support the Jews for Palestinian Right of Return statement

This is an old post dating back to 2013!

Jews Speak Out Against the Racist Double Standards of the 'Law of Return'

There is nothing more illustrative of the racism of Israel and Zionism than the Law of Return.  As a Jew I can 'return' to a place I've no interest in living in.  But Palestinian friends have no such luxury.  They cannot return.   It is therefore excellent that there is growing Jewish opposition to Zionism despite the tants of 'self hater' (no we hate you!).  Like the anti-Nazi Germans who died under Hitler, Jews who oppose Zionism

 A Film Made About Jews Who Oppose Zionism
Despite an overemphasis on Neturei Kara, the Orthodox anti-Zionists, this is a good film that features among other things the young Israelis opposed to the occupation who refuse to serve in the Israel Occupation Forces, the Shministim, and also Gerald Kaufmann MP's excellent speech when he said that his grandmother hadn't been murdered in the ghetto she lived in by the Nazis in order that Israel could kill Palestinian grandmothers.
 

I am therefore very proud to be one of the founding signatories of this statement and urge all Jewish people to support it.  

Tony Greenstein

Dr. Ghada Karmi, M.D.: “An excellent statement which gets at the heart of the Palestinian cause. All people of conscience must sign it.”

To support the Jews for Palestinian Right of Return statement below, please:

**Sign as an individual or organization   

**Join, invite friends to, and repost the Facebook event page 

**Repost widely on websites and blogs:

Praise for JFPROR

Ali Abunimah (Electronic Intifada): “Beautiful!”

Mezna Qato (US Palestinian Community Network): “Absolutely beautiful.”

Fatin Jarara (Al Awda-NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition): “Thank you, JFPROR, for your support of the right of return for Palestinian refugees to all of Historic Palestine and for the call for a single democratic state, a point that must never be compromised by Palestinians, first and foremost, or their allies.”

Max Blumenthal: ”I was proud to join so many outstanding people in signing.”

Stuart Bramhall (Daily Censored): “Profoundly moving.”

Kevin Ovenden (Palestine solidarity activist, London): “Well done – forwards to peace and justice, without which there can be no peace.”

Jews For Palestinian Right of Return

January 1, 2013

“For Palestinians, the right to return home and the right to live in dignity and equality in their own land are not any less important than the right to live free of military occupation.”

–Prof. Saree Makdisi

For more than a century, Zionists have sought to construct a “Jewish state” through forced removal of the indigenous Palestinian people.

In 1948, this state was established through the Nakba (Catastrophe): erasure and occupation of more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages, dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians, and a terror campaign of which the massacre at Deir Yassin is but the most infamous example.

Since 1967, Israel has also occupied and colonized the remainder of historic Palestine. Today, this relentless ethnic cleansing continues — armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies — on both sides of the 1948 “Green Line.”

As a cumulative result, seventy percent of Palestinians are in exile, the world’s largest refugee population.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Gaza, where Israel inflicts particularly brutal collective punishment on 1.7 million people — most of them refugees — for defiantly resisting expulsion from their homes throughout historic Palestine.

“Pick a point, any point, along [Gaza's] 25-mile coastline,” writes Gaza City resident Lara Aburamadan, “and you’re seven or so miles — never more — from the other side. The other side is where my grandparents were born, in a village that has since become someone else’s country, off limits to me. You call it Israel. I call it the place where the bombs come from.”

To hide these crimes and shield itself from their consequences, the Zionist regime officially denies the Nakba, the ethical equivalent of Holocaust denial. It has even authorized legislation to penalize those who memorialize the Nakba — a step toward criminalizing its observance altogether.

As it is for all colonized peoples, liberation means reversing dispossession. “The Palestinian cause,” writes Dr. Haidar Eid in Gaza, “is the right of return for all refugees and nothing less.”

Return — one of the key demands of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign — is affirmed in U.N. resolution 194, but derives from the principle of universal human rights and, as such, cannot be renounced or abandoned by any body or representative; it inalienably attaches to Palestinians, both individually and collectively.

Despite this, even some who criticize Israel’s 1967 occupation claim that Palestinian return is “unrealistic.”

However, solidarity means unconditional support for the just aims of those resisting oppression. As Palestinian journalist-activist Maath Musleh explains: “If you think that [return] is not possible, then you are really not in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”

Some also object that refugees’ return would mean an end to the “Jewish state.” But supporters of social justice must ask themselves how they can defend a state whose very existence depends on structural denial of Palestinian rights.

Recently, more than a hundred leading Palestinian activists reaffirmed their opposition “to all forms of racism and bigotry, including, but not limited to, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Zionism, and other forms of bigotry directed at anyone, and in particular people of color and indigenous peoples everywhere.”

