Allies to Diaspora and Israeli Jews webinar October 22, 2023
Cherie Brown:
We are in the Israel/Gaza war with potential to spread regionally and further. Never before has our organization been confronted with something like this and decided to do an international all-hands-on-deck response.
I had meetings with Diane Shisk and Tim. Dorann and I had meetings, and we pulled in Azi Khalili, Diane Balser, Dvora Slavin. And we are having an organization-wide response that is beginning this weekend.
Diane Shisk and Janet Kabue and I were supposed to be leading “Jews and the Climate Emergency” this weekend. It became clear it made no sense to go forward with that workshop. As urgent as many of us are about the climate emergency, THIS is in front of our faces.
So I have been all weekend—and will return to them after this—with diaspora Jews, all of the Jews around the world outside of Israel. Tim led two classes yesterday and one right now for all the Israeli Jews living in Israel now while the war is going on.
This webinar is for allies to Israelis and diaspora Jews, and this afternoon will be for Allies to Palestinians.
I say this so you know that our whole organization and the leadership of our organization is saying this is our priority now.
I want to start by telling you a little bit about what it was like for me and many other Jews, particularly in the diaspora, immediately following the horrible events of the attacks on Israelis on October 7. That Saturday morning, when I woke up to the news, I went immediately to a Zoom Shabbat service with my congregation because I wanted to be with my people.
I’m going to tell you about three people in my life outside of counseling all of whom have been fierce allies to Jews, committed to ending antisemitism, and yet, in the first week of the war—they were missing in action: they disappeared that first week.
1) I met my husband George 36 years ago at a national meeting on Christian- Jewish relations. I was leading a workshop at the conference and I counseled a woman on antisemitism and she cried. George was moved by my session and realized that the emotional work I was demonstrating was missing from his work. At the time, George was a Roman Catholic priest, in charge of issues around anti- semitism for the pope. And he realized that the emotional work he saw in my workshop was missing from his Catholic-Jewish work. George came to a training that I was leading in my non-RC organization, and the rest is history. My husband has devoted his life to ending antisemitism in the Catholic Church, but was completely unable to be there when this war broke out.
2) One of my very best friends is D. She and her husband and son are part of our family. We do every holiday together. When we’re in trouble, she’s there, and when they’re in trouble, we’re there. They are a Black African Heritage family that have made a fierce commitment about antisemitism. Yet D was completely missing in action, not a word from her the entire first week of the war.
3) Another very close friend, G, leads the Latin-x work in my non-RC organization. G was in Durban with me at the World Conference on Racism. We were walking down the road there with someone who was a visible Jew and wearing a yarmulke. A car suddenly came towards us about to hit us and G threw me out of the way and saved my life. G was a steelworker and he has a large build. For decades, he loved to always say, pounding his chest— “Cherie Brown! If they come for you, they’ve got to come through me first!” And yet, I was hurting deeply last week and G was missing in action; I have yet to hear a word from him.
So in the middle of this deep grief—and I cannot even begin to tell you what it has been like for us Jews this past two weeks, many of our best friends and allies, including co-counseling allies, also were not there.
So I ask myself, what does this mean?
And one of the things I have concluded: you have your work to do on this as our allies, but we have our work to do as Jews. And the piece that’s our work— there’s some way and particularly for diaspora Jews—Jews living outside of Israel—because of the nature of what it means to live in a dominant Christian world, we have assimilated. We have not been able—even to ourselves, let alone to you—to full-out show the depth of our terror, and the depth of our love for Israel in a world that hates Israel.
For hundreds of years, every Passover, at the end of the Seder every Jew says Hashanah Habaya B ‘Yerushalayim: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
My grandmother was raped by the Cossacks in Russia when she was 12. She was the only one who got out. She came alone to the United States. She was sick my entire childhood. I never understood why. And from her hospital bed, year after year, my grandmother raised money for Israel.
My father’s family was from Romania. He was the baby of 13. All of his siblings except my dad were born in Romania. As best we can count, my dad lost 40 members of his family in the Holocaust. I never saw my dad smile or laugh or look happy. Except the one time he and my mother went to Israel. And when he came home and he was telling me stories, for the first time in my life I saw a sparkle in my father’s eyes.
The last piece I will tell you in terms of getting some picture of what this place that is now at war means to so many of us. There is a place in Jerusalem called the Kotel—in English— the Wailing Wall. When the temple was destroyed in 70 CE, 2000 years ago, what was left was this wall. From 70 CE until 1967, and I’ll get to that in a few moments, Jews had no access to the wall. When Jews go to Israel, they go to the wall. The last Jewish leaders’ conference that was in person, about 6 years ago, was in Israel. After the conference I went with a group of RCers to the wall. We got there, Diane Balser, Phil Rees, Adley Gardenstein, we all (unknown to each other), as soon the conference ended, we all went to the wall.
