Refusal is courage and obedience a nightmare
JVL Introduction
Avrum Burg has written this letter to his grandchildren. Burg was the Chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel and a past Speaker of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset). His is, perhaps, the cry of many liberals who continue to believe that there was a possibility for a principled Jewish State, for a culture within that State that did not seek to oppress others (while claiming ongoing victimhood). We can almost hear his disillusion and demoralisation and his loving letter urges his own family members to refuse to fight for the actual, Jewish State. He says of Israel’s culture that: “The entire national education is turned inward, a nationalist narcissism that seeks to erase the existence of the others, that denies the memories, the wounds and the dreams of the Palestinians. And that denial is the mother of all sins, the force that has turned a great civilization into a contemptible barbarism.”
And we know it is Palestinians’ (and Lebanese and Iranian) lives that are being destroyed. We applaud all those who refuse to fight for the Israeli regime.
LL
This article was originally published by Avrum Burg's substack on Fri 24 Apr 2026. Read the original here.
My Beloved Grandchildren: Please Refuse
A Letter to My Grandchildren on Israel’s Independence Day, 2026
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This is a most moving and heartbreaking essay or letter from one of Israel’s foremost liberal leaders. His disillusionment with political Zionism in favour of cultural Zionism and disgust with Netanyahu and colleagues is palpable and gives a slight glimmer of hope that Israel might not become the pariah state it seems likely to be at the moment
reposted on the Times of Israel Daily online Conversation
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-high-court-is-treading-a-dangerous-path-by-delaying-an-october-7-state-inquiry/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2026-04-25&utm_medium=email
in the context of the ongoing polarisation of opinions in Israel about the controversy surrounding the topic of holding a state commission of inquiry a propos 7 October 2023. This goes to the heart of what Mr Burg is writing about.
It is so easy to understand antisemitism in the present context. But I want to ask. Why has it always been so across many continents, and over centuries? What is it about Jews that make them Targets for hate?
If I ask the question about bullied children at school their is loads of research.
If I ask about racism there is plenty of thoughtful reading. Are the jews so much more picked on than black people?
There is much discussion of this, whole academic departments and journals devoted to it. Mush of it, regrettably, is designed to argue for a Jewish exceptionalism and justify Zionist policy. But there is also some more thoughtful work. You could start from the writings of Anthony Lerman and Brian Klug. JVL runs education programmes which include sections of the history of antisemitism https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/education/
Hundreds of Israelis have demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the Israel’s wars on Iran and Lebanon and against the occupation of the Palestinians, as reported by “Al Jazeera”. That’s encouraging, I feel. At one stage, Israeli protests against the genocide in Gaza were much, much smaller. Now, some protests attract over a thousand Israelis.
Perhaps you need to be – or fear that you will be – on the losing side of a war to realise just how horrible and terrifying ALL wars are. Even though a majority of Jewish Israelis continue to back Netanyahu and Trump’s war against Iran, their lived experience of it has cut support for the war down from 93% to 68% within 6 weeks.
Perhaps there is now a greater chance of “an outbreak of peace” than this grandfather and all the rest of us had believed possible. I hope so.