Such racism and bigotry is reflected precisely in Zionism’s attempt to erase the Palestinian people, a century long campaign that dishonors the memory of Jewish suffering and resistance in Europe.

The moral response is clear: “There is one geopolitical entity in historic Palestine,” writes Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah. “Israel must not be allowed to continue to entrench its apartheid, racist and colonial rule throughout that land.”

As Jews of conscience, we call on all supporters of social justice to stand up for Palestinian Right of Return and a democratic state throughout historic Palestine — “From the River to the Sea” — with equal rights for all.

The full measure of justice, upon which the hopes of all humanity depends, requires no less.

Initial Signers

 

(List in formation; affiliations listed for identification only)

Max Ajl, Writer and activist; Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine

Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Switzerland

Max Blumenthal, Journalist and author

Prof. Haim Bresheeth, Filmmaker, photographer and film studies scholar

Lenni Brenner, Author and antiwar activist

Mike Cushman, Convenor, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (UK)

Sonia Fayman, French Jewish Union for Peace; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network France

Sherna Berger Gluck, Founding member, U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Israel Divestment Campaign

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Coordinator, Fellowship of Reconciliation Peacewalks, Mural Arts in Palestine and Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence

Hector Grad, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Spain

Abraham Greenhouse, Blogger, Electronic Intifada

Tony Greenstein, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (UK)

Jeff Halper, Director, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

Stanley Heller, Host of “The Struggle” TV News

Tikva Honig-Parnass, Former member of the Zionist armed forces (1948); author of False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

Adam Horowitz, Co-Editor, Mondoweiss.net

Selma James, Global Women’s Strike; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network UK

David Klein, Organizing Committee, U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Dennis Kortheuer, Organizing Committee, U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Israel Divestment Campaign; Dump Veolia LA

David Letwin, Activist and writer; Gaza Freedom March

Michael Letwin, Co-Founder, Labor for Palestine; Organizing Committee, U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Antony Loewenstein, Australian journalist and author

Barbara Lubin, Executive Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance

Mike Marqusee, Author of If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew

Hajo Meyer, Auschwitz survivor; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Linda Milazzo, Participatory journalist and educator

Prof. Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and socialist activist

Miko Peled, Author of The General’s Son

Karen Pomer, Granddaughter of Henri B. van Leeuwen, Dutch anti-Zionist leader and Bergen-Belsen survivor

Diana Ralph, Assistant Coordinator, Independent Jewish Voices-Canada

Dorothy Reik, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains

Prof. Dr. Fanny-Michaela Reisin, President, International League for Human Rights (German Section FIDH); Founding member, Jewish Voice for a Just Peace – EJJP Germany

Rachel Roberts, Civil rights attorney and writer

Ilana Rossoff, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Carol K. Smith, Activist and civil rights attorney

Lia Tarachansky, Director, Seven Deadly Myths

Hadas Thier, Contributing author of The Struggle for Palestine; Israeli-born daughter and granddaughter of Nazi Holocaust survivors

Dr. Abraham Weizfeld, Jewish People’s Liberation Organization (Montréal)

Sherry Wolf, Author and public speaker; International Socialist Organization; Adalah-NY

Marcy Winograd, Former Congressional peace candidate; public school teacher

Dr. Roger van Zwanenberg, Non-Executive Director, Pluto Books Ltd.

Additional Signers

(Complete list at:  Affiliations listed for identification only.)

Stephen Aberle, Vancouver, BC, Independent Jewish Voices

Deborah Agre, Berkeley, CA, Middle East Children’s Alliance

Seymour Alexander, Slough, Jews for Justice for Palestinians UK

Ruth Bader, Australia, German-Jewish/Australian, daughter of Holocaust survivors

Adam Balsam, Independent Jewish Voices Canada

Moran Barir, Human rights activist, Jerusalem

Ronnie Barkan, Tel-Aviv, Boycott from Within

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Journalist

Dalit Baum, Israeli feminist teacher and activist

Medea Benjamin, Codirector, Codepink

Mark Berman, Playwright

Rima Berns-McGown, Toronto, Writer and Adjunct Faculty, University of Toronto at Mississauga

Elizabeth Block, Toronto, Independent Jewish Voices

Audrey Bomse, National Lawyers Guild, Free Gaza

Dennis Brasky, Professor – Political Science – Rutgers University

Estee Chandler, Founding Member, Jewish Voice for Peace, L.A. Chapter

David Comedi, Tucumán, Argentina

Prof. Roger Dittmann, CSU Fullerton

Mark Elf, Jews sans frontieres

Prof. Sam Farber, NYC

Deborah Fink, UK, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods

Alexei Folger, Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area

Maxine Fookson, Portland, Oregon, Jewish Voice for Peace

Racheli Gai, Tucson Women in Black, Jewish Voice for Peace

Kamran Ghasri, Israel Divestment Campaign

Dr. Terri Ginsberg, NYC; film scholar; Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism

