Photos from "International Resistance to Zionism" Panel (SF)

Here's a brief analysis from a local organizer who attended our panel last week, which filled the 522 Valencia Auditorium with close to 100 people:

A remarkable international panel broke new ground in the Bay Area, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. In a packed meeting called by the anti-Zionist International Jewish Solidarity Network, Arab Jews, Palestinian and Jewish activists with backgrounds from India, Puerto Rico, Israel, Lebanon, France/Argentina, Britain, and the US, tackled burning questions facing the Middle East and the world. Speakers placed Zionism as the partner of US imperialism and addressed their weakening power, among Jews for whom it claims to speak and act. Speakers also described the brutal racism of the Israeli settler state that the anti-war and anti-racist movements must confront to support the Palestinian struggle, including the mountain of survival work women do to repel the genocidal Israeli assault. The clear and unambiguous anti-Zionism of the meeting is an exciting expression of the newly emerging network of anti-Zionist Jews demanding that we impose boycotts, divestment and sanction against Israel, as part of a broader movement for liberation.

And some photos -- video will hopefully be coming soon, as will report-backs from similar panels that happened in London and Los Angeles.







Thanks to all of our panelists, co-sponsors, and volunteers!

You can read more about Reuven Abarjel's history and participation in the movement on IndyBay.

More photos from the panel are also on IndyBay.

The IJSN International Meeting comes to a close!

After four days of intense work and great energy, the IJSN international meeting has come to a close. On Sunday much of our work over the past few days was solidified and many decisions were made - in the next few days we will post updates on these pieces. Other areas of work are still in progress and as we move towards their completion we will be in need of your input - we will also post an update on what these pieces are and how we will be seeking your participation in their follow through. Please check the blog next weekend to read about the outcomes of the meeting and engage in continued areas of work!

Proposals for Areas of Work

We spent a lot of time today developing proposals for different areas of international organzing work. Following is a list of these proposed work areas:

• Development of anti-zionist education resources
• Anti-zionist narrative collection
• Participation in Israeli Apartheid Week
• Popular Tribunals (community mock-trials of Zionist war criminals)
• North America Convening in 2009 (organizing conference)
• Literature and analysis development
• Creation of sector networks (Students, Academics, Religious/Spiritual, Jews of Color/Mizrahi, Youth, Cultural)

Would you be intersted in being involved in any of these projects? Are there concrete project proposals that you have for IJSN international work?

New and refined ideas for the name

We will vote on these tomorrow. What do you think?

• International Jewish Solidarity Network: Resisting Zionism
• The 11th Commandment: International Jewish Resistance to Zionism
• Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress (maybe followed by subtitle that references international nature of network)
• Parting the Sea (maybe followed by descriptive subtitle)
• Eyes Wide Open (maybe followed by descriptive subtitle)
• The Pomegranite (maybe followed by descriptive subtitle)
• A Key Challenge (maybe followed by descriptive subtitle)
• Out of Bondage (maybe followed by descriptive subtitle)
• Jewish Solidarity Network: The Anti-Zionist International
• Jewish Resistance Congress: International Challenge to Zionism

Two days of work completed, two more days to go!

This morning IJSN is entering our third day of meetings during this first international gathering of the network! The process so far has been incredibly exciting and productive. In the past two days we have focused on developing the foundational principles and orientations that will guide our work as we get increasingly concrete over the weekend. As we move forward, we would love your input on our work so far, as well as your continued feedback over the next two days.

Orientation to Forces

We began the process today of mapping the politics and power of the forces we will find ourselves in partnership and relationship with and/or in opposition to. A question for this weekend is: How will we (or will we) relate to and engage with the following forces as they exist in different regions?

Major forces we have begun the mapping process of:

Please note that we recognize this is an oversimplification, we use the catagories to the extent that they are helpful as a basic strategy development tool.

• Existing AZ J efforts/formations
• Jewish “grassroots” – politically unaffiliated or undecided
• Liberal Zionist organization or collaborations
• Arab and Palestinian anti-Zionist organizations
• Palestine solidarity organizations
• Domestic grassroots/mass based groups
• Anti-imperialist/anti-war/peace orgs
• labor and churches/temples/mosques
• General public

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?