Dear friends,
Thanks to those of you who wrote to the Jewish Advocate last week in support of my article
(http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions2/?content_id=4644). The editor says he has never gotten so much response (both positive and negative) as he did with this article. I'm so excited to see this conversation be opened in a mainstream, and when it comes to this issue, right-wing Jewish community. There are three relevant things in this week's Jewish Advocate, and I encourage you to engage and respond in order to keep the conversation open, to show the Jewish community and beyond that there is not consensus (Jewish or otherwise) on this issue, and perhaps even to cause some ambivalence in people who have never really questioned the fundamentals but whose values otherwise might point them in this direction if only given a little push.
1. This week's online poll states: "In light of last week's Leading the Way column, do you think it's helpful for the American Jewish community to talk about and/or acknowledge the issue of who has the right to certain land in Israel?" I know, on one level an absurd question, on the other hand, let's all vote yes! :) www.thejewishadvocate.com (poll at the bottom in the middle)
2. There are letters to the editor (all 5 are about Israel/Palestine, the last 3 are specifically in response to my article): http://thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/letters_to_the_editor/?content_id=4685
My suggestion: write a letter to the editor in response! editorial@thejewishadvocate.com
3. There's an editorial that starts well (by stating that my opinions are both widely supported and widely criticized) and then goes on to state as fact a lot of disgusting myths and stereotypes (so brace yourself): http://thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/editorial/?content_id=4680
My suggestion: write a letter to the editor in response! editorial@thejewishadvocate.com
Pick whichever inspires you (if any), and let them know what you think! It's so rare that we're able to talk about the fundamental issues of 1948, Zionism, and refugee rights in these spaces - let's see how long it can last! Also, while you should reference what you're responding to when you write, I think the most effective thing to do is to make this a bigger discussion than just about my article - so please write about the issues themselves, rather than about me or my opinions. I have a few of my own thoughts about different kinds of effective responses, so if you're stuck or are just interested, feel free to write and ask me. But for now, take it away!
And, in case any of you are still reading and haven't yet taken a look at the No Time to Celebrate pledge, please do: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate If you sign the pledge you'll receive an e-mail pretty soon with suggestions of Nakba-related actions to take this spring.
Thanks, all!
Love and resistance,
Hannah
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
No Time To Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakba
Dear friends,
I am so excited to be sharing with you the important effort outlined below. Please take a look, and for all the Jewish people out there, please consider signing this pledge and forwarding it to others. There are more of us than we know - let's show that to ourselves, to mainstream Jewish communities, to the Palestinian people we work in solidarity with, and to the world.
I'm also heartened to let you know that the Jewish Advocate, Boston's Jewish newspaper that is certainly not known for its support of Palestinian rights, has published an editorial that I wrote as part of a column reserved for young people's opinions. You can read it at http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions2/?content_id=4644 and if you feel compelled to write them a letter (to potentially keep the issue in the paper longer), please do.
Okay, now for the campaign and pledge...
Calling all Jews of Conscience!
Join "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"
"NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba" is a campaign organized by anti-Zionist Jews from around the U.S. and Canada to coordinate and make visible Jewish response to Israeli Independence Day celebrations and Jewish participation in commemoration of the Nakba. We invite you to join us in this effort:
1. Sign the NO TIME TO CELEBRATE statement and pledge of action (text below). Go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/ to sign! All signatories will be sent additional information about how to get involved in the campaign.
2. Participate in NO TIME TO CELEBRATE's call for coordinated actions across North America by organizing an action or event in your city, such as peaceful disruption of Israel celebration events or Jewish participation in Nakba events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement. Please contact notimetocelebrate+localaction@gmail.com to let us know what you are planning and to request resources/ideas for action compiled by the campaign.
3. Incorporate the Nakba remembrance Haggadah supplement into your Passover Seders. E-mail notimetocelebrate+haggadahsupplement@gmail.com to request the supplement be sent to you once finalized.
4. Take action in other ways to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba; about the colonial nature of Zionism; and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
5. Spread the word about "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"! Pass this call on to your organizations, friends and family.
In solidarity with 60+ Years of Palestinian Resistance to Zionism,
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
notimetocelebrate@gmail.com
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/
******************
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
Statement and Pledge of Action
This May, Israel will mark 60 years of statehood. In cities across the U.S. and Canada, major Jewish organizations will sponsor celebrations of "Israeli Independence Day." Meanwhile, Palestinians around the world will mourn 60 years since the Nakba – Arabic for "catastrophe" – of 1948. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and made more than 800,000 Palestinian people refugees in order to create a Jewish state in a land where the majority was not Jewish. This does not deserve to be celebrated.
Today the Palestinian Nakba continues. In order to maintain Israel's artificial Jewish majority, the Israeli government has continued campaigns of ongoing displacement, violence, and occupation. Inside of the 1948 borders of Israel, Palestinian citizens are denied equal rights to Jews under the law. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are denied access to land, water, healthcare, and other basic resources. Palestinians throughout historic Palestine experience international isolation, economic devastation aided by the erection of a 730-kilometer wall, and continued closures and invasions including the current horrific siege of Gaza. Today there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the world, all of whom are denied their internationally recognized Right of Return to their homes and land. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this "right" to "return" given to us by Israeli law.
