I have been so incredibly grateful for the leadership and energy of people like Jewish Voice for Peace who are making it abundantly clear that there are many many of us American Jews that do not support Israel at the expense of Palestinian human rights. The best time to make this clear would have been decades ago but the second best time is right now.
For years I have been called “antisemitic” by Jews who conflate Israel with the Jewish people. Not only do we not owe any loyalty to that colonial apartheid state, I believe Jews are actively harmed by their actions as Israel rightly becomes a global pariah and claims to be acting for US!
Tema Okun is a long-time anti-racist trainer and changemaker. She is the author of the widely circulated article “White Supremacy Culture” which was originally written and published in 1999 and continues to educate and transform the way white people understand ourselves and our impact in the world. Last week, Tema offered us this poem, “If our survival is to be Jewish.”
If our survival is to be Jewish
i
my tears are crying
I am drowningno longer wandering
in the wilderness
we have become
the pharaohii
centuries of
sacred celebration
and suffering
sunk into strident subjugationthe mirror is cracking
iii
my despair is desperate
I am tremblingour prayers
so full of longing
mock uswe chant
in the shade
of a homeland
shuttering for half a century
the lives of humans
we push out of sight behind
(prison) Wallsiv
my anger is angry
I am shakingour silence grows deadly
with the deal we’ve made
to defend our hearts
from knowing
they love their children
their laughter their lives
as much as we dov
my rage is raging
I am bent
overJewish godmother to
an exuberant Palestinian boy,
now a manmy love for him
a kind of genesis,
his love for me a kind of gracehe would hate us
otherwisenot any kind of anti-Semitism
consequences
for making of him a demon,
and discarding him daily in the dust
of so many, too many checkpointsvi
my trauma is traumatized
I am brokenwe condemn them
for making corpses of
our children
as we make corpses
of theirsthe math of it
is bleeding usdry
vii
my people, my Jewish people,
I don’t know how to reach youour fear is afraid
and forgets
we are the ones
settling, seizing, sequesteringwe pile fear upon fear like
stacks of rubble from
houses demolished
dreams destroyed
for decadesviii
my grief is grieving
I am wailingwe did not outlive
the horrors of holocaust
to hoard survival
like thisto hollow ourselves out
ix
or did we
x
my people, my Jewish people,
tell me it is not too late
Tema Okun, Oct. 26, 2023
to choose another way.
But equally disturbing is how, even after it was clear what their fate would be, the Judenrat leaders continued to facilitate the execution of their own people in the deeply misguided, arrogant, and counterfactual belief that they could somehow lessen the impact by collaborating with the Nazis rather than resisting them. First it started with seemingly-acceptable policies like registering all Jews and distributing rationed food. You can imagine how some thought it would be helpful to do this. But like the frog in a slowly-boiling pot of water it became clearer and clearer that the end goal of all of these efforts was to extinguish the Jews.