American/Jewish
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Bob Suberi, 72, St. Louis, Missouri, American Jewish activist:
“So as an American, I feel that I have a responsibility to learn what my tax dollars are supporting and to go back home and report on it… So as an American, I need to be here. Just as I’ve been in other places on other delegations in countries that we’ve interfered in for our own private gain.
“As a Jew? Oh my God. They’re doing this in my name, so I have to speak out as a Jew. As an American Jew, I have to speak even louder. So that’s why I’m here in the first place.
“I served in the army. I believed that Americans were exceptional. I remember my fifth grade history teacher, every time she mentioned manifest destiny she would gaze off into the distance. I bought all that crap. I think my experience in Vietnam opened me up to the idea that ‘You know, maybe not everything we do is good. Maybe we’re not so exceptional’. And maybe even as Jews, we sometimes see ourselves as so exceptional. Israel is a concrete example of that. It’s something that we can point to as Jews and say ‘Look how exceptional we are. We got our own state’. It kind of anchors that idea of us being the chosen people. It’s not that I was unaware of our tribal nature growing up, it’s just that I thought it was a good thing. But I question it now.”
Elliot Beck, 35, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, American-Israeli Jewish activist:
“My involvement was not a question of Jewish values - everyone’s Jewish values are completely different, depending on what your Judaism looks like. People use ‘Jewish values’ to justify all sorts of things. I felt I had responsibility as a Jew, and additional power I could use as a Jew, but I didn’t feel a particular compulsion to act because of my Jewish identity. Being a part of the oppressive society responsible for these actions, my role is to stand with the people on the receiving end of that oppression - both to show them direct support and to also serve as an example for other Jews who might be afraid or hesitant that there is another way to approach this whole thing: that we aren’t fated to be enemies. I feel a sense of responsibility in that I have power within the structure of oppression, the way it has been set up. As an Israeli citizen, as an American citizen, as a Jewish person - I have a certain power.”
R., 27, Washington DC, American Jewish activist:
“I didn’t just grow up a modern Orthodox Jew in a Zionist community in the United States of America. I grew up in the suburbs of DC, so my modern Orthodox Jewish community was not your average Zionist American Jewish community. They were members of the Supreme Court, and senators, and congresspeople, and people who had access to the highest seats in the land. The most influential positions of power, people who were shaping Israeli policy. The main base of my community, my shul [synagogue], was an absolute DC scene. And this had a big impact on my relationship to Israel. It wasn’t just coming from the place of spiritual connection. On the contrary: In general, if you look at the wealthy, cerebral modern Orthodox communities like I was raised in, they aren’t particularly spiritual communities. There isn’t a huge God relationship. It’s a relationship based on history, and culture, and politics.”
Oriel Eisner, 31, Denver, Colorado, American-Israeli Jewish activist:
“In the simplest of terms, it feels like it comes down to seeing the ways in which Jewishness and Jewish life has come to align itself with empire, with white supremacy in the U.S., with colonialism - through both the American-Jewish experience and Israeli-Jewish experiences. And I think that that's something that's always been a part of Jewish experience in the world. I think that there's always been Jewish alignment with power, historically…But I think historically, there's also been a lot, if not even more, Jewish life that hasn't [aligned with power but] that's been victims of power, and has been in resistance to power.
“A big part of what the work is about, is about articulating, creating, pushing for a Jewishness that is in resistance to those systems, in resistance to white supremacy, in resistance to colonialism, because I think those systems are also bad, and also harm Jews, and historically have harmed Jews many, many times. So that alignment is not only morally wrong, is not only extremely harmful to Palestinian lives and to the lives of others, but is also not good for Jews, and isn't the way to create Jewish safety, and, I think, thriving Jewish livelihood in the world.”
Elliot Beck, 35, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, American-Israeli Jewish activist:
“As American Jews, we are being used as a cover-up or as an excuse: Conservative and right-wing politicians in the U.S. say that their support for Israel is because of their support for Jews. And they use this cover as they perpetuate their otherwise anti-Semitic, nationalist, white supremacist beliefs. That’s why we need to support this project in the face of extreme militarism over here [in Palestine]. [American neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, and white supremacist] Richard Spencer says things like ‘I want the U.S. to be just like Israel. I also want a state for us to protect our white culture and people, because we are losing that to immigration’. People are using Jews, and our trauma and our identity, as justifications for perpetuating the most horrific practices of the United States. This manipulation of my identity is infuriating.”
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Oriel Eisner, 31, Denver, Colorado, American-Israeli Jewish activist:
“I think for American Jews there's an element of that disentangling work involved in what they're doing, in creating American Jewishness that isn't completely consumed by Zionist Jewishness. And I think Israeli [activists], not all, of course, but are also doing that. But they're not disentangling from the place that they live. They still live here. it's their geography, I guess… They grew up and live within a few hours of the South Hebron Hills, and will continue to live within a few hours of the South Hebron Hills… They're trying to remake what being here means and is… There's something about people who grew up on the same geography, within the same system, remaking themselves within that system, that feels really, really significant.
“American Jews are Jews, but they're also Americans. And that means that entering into Palestinian spaces, moving through Palestinian spaces, it means something really, really different for them, but also for Palestinians, than Israeli Jews who are of the world and of the system that is oppressing them. I think that, from my experience, most of the Palestinians that I've worked with talk about the experience of working so much with American Jews - but also Israeli Jews - brings the realization that Jewishness isn't only Zionism, that not all Jews support Zionism.”
Oriel Eisner, 31, Denver, Colorado, American-Israeli Jewish activist:
One recurring paradox in working for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, which works in bringing Jews from other places to Israel/Palestine, is that it's resisting that connection that Jewishness equals Zionism equals a connection and responsibility to be engaged in Israel [but it’s also] upholding that, because it's saying that Jews from other places have something to do here. What feels right in it is that I think the way that the world exists now is such that most of the Jews in the world are in the U.S. But a good chunk of Jews are in Israel. And the way that the last seven years have been is that being Jewish anywhere - even if it's not from a Zionist place - is impacted by Israel. Especially in the U.S., what's happening in Israel is affecting what's happening to Jews in America.
Diaspora Jewish activists accompany a Palestinian shepherd tending his herd near an Israeli settlement in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank.
Sarah Brammer-Shlay, 30, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, American Jewish activist & rabbinical student:
“Israel can sometimes hit more at the level of identity crisis for American Jews than dealing with the politics of America generally does. I’m not an American patriot; although heartbroken, angered and ready to act, I wasn’t surprised when George Floyd was murdered. I don’t have the most high expectations of America, it doesn’t feel like an identity crisis as much for me as a white American Jew. I am an American but I wouldn’t say I’m a proud American. But I am a proud Jew, and Israel hits at a specific sort of identity.”
Sarah Brammer-Shlay, 30, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, American Jewish activist & rabbinical student:
“In the U.S., we have organizations who do social justice work but don’t talk about Israel/Palestine and, in some ways, I can understand that. You can’t have an organization that does everything. But I think what these organizations do need to do is not create red lines around people who speak out about Israel/Palestine. To say ‘we’re not going to touch this with a 10-foot pole’ is perpetuating the idea that this is an issue we don’t talk about and then it’s the more right-wing, mainstream establishment organizations who get the power in the situation.”