What Jewish Voice for Peace Can Teach White People about Anti-Racism
In recent months I have been truly inspired by the work of Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish-American organization that is currently fighting to end the relentless, US-backed bombardment of Palestinians in the Gaza strip by the Israeli government, a military campaign described by Holocaust and Genocide Studies scholar, Raz Segal, as “a textbook case of genocide.”1 Since 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace’s mission has been to act in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. They stand against political Zionism (meaning in opposition to a state organized in such a way that European Jews have superior rights to all other ethnic and religious groups) and they are “guided by a vision of justice, equality, and freedom for all people” in the region of historic Palestine, in the US, and around the world.
Members of JVP offer an example of deep solidarity that all of us can learn from. However, here I will focus on two major lessons that they can offer those of us who are white. To be sure, while the Jewish population in the US is majority Ashkenazi, Jews both here and abroad are by no means all white. Additionally, because of the reality of antisemitism, “white” Jews hold a unique, “not-always-fully-accepted-as-white” identity within both an American and global context. Still, the efforts of JVP model skills that white people striving to act for racial justice can learn a lot from.
1. Connection to one’s stake in social change:
Jewish Voice for Peace regularly forefronts their “unwavering belief that Jewish liberation and Palestinian liberation are not opposed, but intertwined.” On the contrary, rather than being motivated by knowledge of how their freedom is intertwined with the liberation of with people of color, white people seeking to work for racial justice are typically given pathways to engagement based in altruistic saviorism (which promotes entitled, paternalistic behavior) or based in deferent allyship (which promotes shrinking and guilt alongside idolization of and continued inauthentic relationships with people of color). Like many white racial justice advocates, members of Jewish Voice for Peace are certainly motivated by a sense of morality, but they are also driven by clarity about their own stake in the Palestinian freedom struggle.
This comes first from the fact that JVP members know that all people have a right to their own humanity; and that enlistment as a supporter of mass violence, whether an active settler-soldier or a political ally in the United States, is deeply wounding to one’s spirit. Thus, members' participation in collective efforts to counter such harm is not only beneficial to those who are targets of violence, but it is also an act of rehumanizing themselves. The most impactful white anti-racist organizers throughout history have also had profound clarity about this reality as it related to the political work they were engaged in.
Second, JVP members’ connection to their own stake in social change comes from a clear analysis of capitalism and of how masses of Jewish refugees were set-up by the powerful to do the dirty work of western imperialism. Members understand the way in which British and US elites grabbed hold of the fringe Zionist movement and, starting in the early twentieth century, amplified it dramatically as a way to create a military outpost in the Middle East that would advance their control over the oil-filled and geopolitically-important region. As Joe Biden said in 1986, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interest in the region.”
JVP leaders have spoken about how what took place this past October 7th is the most severe example of the danger that many Israeli settlers have lived under since the founding of the country. While nowhere close to the danger experienced by Palestinians, it is not insignificant. Membership in such a settler class entails mandatory military service, streets patrolled by soldiers, homes that are required by law to have bomb shelters, forced participation in unnecessary wars to serve the interests of US and Israeli elites, and legitimate fear of attack from a surrounding region that has been so violated by the Israeli military over the course of decades. Despite the risks associated with Israeli citizenship, the poverty level in Israel is even higher than that of the incredibly unequal United States, illustrating further that this broader imperial project of which Israel is part is ultimately only meant to serve a small ruling class.
JVP knows that political Zionism endangers Jewish-Americans and other Jews around the world, too. As Israel, their American lobby, and their western political benefactors and media allies conflate Israeli military aggression with Judaism as a whole, antisemitism around the world is fueled; And as these forces conflate antisemitism with anti-zionism, its real sources go unaddressed.
Jewish Voice for Peace follows the lead of Palestinian social change organizations in many instances and simultaneously remains self-directed, grounded, and free from a dynamic of guilt-filled deference common in white anti-racism. This integrated way of being is largely made possible by holding tight to a broader analysis that clarifies how their own safety and material well-being is tied up in Palestinian liberation and can only be achieved through solidarity.
A similar reality is true of white supremacy more broadly. Racism, in the US and around the world, upholds an economic system that harms almost everyone. The vast majority of white people, too, are going down on the sinking ship that is racial capitalism, even if we happen to be on a higher deck. There are examples of white people historically who, in a similar way to current members of JVP, have understood this reality not only theoretically, but personally, and have engaged in the work of social change from a place of rooted solidarity and genuine comradeship across lines of difference.
Additional note: Another group that uses an explicit class analysis and mutual interest frame is Standing Together, an organization of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel itself using this organizing strategy to build political power toward a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, equal rights within the region, and a just multireligious, multiethnic co-existance. Read their theory of change and listen to Peter Beinart’s defense of their tactics in the face of some recent criticism from the left.
