Last week, close to a thousand young Jews marched outside the AIPAC policy conference, singing in Hebrew and English. The protest was organized by IfNotNow, a grassroots movement led by young Jews calling for an end to our community’s support for the occupation. Our message was simple: When you continue to support 50 years of occupation, you do not speak for the American Jewish community.
We decided to demonstrate against AIPAC because no American Jewish institution has done more to support the occupation. For a long time, AIPAC has lobbied for pro-Israel-at-all-costs politics — whether working to undermine the peace process, or lobbying to support the Israeli settlement enterprise. As J. pointed out in its March 31 editorial, “AIPAC: Not as monolithic as IfNowNot protesters believe,” it is true that AIPAC is not a monolith. (It’s hard to find anything that is.) Though Democratic Party leaders like Sen. Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (both of California) spoke at AIPAC’s conference, the net impact of AIPAC’s work is quite clear: presenting a continuous image of American Jewish support for occupation.
But AIPAC does not represent the majority of our community. While 71 percent of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton, Trump received a standing ovation at last year’s AIPAC conference. Just recently, we learned that AIPAC donated $60,000 to the Center for Security Policy, one of the architects of President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. AIPAC has also failed to speak out against the anti-Semitism of Trump’s administration.
So, why was IfNotNow in the streets? Why didn’t we register for the AIPAC conference, as J.’s editorial suggested, and try to change it from the inside? Many of us in the movement have worked for years within our community to create change behind closed doors. It wasn’t enough. After 50 years of occupation, the time for that work has passed. This moment is simply too urgent, the stakes too high.
For too long, the power brokers in our community have dismissed dissent as marginal or juvenile. This is unacceptable. We are taking direct action because we believe we cannot wait any longer. The occupation is a daily nightmare for Palestinians and a moral disaster for American Jews and Israelis who support and administer it. It denies the freedom of Palestinians, denies peace of mind of Israelis, and implicates Jews all over the world in a system of violence and discrimination.
During IfNotNow’s march, Jewish Defense League activists arrived explicitly to support AIPAC. Many members of IfNotNow watched AIPAC attendees express gratitude for the JDL’s presence. Soon after, JDL activists violently attacked a Palestinian protester and one IfNotNow member. The Palestinian man was badly hurt, and ended up in the hospital. AIPAC has yet to condemn the JDL’s acts of violence done in AIPAC’s name.
Our call in the streets for freedom and dignity for all people — Palestinians and Israelis alike — is also a call for our own liberation. We are here to fight for a Judaism that represents freedom, not oppression. Occupation, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are all connected, as we can all see plainly in the conduct and policies of the Trump administration. We will not be free — or safe — until all people are free.
AIPAC has failed to offer moral leadership for too long, so we won’t register for its conference next year. But if members of AIPAC hear what’s true in our message — that the best way to protect Jews is to protect all people, including Palestinians — we welcome them to join us, singing in the deep prophetic spirit of our people: Olam chesed yibaneh — we will build this world with love.
Eyewitnesses said several hundred. Photos show several hundred. Press reports indicate several hundred. Only this organizations claims close to a thousand (or, in other publications, “thousands”. ) There were 18,000 attending AIPAC, including over 4000 students.
Sorry. This is a fringe group.
This organization hijacked our local anti-Trump demonstration by having their public tantrum in front of the Israeli Consulate (Hello? Hello! If this were really about Trump, the Russian consulate was just a short walk away.) If Not Now just appears to be another incarnation of “Jewish” groups that target Jewish institutions. A few years ago, a dozen ” If Not Now, the prequel” activists were arrested for disrupting classes at the San francisco JCC. Others interrupted a solidarity program at Temple Sherith Israel. I see this group as just another anti-Israel group, perhaps even a sock puppet of a pre-existing one. It may be no coincidence that in the Bay area, one of the If Not Now organizers is a paid staff member of Jew-ish Voice for Peace.
I also pointed out that it was 300.
Yea I was there probably 200. It looked like a college protest with similar tactics.