I share all of this to give you some little glimpse of what this place means to us that we haven’t been able to show you.
I want to do something I have not done before. I am going to give you the Cherie Brown historical journey about Israel and Gaza. I’m going to name key dates along the way. I want you to understand what we are up against in this moment with the Israel/Gaza war. And you will find this no place else, what and how I’m going to tell this to you now.
Some of you have read things about Gaza, Israel, the Middle East. Some of you have not. In this moment, it is no longer an acceptable privilege to opt out. The world is divided on this and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I need you as my allies and as allies to the Jewish people to know these things and in any moment as I’m talking if you watch your brain start to go, I want you to fight to come back.
I’m going to start with the late 1800s. Which was the beginning of Zionism, the modern political movement for Jews to return to their ancestral homeland in Palestine. Zionism arose in the context of worldwide pogroms and massacres of Jews. It was the hope that if there was a homeland for the Jewish people, that there would be a place that could fight against the antisemitism. Many Jewish leaders, particularly in the United States initially didn’t back modern Zionism. I also want to say in this moment, if you hear people say, Israel is a settler-colonial state, I want to understand why that is inaccurate. A settler-colonial state means you come to a land that is not yours, that you have no historic claim to and take it over, practice genocide. Jews were returning to the ancestral homeland that they had been kicked out of. And there were many—I don’t know how many thousands of Jews—that still lived in Palestine for hundreds of years.
Many Jewish leaders did not initially support Zionism. They thought it made no sense to suddenly have a Jewish state. Two events changed that conversation: 1939, the St. Louis, a ship from Germany with 900+ Jewish refugees trying escape the Holocaust. The St. Louis docked in Cuba. The Cuban government would not take them in. The St. Louis docked in Florida. The US government would not take them in. The Canadian government would not take them in. The St. Louis had to turn around and go back. Some of those Jews—England took in some. Germany took in some. Over a third were killed in the gas chambers.
The second event was in 1941 when all the information about the gas chambers was being widely known for the first time. 1941 was an important conference for the Zionist movement and it passed what was called the Biltmore Declaration. In light of the horrors of the Holocaust, there was no longer any disagreement about the Zionist goal to have a home for Jews to go to to fight against antisemitism.
I want us to be clear. The final decision of the need to have a Jewish homeland was in the most desperate moment in Jewish history. Jews were a decimated people going to a land where there was another people on the land who had also been colonized and oppressed for hundreds of years, but not by Jews.
The Eisenhower doctrine—President Eisenhower of the US—was to return Jewish refugees to their original countries after the war. You were going to return Jews to Germany? You were going to return Jews to Poland, which killed more Jews than Germany? There was no place for my people to go. I want us to hold that understanding as we go forward.
British imperialism. I do have to say something to my beloved English co- counseling loves. You may want to go on about US imperialism. But you need to face this history of the role that British imperialism played in what we are dealing with now.
1917 was the Balfour Declaration, that declared the commitment by Britain, which ruled over Palestine at the time, that there could be a Jewish homeland. I might add—Balfour was known for his antisemitism.
Britain practiced divide and conquer in order to rule. Jews and Arabs in Palestine were pitted against each other systematically. There’s a great book—now out of print—There Could have been Peace. By Aharon Cohen. He describes event after event of Jews and Arabs trying to create a union with each that the British ripped apart.
The foundation of what we are dealing with today was British imperialism.
1948—I was born in 1949. I can still cry listening to recordings of the vote in the United Nations that partitioned Palestine so there could be a Jewish state. And country after country voting for that. So 1948 was the moment that a decimated people with a third of their people killed in the gas chambers, got a homeland. 1948 was also the Nakba—the Arabic word for catastrophe. And I need our allies to hold this duality. At a moment of hope for Jews in the midst of horror was also a moment of catastrophe for Palestinians when they were kicked out of their homes and lost the places that they lived in. Many of us Jews have been lied to about the extent that Palestinians were kicked out of their homes. Only in recent years has Israel started to do a reckoning, and things are coming out of hiding of what really happened, and it was horrible. So we have to hold two things that are hard to hold. The hope of a homeland for Jews, and the Nakba for Palestinians
The next moment I’m going to go to is 1967, the 6-day war. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, all of the surrounding Arab countries amassed armies to come after Israel. Miraculously Israel won that war in 6 days. In contrast we are already on day 16 of the Israel/Gaza war now.
