Jewish People Who Are Pro-Palestine
This issue is confusing for people because both IDF and Hamas are killing civilians. But there is one group I want to highlight who aren’t having their voices heard enough: Jewish people who are standing in support of Palestinian freedom, against the IDF, and against Zionism.
People are being labelled as anti-Semitic for saying they are pro-Palestine, even when the people making that claim are not Jewish and the people on the receiving end of that claim are. But this issue isn’t really Palestinians vs. Jewish people, it’s Palestinians and Jewish people coming together to stand against both Hamas and the Israeli state.
The organization Jewish Voice for Peace calls itself the largest organization “working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism.” They state on their website, “We are committed to building an inclusive Jewish community, that, like many of our families, welcomes Jews and allies who share our values and appreciate our traditions, who advocate for an end to Israeli human rights abuses, and who oppose anti-Jewish hatred, anti-Arab racism, and Islamophobia.”
Other parts of their website state, “We have millennia of Jewish history where our traditions and our communities were not bound up with support for an apartheid government.” “The Israeli government claims to be acting in the name of the Jewish people, so we are compelled to make sure the world knows that many Jews are opposed to its actions. Attempts to hold the Israeli government accountable are often silenced by conflating legitimate criticism with antisemitism. Israel is a state, not a person. Everyone has the right to criticize the unjust actions of a state.”
“Criticism of Zionism should not be conflated with antisemitism. The Israeli government has openly adopted Zionism as a core political belief, which informs its policy decisions. Those political beliefs and policies, grounded in Jewish supremacy, can and should be subject to critical debate.”
The organization If Not Now states, “We are a movement of American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.” “We are Jews of all ages, with ancestors from across the world and Jewish backgrounds as diverse as the ways we practice our Judaism.” “Our elders taught us that because of our history, we must oppose oppression everywhere — whether it preys upon us or others. It is up to us to keep their wisdom alive. Today, as we hold onto our stories of genocide and expulsion, we must understand them as connected to the historic and ongoing oppression of other peoples.”
^ This video is of a Jewish professor making an impassioned speech, talking about how both of his parents survived multiple concentration camps during the Holocaust, and the rest of his family members were killed there. He says, “It is precisely and exactly because of the lessons my parents taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent when Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians. And I consider nothing more despicable than to use their suffering and their martyrdom to try to justify the torture, the brutalization, the demolition of homes that Israel daily commits against the Palestinians…If you had any heart in you, you would be crying for the Palestinians.”
The organization Jews for Radical & Economic Justice states, “We know our power and safety as Jews do not lie in police, militaries, the borders of any nation-state, or the oppression of others, but in solidarity and community, wherever we live. We strive to support local efforts led by our partners for Palestinian rights and freedom, and against Israeli apartheid, occupation, displacement, annexation, aggression, and ongoing assaults on Palestinians.
We are especially called to respond to instances that have an unjust impact here in our own city. Too often our opponents successfully use legitimate Jewish fears about antisemitism to divide and distract New Yorkers from our goals. Too often, Israel-Palestine is a vehicle for this division.”
^ Taken from the Instagram page for Jewish Voice for Peace, the description includes, “JEWS SAY: STOP THE GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS. BREAKING: Thousands of Jewish New Yorkers just showed up at the doorstep of @SenSchumer’s home as he left for Israel, protesting against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. 100+ were arrested blockading his door, including high profile public officials, rabbis, politicians, scholars, and descendants of holocaust survivors — ages 20 to 80. We were proud to be joined by @ifnotnoworg, @jfrejnyc, @nycdsa, @sunrisemvmtnyc, @zohrankmamdani, @marcelaforny and many others.”
In the article Criticizing Israel isn't Anti-Semitic. Here's What is., Sarah Gertler, a young Jewish woman, states, “What is anti-semitic is the cacophony of mainstream media and politicians saying that criticizing U.S. policy toward the state of Israel is the same as attacking Jewish people.” “It’s true that Jews have faced centuries of brutal persecution in Europe. But the Zionists’ project shared unmistakably European colonialist roots. In 1948, Israel’s war of independence led to the Nakba, an invasion driving 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. These Palestinians were never allowed to return, creating a massive refugee population that today numbers over 7 million.
