Decentring Palestinians from Jewish Activism

Abstract

Diaspora Jewish solidarity with Palestine has broken out of the man-bites-dog category of quirky story, and into being a significant element in both global Palestine solidarity as well as among US Jews. Israel’s repetitive assaults on Gaza, the Trump presidency, the effect of BLM in conscientizing younger Jews, and the latest chapter of Palestinian struggle in May 2021 have all been contributing factors. The trend is reflected in growing US Jewish distance from Israel: a recent Pew Poll showed that only 50% of 18–49 year-olds feel attachment to Israel compared to 61% in 2013 (overall it was 57% in 2020 compared to 69% in 2013) (Pew Forum 2021). This poll created no ripples of surprise; Israel has been a cause of contention and dissension among US Jews for decades now. It is the reason that Ron Dermer, the former Israeli Ambassador to the US, recently advised that Israel should concentrate its hasbara efforts on Christian evangelicals rather than diaspora Jews, who are “disproportionately among our critics” (Magid 2021). Thus, a book which promises in-depth examination of these critics is very timely, although it only examines one aspect of their movement. Its main argument is that “Jewish Palestine solidarity activists and other critics of the occupation and Zionism constitute a social movement operating to transform the meaning of Jewishness” (Omer 2019: 9). As such, the book is more interested in how these activists relate to Jewishness and Judaism, than in Palestine solidarity, which is largely sidelined. This is a pity, as the author has interviewed seventy Jewish and thirty non-Jewish activists, and thus has the material to discuss the movement in round. The opening chapters begin well by outlining the terrain, or at least the Jewish part of it, that this movement operates in – revealing how Jewish communal institutions channel younger Jews towards Zionism, and how they silence dissent through deploying a mixture of Islamophobia, accusations of antisemitism, and lawfare. There is also an excellent exploration of how Jews come to Palestinian solidarity, and here the book adds to previous literature which discusses the moral shocks experienced when encountering Israel, the cognitive dissonance between their liberal values and Zionism, and the importance of prior politicization and encounters with Palestinians (Abarbanal 2012; IJV 2008). Of particular interest