When it mattered, did you side with justice or power?

JVL Introduction

Jewish Voice for Labour is one of the members of Global Jews for Palestine along with Jewish organisations that work in support of justice and freedom for Palestinians in 20 other countries.  This webinar was organised to launch our  Global Jewish Manifesto for Collective Liberation and find out more about our member organisations in Latin America, the USA, Canada, most countries in western Europe, Latvia, South Africa, Australia and Aotearoa – New Zealand here.

Excellent speeches were made by speakers from member organisations in Argentina, Aotearoa, Canada and Germany. We were joined  by Gabor Maté who, like others linked the struggle with the history of the world, especially colonialism and also capitalism and the systems we have created, He emphasised that it is a human and a global issue.  He quoted from Primo Levi’s seminal “If this is a man” from which he concludes that “”once Zionism decided that the enemy is the indigenous population, then the concentration camp was inevitable.

He referred to two more books, “Perfect Victims” by Palestinian writer Mohamed El Kurd and “One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This” by Egyptian writer Omar El Akkad from which he quoted: “the moral component of history, the  most necessary component is simply a single question asked over and over again – when it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?”

We were reminded again that the task is not ours to finish but it is also not ours to leave alone and we will not be stopped or silenced!

LL

This article was originally published by Global Jews for Palestine with Haymarket Books on Thu 24 Jul 2025. Read the original here.