2. Reclaiming a liberatory lineage:
Jewish Voice for Peace also understands that Zionism was not by any means the only solution offered by the many diverse Jewish cultural and political movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and far before) to address the long history of extreme Jewish marginalization. There were many others—including Socialist, Communist, and Bundist movements—that were based in inter-ethnic, inter-religious, and international working class solidarity and, often, a spiritual ethic that mirrored this political orientation. But this mass upliftment of Zionism, initially by the British empire, and the continued repression of these alternatives by European powers, initiated a hundred-year process in which Zionism would be more and more conflated with Jewishness itself, eventually making Zionism one of the only avenues of Jewish political struggle accepted in the mainstream. Winston Churchill even penned an op-ed in 1920 asserting that a “bad Jew” was a follower of an internationalist, socialist Jewish tradition and a “good Jew” was a follower of Zionism. Other Anglo-elites and antisemites of this era, most notably Henry Ford, also consistently decried “the International Jew.”
The recently-released documentary, Israelism, describes the processes of young Jewish-Americans reckoning with the reality of Palestinian oppression as well as the fact that many of their own upbringings hid the severity of this reality from them. In the closing scene of the film, Rabbi Miriam Grossman—a member of JVP’s rabbinical council—shares these words with a group of young Jewish activists:
“People may tell you that if you stand up for Palestinian rights that you aren’t really Jewish, that you’re maybe a self-hating Jew. As a Rabbi, what I see when I look at the work of solidarity is a long chain of Jewish history—this chain of people and ancestors and texts, and traditions that are about justice and fighting for it. Jewish tradition tells us to envision a world where all people are safe and free, to never stop fighting for that world. So may you all feel blessed in a tradition of liberation; may you be blessed to know you’re not alone; and let’s get to work.”
As Grossman indicates, JVP leaders constantly remind their Jewish base that this violence they are being pushed to be complicit in is not representative of the tradition they come from. Her words are illustrative of the fact that the work JVP members engage in does not only involve marches, rallies, and phone-banks. It is also cultural work, the work of collectively reclaiming who they are.
So often, white people grappling with the reality of white supremacy are emotionally immobilized by an ahistorical understanding of racism and whiteness that says, “these forces of harm are all you come from.” We do not realize that white racial identity was in fact given to us to separate us from our own lineages of cultural, political, and religious resistance to domination, and enlist us as foot soldiers of a growing global capitalist empire.
The reality is that we come from legacies of people who participated in work slow-downs on feudal manors in Germany and France. We come from legacies of Eastern Europeans who continued to practice traditional, earth-honoring religious traditions in the face of crusading from the Holy Roman Empire. We come from radical Christian sects who saw antisemitism as ruling class propaganda and spread an inclusive, anti-feudal liberation theology to the masses.2 We come from those who participated in the 1381 mass uprising in England where tens of thousands of peasants marched on London to end serfdom and war. We come from people who ran away from indentured servitude. We come from the one-fourth of confederate soldiers who defected from the Civil War. We come from immigrant socialists who held tight to their ethnic identities and we come from IWW members and communists who engaged in anti-racist and multiracial labor organizing.
These people’s story is our story. And whiteness was designed to separate us from that story, to separate our belonging from that story.
Following in the footsteps of Jewish Voice for Peace, I believe that those of us who are white should see the act of reclaiming this story that was taken from us as a pathway to gaining the wholeness we need to emerge as genuine partners in the transformation of this society.
Join Jewish Voice for Peace's "Power Half-Hours": Multiple times per week JVP holds “Power Half-Hours” on zoom at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific for Jewish and non-Jewish people alike. Attendees get updated on the Palestine solidarity movement, receive some emotional and spiritual nourishment from JVP leaders to cultivate resilience amidst the atrocities being carried out by the Israeli military, and take some small form of collective action together toward the goal of a ceasefire in Gaza. This is a simple way to take action during this heartbreaking time when all of us are needed. I encourage you to take part. Sign up here.
Take the "Study and Action for Palestine: From Ceasefire to Liberation" online course: White Awake, an organization I often facilitate with, is hosting an online course starting June 17th called, "Study and Action for Palestine: From Ceasefire to Liberation - What would it take?" While White Awake often offers anti-racism education that is specifically for white and Euro-descendant people, this course is for anyone committed to a free Palestine and the well-being of all people, everywhere.
The program includes guest speakers Huwaidda Araf, Rabbi Alissa Wise, Andrew Kadi, Sumaya Awad, Ahmad Abuznai, Rochelle Watson, Brandon Mancilla, and Jen Kiok. It consists of extensive study materials, six live sessions, and an ongoing focus on action—both what participants are doing or can be doing right now, as well as how we can deepen our engagement in specific, strategic struggles and commit ourselves for the long haul.
Please check it out! Live attendance is not required and participants will be given recordings of all sessions. Learn more and sign up here.
Photo Credit: Jewish Voice for Peace NYC
Texts like Paul Kivel's Living in the Shadow of the Cross, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous People's History of the United States, Gerald Horne's The Dawning of the Apocalypse, and Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Anne Parker's Saving Paradise reveal to us that early European anti-paganism, antisemitism, and islamophobia were in many ways ideological precursors to whiteness. They functioned in a similar way, as tools of the powerful to divert the class antagonisms of the vast European peasantry toward a stigmatized "other." Whiteness was a direct expansion and intensification of these earlier forms of oppression and identity formation.