In addition to 60 years of occupation and dispossession, this anniversary marks decades of creative and powerful Palestinian resistance to Israel's violence. With this statement, we support this struggle, which is so often ignored or vilified in the U.S. media.
As Jews committed to justice, we imagine an "independence" that does not depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the displacement of indigenous people. As North American Jews, we refuse to celebrate the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Palestinian lives and communities funded by U.S. foreign aid. There has never been Jewish consensus around Israel: not in 1897, not in 1948, and not today. We reject the notion that we have been chosen to displace others. We support Palestinian people's right to return, individually and collectively, to the homes they lost in 1948 and in the violent decades since then.
In response to these historical events and a call from Palestine to mark their significance, we refuse to celebrate "Israel 60." We will take action to make our shared position clear and visible. In cities across the U.S. and Canada this year, we pledge to participate in and to support:
• Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;
• Peaceful disruption of these events;
• Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement;
• Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover Seders;
• The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
• Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
Together, we stand with Palestinians in mourning 60 years of al-Nakba and in honoring 60 years of vibrant resistance.
I am so excited to be sharing with you the important effort outlined below. Please take a look, and for all the Jewish people out there, please consider signing this pledge and forwarding it to others. There are more of us than we know - let's show that to ourselves, to mainstream Jewish communities, to the Palestinian people we work in solidarity with, and to the world.
I'm also heartened to let you know that the Jewish Advocate, Boston's Jewish newspaper that is certainly not known for its support of Palestinian rights, has published an editorial that I wrote as part of a column reserved for young people's opinions. You can read it at http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions2/?content_id=4644 and if you feel compelled to write them a letter (to potentially keep the issue in the paper longer), please do.
Okay, now for the campaign and pledge...
Calling all Jews of Conscience!
Join "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"
"NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba" is a campaign organized by anti-Zionist Jews from around the U.S. and Canada to coordinate and make visible Jewish response to Israeli Independence Day celebrations and Jewish participation in commemoration of the Nakba. We invite you to join us in this effort:
1. Sign the NO TIME TO CELEBRATE statement and pledge of action (text below). Go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/ to sign! All signatories will be sent additional information about how to get involved in the campaign.
2. Participate in NO TIME TO CELEBRATE's call for coordinated actions across North America by organizing an action or event in your city, such as peaceful disruption of Israel celebration events or Jewish participation in Nakba events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement. Please contact notimetocelebrate+localaction@gmail.com to let us know what you are planning and to request resources/ideas for action compiled by the campaign.
3. Incorporate the Nakba remembrance Haggadah supplement into your Passover Seders. E-mail notimetocelebrate+haggadahsupplement@gmail.com to request the supplement be sent to you once finalized.
4. Take action in other ways to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba; about the colonial nature of Zionism; and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
5. Spread the word about "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"! Pass this call on to your organizations, friends and family.
In solidarity with 60+ Years of Palestinian Resistance to Zionism,
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
notimetocelebrate@gmail.com
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/
******************
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
Statement and Pledge of Action
This May, Israel will mark 60 years of statehood. In cities across the U.S. and Canada, major Jewish organizations will sponsor celebrations of "Israeli Independence Day." Meanwhile, Palestinians around the world will mourn 60 years since the Nakba – Arabic for "catastrophe" – of 1948. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and made more than 800,000 Palestinian people refugees in order to create a Jewish state in a land where the majority was not Jewish. This does not deserve to be celebrated.
Today the Palestinian Nakba continues. In order to maintain Israel's artificial Jewish majority, the Israeli government has continued campaigns of ongoing displacement, violence, and occupation. Inside of the 1948 borders of Israel, Palestinian citizens are denied equal rights to Jews under the law. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are denied access to land, water, healthcare, and other basic resources. Palestinians throughout historic Palestine experience international isolation, economic devastation aided by the erection of a 730-kilometer wall, and continued closures and invasions including the current horrific siege of Gaza. Today there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the world, all of whom are denied their internationally recognized Right of Return to their homes and land. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this "right" to "return" given to us by Israeli law.
In addition to 60 years of occupation and dispossession, this anniversary marks decades of creative and powerful Palestinian resistance to Israel's violence. With this statement, we support this struggle, which is so often ignored or vilified in the U.S. media.
As Jews committed to justice, we imagine an "independence" that does not depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the displacement of indigenous people. As North American Jews, we refuse to celebrate the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Palestinian lives and communities funded by U.S. foreign aid. There has never been Jewish consensus around Israel: not in 1897, not in 1948, and not today. We reject the notion that we have been chosen to displace others. We support Palestinian people's right to return, individually and collectively, to the homes they lost in 1948 and in the violent decades since then.
In response to these historical events and a call from Palestine to mark their significance, we refuse to celebrate "Israel 60." We will take action to make our shared position clear and visible. In cities across the U.S. and Canada this year, we pledge to participate in and to support:
• Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;
• Peaceful disruption of these events;
• Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement;
• Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover Seders;
• The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
• Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
Together, we stand with Palestinians in mourning 60 years of al-Nakba and in honoring 60 years of vibrant resistance.
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