From a small group of seasoned protesters, a lively and creative coalition of Jewish groups has come together to form a growing, visible bloc in solidarity with the Palestinians on all the protests against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. RUTH LUKOM reports
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Our newly formed Jewish Bloc — including, among others, the Black-Jewish Alliance, Na’amod, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Jewish Voice for Labour and Jewdas as well as individual Jews and activists who have come together — is now a recognised presence. No longer a curiosity.
We are getting an entirely different and sometimes quite moving response to what we have previously encountered. It is a combination of gratitude and relief as we have vindicated what everyone knew in their hearts: that what they were reading and hearing in mainstream media about British Jews being united on Israel and Palestine was a lie.
As more groups joined, our Jewish Bloc began organising more methodically. Someone knew a graphic designer and they came up with our watermelon/star logo, which has been picked up everywhere.
Before a mass demo, we talk online and arrange a meeting place which is put on to our Jewish Bloc logo and then circulated. Our numbers have grown — up to 1,000 on one demo. The people joining us are a combination of longstanding activists and other Jews who are horrified and angry at Israeli brutality but still wary of the mass protests because of the raw emotions, fear of hostility or uneasiness about the “river and sea” chants.
Since December the Jewish Bloc has met up each month with other comrades and friends for a Shabbat dinner, where we eat, drink, sing and dance with our group banners draped around the room.
But that’s just in London.
Around the country, in all the major cities, Jews are demonstrating as Jews. In Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, Jews have joined the Palestine demos and organised vigils. Says Carla Bloom, a member of Na’amod in Brighton: “We demonstrate to all and sundry that it’s possible to be an ‘out’ Jew and not support Israel. We encourage other Jews to have the confidence to speak out against Israel — because the pro-ceasefire argument is strengthened when ‘even’ Jews espouse it.”
And Misha in Scotland says: “I will often march with a wider community group of Jewish people at the protests, or will visibilise myself as being Jewish through holding different signs. To believe in and act for Palestinian liberation is what my Judaism requires of me.
“The mainstream narrative, perpetuated by both global and mainstream British Jewish institutions, holds the belief that all Jews are zionists. I identify as Jewish at the demos to resist this narrative: to show that there is Jewish solidarity for Palestine; that there is a global community of Jews who stand in solidarity with Palestine and we are no less Jewish for this.”
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace stage a sit-in at Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ office in Washington, D.C. on March 12, 2024. (Photo: @JvpAction/X)
“Our Jewish communities are rising up to say, ‘Never again is now,'” said organizers.
Sharpening their focus on the influence that pro-Israel lobbyists have had for decades on U.S. policy regarding Palestinians, Jewish progressives on Tuesday held a sit-in at the Capitol Hill office of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, one of the largest recipients of campaign funds from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The protesters, who are members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, prominently displayed a sign reading, “AIPAC gave $829,835 to Hakeem Jeffries, who opposes cease-fire,” before proceeding to the New York Democrat’s office.
The sign referred to AIPAC’s contributions to Jeffries throughout his career.
“Our Jewish communities are rising up to say, ‘Never again is now,'” said JVP Action. “We refuse to be bystanders as the Israeli government wages a genocidal campaign in our name and funding by U.S. tax dollars.”
At the sit-in, the organizers held signs saying, “AIPAC funds genocide” and, “Jeffries: Reject AIPAC.”
BREAKING: As AIPAC lobbyists take to Capitol Hill to tell Congress to support Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, JVP Action members occupied the office of Rep Hakeem Jeffries, once of the largest recipients of AIPAC funding, telling him to #RejectAIPACpic.twitter.com/NCTKHXuhTp
— Jewish Voice for Peace Action (@JvpAction) March 12, 2024
Israel has killed at least 31,184 Palestinians since it began its U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza in October, and at least 25 people have died of starvation due to Israel’s blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said Tuesday that more children have been killed in Gaza in the last four months than the number of children killed worldwide in wars over the last four years.
JVP Action is among several rights groups that announced a new coalition, Reject AIPAC, on Monday. AIPAC and its political action committee are planning to spend $100 million this election year to unseat lawmakers it views as insufficiently supportive of Israel.
As JVP Action noted Tuesday, while Democratic lawmakers who continue to back Israel’s assault on Gaza may retain the support of AIPAC, they are out of step with Democratic voters, 77% of whom are demanding the U.S. call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Since October, the Israeli military has killed over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Polls show that 67% of voters and 77% of Democrats support a ceasefire in Gaza, yet many US lawmakers have not yet called for an end to the genocidal bombardment.