While I was able to travel freely up and down Israel, the Palestinians who once lived there are legally barred from returning. While I wandered the marketplaces trying stews and shawarmas, Palestinians in Gaza can’t afford even the gas to cook their food because of the Israeli blockade.” “ Talking foreign policy is not anti-semitism. What is anti-semitic — always — is saying that all Jews support violence and imperialism.”
Sarah wrote another article, Liberation is Jewish History. Let's Make it Our Future, Too., “Amnesty International released a comprehensive report concluding that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians. It’s not the first human rights organization to do so — Human Rights Watch and the Israeli groups Yesh Din and B’Tselem have all concluded the same.
These reports — and decades of grassroots advocacy — have made it impossible to deny modern Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians.” “Since its establishment by force in 1948 — and especially its occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 — Israel has demolished countless Palestinian homes to expand Jewish settlements. Millions of stateless Palestinians live under strict Israeli military control, while Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy fewer rights than their Jewish counterparts.
For the 2 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip, the daily denial of adequate water and electricity is compounded by the looming threat of Israeli bombing. In just 11 days of conflict this time last year, Israeli strikes killed up to 192 Gazan civilians, at least a third of them children. These abuses stand painfully at odds with the Jewish history I know. Jewish people around the world should defend our heritage — and stand up against these violent injustices in our name.”
There are many Jewish people all over social media making it known that they are pro-Palestine and don’t like being used as an excuse to support what Israel is doing.
^ A protestor in this video of a JVP Bay Area protest that included locking down nancy Pelosi’s office, holding a “Jews against genocide in Palestine” sign, says, “…the people who are using my community’s trauma and pain to call for increased militarization. I am so angry the way our community’s pain has been weaponized and continues to be weaponized for the Zionist machine.”
The Israeli Yesh Din article linked in Sarah’s article above, The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion, includes, “The alibi used by successive Israeli governments that the situation is temporary and there is no desire or intent to maintain the domination and oppression of Palestinians in the area or preserve their inferior status falls apart in the face of the clear evidence that the separate policies and practices Israel applies in the occupied territory are designed to maintain and cement the domination and oppression of Palestinians and the supremacy of the Israelis who migrated to the area.” “even if not all Israelis are guilty of the crime, we are all responsible for it. It is our duty, each and every one of us, to take resolute action to stop the commission of this crime.”
The other Israli article linked above, A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid, includes, “The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire area. To that end, it has divided the area into several units, each with a different set of rights for Palestinians – always inferior to the rights of Jews. As part of this policy, Palestinians are denied many rights, including the right to self-determination.”
^ Taken from this video on Instagram, the speaker describes what is happening to Palestinians and says “this is genocide. This is genocide. And as Jewish New Yorkers, we are here to say not in our names!” and leads the group in a chant of “Not in our names!”
Another Jewish woman, Rebecca J. Alvarez, writes in the article As a Jew, I understand that the root of violence in Gaza is oppression, “Regardless of what many people believed Zionism was, the ultimate impact of this ideology has been oppression and conflict. The Israeli government may have just declared war on Hamas, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and the United States’ complicity in that oppression — are the source of this violence.
For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy, with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege, and daily humiliation.” “I understand that to be silent on Palestine is to be complicit in the erasure of a people who also deserve to survive and thrive.”
A Rabbi speaks on the Palestinian genocide, saying “Genocide is not a Jewish value.”
The article Jewish Alternatives to Zionism: A Partial History includes, “For over a century, Jews around the world have maintained a robust critique of Zionism and the state of Israel. The tradition of Jewish dissent against Zionism has taken many forms. From the moment Theodore Herzl strode upon the world stage, many of us have insisted that leaving the diaspora for a Jewish nation-state is the wrong way to achieve safety, fight antisemitism, actualize Jewish identity, and work for justice in the world. Many have claimed that our peoples’ relationship to the land of Israel is far more complicated than a narrow nationalist vision can allow, or that we are religiously forbidden, at this time, from setting up a Jewish state in the holy land. And many have protested Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians indigenous to the land of Israel.”
