Jewish Locations to Zionism

Today we worked on how to articulate the diversity of Jewish locations in relationship to the contradictions and mechanisms upon which Zionism is based. The following is an in-progress lens that will inform our points of unity, charter, principles, etc., and help build our political unity in relationship first and foremost to the Palestinian liberation struggle, but also to anti-zionist and anti-colonialist Mizrahi organizing.

Our opposition to Zionism is first and foremost its impact on the people of Palestine.

We recognize and repudiate our positions of power in relation to the Palestinian people and other Arab/Muslim people.

Therefore, our commitment is to reject and dismantle these relations of power to struggle collectively against Zionism.

Because we recognize and oppose the exploitation and oppression of Mizrahim and Sephardim by the Israeli state and white supremacy, we see the necessity of supporting joint struggle between Mizrahi and Palestinian people within Palestine.

This requires a decolonization process for Mizrahim and a related but different process for Ashkenazim.

Questions about this lens:

• How/where to recognize and repudiate the hierarchies of power and our positions with them [via Jewish white supremacy] in relation to the Palestinian people and other Arab/Muslim people?
• Is it a “decolonization” process or “deZionization” process?
• How are we articulating the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi binary and/or complicating it?
• How do we speak to the locations of and positions of power held by Jews of other racial and ethnic backgrounds?
• Do we want to explicate more what our accountability to the Palestinian struggle, and the broader process of decolonization, will look like?
• How do we speak this lens in short and accessible language?