More Jews say Stop the Genocide Now!
JVL Introduction
Two American anti zionist Jews write in desperation and fury at their government and its current and past backing of Israel almost without question. The same applies to the UK and to most western governments (and Oppositions) that emphasise “Israel’s right to defend itself”. We may ask, as Irish Parliamentarians have asked, who is recognising Palestine’s right to defend itself? We are (rightly) asked to condemn the actions of Hamas that went far beyond the legitimate actions of resistance to occupation yet Israeli spokespeople are not asked to condemn what Israel is doing now and, indeed, its decades long violations of international law.
The authors note, for example, that “between 2000 and the recent wave of violence, more than 10,600 Palestinians were killed by Israelis, according to human rights group B’Tselem, compared to 1,329 Israelis by Palestinians — an eight-fold difference,” and that “(t)he decades between 1948 and 2000 are filled with tens of thousands more dead — largely Palestinians. The story of this conflict, the numbers clearly show, has been the story of overwhelming Palestinian death and displacement.
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This article was originally published by The Guardian on Wed 18 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
We’re anti-Zionist Jews and we see genocide unfolding in Gaza
As Jews, we condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza. Any mass slaughter will not just be on Israel’s hands, but on the hands of America
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This raises the fundamental problem for all those (not least the Jews among them, who recognise that Israel is on the very edge of committing a genocide of a kind that not so many years ago very few could imagine any Jew, for obvious reasons, could possibly sanction) who are winning the popular argument in support of Palestine and protest against Israel, but who are unable to win over the political classes who refuse to acknowledge what sort of state Israel is, or if they do realise it (and how could they not?) refuse in their own interests to act on their knowledge.
Democracy is dead in Israel; now, largely because of Israel, democracy is dying everywhere.
And the Jewish people, once proudly believing ourselves to be beyond the kind of inhumanities that in the past have been so often and so harshly inflicted on Jews, now have to bear the stain on our reputation as a peaceful people which the zealots currently murdering Palestinians has tainted us with.
But thankfully, this dilemma has not led to despair: instead, the Jewish voices speaking against Zionist Israel, once silenced in the world, are beginning to make themselves heard, in defiance of every cruel or sly trick that Israel has employed to keep them silent.
When – if – the time comes when there are more Jews openly standing up to Israel’s ugly bullying, confounding its Hasbarah, then those in power currently giving Israel uncritical support may need to modify their stand if they are to maintain themselves in that power.
These are strange times: it all feels like something of a turning point, and this brilliant article is a sign of that.