In A Jewish Plea: Stand Up to Israel’s Act of Genocide, Stefanie Fox writes, “My only hope in this moment is that my fellow Jewish Americans and people of conscience all across America will unite in a way we never have before to call for an end to genocide. Israel has dropped more bombs on Palestinians in Gaza this week than the United States dropped on Afghanistan in a full year of the war…So many children will die who have never seen life outside of the walls of the ghetto that Israel has locked them in, as politicians here in the United States cheer on the carnage, claiming they are doing it to protect people of my own religion. This is genocide.”
”And like clockwork, the loss of Israeli lives is being used by our government to justify the rush to genocide, to provide moral cover for the immoral push for more weapons and more death. For Jews, the pain we feel is not ours alone. Since the founding of the state of Israel, the Zionist movement has positioned the domination and oppression of Palestinians and the colonization of Palestinian land as the answer to the very real question of Jewish safety. They have taken the very real pain and trauma that we as Jews carry and sharpened it into a deadly weapon. We desperately must understand that what is happening is not a cycle of violence. It is a system of violence. Everyone is caught in its teeth.”
”While the vast majority of the violence of the apartheid regime lands on Palestinians, there is no safety for Israelis in a system rooted in such dehumanization and oppression. In the words of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer, “My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself. The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear.”
Stefanie also wrote the article, Jewish Grief Must Not Be Used as a Weapon of War, “I cannot sit back while Jewish grief and trauma is weaponized by the Israeli government to destroy Gaza. As I write this, Israel just announced that the 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza—half of them children—will have 24 hours to flee, which the UN has already deemed impossible.”
“Make no mistake: The Israeli government is using genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians. We as Jews know all too well how dangerous this rhetoric is, the way in which the unthinkable becomes acceptable when we deny people their humanity.”
^ In this video by clios_world on TikTok, Clio starts off, "As a Jewish person who was indoctrinated into Zionism, one of my earliest stirrings of anti-Zionism came when I realized I was associating my Jewish identity with Israel." "What I was struck by even then, is, "Why am I so patriotic about a country I don't even live in?" It's one of those things you don't really question because it's so normal, except for those stirrings of "Why am I associating my identity with a country again, that I've never been to?" "I am being conditioned to support Jewish Nationalism. The Jewish statehood."
In the article, As Israel turns 70, many young American Jews turn away, the author states, “Natalie Portman, the Oscar-winning actress, recently kicked off a massive storm of controversy when she pulled out of a prestigious award ceremony in Israel because, she said, she “did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu”
”There has been a profound shift happening in American Jewry’s attitude toward Israel for some time (as I show in my book “Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel”). Public criticism of Israel and acts of protest by American Jews have gradually become much more common…For many, their problem with Israel is not just its current prime minister, its government’s policies and its nearly 51-year-long occupation of the West Bank. It is also Israel itself that they are uncomfortable with, specifically its identity as a Jewish state. It is not only what Israel does that bothers them, but also what Israel is.”
^ A Jewish author in this video states, "So right now, if you are putting out a statement talking about how your heart goes out to the hostages in Israel, but you are not saying that your heart goes out to the people, the civilians, the children of Gaza...if you are condemning Hamas but you are not simultaneously condemning the Israeli government and the US's unconditional support for the Israeli government...that is because you see Israelis as people and you do not see Palestinians as people."
"...it is extremely threatening to do anything to humanize Palestinians. Which is why my suggestion yesterday...that people read a book, any book, by a Palestinian author, that is so threatening to people. People take that as anti-Semitic, the suggestion that you read a book by a Palestinian. Because if you read a book by a Palestinian, that is going to humanize Palestinians for you and it will change the way you see this conflict forever."
"I created the Read for Palestine challenge and apparently that was so threatening that it got me put on an Israeli block list in this notorious website...and I, an outspoken Jewish author, am according to them a horrible anti-Semite just because I encourage people to read Palestinian literature."
