Jewish Israeli opposition to the war and ethnic cleansing

JVL Introduction

There is some opposition, standing against the frenzied onslaught and destruction willed by Netanyahu and Ganz, within Israel itself and among Jewish Israelis:

• Israeli Jews have put out An Open Letter to the International Community: “Stop Israel’s Apartheid!”;
• Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, National Co-Director write on behalf of “Standing Together”;
• Refuser Tair Kaminer tells how she and fellow refuser Atalya Ben-Abba were illegally arrested for organsiing an anti-war demo and banned from further protesting for 30 days in Jerusalem’s main square;
• Residents of the Gaza Border Region, call on government leaders “to end our ongoing suffering and the inferno that you have unleashed on the people in the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli Jews Call: “Stop Israel’s Apartheid!”

#IsraelisAgainstApartheid

An Open Letter to the International Community

We, Jewish Israelis, oppose the actions of the Israeli government and hereby declare our commitment to act against them. We refuse to accept the Jewish-supremacist regime and call upon the international community to immediately intervene in defence of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Negev, al-Lydd, Yafa, Ramleh, Haifa and throughout historic Palestine.

Jewish supremacy is the cornerstone of the Israeli regime, and its consistent objective is to transfer and obliterate the Palestinian people, their history, and their national identity. This objective manifests in continued acts of ethnic cleansing by means of evictions and home demolitions, brutal military occupation, denial of civil and human rights, and legislation of a series of racist laws culminating in the Nation-State Bill, defining the State as “the Nation State of the Jewish People”, and them only.

All the above effectively form an Apartheid regime creating Bantustan-like and Ghetto-like areas for Palestinian native communities. We believe that Zionism is an unethical principle of governance that inherently leads to a racist Apartheid regime that has been committing war crimes and denying basic human rights from Palestinians for over seven decades. Such crimes and violations include: the destruction of hundreds of towns and villages and depopulating them from 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, alongside the active prevention of return of refugees; the systematic expropriation of Palestinians’ lands and transferring them to Jewish ownership under the auspices of the state; the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights and the application of a colonizing military regime, ruling over millions of Palestinians; the gradual annexation of the territories occupied in 1967 by violently engineering demographics; the ongoing siege on the Gaza strip and persistent massacres of the Gazan population by the Israeli Air Force; political persecution of Palestinians throughout Palestine and the ongoing incitement against the political leadership and society at large; All of these atrocities take place due to the impunity Israel receives from the international community and especially the United States.

In recent weeks, the Israeli government has up-scaled its attempts to seize Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem (especially in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood) and house Jewish settlers in them with the aim of completing the Judaization of the city that began in 1967. During the month of Ramadan, Israeli forces intensified their violent onslaught on the Al Aqsa Mosque compound while giving settlers the green light to vandalize and physically harm Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and throughout the ’48 territories. Mobs of settlers are acting under the auspices, and in coordination with the Israeli police. Israeli media is taking part in the unhinged incitement against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, the Jewish mobs receive impunity for their violence, while hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel are arrested for protecting their homes and communities, or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

As we write this statement, Israel is committing yet another massacre in the Gaza ghetto. Israel has declined several third-party offers to negotiate a cease-fire agreement with Hamas officials, and has continued to bomb neighbourhoods in Gaza. The inhumane siege on approximately two million people continues.

As individuals who belong to the side of the oppressor, and that have tried for years to shift public opinion in Israel in order to change the foundations of the current regime, we have long come to the conclusion that it is impossible to change the Jewish supremacist regime without external intervention.

We call upon the international community to intervene immediately in order to stop Israel’s current aggressions, to adopt the demands of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; to work towards the actualization of the Palestinian Right of Return and to bring about historic justice; to reach a just and democratic solution for all, based on the decolonization of the region and founding a state of all its citizens.

