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I am very pleased to be speaking here on behalf of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
We are here today to remember al Nakba, the catastrophe, that immense tragedy for the Palestinian people that accompanied the establishment of the state of Israel.
That may have been long ago but it is not forgotten.
I want you to know that Jews across the world are increasingly standing up, as Jews, to say:
* there will be no peace for Israelis or Palestinians while the occupation continues
* there will be no peace without dismantling the settlements
* there will be no peace without a just and fair solution to the refugee problem for which Israel bears such heavy responsibility
* there will be no peace while the so-called ‘separation wall’ remains.
* there will be no peace while the Palestinian population is harassed daily at checkpoints, shot-at, bombed, subjected to targeted assassinations and collective punishments month after month, and year after year
* there will be no peace while international volunteers and observers - many of them Jewish - are harassed, attacked and even killed in cold blood.
We call on all Jews - and on all of you here today - to support all those Israelis who stand out against the Israeli Government, opposing the occupation and working for Israeli-Palestinian peace and dialogue: such as the Israeli Peace Bloc, Gush Shalom; Physicians for Human Rights who help provide health care in the occupied territories; the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions; Machsom Watch which monitors Israeli army activities at checkpoints; Ta’ayush which works with the ISM to protect Palestinians villagers from ethnic cleansing by settlers. First and foremost we support the Refuseniks, those Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories.
As Jews we are all too aware of how Israeli actions are often presented as being done on behalf of all Jews; and how the holocaust is used as a moral shield, to dismiss any criticism of Israel as automatically antisemitic. It is precisely because we remember the holocaust that Jews in JFJFP reject this, and insist that Israel be judged by the same criteria as other states.
There are many Jewish voices. We are fighting for our right to be heard as Jews and we will not allow our voices to be drowned by those who would hijack Jewish history in pursuit of a Greater Israel.
Two things make the task of building solidarity for Palestinians in the Jewish community extremely difficult and I want to say a few words about both: violence against civilians; and antisemitism. Both are contrary to the ethics of liberation and of any decent society. Both make Jews feel beleaguered and are exploited to encourage identification with Israel, right or wrong, as the only way of being Jewish.
On the first I merely want to say that we need to understand the outrage caused by the killing of innocent civilians - of whatever country. It is unacceptable, no matter who carries it out
On antisemitism. It is emphatically not antisemitic to oppose the current policies of the Israeli government with its occupation and its settlements. But at the same time, we need to be aware of the realities of antisemitism in the world today. Nothing reinforces a laager mentality among Jews more than giving the slightest support - even by just turning a blind eye - to any acts of antisemitism in the wider ranks of the solidarity movement. Antisemitism is truly the enemy of Palestinian liberation. The PSC, organisers of this rally have, to their credit, taken an uncompromising stand against it.
Finally, if one thing unites all Jews it is an awareness of our suffering and oppression down the ages culminating in the Nazi efforts at extermination of an entire people in the Holocaust, the Shoah. But we cannot allow the sufferings of one people - our people - to become the reason or the excuse for oppressing another.
We stand with the Palestinian people. End the occupation, stop the ethnic cleansing. We say as Jews, loudly and clearly: NOT IN OUR NAME!