@mattxiv on twitter tells his Jewish family that the “global day of jihad” turned out to be false propaganda meant to make Jewish people feel better about atrocities being committed against Palestinian people in Gaza.
^ In this video, Noam Chomsky, who has Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant parents, says that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is “worse than apartheid”, and says Israel “just wants to get rid of them. If they’d all leave, that’s fine” calling it a “classic neocolonial system.”
^ Michael Brooks says, “My Jewish values teach me to oppose apartheid.” “I knew that people I admired like Nelson Mandela said, “South Africa is going to not be properly free until the Palestinians are free.'“ In 2006 I believe, I read a piece by a guy named Tony Jutt in the New York Review of Books, who was a really important Jewish scholar, and the argument was like literally this is childish. Like the idea that you have an ethnostate or a religious state…if you’re committed to any type of broad based social economic equity and civil society, it doesn’t work.” “I don’t support second class citizenship, occupation, and sieges for anybody, no matter who they are.”
Jewish artist Roan Boucher, @pollinator_press_art on Instagram, shares this piece of artwork of the protests, saying in the description, “Judaism ≠ Zionism. Occupation and apartheid don't keep Jews safe. Gaza is under siege. Don't let Israel commit genocide in our name. Ceasefire. Ceasefire. Ceasefire.”
The description of the book A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews confront Zionism includes, “It relays the transformational journeys of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, queer, and Palestinian Jews who have come to reject the received Zionist narrative.”
Jon Stewart talks about his pro-Palestine stance, saying “As a Jewish person, you are saddled with the idea that you are not a citizen of America, or a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of Israel, and you must back their actions. And one has nothing to do with the other.” “It’s to nobody’s benefit but the Palestinian people that it get resolved.” “That doesn’t negate how I feel about anti-Semitism. Semitism is not the same as Zionism.”
In this video, @hermes.the.cynic on Instagram says, “You want me to support Israel? MY Israel? Fuck no never, absolutely not ew disgusting.” “It’s my Israel by the way. It’s mine. I own it. You see, it’s my birthright. For those of you who don’t know, because I was born a Jewish man, I own the land of Palestine and Israel. It is my fucking bloodright…that’s not me saying that, that’s the state of Israel by the way. They told me hey man, because you’re technically a Jew, Israel’s yours. Come on down.” “It’s an apartheid state. It’s the greatest shame of the Jewish people. It’s disgusting.”
Rabbi Dovid Feldman, spokesperson for Neturei Karta, an international Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist group, states in this video, “The state of Israel does not represent all Jews, and certainly does not represent the Jewish religion. According to Jewish religion, all of this is criminal. All of this is forbidden. Basics of Jewish belief teaches that Jews are in a divinely decreed exile. We are even forbidden to create a sovereignty for ourselves, but especially when this is by killing, stealing, oppressing an entire people. This is not only criminal according to international law, this is a true violation of Judaism.”
@interstellar_isabellar on Instagram who calls herself a "Jew for Palestine" talks in this video about the history of how Israel funded Hamas to try to take down the Palestine Liberation Occupation because they were a secular left-wing organization, and to create more harm and division to Palestinians so that they couldn't overcome Israel, and that most of the nonviolent resistance was eliminated for this reason as well. She also mentions of Hamas, "They are also acting out of anger that has built up over 75 years of brutalization and oppression. The larger force behind all of this is apartheid. Is the unjust state of Israel."
She also mentions that stories of Israeli people being killed "are being used to justify genocide. To justify war crimes." "They have used Jewish death as a pawn for decades, to their own violent ends, to justify horrible things."
Wallace Shawn, who played Vizzini in the movie The Princess Bride, attended a protest led by Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, holding a “My grief is not your weapon” sign. In this video, he states, “Like anyone who is Jewish, millions of my relatives have been massacred. You’d think that would teach everybody from that background that this is a tragedy that should be avoided, that hatred against particular groups is wrong.” “What’s happening right now is certainly one of the most deliberate cruelties inflicted on a group of people that I can remember and that my own government has supported. Even in Vietnam, there was a whole elaborate explanation that people gave and they didn’t quite admit that they just were slaughtering the innocent.”