Thats vwhat the photos show, too. If not now marched along with notorious anti-Semites such as Alison Weir and Greta Berlin, and groups such as Al Awda. When you find common cause with such extremists, its time for some serious soul-searching. But these are days of lazy reporting- you send out a press release and it gets printed verbatim. You create your own reality. Let the reader beware
Feh.
Jews supporting the Muslim genocide of Israel show their ignorance of middle East realities
That’s how a lot of Jews are. They would rather help the enemy than themselves.
They all pretty much seem to be from the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
As long as it makes them appear to their friends as though their hip or have empathy, that’s all they care about.
Pure narcissism…and blissful ignorance.
Contrary to the author’s claims, it was several hundred protesters (which If Not Now described as “more than a thousand” in its press release).
I was unfamiliar with this group, so I went to there website and found this peculiar statement: “We do not take a unified stance on BDS, Zionism or the question of statehood.”
So this organization takes NO position on a Jewish right to national self-determination, which is after all a universal right?
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about this “pro-Israel” organization.
This is worth reading https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-04/american-protesters-cause-isn-t-clear-to-israel
Thanks. I posted it on FB.
Great quote from Rabbi Gordis on If Not Now
“When the group protested at the Anti-Defamation League’s New York national headquarters last year, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive, told them that his organization also supports both an end to the occupation and a two-state solution — and he invited them in to discuss their mutual work. The If Not Now protesters, however, refused the invitation. They preferred to stay in the lobby until they were arrested. That is not how serious people shape policy.”
And of course, he’s right
And Greenblatt is a big time Leftist and he sees them as dupes.
And the only “occupation” are muslims squatting on Jewish Israel.
It was probaby 200 people marching. I was there.
It was probably 200 people , for one day. Jews Mixed with non Jews. I was there.
The time to work with Leftist fools has passed.
AIPAC is bipartisan, has more Democrats than Republicans, supports the two-state solution, has the policy of supporting the policy of whatever Israeli government is elected–even if it is a Labor government, and alternates its president every two years between Democrat and Republican.
These protestors are fools and believe stupid things like:
1) Israel could advance the peace process if it tried harder (wrong)
2) Netanyahu was not serious about peace negotiations or about the two-state solution (also wrong)
3) Pressuring Israel can make peace with the Palestinians (even more wrong–lack of peace is b/c the Palestinians want all of Israel–and Palestinian leadership in Fatah and in Hamas insist on this–and they’ll never recognize any Jewish state–no they already haven’t, actually)
4) The fault lies mainly with Israel (1,000% wrong)
5) The life of West Bank Palestinians is unbearable (it isn’t)
6) Settlements matter (they don’t)
To explain all of these things to a Lefty would require about 3 hours of their time and attention–they wouldn’t give it more than 10 seconds before calling you a racist and running home–or punching you. Keep in mind, these beliefs have become a religion for them–their only one. And their ‘friends’ would ban them for life if they ever changed their minds even a little bit. Stalinist rules. And if you believe anything contrary to their dogma, you are either evil or crazy…by definition…again, Stalinist rules.
Very few of them will have even one Jewish grandchild. And that means nothing to them either. That’s how Jewish they are. They are the last stop in a 3,000 year journey. Today, the only remainder of their Judaism is blaming Israel what the Arab leadership in Israel has been attempting since the Grand Mufti was appointed around 100 years ago–ethnically cleanse the Jews.
You are never going to get people to understand the situation if you keep calling Judea by the Arab propaganda invention, ‘the West Bank’. The Jordanians invented the expression to keep from looking ridiculous even in their own eyes by claiming the Jews they were expelling somehow had no right to live in Judea. Please do not reinforce this fantasy-lie by repeating it. The land has been Judea for 3,000 years. It is still Judea.
