A RELIGION, NOT A RACE:

I don't feel alone any more. Though the years since 2014 have seen the growth of a small but committed Jewish anti-occupation movement, the last week and a half have brought an even larger circle of the community to a place of reckoning. We've seen Jewish politicians, celebrities, rabbinical students and others speak up loudly for Palestine. We've seen a powerful display of solidarity from Jewish Google employees, asking their company to sever ties with the IDF. At Jewish Currents, the leftwing magazine where I am now editor-in-chief, we asked for questions from readers struggling to understand the recent violence. We've been deluged.

These questions taken in aggregate paint a striking portrait of a community at a turning point. Though many queries aim to understand specific aspects of the recent round of violence - the circumstances surrounding the expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, for instance, or the affiliations of the Jewish revelers dancing ecstatically opposite a fire on the Temple Mount - many more are simply expressions of confusion, and a newfound willingness to 

"I know what's happening is wrong, but does supporting Palestinian liberation mean supporting Hamas?" asks one reader. "How do I talk to my family about this?" asks another. There are people struggling with new terminology ("Is apartheid an accurate word for what is happening in Israel/Palestine? What about ethnic cleansing?") and with the foundational events that shaped the current situation on the ground ("Was there really an expulsion of Palestinians in 1948?"). Though many of our Jewish readers are anxious about antisemitism and about Jewish safety in Israel, there are strong indications that they are beginning to separate these feelings from the moral reality on the ground. On the whole, their questions represent a genuine outpouring of curiosity and compassion about the plight of Palestinians.

What has changed? The Black Lives Matter movement can claim credit for helping masses of people understand the mechanisms of structural racism and oppression, and for consistently linking the Black struggle to the Palestinian one. White people, including white Jews, who spent last summer confronting their own complicity in anti-Blackness or their discomfort with the force of abolitionist demands like "defund the police", are perhaps finding themselves prepared to face similar complicities and discomforts in relation to Palestinian liberation. Jewish groups in solidarity with Palestine like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow in the United States and Na'amod in the UK, some of which were formed following the 2014 assault on Gaza, have steadily moved the intra-communal conversation around Israel/Palestine, creating more space for Jews to speak their conscience without having to abandon their identities. These groups all enjoyed periods of growth during the Trump-era, when Donald Trump's close relationship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, heightened the contradictions for a largely liberal Jewish populace. Young Jews becoming politically conscious for the first time saw a powerful, rightwing Israel intent on entrenching a decades-long occupation - a story that contrasted sharply with the one many of their elders had told them.

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