Jewish Voice for Peace
I am an atheist. There are a lot of Jewish atheists. There is nothing contradictory about the terms. I am a leftist. There are a LOT of Jewish leftists! I believe in peace. I am not a pacifist, but I believe we are always better off living in peace, and that few wars are justified.
I’ll never forget going to dinner with my aunt and uncle in the early eighties, when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was going on. At that dinner I expressed a mild criticism of the Israeli invasion and you would think I had praised Hitler. I learned that unless I wanted to be attacked by my family I would keep my mouth shut about Israel. At the time I worked with Israelis. Some were horrified by the invasion and some cheered it on. There was disagreement in Israel but not in America.
Growing up I knew little to nothing about the Palestinians until the Munich Olympics. The Palestinians entered my consciousness when they murdered athletes at an international competition. The Palestinian use of violence blinded me to the justice of their cause. It was only with the invasion of Lebanon that the blinkers came off my eyes. But I did nothing, only occasionally voicing criticisms to Jewish friends, which always set off an angry argument. I believed in Israel as a place Jews could go. I had no desire to go there. I had no desire to do anything Jewish at all. Yet I have always identified with being a Jew, much more than say, an American, because I felt like I was part of a Jewish tradition which was cultural and intellectual. And I knew there were many, especially in New York, who felt the same way.
Over the past thirty years I have become only slightly more educated, but just being a guy who follows the news my feeling of horror and disgust with the actions of the state of Israel has increased. I stopped feeling like critics of Israel were secret anti-Semites. I stopped caring what other Jews thought of me.
I can’t explain why it took so long exactly, but yesterday I sent a hundred bucks to Jewish Voice for Peace. I’ve had it. Until large numbers of American Jews stand up and say, “Enough!” there will be no political will in Washington to put pressure on the Israelis to negotiate a serious peace plan, with a Palestinian state that includes East Jerusalem. Aside form the moral arguments, the fact is the United States is hostage to a policy that will perpetuate violence and conflict in the entire region, and continue to involve us in senseless immoral wars. As a leftist, a peace activist, an American and a Jew I can’t merely stand against it, but must put some money behind it and add my voice to the opposition.
Jon, man, good for you! I’ve also been an atheist and leftist/socialist all my adult life, but had always shied away from Israel/Palestine. I knew something about it but didn’t face it squarely, although I’d been an activist since Vietnam. What did it for me was the second Intifada, I just realized that I couldn’t be an activist, Jewish born and raised and identified, and continue to ignore I/P. Politically I felt it was important for a Jew like me to do something public about it. Emotionally I felt most comfortable working with like-minded other Jews. Twelve years after joining a local Jewish group (formerly part of JVP) I’m still at it, and have watched my personal perspective morph to where now I am suspect of other Jews – unless I know where they’re coming from on I/P, I feel like what I imagine a white civil rights advocate must have felt walking down the street in, say, Mobile AL in the 40s or 50s — I can pass amongst all these white people and smile, but if they knew what I felt about black liberation, the great majority would either think I was at the least weird and screwed up and should be shunned, at the worst a dangerous traitor who should be neutralized. So in my life I’ve gone from feeling, as a kid in the fifties, a sense of safety, family, and belonging around other Jews, to today regarding other Jews as the single ethnicity on the planet that puts me on edge. All thanks to Israel!