I was sitting at the gate at Ben Gurion Airport in the middle of the night this past May, about to leave Israel/Palestine after my three-month stint serving as a human rights defender, when I received a video from Elissa, a family friend in Michigan. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, I watched Elissa address Congressman Andy Levin at a backyard campaign fundraiser. She read from an email that I had recently sent her:
“After a 22-year-long legal battle, the Israeli High Court decided last night to give the army the green light to forcibly remove over 1000 Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta (occupied West Bank). This would be the largest mass expulsion by Israel in decades…
“During my three months volunteering in the West Bank, I’ve been active in these very communities under threat of forced removal. I’m terrified to think about what will happen if Israel moves forward with its plan. And everyone on the ground here — residents, activists, lawyers — agrees that now is the moment for international pressure.
“We are asking that you lead a congressional letter to Secretary of State Blinken calling on Israel to not evict these Palestinian communities.”
Levin explained the problem in Masafer Yatta in a little more detail to the audience, demonstrating his familiarity. He mentioned that there was in fact a letter in the works (this letter), and then said: “Israel says that they need this area to blow things up. These [Palestinian] families have lived there for generations and generations and generations. I’m very upset about this. And you can promise Zak that I’ll be very active in opposing it–just like I have been on so many other situations, where there are expulsions or home demolitions.”
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the culmination of three months of pent-up emotion from putting my literal body on the line alongside my Palestinian friends resisting military occupation, but I shed a tear watching this video.
Today the place-name “Masafer Yatta” has gained currency like the sites of other struggles in Israel/Palestine, such as Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, did last year. But, by early May, I’d only seen a couple members of Congress invoke the place in tweets, and I’d never heard an American enunciate the name in a public forum–certainly not in my childhood home of southeast Michigan.
Rewatching the video as passengers filed onto the plane, I felt proud to have acted as a bridge between Palestinians fighting for the right to stay in their homes in the occupied West Bank and the decision-makers back in the US. And I felt grateful to Elissa, and to Andy, for taking up the banner of Masafer Yatta. I may have been leaving behind the Land and its people, but the Land and its people would not be leaving me.
This week, Andy Levin lost his reelection bid in large part because he defends Palestinian human rights. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) boosted Andy’s more conservative primary opponent with millions of dollars in advertisements, much of the money coming from Republican billionaires. And Andy was, in the end, defeated.
What was AIPAC’s issue with him? Andy describes himself as a Zionist. AIPAC is Zionist. Andy supports the two-state solution, which is supposedly the mainstream position of the Democratic Party as well as AIPAC. None of that mattered to AIPAC because Andy Levin also speaks out when successive Israeli governments have violated Palestinian human rights, and he does so rooted in Jewish social justice tradition.
American Jews of conscience would do well to take note. We already know that our Jewish identity accords us some special authority when speaking on Israel/Palestine. We know that this can be problematic – people should be just as ready to trust Palestinians when they narrate their own struggles too – but we believe nonetheless that it’s strategic (not to mention ethically imperative) for us to speak out against injustice when it’s committed by our side and demand that everyone’s rights to equality and freedom in the Land be respected.
What appears new, or newer, is how our political enemies are demonstrably scared of our rising movement. Look at the sheer weight that the pro-occupation/pro-apartheid elite in the American Jewish community brought down upon us in this Democratic congressional primary in Detroit: millions of dollars to try to beat back our grassroots people power. The “Jews for Andy” group along with IfNotNow Detroit knocked on over 5000 doors and had 1,200 conversations with constituents during the final days of the campaign. Imagine if it had been a fair fight without Republican billionaires putting their collective crusty foot on the scale! Who knows how this race would’ve turned out?
It is now three months since I returned from my solidarity project in Masafer Yatta. The Israeli military has carried out near weekly live-fire trainings in the immediate vicinity of Palestinian families’ homes. Despite the bicameral letter to Secretary Blinken, which Levin signed, the US has not pressured Israel to stop the mass forced removal of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta. For me, half-a-world away from the villages in the South Hebron Hills that I called home for three months, I often feel frustrated that I cannot do more to immediately respond. Whereas before I would rush to the scene of a demolition, night raid, or settler attack in order to document and de-escalate, now I watch from afar via social media as my chest tightens. What now?
I’ve entered a new political battlefield back here in America, I remind myself, one based on community organizing and movement building. When I was in Israel/Palestine, it sometimes felt like having the ear of elected leaders like Andy Levin was our only hope for actually stopping the excavators and bulldozers. But, on weeks like this one, after a hard electoral defeat, I take solace in the fact that our movement is bigger than any one election or politician. The people who rallied behind Levin’s campaign–many of whom are my friends and comrades, many more of whom are simply smiling faces in the crowd–aren’t going anywhere. In fact, from my conversations with them yesterday, I can tell that some are angry and some are sad, but they’re also firmly resolved to continue the fight.
If you are looking for a community of young, progressive American Jews who share your commitment to justice and equality for all Israelis and Palestinians and want to support the civil society leaders doing that work on the ground, look no further. Email me at zak@nif.org and I’ll help you get connected to New Israel Fund New Generation in your town or city. Together we’ll build our movement through organizing educational and social events, leveraging NIF’s deep relationships with intrepid Israeli and Palestinian activists. Because when progressives in Israel and the occupied West Bank join forces with progressives in the states, we multiply our forces in such a way that big money, reactionary interests can’t handle. And then we win.