#IsraelisAgainstApartheid

Sign The Letter

There are 554 signatories at the time of posting

Standing Together Israel

Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, National Co-Director – Standing Together write in an email dated 20 May:

It has been 10 days of a continuous nightmare. We are shocked by the reports from Gaza, a Palestinian woman killed in Hebron, and a 17-year old Palestinian killed in Umm-Al Fahim in Israel by the police during a protest. We are shocked that people are losing their lives in Holon, Sderot, and Lod, and that kids are spending their days in a shelter.

Our mission is more important than ever, we need to strengthen our voice, loud and clear: The majority of the people who live here want a ceasefire, an end to the occupation and settlements. We demand a change of direction towards a life of freedom, equality, justice, and peace. In the last days, we have mobilized thousands of Arab-Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens, every day, in tens of locations. This weekend, we will continue our mission, and we need your support.

The last few days have proved once again – the government has no solution for us. Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smutrich, Ohana and their friends offer us only more life by the sword, violence, fear in the streets, racism and incitement. For them, civilians in Gaza and Israel will continue to run to shelters and live in fear, with a round of escalations following another. As far as they are concerned, let there be more violence in Jaffa, Lod, Acre and all over the country so people will be afraid to leave their house. They want to maintain the discrimination of Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel, and for the police and the border security force to continue the provocations, brutalization, harassment, and protecting settlers. We, however, will not allow this to continue.

It does not have to be this way. We have the power to change that. But only if we work together. On Friday, we will march together in Jerusalem and go to Sheikh Jarrah. On Saturday night, we will stand together Arabs and Jews, and demand a good reality for all of us: a ceasefire, an end to the settlements, an end to the occupation, and move towards Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Hello, my name is Tair Kaminer. In 2016 I refused to join the Israeli Military and was subsequently imprisoned in Military Jail for over 150 days. Last Saturday I was unlawfully detained in Jerusalem with my friend Atalya Ben-Abba, also a refuser from 2017 who was jailed for 110 days, after police illegally disbanded the Anti-War demonstration we held in Jerusalem’s main square.

Just a couple of minutes after we gathered a police officer approached us and claimed he had “secret intelligence info” that our demonstration will be targeted or attacked by Jewish Nationalists. Even if this info was correct, the police’s role is to protect our Freedom of Speech and make sure the demonstration goes unharmed. Instead, they forced us to disband in seconds and arrested Atalya and I for allegedly not complying. We had to spend the entire night arrested in police custody. We were released around 7 am and had to sign a bail bond preventing us from gathering in Jerusalem’s square for 30 days.

The sole purpose of the restrictions that were put on us is to silence our voice and we refuse to be silenced. We will appeal the bail bond in courts in the following days. As military refusers, we have already been detained by Israel for fighting for peace, but in many ways, we are not the main victims of this incident. The main victims are the millions of Palestinians who suffer through this war, bombardements, siege, and occupation.

We gathered on Saturday on the streets of Jerusalem to show our opposition to the war and hostilities conducted by Israel, to call for an end of the siege on Gaza and Occupation of Palestine, and to show our solidarity with Palestinians who are being targeted and attacked by groups of right wing extremists all over the country. In the past week, organized groups of settlers and right wing extremists gathered in different Arab neighborhoods in cities in Israel, attacking the locals and trying to incite a “racial civil war”. In Sheikh Jarrah and East Jerusalem, settlers with guns patrol the blocks, and in Bat-Yam, miles away from Tel Aviv, an Arab passerby was lynched and beaten to near death by a Jewish mob, Live on National TV. The Israeli authorities are unable, or unwilling, to put a clear stop to these attacks and the government is trying to silence other nations and international organizations from commenting on them.

The surge of racist attacks amid the ongoing war in Gaza frightens us. While we were arrested for trying to express our desire for peace, those who seek to violently incite war still roam the streets freely. Almost no criminal charges were submitted against Jewish nationalists, and many, both Jews and Arabs, fear becoming the next targets of their attacks.

Sincerely yours,

Tair and Atalya

PS – Thanks to contributions from our supporters we were able to send this newsletter and support refusers in Israel. We hope you can pitch in here. Such recurring donations help amplify our voice for peace in these difficult times

Bibi and Gantz! End this unnecessary and pointless war!