Nearly 100 activists with the New York City chapter of grassroots organization Jewish Voice for…
Devyn Springer says there is a clear pattern to how pro-Israel supporters attempt to discredit Black advocates for Palestine: “whether it is local rabbis blasting Black Lives Matter activists as ‘ignorant’ for including support of BDS in their demands, Zionist white feminists attacking the women’s movement for standing against Zionism, or the coded language against Alice Walker and NFL players that assumes they simply ‘don’t know what they’re talking about.’ The pattern is the use of anti-Black rhetoric and, in turn, anti-Blackness in whole, to perpetuate the assumption of Black ignorance to silence and belittle Black BDS advocates.”
In recent days, the mainstream press has been full of reports of the dire plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar that is currently being ethnically cleansed by the Burmese military. What has not been reported in the mainstream news is the fact that, even during this ongoing genocidal campaign against its Muslim population, Myanmar has been supplied with weaponry by Israel.
“As both a Jew and an African American, I recoil from the white supremacy and anti-Semitism on display this week. I have been gratified to hear Jewish leaders and organizations call for the destruction of racism, speaking eloquently about the shared history of oppression Jews and African Americans have faced. Yet, I confess to a certain discomfort in the many appeals to recognize the twin evils of anti-Semitism and anti-black racism in Charlottesville. I’ve thought about this a lot over the past week, and here’s what I’ve realized: for Jews, Nazi symbols evoke a terrifying, traumatic past. For African Americans, they evoke a terrifying, traumatic, unending present,” writes Lesley Williams.
“Although the Israeli ‘anti-terrorism day camps’ for civilians are not new, an article in Haaretz last week about their growing popularity amongst tourists from around the globe has created significant buzz and, in some cases, righteous outrage, writes Nada Elia, “The lure of these camps, however, is not so much about killing a Palestinian, as it is about ‘killing like an Israeli.’ The focus at all times is on how Israelis do it. Caliber 3 Israeli Counter Terror and Security Academy, which first opened in 2003 in the illegal Gush Etzion settlement, is fully staffed by IDF combat veterans, including members of ‘elite units.’ They are the experts, and they remind the campers of it at every opportunity they get.”
There is no space for Zionism in any movement which seeks to alleviate even an iota of oppression from marginalized people. There is no space, no room should be made, no platform to be held, for Zionism, which is diametrically opposed to intersectional feminism, both in theory and praxis.
The Anti-Defamation League brought a delegation of American police officers to an Israeli prison, occupied Hebron and a settler winery in the Golan Heights as part of their 2016 counter-terrorism seminar in Israel, according to an itinerary of the trip obtained by Mondoweiss. Trips like these have come under withering controversy from Palestine solidarity activists and Black Lives Matter protesters. In an age of police militarization and a growing movement to combat police brutality, critics see these trips as potentially fueling harmful police tactics.
A Georgia-based program that has sent thousands of American law enforcement officials to Israel for counter-terrorism training is promoting Islamophobia into police forces across the U.S..