I renounce my Israeli Citizenship: it is a tool of genocide
JVL Introduction
In this powerful piece, there are many reasons cited for the author renouncing his Israeli citizenship, citing Torah teachings as well as his awareness of Jewish solidarity with liberation movements. However, at root he has done this because he sees Israeli citizenship as illegal, based as it is on the Nakba and all that has followed. The citizenship papers formally consolidate those actions and the unjust laws that potentially grant citizenship to all Jews in the world and deny it to all Palestinians.
He notes what we might term PEP (Progressive Except on Palestine) saying this about his parents who settled in Israel in 1971: “Out of a youthful naivete that would deepen into willful ignorance, they managed to become both American liberals who opposed the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, while also acting as armed settlers of another people’s land…They occupied a home built and recently inhabited by a Palestinian family whose community was expelled to Jordan and then violently barred from returning at the barrel of a gun — and by the citizenship papers my family held in their hands.”
LL
This article was originally published by Truthout on Thu 26 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
Israeli Citizenship Has Always Been a Tool of Genocide — So I’m Renouncing Mine
My decision is an acknowledgement that this status never held any legitimacy to begin with.
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Re “I don’t regard my decision to renounce this citizenship as an effort to reverse a legal status as much as it is an acknowledgement that this status never held any legitimacy to begin with. Israeli citizenship law is predicated on the worst kinds of violent crimes we know of …”.
It’s a savage irony that the Israeli government’s brutality since Oct has resulted in millions of us learning for the first time that the State of Israel is and always was illegitimate from its foundation. We’ve also learnt how our own nations connived at dispossessing an entire people of their homes, land and unalienable rights to self-determination. An own goal for Netanyahu etc that will shape attitudes towards Israel for generations.
I admire the person who wrote this as being someone who is willing to put their money where their mouth is. It is more than symbolic because it is renouncing something that others value or have valued in the past. I hope that others will have the courage to do the same and take steps to publicise what they have done.
The history of imperialism and colonial settlers goes hand in hand with genocide. Tariq Ali in his book on Churchill quotes Churchill as saying the Arabs(in Palestine) as with the Australian aboriginals and native Americans must be got rid of because they are lesser than the white man. I am ashamed of my nationality whilst the British government colludes in the genocide of my brothers and sisters in Palestine
Bravo. May many more Israeli citizens take courage from your action and do the same. It is only by publicly declaring our beliefs in justice and peace and the right of all people to an autonomous state that this will come about.
Spoken like a truly humane and aware human being.i hope many others bravely follow.
Thank you, Avi Steinberg -everyone should read this article. Nothing I have read or heard before has ever made the Isreal – Palestinian situation so clear to me. You are also very brave. I hope, despite their views, you will retain your parents’ love and respect. In the 1980s a very close friend, her two married children and grandchildren – though all had homes and good jobs in UK – moved to live in Israel where they immediately found decent homes and received unemployment benefits until they found a job – simply for being Jewish. Though always disinterested in politics, they suddenly became ardent supporters of Israel’s politics and instantly racist against Arabs & Palestinians. Any attempt at discussing the situation, they would say that , as a non-jew, I didn’t understand how terrible it all was for them there because of the Arab peoples.
This article expresses exactly what I feel about the Israeli state, the injustice happening, the genocide never named.
People who have experienced genocide themselves, who keep on putting this fact constantly forward, calling everybody who just disagrees a antisemite but is doing exactly the same to others is not credible. I refuse, since a long time, to buy any Israeli product, that is my way to oppose.
Thank you, Avi Steinberg, for your courageous deed and this clarifying article. I would like to know what Zionists have replied to it.
I still can’t fathom how Israel can inflict on another oppressed people the same atrocities as those that the Jewish people themselves have suffered – without wanting to bury themselves out of shame and disgrace.
You are a hero!
Excellent article that resonates with me. Not the selective reading of a merciful and just God in the Torah – try the sections where the Israelites conquer Canaan, destroy cities and their inhabitants, or are called to eliminate every Amalek, among other tribes. I tried to surrender my citizenship years ago, but was told that I had to have my children’s consent.