Week in Review

A diverse group of 24 family and friends ranging in age from 3 to 85 gathered for our belated anti-zionist liberation seder with original Haggadah. We celebrated the songs, poetry, and story of Passover and brought the message to the current struggles we face today:

We arrive at the Passover table breathless, with the salty taste of authoritarian racism ripe on our tongues.

We arrive at the Passover table full of awe, with the rise of grassroots popular movements insisting on connection across borders and walls.

We arrive strong and grateful for one another; for our ever-growing movement for justice and liberation. (from Jewish Voice for Peace)

We explored racism, the struggles for Black and Palestinian liberation, the attacks on our LGBTQ family and friends, global warming, the plague of zionism, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and more, and ended with inspiration and the poem by poet and activist, Aurora Levins Morales:

This time we cannot cross until we carry each other. all of us refugees, all of us prophets. no more taking turns on history’s wheel, trying to collect old debts no one can pay. the sea will not open that way. this time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen. this time it’s all of us or none.

Please check out these resources and share with colleagues!

What is notable about this development isn’t the intelligence failure, or even the relative success in uncovering the espionage operations. The more interesting part is the underlying sociological realities that made it possible. Emblematic of this reality is the emergence of a new figure in Israeli political life: the ordinary citizen-traitor who sells out his country not for ideology, but for a Telegram payment made in cryptocurrency.

From Peter Beinart. Why Tucker Carlson blames The Jews.

On April 7, the Pew Research Center released data on attitudes towards Israel in the U.S., and the numbers are devastating for the self-proclaimed Jewish state. What they reveal is a U.S. public increasingly aware that the myths spun over the last several decades justifying the U.S.- Israel relationship are false. And as these myths crumble, a significant political shift regarding official support for Israel is happening in centers of power in the U.S. Pew reports that overall, 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% in just one year and a nearly 20-point increase since 2022.

In pursuing Israel’s interests at the expense of American Jews, Netanyahu has put the world’s largest community of diaspora Jews in a terrible bind, caught between support for Israel and its liberal allies. And, it seems, he couldn’t care less.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were scheduled to vote for new mayors and municipal councils, but in many places, they didn’t. This year, Palestinian local elections are being boycotted by several key political forces, leading to a complete absence of competing candidates in many cities and towns. Many see this as symptomatic of wider Palestinian society and politics after two years of genocide in Gaza and a brutal Israeli crackdown in the West Bank.

Human rights centers have documented hundreds of cases in which the Israeli military broke international law, including using women and children as human shields. During forced displacement, Israeli troops set up checkpoints where women are searched in ways that “violate their dignity and subject them to humiliation during interrogation and inspection.” Sometimes, their treatment is far, far worse and includes being subjected to sexual violence and torture.