Neta Golan, Palestinian Territories, ISM

Nathan Goldbaum, ISO, Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, Chicago Teachers Union

Steve Goldfield, Ph.D., Oakland, CA, Former chair, Palestine Solidarity Committee, former editor, Palestine Focus

Jean R. Goldman, Miami Beach, Women in Black

Sue Goldstein, Toronto, Women in Solidarity with Palestine

Marty Goodman, NYC, Former Executive Board member, Transport Workers Union Local 100

Heidi Grunebaum, Cape Town

Cathy Gulkin, Toronto, Independent Jewish Voices, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

Georges Gumpel, Union Juive Française pour la Paix

Freda Guttman, Montreal, Tadamon!

Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, Author and journalist, Germany

Annette Herskovits, Berkeley, Holocaust survivor, writer, and activist

Rebecca Hom, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-U.S.

Bec Hynek, Sydney, Australia, Socialist Alternative

Jews Opposing Zionism, Not In Our Name – NION (Canada)

Riva Joffe, London, Jews Against Zionism

Ramsey Judah, Los Angeles activist and Immigration Rights Attorney

Alex Kane, Assistant Editor, Mondoweiss.net and World editor, AlterNet

Dan Kaplan, Executive Secretary, AFT Local 1493, San Mateo, CA Community College Federation of Teachers

Asaf Kedar, Zochrot

Alice Diane Kisch, Emerryville, CA, Jewish Voice for Peace

Bud Korotzer, Brooklyn

Yael Korin, Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Southern California

Steve Kowit, American poet, Professor emeritus, Southwestern College

L.A. Jews for Peace

Sylvia Laale, Ottawa

Stephen Landau, Translator and publisher, White Plains, NY

David Landy, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Melanie Lazarow, University of Melbourne

Howard Lenow, Sudbury, MA, Union Attorney, Founder American Jews For A Just Peace

Leah Levane, London, Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Daniel Levyne, France, UJFP

Brenda Lewis, Guelph, Ontario, child of Holocaust survivor

Abby Lippman, Montreal, Professor Emerita, McGill University

Jennifer Loewenstein, Madison

Henry Lowi, IDF veteran

Alex Lubin, Professor, American University of Beirut

Helga Mankovitz, Kingston, ON, Independent Jewish Voices

Eli Marcus, Occupied Palestine

Richard Marcuse, West Vancouver, BC, Independent Jewish Voices

Peter Melvyn, Critical Jewish Voice, Vienna

Waldo Mermelstein, Sao Paulo

Gail Miller, NY, Passenger, U. S. Boat to Gaza–The Audacity of Hope

Prof. Hilton Obenzinger

Akiva Orr, Matzpen

Peter Rachleff, Saint Paul, Professor of History, Macalester College

Zohar Chamberlain Regev, Dúrcal, Granada, Spain

Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Jewish Voice for a Just Peace – EJJP Germany

Ernest Rodker, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, UK

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, Chair, British Committee for the Universities of Palestine

Martha Roth, Vancouver BC, Independent Jewish Voices

Cheyl A. Rubenberg, Boca Raton, Professor (retired)

Leslie Safran, London

Margot Salom, Brisbane Australia, Just Peace for Palestine

Christiane Schomblond, Brussels, Belgium, professor retired from University of Brussels

Ralph Schoenman, Vallejo, CA., Author: Hidden History of Zionism

Yossi Schwartz, Haifa, Internationalist Socialist League

Amanda Sebestyen, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network UK, JfJfP, JBIG, IJV

Sid Shniad, Vancouver, BC, National Steering Committee, Independent Jewish Voices

Mya Shone, Author, The Hidden History of Zionism and other works

Abba A. Solomon, Author of The Speech, and Its Context

Peter Sporn, Oak Park, Illinois, Arab Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle East

Marsha Steinberg, BDS LA for Justice in Palestine

Cy & Lois Swartz, Philadelphia, Grandparents for Peace in the Middle East

Prof. Barry Trachtenberg

Matthew Taylor, Berkeley, founding member, Young Jewish and Proud group within Jewish Voice for Peace

Steve Terry, Criminal defense attorney, Brooklyn

Lily van den Bergh, Documentary filmmaker & organiser, Women in Black  The Netherlands

Dominique Ventre, French Jewish Union for Peace; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network France

Judith Weisman, Toronto, Independent Jewish Voices, Not in Our Name

Suzanne Weiss, Toronto

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Founder member, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods

Tamar Yaron, Kibbutz Hazorea, Israel, founder & moderator: Encounter-EMEM for international Israel-Palestine peace activities