— Jewish Voice for Peace Action (@JvpAction) March 12, 2024
“If members of Congress vote to send Israel more bombs and weapons now, it’s because AIPAC demands it,” Justice Democrats, another member of the coalition, said Monday. “Reject AIPAC because Palestinian lives should matter more to our leaders than campaign checks.”
A Palestinian man holds a child as he mourns the death of twin babies Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza, killed in an overnight Israeli air strike, during their burial in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 3, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war.
The following is a statement written by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an independent media outlet in India.
The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.
Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.
They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them.
Racism is of course the keystone of any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews. It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never Again”. And we are left only with “Again”.
Never Again.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue to flow to enable the genocide.
And what of our country?
It is well known that our prime minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine protestors.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor.
And now, while the US exports what it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.) People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame.
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople, and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are the hope for the future of the world.
Arundhati Roy Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her most recent book, a novel, is: “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Her other books include: “Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy,” “The God of Small Things,” and “The End of Imagination.
This blog is named after and in tribute to Roy’s 2002 article which now seems difficult to find. She made a speech at the World Social Forum on 27 January 2003. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I consider that this article answers and satisfies the question I posed in my recent Coming Soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?
Jewish activists and allies hold a protest demanding a cease-fire in Gaza on December 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace)
“As the descendant of people who have survived pogroms, I know my ancestors would want me to do everything in my power to stop the U.S.-funded genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said one activist.
On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Jewish activists and allies took to the streets of eight U.S. cities on Thursday to demand an end to the bloodshed in Gaza, blocking traffic on bridges and highways in a show of opposition to the Biden administration’s continued support for the Israeli military’s atrocities.
“It is horrifying to watch the U.S. government fully fund the Israeli government’s relentless bombing campaign and the destruction of the people of Gaza,” said Sara Bollag of the Washington, D.C. chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which helped organize the protests in Seattle; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Atlanta.
“I am here, as the great-granddaughter of a victim of the Holocaust, doing everything in my power to stop another genocide unfolding before our eyes,” Bollag added.
In the nation’s capital, demonstrators holding signs that read “Cease-Fire Now” and “Never Again for Anyone” and singing Hanukkah prayers shut down an overpass.
BREAKING: DC joins nation-wide protests to shut down 8 bridges on the 8th night of Hanukkah.
Over 90 Jews and allies in the struggle for Palestinian liberation are blockading the overpass to New York Ave with @JVPDCMetro to say: ceasefire now! Free Palestine! pic.twitter.com/2VFM79GyOP
In Chicago, more than a dozen Jewish demonstrators were arrested for obstructing the Washington Street bridge.
“As the descendant of people who have survived pogroms, I know my ancestors would want me to do everything in my power to stop the U.S.-funded genocide unfolding in Gaza,” said Millie Hartenstein of JVP Chicago.
BREAKING NOW: Chicago Jews and allies are putting their bodies on the line to block the Washington Street bridge in the Loop. No business as usual. We are here on this last night of Hannukah to demand #CeaseFireNow. #NotInOurName. This genocide must end now. pic.twitter.com/tmTYB5k4mm
The nationwide demonstrations came amid growing domestic and international outrage over the Biden administration’s decision to keep arming the Israeli government and opposing global efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza spirals out of control, leaving most of the territory’s population without adequate food, clean water, humane living conditions, and sufficient medical treatment.
“Everywhere you look is congested with makeshift shelters. Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry, and terrified,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said in a speech on Thursday. “People—and this is also something completely new—people are stopping aid trucks, taking the food, and eating it right away. This is how desperate and hungry they are. I witnessed this firsthand.”
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with Israeli leaders on Thursday and reportedly urged them to “switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks” in an attempt to “communicate that American patience with widespread civilian deaths is running out.” According to one human rights monitor, more than 90% of the people killed so far by Israel’s latest aerial and ground assault on Gaza have been civilians.
A U.S. intelligence assessment reported by CNN on Wednesday found that nearly half of the munitions Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 have been so-called “dumb bombs,” unguided weapons whose use in densely populated areas could violate international law.
The U.S. has provided Israel with both guided and unguided munitions, as well as artillery shells and other weaponry. Just last Friday, the State Department bypassed a congressional review process to push through the sale of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel.
Earlier this week, top humanitarian aid leaders implored the U.S. government to urgently change its approach to halt Gaza’s “apocalyptic free fall” and dozens of Biden administration staffers held a vigil outside the White House demanding an immediate cease-fire, the latest sign of mounting internal dissent.
“We have seen refugee camps, hospitals, schools, and entire neighborhoods bombed,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in October over the Biden administration’s unconditional arms transfers to Israel, said during Thursday’s vigil. “We have seen dead men, women, and children pulled from the rubble in their pajamas. We have seen harassment, humiliation, and degradation of many kinds. This is unacceptable.”