In those 6 days, in 1967, as part of the end to that war, Israel kept the Golan Heights in the North, the Sinai in the south and the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza together are what is called the occupied territories. For the past 56 years Israel has occupied those territories.
Two years later in 1969 I had my first trip to Israel. I was 19. I was a strong leftist. On my campus I was an anti-war activist, president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and I was devastated by what I found on my first trip to Israel. The Israelis were feeling the miraculousness of having been able to withstand all of the Arab armies and to have survived. But I knew what was ahead. I had a moment, I was at the Wailing Wall, and I looked and I saw all these Israeli soldiers armed with guns protecting the wall. I heard the call of prayers for Islam, and I knew in every cell of my being that this was going to be the destruction of my people.
When I came back to the US there was not one person I could talk to about it. I went to the rabbi of the synagogue where I taught Sunday school, the most progressive synagogue in the US. He couldn’t hear me. I went to the rabbi of Hillel, the Jewish organization on my campus that had brought Saul Alinsky to train us in community organizing, and I couldn’t talk to him.
An organizer with Operation Bootstrap was the only person I could talk to. This was a Black power organization. I got close to the founder of Operation Bootstrap while I was in high school when I attended Black/white dialogue sessions. I cried in his office: this was going to be the end of my people. He cried with me. He was afraid that the Black power movement was losing the nonviolent message of MLK. We bonded in that moment.
1973—the Yom Kippur War. On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when Jews were fasting and in synagogue, Syria and Egypt mounted a surprise attack on Israel. Golda Meir was prime minister. There’s a movie out about her (Golda): It’s a good movie but don’t go to it for historical accuracy.
That war was 50 years ago, and it's being talked about now. What happened on October 7 had a similar dynamic, in that the Israeli government was taken by surprise. That was a much more protracted war than the 1967 war. Many were killed on both sides. Golda Meir resigned in shame because her government had missed all the signs leading up to that war.
Two years later, 1975, I pulled four friends together, we formed the Shalom Network, and met in my parents living room. It was a first attempt to try to create a Jewish US peace response. There have been many of these groups since that I and other co-counselors that you know and love have been involved in, Diane Balser being one of them. There was an organization called Breira. At a national meeting in Washington, DC Diane and I and a few others were holding up a door, and the Jewish Defense League was trying to break down the door down, interrupt our meeting and beat Jews up. Diane and I held up that door and kept the JDL from getting in to harm us.
1979—Anwar Sadat traveled to the United States for the famous Begin/Sadat (Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) handshake on the White House lawn. I often say when I’m working with Jews who feel so discouraged and hopeless about the situation (and this is a US phrase): things can “turn on a dime.” They can move quickly. Just before Sadat came to the US, all the polls in Israel said: we will not give back territories. Sadat came to the US and Israeli children were waving Egyptian flags that day. Within one day, 80 percent of Israelis agreed: we have to give the Sinai back, which is what happened.
I say that because in the moments of deepest hopelessness, because I have the wide span of history in this conflict, I know that a turning point moment can happen that turns everything around quickly, and we should never forget that possibility.
1987—the formation of Hamas. There had been tremendous increases of illegal settlements. Settlements are the illegal, based on international law, formation of communities in the occupied territories of mostly the West Bank but also Gaza.
So Hamas formed, and it was the beginning of what was called the Intifada. In Arabic the word means uprising. And the Intifada lasted from 1987 when Hamas formed until 1993. And I might add: it’s important to know that the charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel as it is currently known, with the goal of the creation of an Islamic state. It has nothing to do with living side by side with Israel. So the first Intifada ended in 1993 with the Oslo Accords.
Oslo launched the creation of the P.A., the Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank. Yassar Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, agreed that in exchange for a homeland—the word STATE was not yet used— in exchange for a Palestinian homeland side by side with Israel, Palestinians would give up their armed struggle against Israel.
Hamas never signed on and never agreed to Oslo.
Oslo gave hope in many ways. I was at the UN conference for women in Beijing with our RC delegation in 1995 right after Oslo. There were Jewish women from all over the world in Beijing. I built relationships with them. There was a session with Palestinian women that angered them. They were about to have huge demonstrations against the Palestinian women. I was able to say to them: we have Oslo! We have agreements with Egypt and Jordan. You don’t need to picket the Palestinian women; you can reach for them as sisters and dialogue on your differences. And I succeeded at getting Jewish women from around the world—the wide world Jewish women’s leadership of my community—to not picket the Palestinian women. And I could do this because of Oslo.
But the Oslo Accord ultimately failed. There were four primary issues that were not dealt with: the negotiators of Oslo figured they would deal with it later.
