Jews Against the Occupation
Is it Anti-Semitic to be Anti-Zionist? 
Palestine, Justice, and Anti-Racism
By Sherene Seikaly
The work in solidarity with the Palestinian people living under occupation is not identity-based. My own personal experience as a Palestinian and as an American speaks to this issue. My parents, their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and families were born in Haifa and expelled in 1948. They traced their lineage 700 years to the cities of Haifa and Acca. As a child, I grew up with their memories and their history. Haifa was a place I resided in my imagination, among the stories of the movie theater, the houses, the stairs that lead from the market to the sea, the orange trees, the games they used to play, the corners they played hide and seek in, where they bought their meat and vegetables, where they prayed, where they went to school, where they worked, where they laughed, where they buried their dead. I watched my extended family being dispersed on four different continents, and I watched my parents lose their belongings several times over, struggling as Palestinians living through the 56 tripartite attack on Egypt, the Six Day War of 67 between Israel, Egypt and Jordan, the October 73 war between Israel and Egypt, the Lebanese civil war. Palestine was not simply where we were from, it was what we would always be.
I visited, or perhaps I should say returned to Haifa, the city that I had always claimed hailing from, the city that was the major port of Palestine and had now been for 54 years a major Israeli city, with dwindling Arab residents. I went as an adult with the hope and the fear of a child. This last summer, I was there beginning my research and I had the opportunity to do so not as a Palestinian but only because I have US citizenship. I decided one day to walk the city by myself. I took a camera and I walked for four hours. I had a long list of houses and sites to find. I searched, hoping in some way, that they we would all be gone, so that I could say, I am not really from Haifa and there really is no Haifa as it has existed in my parent’s memory and in my own.
But it was there, the houses of their parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents; the train station they had detailed, Wadi an-Nisas where they went to market, the church where they prayed. I searched for the staircase, where my mother’s aunt had lived, that lead to the sea. I walked and found the house, I walked down the beautiful old stairs and I looked at the old houses.
I tried to photograph every moment so that my aging grandmothers could see that I had been there, that there still existed, but there was no way to document what I felt. I was all alone but surrounded by the memories that were engraved on the steps, and all I could think was 54 years ago, my mother and father played on the stairs I stand on now. These moments and these memories have shaped me.
But it is dealing with these experiences and understanding what Haifa means to me now that is the most challenging work. I have done this emotional, intellectual, and political work with friends and family and through research, study, and activism. Each book and each person brings a perspective, a challenge, an idea. I could not have done this work had it not been for a diverse group of people with whom I share a commitment to justice and peace—Palestinians who have pushed me to move beyond our own collective memory and disposition to understand that we need to recognize the suffering of others as our own; people of color who have taught me that freedom is indivisible and that we must oppose all forms of racism and discrimination; and lastly my Israeli and American Jewish friends, colleagues, advisors, and fellow activists who refuse to allow the brutality of occupation to continue in their name, who recognize the asymmetry of power, and who are drawing from history that never again means never again to anyone.
Often I feel as if we grab each other hands and walk down the stairs in Haifa together. It is a difficult, painful journey and it requires knowing each other’s histories, recognizing each other’s tragedies, and understanding our fates as inextricably linked. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, but our differences are what makes us strong. In our friendships and in our work with NYU Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestine Activist Forum— we stand united against all forms of brutality and racism. We, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, South Asians, African Americans, people of color in this country, are joining the many people around the world and calling for an end to the Occupation. The plight of 3 million people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are disenfranchised, impoverished and imprisoned is not about identity, it is about humanity, justice, and peace.
As we gather with one another in solidarity, another escalation of the Israeli war on the Palestinian is underway. . . as troops, tanks, missiles, and apaches funded and supported by the United States continue to kill innocent people, demolish homes, and destroy the little left of Palestinian social infrastructure.
Our presence in New York as a group of diverse activists and concerned people is testament to the growing strength of the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for decolonization and freedom, here in the U.S. and internationally.
As this movement spreads on college campuses, in neighborhoods, and in communities, it faces many challenges. One challenge that we must face head on is the oft-cited charge of anti-Semitism. For many of us who are invested in Palestine solidarity work this accusation is one we are painfully familiar with. On college campuses, it has taken various forms. For NYU Students for Justice in Palestine, it has meant being accused by Zionist student groups; and having to answer to the administration in various written testimonies that we stand united against all forms of brutality and racism. In each case, our group—growing and diverse and including Americans, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, South Asians, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists—has proven more than capable in defending our stance—one that strives for basic human rights and civil liberties, and is against all and any kinds of racism.
As time passes, we are struck once and again by the extent to which we are asked to disprove our anti-Semitism before we can even begin to be understood as legitimate by the mainstream discourse. This is despite the explicit diversity, the stands against the targeting of innocent civilians (Palestinians and Israeli), and the well-developed foundations of anti-racism that we draw on from various social movements. In effect, these accusations attempt to morally delegitimize our work and silence our criticism of Zionism and Israeli policy. At the same time, while we defend ourselves—we are left pondering—why is it that at no point are individuals and institutions who uncritically support Israeli occupation are publicly asked to demonstrate their own anti-racism?
Articles in the Chronicle, the Village Voice, and the New York Times have unjustly and inaccurately depicted the Palestine solidarity movement as one lying on a shaky foundation that could at any point tip toward the abyss of anti-Semitism and hate. In this way, mainstream media representations of Palestine solidarity work often replicate the representation of the Palestinian struggle itself as somehow inherently racist, unjustifiable, or existentially threatening to Jews. The fact of the matter is that the logic of colonialism and the logic of Israeli occupation is at base the logic of racism. This dehumanization is not new for Palestinians. The process began when historic Palestine was defined by Zionist ideology “as a land without a people for a people without a land” and eventually in 1948, 800,000 Palestinian were dispossessed.
It is as urgent now as ever to confront and undo the consistently repeated conflation between being anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Zionism has succeeded to a large extent in making the categories of Jew and Zionist synonymous. It is this conflation that we must undo—on various levels.
On one level, it is crucial to recognize that the tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism is long and honorable and has existed since the late 19th century. In the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Israel Jewish voices are critical of Zionism and committed to the cause of justice for all in the Middle East.
Secondly, the existence of Anti-Semitism in Europe, the United States, the Arab world, and beyond is a real phenomenon. The recent rise of attacks on synagogues and cemeteries speaks loudly to this issue. We must understand the differing historical origins these various phenomena stem from and the forms they take; and continue confronting, condemning, and resisting anti-Semitic acts and ideology in any and all of its forms.
For me the April 20th dc demonstration was a good example of how solidarity workers can bond together to stand against all forms of racism--when 15 men in masks showed up donning racist, anti-Semitic signs (“Judaism=Racism”), demonstrators surrounded the group chanting making peace not hate, and the voice on the megaphone had a clear message “our Jewish brothers and sisters are part and parcel of this movement, there is no room for racism here.” The fifteen men turned away and left the demonstration.
As Palestine solidarity work grows, it is our challenge to continue building and enriching a principled solidarity movement--one built on the foundations of equality and freedom and envisions an alternative order. As we do so, we will remain committed to the Palestinian struggle with the understanding that the stripping of basic human rights by colonial occupation and military force is morally unjustifiable. The conflict in Israel/Palestine is part of a broader historical struggle that is not about ethnicity or identity as such, but about colonialism. It was not anti-white to deplore and resist the dispossession of native Americans and slavery; it was not anti-Afrikaner to work to end apartheid. It is not anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish to call for ending the occupation, and ending it now.