d r a f t
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Eric Alterman, “What on Earth Has Happened to the Israeli Peace Movement?” New Republic, May 22 https://newrepublic.com/article/181775/what-happened-israeli-peace-movement.
Verbatim Excerpts (money quote):
One cannot but admire both the bravery and tenacity of these people, whom so many Israelis treat as traitors, somehow sympathetic to Hamas. Some have been physically beaten by both police and West Bank settler/terrorists. They show up at demonstrations to bring the hostages home, to resist Netanyahu’s judicial coup, and to call for new elections—positions endorsed by a majority of Israelis—but are generally ignored at best by those who in the past would have been allies. But will they make a difference? Will their voices even echo beyond their still small numbers at their meetings and demonstrations?
According to Hillel Schenker, the overarching problem is that “we have two highly traumatized societies, both the Israelis and the Palestinians, each immersed in their own pain, with little emotional energy to have empathy for the other side.” He signs off by quoting the Israeli standup comic and peace activist Noam Shuster Eliasi: “From the river to the sea/We all need therapy.”
More verbatim quotes, from the top:
In search of explanations for this apparent silence, I contacted a number of friends and colleagues in Israel whom I knew to have devoted much of their lives to the cause of peace with the Palestinians to ask about the apparent disappearance of the peace movement just when its influence is most intensely needed.
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But that was a different Israel. As the Israeli American pollster and political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin explains it, the number of Israeli Jews who defined themselves as members of the left fell by 50 percent, from 30 percent to just 15 percent in the early 2000s, the other half immediately shifting to the self-defined center, as the right wing’s popularity began to climb, reaching 60 percent of Jewish Israelis by 2019.
There are multiple factors contributing to this transformation. As Scheindlin sees it, “Some of this shift can be explained by demographics, mainly the growth of the religious Jewish population, who are characterized by stalwart right-wing attitudes toward the conflict. But historical events were just as crucial in reshaping Israeli views, specifically, the violence during the Oslo peace process in the 1990s and during the second Intifada in the early 2000s, followed by a series of escalations with Hamas in Gaza in the next decade and the fact that the peace process had vanished. By the next decade, Netanyahu’s long rule via ultranationalist right-wing governments had moved society decisively to the right, and most young people had no memory even of the hope for peace.”
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So it was a decidedly dispirited and divided remnant of the peace camp that found itself responding to what has accurately been called the worst attack on Jews anywhere since the Holocaust. All of my correspondents pointed to a similar set of circumstances that explain their fellow citizens’ refusal to question the manner in which their army is fighting this war, regardless of the price it exacts from the Palestinian citizens of Gaza, together with their relative silence in the face of the campaign of violence currently underway on the West Bank, carried out by increasingly radicalized settlers and supported, oftentimes, by both the government and the IDF.
Today, as Yoav Frommer, who teaches politics and history at Tel Aviv University, accurately notes, “it is difficult if not delusional to speak anymore of a peace camp on the Israeli left. Yes, there is a very small minority of Jews and Arabs who, admirably one should say, remain committed to this painfully anachronistic ideal, but in all practical terms that ship has sailed years ago, with any remaining lifeboats from it sinking on October 7.”
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Hillel Schenker, who co-edits the Palestine-Israel Journal with Palestinian attorney and columnist Ziad AbuZayyad,
(Wikipedia Palestine-Israel Journal)
Hillel Schenker, and Ziad AbuZayyad, “Amidst the Horror Lies an Opportunity for Peace,” Palestine-Israel Journal, 28 No. 3&4 (2023) https://www.pij.org/articles/2258/amidst-the-horror-lies-an-opportunity-for-peace.
Verbatim quotes:
Amidst all this horror, we remain true to our belief that violence, from either side, is not the answer, and we choose to see in this crisis an opportunity for new thinking and action.
The 1973 war shattered the conventional wisdom about the region that had been in place since 1967, eventually leading to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. For the sake of both peoples, the security of the region, and the stability of the world at large, we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that this current, tragic war will lead to a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict that realizes the mutual right to national self-determination and the establishment of a viable, sovereign State of Palestine based on the June 4, 1967 lines living alongside the State of Israel in peace and harmony.
The failure of the international community to assume an active role in securing a political settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would end the occupation and create a new reality based on the two-state solution contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict and the violence and suffering on both sides.
We call upon the international community to help negotiate an immediate humanitarian cease-fire that will enable the flow of humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza. We also call for its involvement to secure the release of all the Israeli hostages in exchange for all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Furthermore, we call for immediate international engagement to prepare for a new post-war reality in Gaza with a mechanism aimed at eventually uniting the Strip with the West Bank under Palestinian governance.
The international community can no longer stand aside. It is clear that the continuation of the Israel-Palestine conflict will have consequences that reach far beyond our borders. Only through active international involvement will we be able to realize the dream of “No more war; no more bloodshed” for Israelis and Palestinians.
