seeing the system that rules them as the illegal method of apartheid.
I’ll end with the words of an Israeli Jew who had to protect his workers on May 12 from an attack by an Israeli Jewish mob. Haaretz reports he hid them in a “small. concealed space” near his gas station. He said, “and I don’t like to say it, but I feel nervous now even when I see the Israeli flag. It really hurts me that the flag of my country has become the symbol of people behaving like – I hate to use the word – Nazis. But that’s how I feel.”
This gas station owner understands what apartheid does to the ruling group. We have to learn from him. We need to distinguish between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and the State of Israel and its policies on the other. Taking down the flag would be one symbolic way to make that clear.
I’m proud to have signed this statement. The flag of a major human rights violator does not belong in a synagogue.
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“We have a sacred obligation ‘to get the story right.’”
“Journalists also drew attention to media outlets’ uncritical repetition of Israeli military claims about its assault on Gaza. ‘We are calling on journalists to tell the full, contextualized truth without fear or favor, to recognize that obfuscating Israel’s oppression of Palestinians fails this industry’s own objectivity standards.’
“The letter also underlined that journalists have an important mission to inform the public correctly.
“‘We have an obligation — a sacred one — to get the story right. Every time we fail to report the truth, we fail our audiences, our purpose and, ultimately, the Palestinian people,’ it added.
“Israel’s attacks on the blockaded Gaza Strip on May 10 ended May 21 after a cease-fire with Hamas.
“A total of 254 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women, were killed in the bombing of Gaza.”
The Israeli flag has become especially despicable & conspicuous when the pro-Israeli crowd wave and drape themselves in the Israeli flag at counter demos.
A secular Jew by birth and inclination, I’m strongly opposed to any form of discrimination, and a member of UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch in Brighton. The war crimes Israel perpetrates against Palestinians for racist and imperialist motives cannot be defended on any grounds; and to do so in the name of all Jews is simply a travesty – not in my name! And take down those flags!
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Excellent article!! “The times, they are a’changin,” ever faster!
Journalists pen open letter on US media coverage of Palestine (aa.com.tr)
“Journalists pen open letter on US media coverage of Palestine””Reporters speak up against media narrative about Palestine” By Islam Doğru, 13.06.2021NEW YORK “More than 500 journalists working at US media outlets released an open letter about American media coverage of Palestine.
“Journalists spoke up against the narrative used by the media that ‘obscures the most fundamental aspects of the story: Israel’s military occupation and its system of apartheid.’
“‘An open letter on U.S. media coverage of Palestine,’ also demanded an end to ‘this decades-long journalistic malpractice.’
“It was signed by 514 journalists, including reporters from leading organizations such as The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
“‘Finding truth and holding the powerful to account are core principles of journalism. Yet for decades, our news industry has abandoned those values in coverage of Israel and Palestine,’ according to the letter.
“‘Israel’s systematic oppression … must no longer be sanitized'”
“Underlining the need to change course in the American media for the sake of readers, viewers and the truth, the letter said: ‘We have a duty to change course immediately and end this decades-long journalistic malpractice. The evidence of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians is overwhelming and must no longer be sanitized.’
“The letter referred to a Human Rights Watch’s report published April 27, ‘A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution’, citing, ‘the report documented ‘Israeli authorities committing ‘crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.’”
“‘We, as journalists, need to examine whether our coverage reflects that reality,’ it said, adding that terms such as apartheid, persecution, ethnic supremacy ‘are increasingly gaining institutional recognition after years of Palestinian advocacy.’
“Exemplifying the language used in US media regarding events in Palestine with the coverage of East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah, it said, ‘Media outlets often refer to forced displacement of Palestinians living there – illegal under International law and potentially a war crime – as ‘evictions.’ (cont’d)