The four issues:
- What happens with Jerusalem, the city that both peoples claim as their own,
- What policies need to be set for the law of return: Palestinians returning to their ancestral homeland,
- Most importantly, nothing in the Oslo agreement addressed the issue of settlement expansion,
- Final borders were not determined.
And the failure to resolve these issues ultimately did Oslo in (caused Oslo to fail). The leaders in Israel who never wanted a Palestinian state to begin with began to support massive settlement expansion.
It is a hard but important thing to say: The Netanyahu policy, which began then, was to back (support) Hamas and to weaken the P.A., the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank. So imagine: to back (support) the entity that was calling for the destruction of Israel and weaken as much as possible the entity in the West Bank that wanted to live side by side with Israel. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but that was the policy. Why? So a Palestinian state could never happen.
The Netanyahu policy of systematically pitting Hamas against the Palestinian Authority would make it impossible, or so they thought, to ever have a Palestinian state.
Those shortsighted policies led to the second Intifada in 2000. Tim Jackins and I were due to lead a Jewish leaders conference in Israel. The second Intifada broke out. U.S. naval ships were going towards the area. We canceled the conference. Instead, Tim and I brought about 25 US leaders to Israel and I proposed that we would listen to soldiers as they fought and came away from the West Bank. This was as far as I know the first listening project in RC.
Israel left Gaza in 2005. In 2007 Hamas was elected as the leadership of Gaza and all the exit polls showed after that election that the Gazan people did not support the Hamas policy of ending Israel and building an Islamic state. They voted for Hamas because they hoped that Hamas would not be as corrupt as the Palestinian Authority (which had been ruling over Gaza) These two weeks have shown to many the failure of what is called the Netanyahu doctrine. Support Hamas, weaken the Palestinian Authority, no Palestinian state.
And I will next add, that throughout all of this, US imperialism has played a vicious and significant role. The special relationship with Israel is classic anti-semitism. The US wants a foothold in the Middle East region for power, for oil. Strong U.S. support of Israel has little to do really with its love of Israel.
I wanted to wait until I’d given you some of this history behind the current situation in Israel and Gaza to be able to say how everything that’s happening now is classic antisemitism. Setting up Jews and in this case Israel to play a crappy racist role. And then the whole world hating, vilifying, and abandoning Israel.
I used to hate it when Harvey would say: “There was a ruler that woke up one day and had this brilliant idea . . .” But with that image Harvey was saying something profound. It’s not about a better or worse oppression: all oppressions are horrible. But there’s no other oppression that has this set-up of oppressed and oppressor. 2000 years of hatred culminating in the gas chambers, fuels Jews and in this case Israel to play a horrible racist role and then be hated, vilified, and abandoned. Another way to think about antisemitism is that it is the setting up of Jews up or Israel to be the visible racists. Our racism shows. And the Left for as long as I can remember has been way off about Israel. And this confusion has devastated any attempts to move forward. We have two oppressed peoples. One that has been supported to sit on top of the other. But it is all still within the dynamic of antisemitism.
We’ve always said that antisemitism was the opening wedge that ripped movements apart. Every liberation movement has been ripped apart by this version of antisemitism and specifically about Israel. Antisemitisnhas been systematically used to divide many different liberation movements. I'm going to give examples of five of them. In 2001, RC had a delegation that attended the UN Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa. Durbin was an amazing place to be. Durban was also a hard place to be a Jew. There were caricatures being passed around Durban with pictures of people with large, hooked noses and blood pouring down their faces, reminiscent of the blood libels of the Middle Ages. Mary Robinson, the head of the NGO conference was showed these caricatures, and she said if this is being passed around Durban, then I'm a Jew. The next day in the daily paper at the conference, the headline said, “Mary Robinson says I'm a Jew.” On the last day of the conference, 10,000 anti-racism activists were in the stadium. Mary Robinson got up. As the head of the NGO conference. She was hissed and booed by at least half of that stadium of anti-racism activists. The only reason that could have happened is because earlier in the week she had had the courage to say if anti-Semitic caricatures are being passed around in Durban, then I'm a Jew. It completely broke my heart and I realized in that moment that antisemitism would get used to divide anti-racism activists.
The second example, was at a gay liberation conference called Creating Change. There's a group in Israel, A Greater Bridge that they invited to speak at the conference. A group of allies for Palestinian liberation went to the leadership of the conference and said you cannot invite A Greater Bridge because they are from Israel and we need to boycott everything Israel in fact. There's a term that sometimes gets used “pink washing”. Pink washing means that countries like Israel that are doing oppressive things try to win support by touting and putting forward their successful efforts at gay liberation. So the allies to Palestinians said: “This is pink washing. You cannot invite A Greater Bridge to speak at the conference.” The leadership rescinded the invitation to A Greater Bridge. Progressive Jews went to the leadership and said. How could you not welcome a gay liberation group from Israel that is trying to do progressive things. They reinvited A Greater Bridge. A Greater Bridge did come to speak at the conference. And there was so much intense fights that the police had to be called in, and I spent hours afterwards talking to the executive director of Creating Change, trying to support her in how to move her organization forward. So that it could not continue to get ripped apart and divided.
