Statement addressed to the Northern California Conference of
Liberal and Progressive Jewish Intellectuals: November 11-12, 1989, San Francisco, California
Source: Fraser, C. (1998). "Say NO to Shamir and NO to Zionism!" In Revolution, She Wrote (pp. 139-141). Seattle, WA: Red Letter Press.
Transcription/Markup: Philip Davis and Glenn Kirkindall
Copyleft: Internet Archive (marxists.org)
2014. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
As a daughter and defender of the great radical and humanist Jewish tradition, I extend greetings to this conference on behalf of myself and my organization, the Freedom Socialist Party.
We applaud your stance against Shamir and against Israel’s Palestinian policy. And we urge you to go even further—to say no to the Zionist myth.
World Jewry must face the truth that Israel’s horrifying treatment of Palestinian people is no aberration but the direct and inexorable product of expropriating Arab land for an exclusive Jewish state.
Too many Jews, for too long, have denied the harsh underpinnings of Zionism.
How else could they be surprised by the intifadeh, embarrassed by Israel’s iron-fisted response, or shocked by Israeli development of nuclear missiles for South Africa and provision of military training to Colombian drug dealers?
And now the Israeli army has become a brutal tax collector that forces the West Bank town of Beit Sahur to pay for its own occupation—a travesty against centuries of Jewish resistance to unjust, anti-Semitic taxes.
Israel is not, has never been, and can never be a safe refuge for Jews.
Jewish nationalism has provoked interminable war and a looming replay of the holocaust.
Indeed, how could Jewish freedom ever be gained as long as anti-Arab racism is so endemic among Zionists? This virulent racism blinds Israel’s supporters to the real nature of Israel: a colonial outpost of the imperialists and an expansionist country.
Israel has leapt into the role of permanent military aggressor, a U.S. pawn in suppressing the Arab liberation struggle, and best friend to bloody dictatorships around the world.
Stubborn ethnocentric refusal to make common cause with Palestinian Arabs can only end in disaster for Jews. As our own tortured history so eloquently teaches, passion for freedom and justice cannot for long be silenced or smashed.
Jews used to have a proud history of support for the dispossessed.
But ever since Israel crystallized into an exclusively Jewish state, all Jews are branded with the mark of the oppressor.
Dissent and turmoil are ballooning among Jews in Israel today, and American Jews like ourselves must intervene in the debate. We must differentiate ourselves from Jews who behave like Nazis. We must condemn both the Pentagon’s agenda in the Middle East and Israel’s tyrannical occupation forces.
And we must explain that the essence of the matter is not simply occupation or withdrawal from the West Bank. In the final analysis, the only salvation for Palestine is a bilateral, integrated, secular, and socialist Jewish/Arab state with full rights for Jews, Palestinians, women and non-European Jews.
This conference has an historic opportunity to unearth the vibrant roots of Jewish internationalism and humanitarianism. We believe this is the only road to Jewish survival, to the flourishing of our rich culture and creativity.
The afflicted must help each other; it is written.