[WCUSP] Fw: Jewish Canadian Youth Speak Out!

Mon Jun 9 17:17:09 EDT 2008

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jewish Peace News " <jpn at jewishpeacenews.net>
To: <LMFrank1 at verizon.net>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 2:40 PM
Subject: Jewish Canadian Youth Speak Out!


>
> So often we bear bad tidings.  Here's a little piece of inspiration, 
> brought to you by the  new generation of Jewish (Canadian) fighters for 
> justice in Palestine and Israel.
>
> --Rebecca Vilkomerson
>
> http://www.culturemagazine.ca/content/view/271/56/
>
> Heating Up: The Battle for the Jewish Voice and the Jewish soul
>
> Dear Mom, Dad, your Zionist friends, and Bob Dylan too,
>
> I've got news for you all: The times they are a changin'! Remember last 
> Passover? Remember when we sat around the Seder table and listened to you 
> rant about Israel`s victimhood? About how ethnic cleansing really isn't 
> that bad? And about how if they try to kill the Jews this time, we will at 
> least take them all with us? Remember the rolled eyes of my cousins and 
> the looks we exchanged thinking you were all nuts?
>
> These are the four questions we were thinking of:
>
> 1) Why, on this night we dedicate to remembering our own history as an 
> oppressed people, do we justify Israel's oppression of the Palestinians?
>
> 2) Why, on this night when Israelis are free to celebrate, are the 
> Palestinians locked down under curfew - as is done on most Jewish 
> holidays?
>
> 3) Why, here in Canada, where we are a minority amongst a Christian 
> majority, do we advocate for and support a 'Jewish State' in the Middle 
> East, where the non-Jewish minority are treated as second class citizens?
>
> 4) Why should anyone think that just because we say 'next year in 
> Jerusalem' at the end of our Seder, that we had a right to kick others out 
> of their homes so that we could live there?
>
> You see, our generation is different. We are not blind Zionist ideologues. 
> We did not take the lesson of kill or be killed from the stories our 
> grandparents told us about the Holocaust or the anti-Semitism they faced. 
> Alongside our lessons about Zionism and about why the Holocaust meant that 
> Jews need a Jewish state for themselves, we couldn't help but absorb the 
> need to oppose racism, to fight oppression and to not justify the 
> subjugation of one 'people' for the benefit of another.
>
> At first, we may have believed your myths about 'Israel the good', about 
> the Israel Defense Forces being the world's only 'moral' army, and about 
> how it's not Israel but 'the Arabs' who don't want peace. But we have 
> grown up now, and like our Christian peers who come to understand Santa 
> Claus is not real, the growing majority of us have come to see myth of 
> Israel the good as a relic of our childhood Chanukahs.
>
> For those of us who have followed developments in the mainstream Jewish 
> community, we see more to your ranting, too. We see a sick hierarchically 
> organized Jewish community that is not only serving as a smokescreen to 
> allow the ongoing genocide of a people; we also see the twisted irony that 
> you, our parents who claim we need Israel as a safeguard from 
> anti-Semitism, are actually putting us and the rest of World Jewry in 
> danger. By tying our fate (and our children's) to that of the leadership 
> of the dying American empire, you are setting us up as a scapegoat.
>
> Israel is an offshore American army base and the Israeli leadership and 
> its North American lobby are so in bed with the neo-cons that our 
> community will be suffering consequences for years. Even worse, in Canada 
> and the United States, the lobby has deluded itself into actually thinking 
> it controls the hand that feeds it. The lobby happily plays the role of 
> the dirty cop on the beat using underhanded (but not so secret) ways to 
> try and eliminate what it sees as threats to Israel's support, or the 
> lobby`s own domestic power. I'm sure that Harper, Bush, and their 
> corporate masters are not disappointed that the targets the Israel lobby 
> chooses for career or character assassination (in the media, academia, 
> public life, etc.) typically line up with their own. But, what will happen 
> if: Oil prices keep rising? The war in Iraq and Afghanistan keeps failing? 
> Housing foreclosures keep increasing? And world anger at the West keeps 
> growing?
>
> The Jewish community's leadership certainly makes it easy enough to paint 
> a picture that the Jews are behind it; sometimes they even gloat. Will it 
> really be a surprise if, when shit hits the fan, our supposed allies in 
> the US/Canadian elite cut Israel's strings and point the blame at home 
> towards Jews?
>
> Hypotheticals aside, luckily this too is changing! From the disenchanted, 
> once isolated Jews, a new community is rising. Remember the article I 
> wrote on "The Fall of Zionism" last October? Remember how you thought I 
