Jewish organizations’ reflexive opposition to the Ben & Jerry’s decision not to sell in occupied territory, because it strengthens BDS and is somehow “antisemitic,” shows that being Jewish means being ‘anti-Palestinian’. These organizations have constructed a Jewish identity, theology and ethics around the denial of Palestinians to peacefully protest and call for global solidarity. Thankfully, there are pro-BDS alternatives in Jewish tradition.
At the very moment that the UK government has announced plans to ban boycotts, divestment and sanctions by public funded bodies, the very reasons for supporting non-violent strategies to achieve equality for the Palestinian people look more urgent and compelling than ever. BDS is about fairness, equality and justice, ideas that have been at the heart of Jewish ethics for thousands of years
There are liberals and those on the right who think it’s okay to fight antisemitism by encouraging Islamophobia and certainly anti-Palestinianism. You don’t fight racism with racism. We need to decolonize our understanding of antisemitism as a matter of urgency. And that means ditching the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
What happens when B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO, has effectively described the State of Israel as a racist endeavor? Thanks to B’Tselem’s apartheid report, British Jewish groups that seek to display progressive or radical outlook appear tame, weak, their courage lacking.
How I would teach Hanukkah to Palestinian school children, or indeed to their parents? Robert Cohen asks. How comfortable would I find it to tell this story of Jews denied the right to express their culture, identity and history? What would go through the children’s minds as I explained our annual celebration of an armed Jewish revolt against an occupying power? And could I convey convincingly the idea of on-going Jewish vulnerability in Israel, the United States, or anywhere else?
Why British universities should resist the Johnson government’s demand that they adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism: If you’re a Palestinian student studying at a British university this is about your right to express your lived history and that of your family and people. Denying the expression of that experience would seem to go against any ambitions to be truly diverse, inclusive and welcoming institution.
The international community forgets the Palestinians: The Trump peace plan left out that there was an illegal Israeli occupation, and the UAE/Bahrain normalization agreement leaves it an Israeli domestic issue.
British progressive rabbis have written an anti-annexation letter to the Israeli embassy in London that suggests they finally confronting the collective Jewish implications of the entire Zionist project. “The moral integrity of the Jewish people is at stake.”
The only variety of Zionism still on offer is the ethno-nationalist creed of Benjamin Netanyahu and the many politicians in Israel who sit to his right in the Knesset. And with annexation, we are about to begin the final phase of the Palestinian people’s long and tortured dispossession.
Many British Jewish organizations have condemned racism at the heart of George Floyd’s murder. It’s impossible for even liberal Jewish supporters of Israel to recognise the structural and institutional racism they inhabit while they cling to the idea that only an exclusive Jewish sovereignty in Israel/Palestine can guarantee Jewish security.