video by A. Daniel Roth

Even though I’ve been back from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence delegation for almost a week now, I’ll take this opportunity to end this series with some final closing thoughts. There’s so much I wasn’t able to cover – and so much more to say about what I did – but I do at least want to highlight some of my major takeaways from this amazing experience.

To start: I have no doubt in my mind now that a genuine diaspora-based Jewish movement for Palestinian solidarity is rapidly growing. It’s real, it’s broad based and its gaining some serious traction. When I was first invited by CJNV founder Ilana Sumka to join this delegation, I went to their website and read that the trip would include Jews who come from a wide spectrum of organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, Open Hillel, If Not Now and Students for Justice in Palestine. I will admit I was dubious. It was simply unprecedented for a Jewish organization to bring such an ideologically diverse array of Jews together to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.

But I also knew that if anyone could build such a Jewish coalition together, it was an organizer such as Ilana, who invests her head and her heart in creative and inspiring ways. The mission and values of CJNV are powerfully straightforward: the conviction that all individuals are equal based on our shared humanity and therefore have the right to be treated equally under the law; a commitment to principles and practices of nonviolent resistance; and unwavering opposition to Israel’s unjust occupation.

In our group there were obviously real political differences (i.e. BDS, the specific meaning of “occupation” and one state vs. two) but in the end we weren’t there to debate our issues – we were there to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. Because of our diversity we had a real strength in numbers; indeed it’s hard to dismiss 40 diaspora Jews openly responding to a call from Palestinians to stand with them in their struggle. It will be even harder next year, when CJNV organizes 200 diaspora Jews to answer the call. I have no doubt in my mind that there will be at least that many participants – if not more.

I also believe that this movement is the real deal because the majority of participants on this delegation were Jewish millennials. I’ve seen this coming for a while now: back in 2010 I wrote that there was a growing generation of young proud Jews who were openly rejecting the Jewish establishment’s orthodoxy on Israel. And I noted that they were “growing in number (and) rapidly finding their voice.”

Well, I’ve believe they’ve found their collective voice. Journalist Peter Beinart, who has also been warning the Jewish establishment about this phenomenon for some time, attended our action and later wrote in Ha’artez that after talking with these young activists, he “realized how formidable a challenge they’re likely to pose to the American Jewish establishment in the years to come.”

Another takeaway from this experience for me was the critical importance of solidarity as a discipline as well as a value. Far too often, leftist activists approach this kind of work using what I would call a “liberal benevolence” paradigm – i.e. helping oppressed people on their own terms rather than taking their lead from those who are most directly affected by this oppression. It was very clear to us through the course of this delegation that the leadership of CJNV had cultivated genuine, longtime relationships with Palestinians activists and Palestinian resistance groups on the ground. And every step of the way, we were reminded that the actions we undertook were at the request of our Palestinian partners.

It was crucial for us to understand that in the end, this is not ultimately our struggle – and that as diaspora Jews we have real power and privilege that we cannot take for granted. On the contrary, we were there to leverage our privilege to support the Palestinian struggle and to shine a light on a system that privileges one group of people over another in such blatant and immoral ways. In Susiya, the only reason the Palestinian villagers could return to visit their original homes was because as Jews, we could purchase tickets to an archaeological park for our entire group. In Hebron, we were well aware that as diaspora Jews, we could garner publicity about Tel Rumeida to an extent that would never be afforded to Palestinians alone. We were also we aware that as diaspora Jews, we were treated far better than the Palestinian activists from Youth Against the Settlements, who were arrested virtually on the spot by the IDF and Israeli police as we continued to work and sing.

It is our hope that through our privilege, we were be able to spotlight the courageous leadership of Palestinian nonviolent leaders such as Aziz and Eid Hathaleen of Umm al-Kheir, Nasser Nawaja of Susiya, Issa Amro of Hebron and Zuheir Elrajabi of Batan al-Hawa and so many others who engage in resistance every single day in their communities. It has been our honor to get to know them, to support their struggle and to do what we can to bring their work to the attention of the world so that many more might stand with them as well.

Yet another gift from this delegation: the opportunity to get to know the Israeli members of the Palestine solidarity community. It is too often said that there is “no longer such a thing as the Israeli left.” While this may be true politically, there is a small but thriving movement of Israeli grassroots activists who actively support the Palestinian struggle and are themselves worthy of our support. I’m referring to groups such as Tayush, All That’s Left, Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence among others, who join direct actions, document abuses, help rebuild homes and provide legal support with their Palestinian partners. These Israeli activists are intensely stigmatized and marginalized by Israeli society – and are too often physically harmed in the process. To my mind, however, they are all that remains of the Jewish ethical soul in Israel. As the far right continues its inexorable political ascendance, I do believe these activists are among only ones left standing between sanity and the abyss. It was such an honor to work alongside them as well.

One final takeaway:

I mentioned in an earlier post that our Cinema Hebron action took place at an old factory owned by Jawad Abu Aisha. The Abu Aisha family is in fact, a venerable family in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron. Like many families there, they originally had amicable relations with the Jewish communities up until the late 19th/early 20th centuries.  This relative peace was tragically rent asunder in 1929 when growing Arab-Jewish tensions resulted in the brutal murder of 67 Jews in Hebron. The trauma of this moment remains fixed in the memory of many Jewish Israelis. What is lesser known is that many more Jews would have been killed had they not been saved by their Palestinian neighbors.

The Abu Aisha family were among those neighbors. And to this day they keep a sacred record of their family’s redemptive act in 1929:

The paper that (Muhammad) Abu Aisha keeps in his pocket … is a faded photocopy of a page of “The Hebron Book,” a deluxe album that was published at the start of the 1970s in order to perpetuate the memory of the Jewish community that lived in the town until the massacre in 1929. Even though he does not read Hebrew, he knows very well what is written on the page, an account of those among the Arabs of Hebron who risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors. At the bottom of the page is a blurred photograph of two men embracing. “This is Ya’akov Ezra and this is my father, Hamed Abu Aisha,” says the elderly man.

As radical Jewish settlers began to move back into the heart of Hebron in the 1980s, the Abu Aisha family, like many other Palestinian families in that area, became targets of harassment and abuse. For at least two decades now the Abu Aisha family lives in what is known as the “caged house” in Tel Rumeida, with iron bars across their windows to protect them from settler violence. Their house and its adjoining properties are considered prime real estate by the extremist settler community who has been gradually encroaching on their property with the tacit permission of the Israeli civil authority.

But as our group worked alongside Palestinians from Tel Rumeida to clear garbage and weeds from the Abu Aisha’s property that Friday morning, I couldn’t help but think of the time not so long ago when the Jews and Palestinians lived together, side by side, not separated by “sterile roads” and caged windows.

And I couldn’t help but think that in some small redemptive way, our action might somehow be bringing Hebron that much closer to such a time once again.