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Naama Lazimi
Naama Lazimi is a member of the Knesset for Israel’s Labor party
Naama Lazimi, “I believe in another Israel – one not defined by Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies,” Guardian, April 13, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-peace.
Verbatim excerpts
As a member of the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, it is very important for me to meet and spend time with the citizens whom I represent. The Israel I meet is completely different from Netanyahu’s government. Since the beginning of the war, I’ve met Arab-Jewish civil society organisations that exemplify this spirit, providing assistance across diverse communities.
This is the real Israel.
The noisy minority advocating for the destruction of Gaza is simply that – a minority. Netanyahu’s partners in the extreme rightwing government want a perpetual war and to see Israel conquer the Gaza Strip and settle there. But the broader Israeli populace desires something different. They seek the opportunity to rebuild their communities destroyed by Hamas attacks, yearning for the return of their 133 loved ones who were abducted.
Moreover, they don’t want to witness further bloodshed in Gaza; instead they want to see the elimination of the murderous terrorism that declared war on Israel and slaughtered us mercilessly on that terrible day. They want to see their sons return from the battlefield. They want a quiet home in which to raise happy children. Over the past few weeks, there has been a surge in protests demanding the return of the hostages and the replacement of the government. Thousands of Israeli citizens have taken to the streets, advocating for immediate elections, a deal for the hostages, and a more accountable leadership.
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My family migrated to Israel from Morocco, following the dream of living in a nation that values life above all else. Throughout 2,000 years of exile, we dreamed of this country, which was established after the Holocaust, the most terrible genocide in history. We dreamed of a country in which life is more precious than land. Under Netanyahu and his cronies, this beautiful country is changing its very character. When I tuck my young children into bed at night, I think about the country I am fighting for, for them, about the country they deserve – one of peace, security and prosperity. And with strong American support, I know that we will succeed. Netanyahu will fall and the extremists will fall.
To the citizens of the US and the entire world, especially those of Jewish descent, I have one request: do not abandon us. Stand with us as we strive for a better tomorrow, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. A liberal-democratic government is not a distant dream but the will of the majority. Together, we can forge a path towards peace and security, fulfilling the aspirations of all who call this region home.
Jo-Ann Mort, poet and freelance journalist of Brooklyn\
Jo-Ann Mort, “Zionism can – and must – be about liberation of Jews and Palestinians,” Guardian, April 29, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/29/zionism-jews-palestinians.
This is urgent unfinished business: ending the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people, acknowledging two states, and beginning a process that today seems light years away, a reconciliation of occurrences and narratives from 1948 to today to acknowledge the pain and the agony of the Palestinian people as part of the story of the creation of the state of Israel. There must be accommodations, too, for non-Jewish citizens who already live as Israelis and those who may come to live.
But, instead, there are two competing views of Zionism. One, which today is the weaker, was the primary founding ethos, steeped in secular and global engagements. It is reflected in this founding paragraph from Israel’s own Declaration of Independence, which would, without doubt, be renounced today by the rightwing ruling government, but it is absolutely critical to the future of the state, and worth organizing around:
The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice, and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed, or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education, and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
The second is woefully apparent in today’s Israeli government, a messianic all-mighty Zionism, a Jewish supremacist ideology forged against the Palestinians who also live there. It is a horrific belief system, worth opposing for sure, because it privileges one group of people – one nation – at the expense of another. It is an extreme religious vision of Jewish power steeped in an anti-modern ideology, versus a shared society and accommodation between Jewish and Arab citizens inside of Israel and between a Jewish and a Palestinian state.
Albert Einstein
Einstein was especially dismayed by the militaristic methods used by Menachem Begin and other Jewish militia leaders, and he joined with his occasional antagonist Sidney Hook to sign a petition in the New York Ties denouncing Begin as a “terrorist and “closely aking to the fascists.” The violence was contrary to Jewish hertage. “We imitate the stupid nationalism and racial nonsense of the goyim,” he wrote a friend in 1947. 520
636 n42 Dec. 3, 1948. begin assails dec 7, 1948 Sidney Hook philosopher — Wikipedia has screenshot of the letter
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Links and Citations
Eric Alterman, “What on Earth Has Happened to the Israeli Peace Movement?” New Republic, May 22, 2024 https://newrepublic.com/article/181775/what-happened-israeli-peace-movement.
Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007): 520, 636n.42.
Naama Lazimi, “I believe in another Israel – one not defined by Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies,” Guardian, April 13, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-peace.
Jo-Ann Mort, “Zionism can – and must – be about liberation of Jews and Palestinians,” Guardian, April 29, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/29/zionism-jews-palestinians.
Hillel Schenker, and Ziad AbuZayyad, “Amidst the Horror Lies an Opportunity for Peace,” Palestine-Israel Journal, 28 No. 3&4 (2023) https://www.pij.org/articles/2258/amidst-the-horror-lies-an-opportunity-for-peace.
Naomi Zeveloff, “How comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi became the woman who proposed to MBS,” The World, Sept. 5, 2019 https://theworld.org/stories/2019/09/05/noam-shuster-eliassi.
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