Morriah Kaplan with the organization If Not Now talks about the organization and its planned protests, and states, “We felt it was really important that there was a Jewish voice saying “Not in our name.” We don’t believe this kind of aggression makes Jews safer, it doesn’t make Israelis safer, and it’s important for American Jews to be able to say, “We do not want this type of violence to be happening in our name.” “What we need is for our government to use its leverage not to send weapons to the Israeli government which has openly voiced its genocidal intentions, but to really bring an end to this.”
@juliajuliaroserose on Instagram posted these two slides with the caption, “This has been my heart for many years. Peace in our lifetime. A FREE Palestine in our lifetime. An end to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation and imperialist genocide across the globe.”
Seth Rogan appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast (who agrees with him as he’s saying this) stating, “I also think that as a Jewish person like I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life. They never tell you that oh by the way there were people there. They make it seem like it was just there sitting there.”
In this video, An ex Israeli soldier talks about how Jewish settlers are given more rights than Palestinians and that he can take the Palestinians homes if he wanted to and that Palestinians aren’t allowed to walk on the same streets as Jewish people etc., and states, “I think realizing all of that in a very very early state in my service helped me understand that someone was lying to me along the way. I didn’t feel like I’m protecting anyone, I didn’t feel like I’m helping anyone feeling more safe, I feel like I’m terrorizing people.” “I felt like I am the terrorist, and my job was literally to scare people so that they cannot think about acting against Israeli settlers or the Israeli military. That was actually our defined mission, to make sure to instill fear in the hearts of Palestinians and Favon, and that’s exactly what we did.”
In this video, @caffeine.and.lamotrigine on TikTok states, “Hi I’m Quinn and I’m an anti-Zionist Jew.” "Zionist Jews have gotten really really good at making this conflict and this crisis the issue of anti-Semitism. That's not what it is. The way they spin it: if you don't support Israel, if you don't support the right of Jewish people to establish an ethnostate on a currently occupied land, you're a Nazi, you're anti-Semitic, you're blowing dog whistles, you want Jewish people to die. Not true." "Before all of it, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all lived in Palestine." "Up until the proliferation of Zionism and the establishment of the Israeli state, all major religions with ties to the land were represented in the population of Palestine." "Using Judaism and the atrocities of the Holocaust to justify and inform settler colonial violence is a slap in the face to the entire faith and a perversion of what Judaism teaches us."
The Twitter page Torah Judaism states, “The purpose of our account is to show everyone that not all Jews are Zionists and support Zionism. There are Torah Jews living in many countries around the world who are ignored by the mainstream media, and these people are attacked for criticizing Zionism. Zionism is not a religion, it is a political ideology and has nothing to do with Judaism. Zionists cannot speak for all Jews. Just as Israel does not represent all Jews, Zionism is not Judaism. All we are doing is showing that not all Jews embrace Zionist ideology. Zionists may not like it, but people need to see the truth. We will continue to be the voice of Jews whose names are never mentioned in the mainstream media, but who exist and struggle justly against Zionism.”
^ Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and an endowed professor in the study of modern genocide wrote an article in Jewish Currants called A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in Gaza. Why isn’t the world listening? and states in the video above, “I think that indeed what we’re seeing now in Gaza is a case of genocide.” “This intent is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since the 7th of October. It’s well known what defense minister Yoav Gallant said on 9th of October declaring “complete siege on Gaza” cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “we’re fighting human animals and we will react accordingly”. He also said that “we will eliminate everything”. We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari for example acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicity “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”. So we’re seeing the special intent on full display.”
“When we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days including phosphorus bombs as we heard, on one of the most densely populated around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel I must say is also perpetrating act number two and three, that is causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals which the World Health Organization has declared to be “a death sentence”. So we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent, this is ineed a textbook case of genocide.”
