Decentring Palestinians from Jewish Activism

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.7.2.0202
• Pages: 202-206
• Published date: 14 December 2022
• Date: 14 December 2022
• Author: David Landy

www.plutojournals.com/reorient

Trinity College Dublin

DECENTRING PALESTINIANS

FROM JEWISH ACTIVISM

David Landy

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 com-

pared 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 dias-

pora 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 activ-

ists, 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 insti-

tutions 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

DOI:10.13169/reorient.7.2.0202