US Jews struggle in the fight for Palestinian rights
Rabbi Brant Rosen, 53, is a harsh critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Al Jazeera News, New York City :
At a memorial for her Jewish mother who died in 2012, Tami Gold put a white scarf she bought in Palestine on the gravestone, closing her eyes and singing John Lennon’s Imagine.
It had been the favourite song of her mother – an opponent of Israel’s occupation of Palestine – and the lyrics represented who she was politically, philosophically and spiritually.
“Imagine there’s no countries,” she sang with her sister and some friends. “It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too.”
But when the mourners opened their eyes and were leaving, reality crashed in: Her uncle arrived and approached Gold to give her an envelope. It contained a formal letter acknowledging that he had donated money in the name of her mother to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a New York-based group that channels donations to the Israel Defense Forces.
“I was honouring my sister,” Raymond Rickman, the uncle, said of his action.
But for Gold, 66, that was a “horrible” gesture.
“My sister wrote a handwritten letter and sent it to him, saying what he did was a violation of my mother’s spirit and commitment in life, and that he sabotaged our memorial for my mother,” she said.
Over the years, some American Jews have turned vocal opponents of Israeli’s occupation of Palestine and ardent champions of Palestinian rights.
Critics of these activists say they are breaking away with Jewish traditions or turning traitors to their own cause, pitting them against their families, friends, or the communities that once embraced them.
But Jewish activists for the Palestinian cause are adamant that they will not budge in their convictions.
Despite the conflict with her uncle, Gold, a professor of film and media studies at Hunter College in New York, and a group of activists have forged ahead with the production of a documentary about the occupation of Palestine. The documentary, entitled The Coming Intifada, which is still in the making, “is an opening for how oppression can breed courage, resistance, radical imagination and love”, according to its website.
Sitting in her home on a rainy day, Gold quickly saved on her laptop a video that purportedly showed a group of Israeli soldiers fatally shooting a Palestinian woman who was driving by in her car, out of fear that the disturbing video would soon be taken down from YouTube.
“It is these kinds of grotesque atrocities against the Palestinian people that motivates me to speak out as a Jew,” she said.
Such pushback is not just within families, however. It also happens within congregations in a country where rabbis who oppose Israel’s actions are still grappling to find their voice.
A study released in 2013 by the Jewish Council on Public Affairs found that almost half of the rabbis surveyed refrained in the preceding three years from publicly expressing their views on Israel. Nearly 40 percent of them sometimes or often avoided expressing “true feelings about Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians” for fear of offending their listeners or those around them, according to the study, entitled Reluctant or Repressed? Aversion to Expressing Views on Israel Among American Rabbis.
Rabbi Brant Rosen, 53, is a harsh critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Though he had been to Palestine many times, it was not until the Gaza War in 2008 that his pro-Palestine stance began to manifest itself. In 2010, he co-founded the rabbinical council at Jewish Voice for Peace, a vocal opponent of Israeli policies on Palestine and its people. He is no stranger to pro-Palestine solidarity marches down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and often blogs about the conflict with a strong advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Inevitably, his activism estranged him from his own congregants at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Chicago, where he had been a rabbi for 17 years, prompting a group of 25 member households to send a letter in protest in May 2014.
At a memorial for her Jewish mother who died in 2012, Tami Gold put a white scarf she bought in Palestine on the gravestone, closing her eyes and singing John Lennon’s Imagine.
It had been the favourite song of her mother – an opponent of Israel’s occupation of Palestine – and the lyrics represented who she was politically, philosophically and spiritually.
“Imagine there’s no countries,” she sang with her sister and some friends. “It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too.”
But when the mourners opened their eyes and were leaving, reality crashed in: Her uncle arrived and approached Gold to give her an envelope. It contained a formal letter acknowledging that he had donated money in the name of her mother to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a New York-based group that channels donations to the Israel Defense Forces.
“I was honouring my sister,” Raymond Rickman, the uncle, said of his action.
But for Gold, 66, that was a “horrible” gesture.
“My sister wrote a handwritten letter and sent it to him, saying what he did was a violation of my mother’s spirit and commitment in life, and that he sabotaged our memorial for my mother,” she said.
Over the years, some American Jews have turned vocal opponents of Israeli’s occupation of Palestine and ardent champions of Palestinian rights.
Critics of these activists say they are breaking away with Jewish traditions or turning traitors to their own cause, pitting them against their families, friends, or the communities that once embraced them.
But Jewish activists for the Palestinian cause are adamant that they will not budge in their convictions.
Despite the conflict with her uncle, Gold, a professor of film and media studies at Hunter College in New York, and a group of activists have forged ahead with the production of a documentary about the occupation of Palestine. The documentary, entitled The Coming Intifada, which is still in the making, “is an opening for how oppression can breed courage, resistance, radical imagination and love”, according to its website.
Sitting in her home on a rainy day, Gold quickly saved on her laptop a video that purportedly showed a group of Israeli soldiers fatally shooting a Palestinian woman who was driving by in her car, out of fear that the disturbing video would soon be taken down from YouTube.
“It is these kinds of grotesque atrocities against the Palestinian people that motivates me to speak out as a Jew,” she said.
Such pushback is not just within families, however. It also happens within congregations in a country where rabbis who oppose Israel’s actions are still grappling to find their voice.
A study released in 2013 by the Jewish Council on Public Affairs found that almost half of the rabbis surveyed refrained in the preceding three years from publicly expressing their views on Israel. Nearly 40 percent of them sometimes or often avoided expressing “true feelings about Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians” for fear of offending their listeners or those around them, according to the study, entitled Reluctant or Repressed? Aversion to Expressing Views on Israel Among American Rabbis.
Rabbi Brant Rosen, 53, is a harsh critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Though he had been to Palestine many times, it was not until the Gaza War in 2008 that his pro-Palestine stance began to manifest itself. In 2010, he co-founded the rabbinical council at Jewish Voice for Peace, a vocal opponent of Israeli policies on Palestine and its people. He is no stranger to pro-Palestine solidarity marches down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and often blogs about the conflict with a strong advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Inevitably, his activism estranged him from his own congregants at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Chicago, where he had been a rabbi for 17 years, prompting a group of 25 member households to send a letter in protest in May 2014.