In reference to the Israeli government saying about Palestinian civilians “we are fighting Nazis” Raz says, “It’s very important to understand this context, the idea of “fighting Nazis”, the idea of using Holocaust memory in this way, there’s a broad context, a long history of course, of this shameful use of Holocaust memory which Israeli politicans have used to justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians. And it has allowed also a view to develop that sees Israel as somehow exceptional providing it immunity. The truth however is that all perpetrators of genocide actually see their victims as dangerous, as vicious, as inhuman, right. That’s how the Nazis saw the Jews and that’s how today Israelis see Palestinians.”
^Andrea Gibson on Instagram, while not Jewish, includes in a post that they were “originally introducted to the Free Palestine movement by Jewish activists who were a generation older than myself and had been working for peace in the area for years. Their message was clear: we do not want another genocide.”
Jewish Israeli professor Ilan Pappe states, “Zionism was a settler colonialist movement that was running away from persecution, but it wanted as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible. This was the aim of Zionism in the late 19th century, this is the aim of Zionism today. ”
Jewish and Israeli citizen @ilanastrology on Tiktok talks about how her Jewish father moved to Israel because of the law of return and states in this video, “when my mother, a non-Jewish woman, arrived to Israel, she was systemically bullied by the state to convert to Judaism just so that she can have minimum wage job prospects and get her children into schools. My mother had to hide in the closet of the bakery that she worked in because when the rabbi would come by he would try to fire the “Russian pig” who was making the food un-kosher. Conversion is a two year long rigorous process in which you have to study rabbinical texts, and my mother doesn’t speak Hebrew. She’s an immigrant. She is poor as f*** and pregnant, it is the last thing that she wants to do just so that she can safely work for very little.
My mother wasn’t even receiving the brunt of the oppressive force of the zionist state because she was white. I remember when I was in the second grade in Israel we had to do a diversity exercise where we were to go up to a board and put up the name of the country that we have associations with. The first child to go up was an Ethiopian kid, and at the time and I believe still to this day, there are more Ethiopian Jews in Israel than there are in Ethiopia. Before anything could happen, children started booing and throwing things at him because he’s black, he has nowhere to hide. And then a Russian kid comes up and he writes “Russia”, people are booing and throwing things at him. It is my turn and I know that I cannot write “Russian on that board, and I can hide behind my whiteness. I know that I am moving to America because we had just won a green card, so I come up to the board and I write “America” and everybody starts applauding.
Three tenets of imperialism are at play within the consciousness of Israeli children. Anti-blackness, the red scare, and American exceptionalism. The zionist propaganda machine divides the Jewish people.”
Jewish and Israeli professor Avi Shlaim mentions in the above video, “Zionism is racism. Israel cannot be both. Israel is either a racist Jewish state, or it’s a democratic state for everybody, and that’s what I would like Israel to be. I’d like a democtatic solution, one state, with equal rights for all its inhabitants. Your organization, Human Rights Watch, issued a report last year about Israel, and the conclusion was: it is an apartheid state. And there are four major human rights groups in the last two years who issued similar reports, reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. So, apartheid is racism. Apartheid is discrimination.”
Amanda Gelender has been speaking out on Twitter, and talks about what it is like to grow up Jewish in America. The last comment links to her article Kaddish for the soul of Judaism - Genocide in Palestine where she includes, “When I see Gaza, I see my own people languishing in concentration camps. I see a world that has turned its back on us, letting us be slaughtered en masse because we aren’t quite human enough. I am having a nightmare, can you wake me up? I’m dreaming that the Star of David is not sewn onto our clothes but affixed to the genocidal soldiers who bomb hospitals, schools, and churches with no regard for life. Who round up entire communities and shoot kids dead in the street.”
Jewish feminist and author Naomi Wolf says in the video above, “I don’t think I could ever live in Israel again unless there was a huge awakening along these lines. How can I live in a society that’s just declared that some people are more equal than other people?”
@benjysherer starts off this TikTok video stating, “As the son of an Israeli, as someone with an Israeli passport, as someone who has friends and family over there, obviously no one approves of the slaughter of innocent people. No one. And of course, I am concerned for my friends and family who are in Israel. That being said, I do not stand with Israel at all on what's going on. And I'm finally starting to realise, for lack of a better term, how brainwashed I've been.