The next example was the women's March. In January of 2017, after Donald Trump was elected, the Women's March took place on the mall in Washington, DC. Apparently, it was the single largest demonstration that has ever in the history of Washington, DC taking place on the mall. The right tried to break it apart. Some of the leaders of the Women’s March were attacked. And claims that they were anti-semitic because they had strong support for Palestinian liberation. The claims of antisemitism totally ripped apart the women's March. The leadership of the Women's March decided to try to see if they could rectify this and the amount of division that the claims of antisemitism by the right were having on the organization. They decided at the next women's March, which took place in January of 2019, to have Jewish women of the global majority leading the March. The morning of the March, we had a beautiful Shabbat on Capitol Hill, and then it was time for the March to begin, and global majority Jewish women rushed to the front of the line to lead the March. It was a moving day. Two weeks later. I got a call from one of the black Jewish women who's in RC and one of the Leaders of the global majority Jewish women that led the March. and she said Cherie, help— indigenous native women are furious. They think they should have been the ones invited to lead the March because the March was taking place on stolen Native lands. The minute I was told that, I thought. Of course. I called Marcie Rendon the ILRP for native and indigenous peoples, and we talked about it and worked on reaching out to the native women. And the global majority Jewish women. To be able to reach for one another. Once again. Antisemitism. There's an opening wedge to divide the women's movement.
The next example. The Black Lives Matter platform. A number of years ago, Black Lives Matter came out with a platform that was profound with incredible understandings of what needs to happen to end racism in the criminal justice system in the United States. In that document they also went on to say Israel is an apartheid state. And Israel practices genocide. Many progressive Jews were very upset by those statements. There were no relationships at that point between the leadership of Black Lives Matter and progressive Jewish leaders. So they ended up having intense fights in those first few weeks when the platform was released. So instead of having a powerful moment for Black liberation to move forward, Black leaders and progressive Jewish leaders were instead acrimoniously fighting it out. Another example of the wedge that antisemitism draws to divide movements.
And the last example was with the Labour Party in England. Major attacks on the Labour Party and on Jeremy Corbyn claiming that the Labour Party was anti-semitic because Jeremy Corbyn had met with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. These attacks on the Labour Party totally ripped apart the Labour Party and everyone taking sides, and that was a major reason, not the only reason, but a major reason that the Labour Party in England lost the last election once again. Either antisemitism itself or claims of antisemitism systematically divided the labor movement. If we are going to move forward as progressive forces, we have to understand this divide and conquer mechanism and build relationships with progressive efforts in all movements and help them. What antisemitism looks like so it can be defeated. It can be defeated and not used. To divide our peoples.
So we have to understand this and the brilliance of this divide and conquer strategy. In the very moment you see Jews/Israel act as oppressors, the antisemitism is in place and Jews will get abandoned. It will be hard to be for both peoples. Whether you feel more of a heartache for all that’s happened to Israelis, or whether you feel more of a heartache for what’s happening in Gaza, and just as I said earlier, we have to hold the fierce commitment to the Israeli people and the fierce commitment to the Palestinian people, no matter what.
One of the reasons Diane Shisk and I thought we needed to have this webinar came after the back and forth on the lists with point/counterpoint, particularly with the terminology of the use of the words apartheid and genocide in reference to Israel. Emotions are high. I’ve seen so much divisiveness. Is the current government of Israel practicing apartheid? I think we have to agree and say yes. Is the siege on Gaza an aspect of genocide? I think we have to say yes. But throwing these terms around: “I’m going to tell you more why it’s genocide,” “I’m going to tell you why it’s not”—fighting about the terms keeps us from doing the work we need to do now.
I want you to discharge and think before you post on the list. There’s a funny thing that happens. I’ve been an RC teacher for about 50 years. And I remember in my classes, when I would have a student in class who has early hurts around not finding their voice. And suddenly this is their moment in class. They’re going to rise up and find their voice and tell you everything that’s wrong with you as a counselor. They are like, “I’m powerful! I found my voice!” This is not reclaiming power. It is only rehearsing an early recording that needs to get discharged so that intelligence can come forward. So I just ask all of us to remember that writing a sentence on our list from our comfortable homes is not the same as activism and doing the courageous work we’re going to need to do. And let’s all do our best to speak up in ways that increase awareness and decrease defensiveness.
