Louder Than Words

JEWS AGAINST THE OCCUPATION JATONYC.ORG

This is the second in a two-part interview.

How do your families react to your doing this work?

Many of us have family in Israel. And many of us have family who are not supportive of what we're doing. Some of us have agreed to no longer discuss Israel and Palestine with family members. On the other hand, some of us get a lot of support from our families—those of us who come from left families of one sort or another. That's several of us. There've been a number of JATO actions in which several generations—grandparent, child, grandchild—have participated.

Are many JATO members religious? Do you work with congregations?

JATO folks run an amazing gamut. One member is in the process of applying to rabbinical school, and a number of folks are quite observant. We have a member on the board of a synagogue. Others have a specifically secular Jewish identity, and still others aren't necessarily observant or secular. One of the things we're doing now is strengthening our direct connections to Palestinian communities and groups. But we're also very aware that what we're doing is community organizing. We're coming up with new ways to reach the third to half of the NYC Jewish population that's part of congregations, and also of reaching the majority, who aren't. We've sponsored or held events, not as frequently as we've tried to, at synagogues and other community organizations.

Part of the work we're doing is to increase visibility of Jewish dissent, to crack this idea that Jews have to have monolithic support for Israel. To say it's okay to speak out in Jewish circles against the Occupation. Along with that, we also speak out against conflating critiques of Israel and anti-Semitism. A lot of time there's a fear in the non-Jewish world about criticizing Israel, because you come off sounding anti-Semitic. We're trying to make it clear that there's a difference.

How does JATO relate to other groups in NYC and around the country?

We've had varying kinds of supportive connections at different times. There's been some recent moves toward making a more coherent anti-Occupation Jewish coalition or network. Right now we've got particularly close ties to Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for a Free Palestine in SF. In NYC, we're one of the founding groups of the Palestine Activist Forum, which is the umbrella coalition of progressive Palestine solidarity work. We work with antiwar groups, and have been working with groups around issues of detention and immigration. We've been working more with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, too.

With such a diverse membership, is it difficult to agree on what to take on?

We cover such a wide range that we wind up having interesting and complicated discussions about how to do things. What sets someone's secularist teeth on edge is going to be different from what sets someone else's more observant teeth off. That's also why we're a strong organization. Another piece of that is building more ties with Jewish communities outside of the Ashkenazi sphere in New York. We're an overwhelmingly light-skinned Ashkenazi organization, and that is not what the Jewish community in NYC is, much less the Jewish community in the world and especially not in Israel.

It's a strong part of our strategy and focus to engage the Jewish community in this discussion. It's not the center—we're definitely about representing a Jewish voice to everyone, and not just a Jewish voice, but a voice against the Occupation, regardless of our being Jewish.

What kind of actions and activities does JATO do?

We observe almost every Jewish holiday. In different years, we've done different actions. We've also called for actions at the Salute to Israel Day parade, and actions supporting refuseniks. Religion is central to our work—some secular members sometimes feel it's too big a part. It's an ongoing debate.

The beautiful thing about Jewish holidays is that they were created for anti-Occupation work! This year for Chanukah we had a teach-in on militarism, the Occupation, immigrant justice. We cosponsored that with JFREJ. We wanted to look at what it is to have this holiday of liberation that's about a military triumph against an occupation. Last Chanukah, we did a procession through Rockefeller Center with a human menorah with gold lame, singing rewritten Chanukah songs. For Sukkot this year, we had a discussion about the Occupation. The year before, we set up in Central Park, and we invited speakers from Al-Awda and other groups. For the past two years of Shavuot, which is a holiday in which you traditionally study all night, we studied the Occupation, and we had a vigil for Tisha B'Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the temple. We did these beautiful leaf-shaped flyers for Tu B'Shevat, the holiday of the trees. We also bring an anti-Occupation presence to the Gay Pride Parade. Creativity is an extremely important element of what we do.