Help Us Contact IJAN

Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends would like to invite all members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, to join us anti-Zionists on June 19th in yet another silent, peaceful vigil at Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor and to hold the Jewish community accountable for its undisputed support of Zionism. IJAN will cosponsor the first national Jewish anti-Zionist gathering prior the US Social Forum in Detroit. Contacting this group has shown to be slightly difficult: we were told that Sara Kershnar would be the person who could help us disseminate our invitation, but there has been no response yet from her email account. Nor have we received response from the general email address of 2010assembly@jewsconfrontapartheid.org If readers know Sara, or think we could use a better email address or phone number for her, or anyone else in IJAN that could help, please let us know.

Nahida the Exiled Palestinian – Our New Heroine

Working in the margins as we do (to date we remain the only synagogue vigil we are aware of on the planet), it’s always refreshing to hear a voice in agreement with ours. In her recently blogged piece A strategy of liberation requires emancipation Nahida takes direct aim at Jewish “peace groups” who put Jewish sensibilities and power ahead of true solidarity with Palestinians. She writes: “Many of our Jewish supporters, individuals and groups (including leading intellectuals) vigorously oppose Zionism, and condemn “Israel’s” crimes and brutality. At various degrees, they also play a significant role in documenting and exposing “Israel’s” crimes, and are unambiguously critical of the Zionist apartheid discrimination policies towards Palestinians Yet their vision of a solution always keeps at heart the interests of the co-religionists, co-culturalists (Jewish Zionists, occupiers of Palestine), as they seek to secure a good future for the perpetrators hand-in-hand with that of their victims: Some persist in supporting the obsolete two-state solution, irrespective the fact that this would subjugate Palestinians to the crushing ‘iron fist’ of the occupier’s military, and force them to accept the annexation of 80% of their land” (emphasis in original).

Keeping a Perspective

As we continue our weekly vigils, as we remember the USS Liberty’s 34 lost sailors in a vicious, deadly attack by the Jewish state, as we prepare our annual partnership with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, we recognize the relative safety in which we do our work: We face a stream of overwhelmingly supportive passersby, while our friends in Bi’lin, Palestine face Jewish soldiers with guns, stun grenades, deadly high-velocity tear gas canisters and a willingness to use these weapons. Iyad Burnat, a peaceful leader in this tiny town visited by this writer five years ago, writes that the IOF set fire to an olive tree in a fashion that had already killed the tree before smoke from the fire was detected. Iyad writes: “So it goes in Bilin, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, ad infinitum, in a vicious world which doesn’t care.” We care, Iyad, and mourn with you the one-year anniversary of the death of our friend Basem Abu Rahme. And we note that even after one year the identity of the coward who killed him, like the identity of the “soldier” who crushed to death Rachel Corrie, remains unknown.

Six Vigilers
Olive trees are bulldozed because Jews want the land
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
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