Here is a 4-point program that I also presented this past weekend at the Diaspora Jews workshop. I am calling it a Call to Action. None of us are discharged enough and ready to do what’s needed in this moment. And yet we need to. So I’m going to offer four points:
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When people are putting forward proposals of what to do now, some are calling for a cease-fire, some are saying we can’t just have a cease-fire because Israel has the right to defend itself. What country in the world would not defend itself after what happened? When you hear different positions and you are trying to think how do I move forward and help others to do so, I want you to ask yourself, is this position, this action, helping both peoples? Is it enabling the self-defense that Israel deserves to have happen AND at the same time not harming one Gazan person in any way that can be avoided? This will not be easy to do both. But that’s where our thinking has to go.
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I propose we each create our own think tank. I want you to notice as you read things on the war and you ARE going to read. Do it in session! As you read things with all that I’ve said, with all that you’re going to hear from Diane Shisk and Dorann later in this session, and from Azi and Dvora this afternoon, is this writer/statement/conversation in any way close to what I’m hearing from Cherie and others about being for both peoples? NO ONE has it right yet in this moment. The divisions are enormous. But is it close? I want you to pull together a group, or do one on one conversations, to start developing these think tanks of those who are putting out the closest thing to rationality, and have everyone in your think tank meet regularly and do think and listens. Get people’s minds engaged in what needs to happen next.
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No organization has it right. I made a mistake years ago. If I could have done it differently I would have. BDS, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement to boycott everything Israel— I wanted Palestinian liberation to move forward but I thought it was the wrong policy to full out boycott everything connected in any way to Israel. So, I didn’t have anything to do with that organization. But it’s a nonviolent movement! We can have Hamas or we can have BDS! Can you imagine if dozens of us had joined with BDS years ago, reached for them as allies, built relations with them and then said there’s a need for a shift in policy here. So we’re too quick to abandon organizations when they don’t take good positions. We don’t have that luxury now. Pick the best and clearest organizations and build relations and help them shift in policies where you think they need to shift.
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Look for anything that gives you hope and share widely these stories of hope. People are going to need stories of hope and to see that changing rigid positions is possible. For example there’s a magazine called Jewish Currents. The editorial board viciously attacked a co-counselor a few years ago who had written a pamphlet called “The past doesn’t go anywhere.” I highly recommend her pamphlet. April credits Harvey, me, and RC in the acknowledgments. April’s pamphlet clearly states that antisemitism exists today and needs to be faced. The editorial board of Jewish Currents attacked April’s pamphlet, claiming- “There is no Antisemitism in the present that needs our attention’”. I gave April many sessions after this unfair attack. It was so devastating to her. Then, just this week I read an editorial in Jewish Currents. They totally changed their understanding of everything and fully acknowledged the depth of atisemitism. Track these changes. If you read something that becomes more balanced, take note of it. People can change. Rigid position-taking can loosen. Share these stories.
My people need you. And we need you Now. This morning’s session is on being an ally to Israelis and Diaspora Jews. I hope you all intend to go to the webinar this afternoon on being allies to Palestinians. Being allies to one group will not move us forward without being allies to both groups. I wanted us to have separate webinars, not because one oppression matters more than the other, so we could focus on the specificity of each oppression.
Dorann van Heeswijk
Using our minds, our thinking and doing our own research is important. The point is for us to engage fully. As Cherie said the whole Middle East situation is full of emotion.and this can lead to a push towards holding and maintaining rigid positions. We all need to have our minds and hearts engaged. We need to do our own research and learning, and to operate in the think tanks that Cherie has mentioned, with each other. Given the feelings we have about war, about issues of right and wrong, about power, about Jews and about Palestinians discharge towards finding our full minds and humanity must be a key element here.
Thank you to us all for being here and listening so carefully.
This war engages the major powers in the world. We, as gentile are called upon to grasp and engage our full humanness. No matter what oppressions and mistreatments we have endured, no matter how that has compromised and compromises our capacity to think and care, ALL our human capacities are in tact. We have them and we discharge in order to have greater and greater access to all of our true selves.
That we are here in this world is a good thing. That’s a fact. No matter the welcome we got, no matter the treatment we got as a very vulnerable, new person. And every feeling we have in this current time has to be traced back to that early, early material: vulnerable, alone, hurting, feeling powerless. I often wonder, if we could come out being able to walk and talk and move, how many of us would have hung around. A liberation movement for newborns would save a lot of time with having to discharge all that got set in at that point. We are already the persons we long to be. For dog owners, you are already the person your dog thinks you are!
