JVP: An anti-zionist Jewish perspective is critically important for accurate local reporting on the crisis in Palestine
Advocacy for Palestine is not antisemitic, and pro-Israel Jewish organizations are increasingly out of touch with Jewish communities.
This month, several hundred Jews in Providence and across Rhode Island have rapidly organized against Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip and reconstituted the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace [JVP]. As Jews, we urgently oppose the genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza now being carried out with United States support, as well as the rapidly escalating violence by Israeli military-backed settlers across the West Bank. We demand an end to Israel’s regime of apartheid and call for justice, safety, and freedom for everyone between the river and the sea.
We are not outliers: Polls show that nearly 40% of Jews under 40 agree with preeminent human rights organizations that Israel is an apartheid state, while a majority of Americans support an immediate ceasefire in Israel/Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Jews participate in JVP chapters nationwide. In Rhode Island alone, more than 200 Jews have been active with JVP just in the past six weeks, and hundreds more have taken part in actions in support of Palestinians.
It is therefore clear that to accurately reflect Rhode Island’s diverse Jewish community, journalists must include the perspective of anti-Zionists in their coverage. The pro-Israel Jewish organizations whose voices most frequently appear in the local media do not speak for all Jews. Journalists who treat these conservative institutions as our representatives perpetuate an inaccurate picture of the Jewish community.
Our voices must be included to debunk the false notion that Jews uniformly stand behind Israel, as well as the even more dangerous misconception that criticizing Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is a form of antisemitism. This false conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish sentiment serves as an excuse to silence principled voices and severely curtails freedom of speech. For more on this, please read JVP’s statement: “Our Approach to Zionism.”
There is a growing consciousness among Jewish Rhode Islanders that Jewish values of freedom, peace, justice, and tikkun olam (care for the world) require us to raise our voices in support of Palestinian liberation and an immediate end to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
In addition to accurately reflecting the diversity of Rhode Island’s Jewish community, we call on local media to feature the voices of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Rhode Islanders. Only by including the perspectives of the majority of Rhode Islanders who oppose Israel’s violence against Palestinians - and by departing from national media practices that selectively amplify pro-Israel voices - can journalists offer the fair and truthful coverage that their readers expect and deserve.
JVP-Rhode Island is the local affiliate of Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. JVP is organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality, and dignity for all people.
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Thank you. The Zionism that was fed to me in my youth was based on a narrative that was truly distorted. I gave up on it many years ago, b ut it is good to see a large public presence of others who refuse to toe the Zionist line. The conflation of being anti Zionist with being anti Jewish has always been a false conflation fueled by the Zionists to keep American money and weapons flowing.
I volunteered with the anti apartheid movement in the 1980s. The apartheid state of Israel has lost its moral groundings. We will not let it destroy ours.
In Israel in 1996 I witnessed an intensely open democratic questioning of every thing. Peace-respecting Rabin had just been killed, Netanyahu was coming into power, people were questioning the treatment of Palestinians and their own future if peace was not an acceptable goal. I know that many Jews in Israel feel that same way now. This is not a one way black and white issue as Netanyahu portrays it to be - he has no right to close the door to even the possibility of understanding.