I was taught to love Israel. I went to Jewish elementary and Jewish high school. And, you know, we're singing the Hadiqva, the national anthem. We're singing all these Jewish songs. And we're taught this one very specific view, view of history. We were taught basically that, like, the land was ours. We were taught that, like, well, we tried to offer them a solution. We tried to offer them peace, and they kept on attacking us. And the reason why we kept on gaining more and more land was because they would start wars with us and we would defend ourselves and we would just end up with more land. And so we would try and give it back to them every once in a while, but they wouldn't accept it.
Now I'm starting to recognise more and more and more, firstly, that the Palestinians are living in, this is the phrase that's being thrown around, an open air prison, 2.2 million people who are being restricted in their food, their water, their electricity, their fuel, children who are born into a prison who are never going to be able to go and go anywhere and do anything. And this has been going on for 50 to 60 years. And we were taught to resent them. And so, you know, obviously, again, the killing of innocent people by the Palestinians, awful, terrible, inexcusable. And then I watch Israel's response, carpet bombing this open air prison with 2.2 million people. They're doing the same thing. I do not stand with Israel. I stand with the Palestinian people. I do not understand how we as Jews can stand by while a nation cries for freedom.”
A bunch of rabbis and rabbinical students made this video calling for a ceasefire and mentioning, “the US and Israeli governments are using our grief to justify genocidal violence directed against the people of Gaza.”
Israeli anti-war protesters are blocking roads in Tel Aviv, calling for a ceasefire.
Holocaust survivor Gabor Mate states in this video of Netanyahu, “He’s one of the darkest minds on the world stage right now. He dares quote prophecy, I’ll give him prophecy. It says in the Tanakh, “Thou shalt not oppress a stranger for you know the heart of a stranger. You who yourselves were strangers in Egypt.” What Netanyahu’s devoted his career to is oppressing the “other” and he dares prattle on about light?” “What you’re seeing there is a person so alienated from his humanity, so committed to his ego, that, as they say in Hungarian, whatever he says, not even the opposite is true. It’s so false, not even the opposite is true.”
This video shows messages that family members of Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th or taken hostage have said. It includes messages like, “I am begging the world; stop all the wars. Stop killing people. Stop killing babies. War is not the answer. War is not how you fix things. This country, Israel, is going through horror…and I know the mothers in Gaza are going through horror…In my name I want no vengence.” “There are hundreds of thousands of innocent Gazans who are also trapped there. We have to be very careful about not causing harm that we can’t undo.”
“Do not use our death and our pain to bring the death and pain of other people and other families. I have no doubt that even in the face of Hamas people who murdered him, he would still speak out against the killing of innocent people.” “I have no need for revenge…Indiscriminate bombing in Gaza and the killing of civilians uninvolved with these horrible crimes are no solution.” “She would be mortified. Because you can’t cure dead babies with more dead babies.” “Do not write my father’s name on a military shell. He wouldn’t have wanted that. My father never forgot that innocent people also live in Gaza.”
Due to the length of this article, if I add any more resources, I think I will keep them as simple links below. I had no idea when I started this that there would be this many. It just goes to show how much Israel is lying to the public about what Judaism stands for.
* https://www.instagram.com/p/C126sMLtlZb/
* https://www.instagram.com/p/C3wPB2OuGog/
* https://www.instagram.com/p/C5olIKpObT1/
* https://variety.com/2024/film/global/jonathan-glazer-oscars-speech-support-jewish-creatives-open-letter-1235960158/
*https://www.instagram.com/p/DAGPDWOuC-r/
*https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7DFUTev2zB/
If you have any more resources, feel free to share them and I will add them. What I have learned is that Jewish and Israeli people are calling what Israel is doing to Palestine a genocide, apartheid, and saying they will not accept being used as pawns to support it…and it is precisely because of the Holocaust that they view the situation this way and see so many similarities with what their relatives went through and what Palestinians have been going through for 75 years. I think that’s something to take into account.