Eilberg-Schwartz, and so many like her, are making my work raising thoughtful progressive Jewish kids so much easier – she’s an example of entitled, dis-connected self-aggrandizement “jewishness” my kids know not to do. I am sympathetic to those weary of “occupation”, and am sometimes uncomfortable with what Israel is forced to do to maintain security, but for brats like this to shut down “the establishment”, ignore their own obligation to learn Jewish history and tradition and instead write books about Arabs AND to imply with their protests and tone that all the rest if us don’t want peace is completely how not to do it. #NotHowToDoIt…
Why give a forum to these enemies?
kol-hakavod to Ms. Eilberg-Schwartz!
Don’t forget to wish the same to her colleagues in ISM, ANSWER, Code Pink, JVP, and other Hamas-symp organizations.
Drink some poison with her, traitor.
A very silly column by a very silly person. The nutters who tried to disrupt the AIPAC convention call themselves the “Jewish Resistance.” They have no idea just how offensive – on multiple levels – this is: Unlike the Jews who fought the Nazis, these jackasses are not brave – in fact, they act worse than kapos. Also, by using the term :Jewish resistance”, they imply that Jews who support Israel are like Nazis. I have met many Jews like the author – they seem convinced that it is a “Jewish value” to bite the hands that feed Jews just to lick the boots which kick Jews. Finally, the author talks about morality – sadly, she shows she has almost no morality whatsoever.
I don’t understand. Who us the “we” that shouldn’t work with AIPAC? Are you talking about a bunch of whiny over priviliged children that aren’t part of any serious conversation among adults?
These infants grew up in a society where anti-Semitism meant being unpopular with some people. They can’t conceive of anti-Semitism being actual life and death. They have no concept if what it means to have a spouse and children around a shabbat table when the missile siren sounds. They can’t conceive of a place where anti-Semites arent prank calling JCCs but actually picking up guns and bombs and killing jews. Not because of Israel, but because they hate Jews anywhere and everywhere.
AIPAC wasn’t working with or for them.in the first place. It’s a lobbying group supported by contributors. And the grown ups that support Jewish organizations with money support Israel.
Personally I think it’s members ought to be added to the no fly list for Israel.
I will give you a list of who I think their main contributors are: a) George Soros or b) actually that’s it, just the notorious Jewish anti-semite and Israel hater George Soros.
The protesters seem to have used the same methods of estimating crowd-size as the Trump administration used in calculating the inaugural crowd. No doubt their estimate was an alternate fact. Which suggests the same self-indulgent attitude toward the truth. Their judgement of issues in the Middle East seems equally fact-free. They are outwardly very different from Trump. Inwardly they seem very similar,
You’re giving them too much credit. They only foresee their agitation resulting in the murders of Israelis, not themselves. Their impulses are not suicidal. They are homicidal.
Reading through some of these hateful and personal attack comments, I reaffirm my respect for your writing and your beliefs, Ms. Eilberg-Schwartz.
I look forward to the publication of your book about one of the co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a remarkable group of Israelis and Palestinians seeking pathways of understanding amidst a maze of angry reactions from some in their respective communities. I also appreciated your 2015 essay on litmus tests within the mainstream Jewish community and among people on the political left, and the ways in which political orthodoxies present people with complex or nuanced views with lots of dilemmas. I myself hold very J Street views and I am guessing I land somewhere to the right of you politically, though well to the left of AIPAC, but I’ve learned a lot from your writing both in J and elsewhere, I appreciate all of it, and I wish you blessings for strength and discernment.
Sounds like you will make great fodder. You can go to training with BLM and jihadis and then you will be pushed into the front when they throw rocks at the police.
Good luck, dupe.
Your comment isn’t civil and I’m only willing to debate with people who engage in civil discourse.
One wonders if the IfNotNow folks would feel quite so cavalier of orderly public behavior if they were attacked by right-wing thugs? Would they not suddenly recollect the urgency of respecting other people’s freedoms if it were their own freedoms that were assaulted? Yet, there they sit, piously insisting that their self-righteous indignation about things of which they are wholly ignorant somehow cancels others’ right to pass.
Communist led, jihadi aligned, these “jews” should be banned from Israel and barred from al synagogues.
Israel is the only Jewish state in the world surrounded by nearly 500 million muslim arabs, in a world with fifty muslim countries. And yet these idiots whine about “occupation”.