Kolkata: Israel’s response in Palestine to the attack by Hamas in the beginning of October has led to sharply divided responses from across the world. Some have stood by Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, even when it means the dehumanisation of Palestinians, and others are as uncompromising in their stance that a people cannot be so violently mistreated.
Editors and journalists have been fired for mere support of Palestine, especially in the US which has reaffirmed support for Israel at this juncture. Prominent celebrities have proven unflinching in their vote of confidence in how Israel is bombing the two million people in Palestine. And yet in a landscape as fraught as this, it is something of a reaffirmation of all that it means to be human that some of the most vocal and visible support for Palestinians in the West has come from a group of Jewish people.
The organisation Jewish Voice for Peace was formed in the 1960s and claims to be the largest Jewish anti-Zionist organisation in the world. It supports the Palestinian freedom struggle and since the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, it has been the subject of global headlines in its demonstrations for a ceasefire at spots significant to the US government.
The Zionist movement supports the idea of a Jewish state for Jews in Palestine. That such an idea, now actualised, is harmful to Palestinians and that Jewish people cannot profess ignorance of this is the rubric of JVP’s presence.
The organisation has among its advisors famed scholars Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. It also has rabbis, young women, elderly men and everyone in between.
Jay Saper, a spokesperson and member who has been arrested twice in the course of the protests in New York and Washington D.C., tells The Wire that 500 of them gathered to sit-in at the US Congress on October 18. Hundreds were arrested and spent the night in jail. But 400 congressional staffers signed a letter supporting the call for the attacks to end.
Last week, we were able to chip at the Western media’s wall of silence that surrounds Palestinians sharing their experiences and calling for their liberation. The cracks in the narrative are showing —we must keep pushing, until Palestinians are FREE.
CEASEFIRE NOW! pic.twitter.com/TWBsoSbmNc
— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 25, 2023
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On X, Naomi Klein called it “the largest Jewish protest in solidarity with Palestinians in U.S. history.” Saper agrees.
Saper also drops interesting trivia: This protest saw the arrest of the largest number of rabbis – 22 – in US history. The only comparable figure is 16 or 17 – the number of rabbis who were arrested while protesting with Martin Luther King against segregation in 1964.
Saper says that the October 18 protest reached the public like no other demonstration did. And indeed, images of protesters at one of the highest seats of global power with the words ‘not in my name’ emblazoned on their shirts made the rounds across social media.
“Politicians are stoking the fire of hatred. We believe that it cannot happen in our name,” says Saper. In a 30-minute conversation over the phone, Saper repeats time and again that their stance against Islamophobia and apartheid in West Asia comes from the belief that yet another community cannot be made to suffer while a community gets what they believe is their due. The resonances are too many with what happened in Europe in the early 20th century. There is no way that members of the JVP, many of whom had ancestors who suffered the Holocaust, can be complicit in an iteration of similar hatred.
“Being Jewish to me means that there is no such thing as being a bystander in moments of historic injustice,” another spokesperson said to the US channel, MSNBC.
The week before the big DC protest, on October 14, Saper and his colleagues at the JVP organised an agitation at Senator Chuck Schumer’s house in New York, urging the Democrat to get the US to stop supporting the operations of the Israeli military. It was timed to come just before Schumer was set to lead a bipartisan delegation to Israel. Several were once again arrested. “By Saturday morning I was out of jail and driving to D.C for the Congress protest,” says Saper. More than individual toil, Saper’s haste signifies a crucial point in the organisation’s identity.
As early as 2017, in the foreword of the book On Antisemitism, brought out by JVP, Judith Butler is forthright in the assertion that “it would be a clearly antisemitic belief to say that “all Jews” share a single political position, or that “all Jews” support the State of Israel, or even that “all Jews” are the same as the State of Israel.”
On this point, Saper says, more Jews than ever are convinced. “Groups which had never collaborated with us before are now with us. In the US, the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice group, which had no typical position on the matter, is now with us. This is such a moment,” Saper says.
At the same time, the group is keen to let more Palestinians be heard and combat the onslaught of fake news by prioritising the authenticity of accounts. More demonstrations are on the cards.
ALL OUT TOMORROW. MOURN THE DEAD, AND FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING.
AdvertisementIn the last two weeks, over 6500 Palestinians and 1400 Israelis have been killed.
This is an emergency of historic proportions.
Ceasefire now to save lives.
RSVP for location at https://t.co/WTJamMsT56. pic.twitter.com/sKDyYg8V1w
— Jewish Voice for Peace NYC (@jvpliveNY) October 26, 2023
In India, Hindutva supporters have struck a chord with their vociferous online support for Israel. At the same time, as The Wire’s Sukanya Shantha has reported, protests in favour of Palestinians have seen disproportionate police action across states. Saper marvels at the curious appropriation of causes by “ethno-nationalists,” where the same people who support radical rightwing thinking also find it in themselves to support violent action by one-time victims of such thinking.