We commit to discharge towards reclaiming our in tact humanity and this is the solid ground from which we must act, as allies to Jews. The way that I think of this is: Jewish liberation from the perspective of Gentile action.
It can be useful in session to say the word Jew in many different tones and see what comes into your mind. We won’t do it as a mini now but do it as an individual. Take a minute now. That usually shows that we are steeped in a reservoir of antisemitic thoughts and feelings. And our early undischarged experiences of powerlessness and aloneness have made us vulnerable to absorbing that material as truths rather than as manifestations of hurt from the individuals and society around us.
Again discharge is key.
We don’t do this work for Jews. They are not an inherent victims or a group to be pitied or rescued. They are a fabulously diverse group of humans. Seeing them as a uniform group is antisemitic in and of itself. Personally I think to use the word Jew with love and care is a fabulous way forward. Jewish always sounds like we’re trying to be nice and good. I would love us to use the word Jew with all the tender loving care we aim to have.
Anti-semitism as a particularly poisonous form of racism and oppression, has been developed over centuries as a weapon of oppressive societies, actually targeting all peoples, sabotaging and de-railing progressive movements. The her pamphlet “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” April Rosenblum talks of antisemitism as a “camouflage” for oppressive activity. Jews are pushed up front to act out the intentions of the oppressive society. The piece I love about Harvey's writing is the recognition of Jews as a group that has survived when many groups have not, despite being scattered across the globe. I think I'm repeating something Cherie said. Jews are used, scapegoated to turn the resentment of oppressed people away from the oppressor. And turn that resentment against Jews. It is a standard, effective tactic of oppressors everywhere to protect themselves from responsibility for their action.
The key thread that I have identified in the reading and research that I have done, is that Jews as a marginalized and vulnerable group have been consistently and systematically used. There are many examples. I’ll just give a few. When the Dutch wanted their colonies to be controlled in the Caribbean, they sent their Jews to do it. So for example in Curacao, an island, when the people rose up against their Dutch oppressors, they also ended up acting out antisemitism, attacking synagogues. In their own minds they weren't attacking Jews as Jews, but as their colonial oppressors.
This is one of many examples of using Jews to front oppressive actions. This is often referred to as “Jews in a middle agent role”. It has applied to Indians in Africa, Chinese in the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia.
Scapegoating, is part of this and is something you will know from your entire life.
There are people who oppressive society offers up as those to blame for hard things. And as circumstances get harder and harder for more and more of the population, the rise of attacks on vulnerable people are increasing. The significance of antisemitism is the way that it is a model for this. Some activists campaigning against racism understand how that rests on the model of antisemitism; Eric Ward, an African US’er is an example of such an activist. A very good place for us to discharge: our history of scapegoating. It happens in families, often our first encounter with an institution and then our next encounter in schools and so on.
https://www.splcenter.org/about/staff/eric-k-ward
Then there’s the issue of blame, of course scapegoating is a form of blaming. Historically Jews have been blamed for all that is perceived to be wrong. I would like us as human beings to take blame out of our whole way of being and thinking. I see taking responsibility as DIFFERENT from blame, even if being asked to take responsibility for our actions can be experienced as blame. We can and must ask each other to take responsibility for our actions without blaming.
Cherie talked about us gentiles not showing up for Jews when things are hard. That’s what we get to make a commitment to do. Show up, risk making mistakes, facing the humiliation that will often come up, and staying. STAYING. That is so important. Everything that I’m talking about are discharge issues. Decision, action, discharge. We are not powerlessness, defenseless, alone, isolated people. We are called upon to build robust relationships where we can keep loving. I don't mean in a sentimental way. I mean robustly loving and caring. Where we can disagree and stay and stay and stay to resolve disagreements. Personally, this has been a big part of my life with Jews. And we all have different challenges there. Mine is to shut up. And I would like to report that I’m making some progress there as a result of discharge and using my mind.
With oppression, all lives are not valued in the same way. It’s visible. And they are all valuable exactly the same. There’s a lot of work for us to do, and I Iove the idea of us going back to support groups, making this work key to our liberation. I would want us to bring joy and a sense of aliveness to this work.
I’ll just give you a picture of our next piece. Diane Shisk will take over now. And then we will break up into groups of Global Majority and white people and then come back and be in random groups of five to share where our minds are and what we intend to do.
Diane Shisk:
It’s huge to all the Jews that we are here and that we are committed to doing this work. I know that we all understand that the war is super restimulating for Jews. We have to notice that while every Jew is different, this is definitely impacting Israelis differently than diaspora Jews. We are restimulating pogroms and the Holocaust and past terrorist attacks on Jews in Israel. We get to help them to work on early hurts, to create the conditions for them to do that. As we are counseling people we have to remember that this isn’t just restimulation. The Israelis are in real, personal danger. And they are handling that and their families and their lives along with that.
