Jews celebrating festival of light declare “Zionists don’t speak for me”
JVL introduction
Hundreds of Jews gathered in Trafalgar Square on December 22 for an event organised by Jewish Anti-Zionist Action (JAZA) joined by others from the Jewish Bloc to mark the end of Channukah, the festival of light.
Their message was one of solidarity with the people of Palestine and with the young activists on hunger strike in British jails, risking their lives for taking action against the Israeli genocide.
Chants such as ZIONISTS DON’T SPEAK FOR ME, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE gave the lie to the pervasive myth associating all Jews with the settler colonial project.
The words JEWS FOR PALESTINE were briefly projected on the base of Nelson’s Column.
Police intervened at the beginning and prevented the organisers from using their PA system. But the event went ahead unimpeded, attracting enthusiastic interest from members of the public, from many different parts of the world, including Gaza. A few antisemitic and anti-Palestinian heckers were treated with appropriate disdain and not permitted to disrupt proceedings.
See below pictures of the event and text of the booklet prepared by JAZA for the occasion, which give some of the flavour of an unusual and creative celebration of our shared humanity.
NWI
All photos below: credit @anthonyjarman
what a brilliant looking event.
I hope this does not happen to anyone who attended this event. But if you are at a Jewish cultural or religious gathering and this is attacked by an Islamist/jihadi terrorist(s) – they will not bother trying to find out your position on Gaza/West Bank/Palestine – they will just try to murder you.
Most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist at all. Is that what you want? That is the logical outcome of completely opposing Zionism. If that is what you want – you are turkeys wishing for Christmas.
Zionism – the self determination of Jews in their ancestral homeland – MUST continue to exist otherwise the world’s Jews will be under existential threat.
Had there been a Jewish state before World War 2 – the Holocaust either would not have occurred or it would not have been anywhere near as bad.
The off the scale level of antisemitism currently which I think is the new norm demonstrate again why the world’s Jews need Israel to exist.
The current Israeli government and its attitude/policies towards Palestinians is completely wrong. This can be fixed by a change of government.
I am happy for it to exist as part of a 2-state solution providing its security is guaranteed.
Excellent. We will not be silent. The “Media” and the Establishment are scared because they have lost control of the narrative. I saw the video of Greta Thunberg being arrested today for holding a placard supporting the hunger strikers against genocide. They may have taken away the microphone in Trafalgar Square, but they will never silence our voices in support of Palestine.
Many thanks to all involved in spreading the Jewish message of peace. It is such a shame that mainstream media ignored your efforts.
Shalom
“Police intervened at the beginning and prevented the organisers from using their PA system.”
on what grounds!?
I suppose that they should be relieved that the TSG didn’t ‘kettle’ them, break bones and set the dogs on them
Is it now ILLEGAL in this country for Jews to publicly say that Zionism does not speak for them?
Are we slithering down the slope to dystopian totalitarianism?
On that subject here’s a prescient 2019 blog from the Times of Israel
The Blogs: Jewish Racism Returns: The Dangers of “Kahanism” in Israel | Ron Kronish | The Times of Israel February 26, 2019
(my Comment):
Interesting that a Jew should use the ‘beyond the pale’ metaphor not once but twice in his blog!
“Kahane’s followers–[who] are rejected as beyond the pale by the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews”
… that is no longer the case
Rabbi Ron’s worst nightmares are come true
« The Israeli Army has become a professional militia army » – Sylvain Cypel – Assaf David
“I was born in Kyriat Arla … I know how children are raised there, in a terrible atmosphere of hatred towards Palestinians. When those young people go into the army they have absorbed that messianic education and that hatred. I don’t know how they can be stopped.”
“I think the Israeli regime has fallen into the hands of the messianics. From now on it is they who impose their vision – and this also affects the army. They are to Judaism what the Jihadists are to Islam. Judaism is instrumentalized to terrible ends.
At the highest levels of the army, we’ve witnessed a destructive madness. So how can we be surprised by the generalised brutality, this wish for total revenge, on the part of both soldiers and civilians ?”
298 words
@ Mike Norman
I think none of these arguments stand up.
The best protections Jews, political dissidents, gays, etc could have had from the death camps ahead of them were governments in the UK and USA (primarily) willing to give them refuge. Shockingly, many of these refugees were callously denied safety.
European Jews naturally preferred to go to countries where there were long established sizeable and supportive resident communities of Jews (as was not the case in Palestine).
They wanted a safe refuge as similar as they could find to the homelands (eg industrialised, wealthy and sophisticated Germany) they’d had before these became dreadfully unsafe. Palestine was mostly a land of small family subsistence farms.
Zionist campaigns over 60 years failed to attract significant numbers of Europe’s Jews (or Arab Jews) to “Israel” until the Holocaust and WW2’s economic destruction of most of Europe pressurised them into considering emigration to the new state.
I’d argue Zionism isn’t a protection for Jewish people, it’s more likely to drive the unmerited scapegoating of the perfectly innocent because they’re wrongly associated with Israel’s shocking conduct. I understand there are many different understandings of what Zionism is and means … but Zionism too often seems to be exploitative, murderous racism in action.
I agree with you about a 2 state solution (on the 1967 borders, etc) being the best way forward that we can hope for – but from my perspective, no Israeli government is likely to negotiate that unless it’s run out of all easier options.
Wonderful! x
Mike Norman:
In the Palestinian’s current dire situation I would not blame them should it be the case that: “Most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist at all”. But true or not Palestine has not nor ever has had the means to carry out such a desire making Israel’s professed fear of such a thing happening completely bogus. In stark contrast, the Israelis, with the immense financial and military support of the US as well as the protection it consistently affords Israel by use of its veto in any vote at the UN disagreeable to Israel, not only wants but has that capacity to ensure Palestine does not ‘exist at all’. Israeli leaders have stated this to be Israel’s intention, helped along by the surge in illegal ‘settlement’ construction in the West Bank, and is well on the way to bringing this inhuman atrocity about. This is openly proclaimed with impunity and beamed into homes across the world along with video evidence of its progress in achieving this ‘final solution’. Another aspect of its feelings of absolute immunity being almost total Western acquiescence, and total non-intervention to halt the on-going genocide. Apparently ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ stretches to wiping all traces of historic Palestine and its inhabitants from the map.
To me as non-Jewish and atheist, the Jewish claim that God gave what is now Israel/Palestine to Abraham is difficult to believe that it happened as claimed, or even if it did that it would override Palestinian rights to their land and homes held for generations. I don’t believe it impossible for me to be wrong whereas the absolute certainty of this by the Israeli government is fundamental, unshakeable—— for obvious reasons not least of which being self interest on steroids.