> was a dreamer and that there was no way a threat to the Zionist control of 
> our community could ever take hold? Well, a lot has happened in the past 
> eight months. The kids are coming home! All those 'self-hating' Jews who 
> isolated themselves from the community not because of a dislike for our 
> culture, heritage, or religion, but because they were told to leave after 
> speaking their mind on the oppression of the Palestinian people, are 
> finding each other, organizing, and coming back.
>
> In Canada, for example, there is a new national umbrella organization 
> called the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC), which represents 
> Jews who are opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The ACJC was 
> launched in March when internationally renowned author, journalist, 
> keynote speaker and Canadian Jew Naomi Klein kicked off a national 
> conference that brought together over 100 activist Jews representing 23 
> different Canadian Jewish groups. The purpose of the ACJC is to provide a 
> counterweight to Jewish organizations that serve as apologists for 
> Israel's crimes, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The ACJC has 
> since put action to words. Recently, for example, it lent support to the 
> Canadian Union of Postal Workers when it became the first national Union 
> in North America to courageously pass a resolution supporting the 
> Palestinian campaign for a Boycott of Israel, and recognizing that Israel 
> has become an apartheid state.
>
>
> Likewise, in May the ACJC, along with other anti-occupation Jewish groups 
> across North America and the world, heeded the call of the Palestinian 
> people to declare the 60th anniversary of the Naqba (disaster) as No Time 
> to Celebrate (this is a common slogan being used in protest of Israel's 
> celebrations). Protests were organized worldwide, and in Canada and the 
> United States Jews protested alongside Palestinians and other concerned 
> citizens. In San Francisco, twenty Jews were (unjustly) arrested trying to 
> make themselves heard as Jews opposed to Israel`s crimes. In Britain, over 
> one hundred Jews signed an open letter published in The Guardian, one of 
> the United Kingdom's leading newspapers, declaring they would not 
> celebrate Israel's birthday. In Paris, French Jews hung the Palestinian 
> flag on the Eiffel Tower in protest. Here in Canada's capital of Ottawa, 
> Jews, Palestinians, and other concerned individuals formed a one hundred 
> person-strong silent protest outside the official Israel
> celebrations at the Convention Center on May 8th, and then repeated it a 
> few weeks later at another event at the National Arts Center on May 20th. 
> Despite the money and glamour being thrown into making 60 years of Israeli 
> oppression a propaganda campaign to whitewash Israel's crimes, Jews around 
> the world are promising not to celebrate (one US-based online pledge not 
> to celebrate has over 500 Jewish signatures).
>
> The actions I am describing did not have millions of dollars for publicity 
> like the official events organized by the Jewish community's elites. 
> Instead, they grew through grassroot networks and traveled by 
> word-of-mouth from committed activist Jew to committed activist Jew. The 
> Jews taking part in these events are the ones who are informed and willing 
> to put themselves on the line to oppose the mainstream Jewish community's 
> official position, and I am growing increasingly confident that their 
> support runs deep.
>
> This letter may sound angry, and at some points it is. It upsets me to 
> hear our Passover conversations, and I won't just quietly roll my eyes 
> anymore. But the reason for that is love and respect. We are forming a new 
> community, with a humanist core that ties us together strongly. Seders are 
> being held that tell the story of the Palestinian enslavement along with 
> that of our own. Events are being held where Jews celebrate Jewish culture 
> from a place that recognizes how our history gives us a responsibility to 
> speak out against oppression. I will continue to celebrate my heritage as 
> part of our family, just like all those supposed 'self-hating' Jews will 
> celebrate with me, as Jews and as part of the Jewish community. We are 
> committed to justice, and through this we are finding our Jewish souls. 
> And when you are ready to join the multitudes of other Jews opposing 
> Israeli oppression, our door will be wide open.
>
> Love,
> your Young Non-Zionist Kids
>
>
> ................................................................
> --------
> Jewish Peace News editors:
> Joel Beinin
> Racheli Gai
> Rela Mazali
> Sarah Anne Minkin
> Judith Norman
> Lincoln Shlensky
> Rebecca Vilkomerson
> Alistair Welchman
> -------
> Jewish Peace News blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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