Cherie and Dorann both talked about how important it is for us to show we care, to show our compassion. We want to open our hearts to their pain in this tragic time. We want them not to have to go numb and just try to handle things. We want them to be able to find a place in our arms and really collapse and look at things and fall apart.
After the 7th I made contact with people, asked how are you doing, but I did it in my usual way. I didn’t take time to discharge and notice and remember while connecting with them the pain they were in. How restimulated they were, how much they were having to handle all of a sudden. I did my usual: what do we need to do? It was hurtful to people that I didn’t approach this in an open-hearted way. That my first priority wasn’t to show them how much I cared and how much I wanted them to be okay. It was only after a few days of discharging that I realized this. It’s clear to me now that that’s one of the effects of all oppressor distresses and antisemitism. The way they numb us to the importance of our relationships with each other and our connection such that even in a tragic situation like this I was pulled to function instead of stopping to care. My heart was closed.
Part 2: we are probably in for a nasty escalation of this situation. And I want to ask each of us to decide that no matter what atrocities the Israeli government commits, you won’t turn against Israel, you won’t turn against any Jews, and you won’t turn against the idea of Israel as a national homeland for the Jewish people. We are going to always remember that people are not the policies of the government. There are terrible policies that are going to be enacted. And we can and should work to stop the atrocities, but we can't get confused about the Jewish and the Israeli people. And this will of course be the same with what happens with Palestinians and Arabs.
As we create the conditions to discharge on the atrocities and what’s coming, we have to get ready to hear people say horrible things in their sessions. People have seen and heard horrible things that have happened to one another already and they may need to recount these stories. And we may need to recount these stories and scream and sob in our sessions that human beings did this. We have to hold the big perspective that we are ending humans harming humans, but we’re going to listen to these stories.
Also want us to note that this is affecting some young Jews differently than it’s affecting some older Jews. Many younger Jews are a generation removed from the Holocaust. It’s not an early hurt in the same way. They also weren’t young when there was a vision of Israel as a homeland and as a freedom-loving society. Israel has been in an oppressor role, albeit as a puppet of imperialist regimes like the US, for much of their lives. So as we listen to these stories we too have to work on our earliest, heavy material. We have experienced, a lot of us not directly, but we have been part of wars throughout our lives. We’ve experienced violence, mistreatment, oppression. Part of why it’s hard for us to face what's happening in the world today is that our childhood was so bad and we still can’t face that.
The final thing I want to say is society is collapsing and our lives are getting more and more complex. There are things that we didn’t have to understand before about capitalism and imperialism and the climate emergency and antisemitism. And if we want to play a meaningful role, and we do, we have to understand those things now. So I'm asking you to resist the pull of any material that says it’s too hard, or that pulls you to just take one side and not to try to understand the pressure and the history of both. Sometime after this webinar we’re going to send you a collection of articles we want you to read. It's fine if you look at them in session. Here are a couple quotes now from them in the chat: these are both teasers to interest you in the articles. And statements that might be useful to you in your sessions or groups that are coming up. I have discharged a lot by reading these articles and watching people struggle to achieve a rational position that supports two peoples, two lands.
Quotes shared by Diane in the chat:
“The existence of Israel as a national homeland for the Jews must be defended by all people everywhere regardless of any injustice involved in its founding or any wrongness in its present policies.” Harvey Jackins
“There is no contradiction between staunchly opposing the Israeli subjugation and occupation of Palestinians and unequivocally condemning brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians.”
Israel-Hamas war: The moral insensitivity of the left. Eva Illouz, Aviad Kleinberg, David Grossman, October 17
“Hamas has committed an unspeakable horror that may damage the Palestinian cause for decades to come. Yet when Palestinians resist their oppression in ethical ways—by calling for boycotts, sanctions and the application of international law—the United States and its allies work to ensure that those efforts fail, which convinces many Palestinians that ethical resistance doesn’t work, which empowers Hamas.” There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive. Peter Beinart, October 14
“We condemn attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians. We believe it is possible and in fact necessary to condemn Hamas’ actions and acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians. We believe it is possible and necessary to condemn Hamas’ attack and take a stand against the collective punishment of Gazans that is unfolding and accelerating as we write.” Tikkun, Statement of Solidarity with Israel/Palestine
Dorann
Whatever gets in the way of connecting is a discharge issue. You’re getting put into random groups of five now to be planning, thinking about what you've heard in this session. And what you plan to do next. And importantly, a commitment to how you’re going to set that up and have it happen. We get to be Gentiles now to commit to ending the oppression of Jews.