Speaking Out Against Genocide: Reckoning and Accountability
The truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t.
I’ve been seeing a number of different discussions lately (posts and articles) about how Jews who have been speaking out against Israel’s genocide since October 2023 are feeling about Jews who are only more recently speaking out. How one feels, how one thinks these “newcomers” should be regarded, and one’s (potential) relationship with them, how one embraces them (or not), are part of the discussion. And questions about the need for accountability, repentance, and reckoning have been central to the conversations.
I believe strongly in processes of accountability and in reckoning, but what concerns me in what I’m reading is that it sounds to me like the discussion is about “us” and “them,” (the “good” and “not so good” Jews)—that is, those who have supported (or been silent until recently about) the genocide and those of us who haven’t. I do not mean to suggest that this kind of “us” and “them” characterization is the intention, but it is how some of it has come across to me. (And what struck me is that some of the posts/articles to which I refer come from those who have just themselves begun speaking out more openly and critically in recent years.)
I, of course, see groups and individuals speaking out now who still have deeply problematic analyses and who don’t begin to address the root of the problem—the original and ongoing Nakba—or decades of complicity. And I, too, have feelings about those who have taken so long to finally act with a semblance of humanity and who have not been vociferous in their opposition to widespread Jewish community support for, and complicity in, genocide. But the truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t. And even after not supporting Israel or declaring ourselves anti-Zionists, there was so much to learn, to de-exceptionalize, to challenge ourselves on. And, certainly for me, that process continues to this day.
My own journey away from Zionism did not happen fully until the late 1980s, after I participated in an international peace conference (Road to Peace) with Palestinians from the US and from Palestine. While I had always been against the occupation of 1967, it was at the conference (and during the yearlong pre-conference planning) that I learned about the Nakba, about the right of return, about the Zionist movement’s role in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes. The information was out there way before the conference and way before I identified as an anti-Zionist. But I had blinders on, and I didn’t challenge myself, or listen, nearly enough.
I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out... toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
So I feel like some of the calls for accountability I’m reading let “us” off the hook, like we don’t have to engage in our own ongoing reckoning and accountability. I don’t mean only for things past, but for the ways we—even unwittingly—continue to perpetuate and support injustice or Jewish exceptionalism or even stay silent (or weaken our messaging) at critical times when our voices could make a difference. Again, I believe we need to continually engage in this process to challenge both the (very present) Zionist framework that values Jewish lives over others, as well as the Jewish exceptionalist framework—with which many of us were brought up—of Jews as the chosen people. (And even those of us who flatly reject the latter concept might still find ourselves perpetuating the notion that there is a Jewish ethical tradition that is—just a bit!—more special or different than that of others.)
Sometimes as I read Steven Salaita–whose ethics and integrity and brilliance impact me deeply—and pay close attention to his words, I’ll start to feel something (discomfort?) and then I think, oh no, I see myself in that. And I know I need to consider long and hard about how to challenge what I see myself perpetuating. He doesn’t point fingers. He just says it as it is.
Reflecting upon the current moment, what I think about when I see all these new people, particularly many Jews, starting to move in the right direction is how they might move beyond where they are at right now to where they and we could and should be—acknowledging and opposing the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and all that follows from that. Because we know that the complicity of US Jewish institutions in supporting the Zionist movement and then Israel in the ongoing expulsion of the Palestinian people from Palestine, and in justifying and/or remaining silent about the Nakba, goes back for decades—including among many of us who now define ourselves as anti-Zionists.
So I see one part of the work I am committed to as trying to open up spaces for those who are now speaking out in opposition to this genocide, to this starvation campaign, for real learning, and for community accountability about the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing Nakba. I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out—just as so many of us were motivated at some point to speak out and renounce our support for Zionism—toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
The goal for me in this particular work is to have more and more of us within our Jewish communities joining, with integrity, in the Palestinian-led movement for justice. There is so much out there to deepen our analysis and organizing—resources and educational materials of Palestinian organizations, scholars, historians, and activists. My own journey has included so much learning over many years and then participating in the creation of educational curricula, first (inspired by Zochrot) Facing the Nakba, and, in more recent years, together with Project48, the Palestinian Nakba curriculum. So many resources abound, and I consider part of my responsibility now, which I embrace, to engage deeply with these resources within Jewish communities where there are openings to strengthen our collective accountability, and our commitment, in word and action, to seeking and pursuing justice.
