May 5th, 2012: University of Toronto undergraduate student Farah Saeed takes on day 6 of hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

From Farah Saeed’s work

1) What inspired you to strike?

What inspired me the most and still does is the struggle of Palestinians on a daily basis and the resistance in which they practice against the oppressive Israeli occupation. The military detention without charges of Palestinians has played a huge role recently in the ways to which Palestinians resist the occupation. People such as Hanaa Shalabi, Bilal Diab and many more have led me to start my own individual hunger strike a way in which I could express my solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. 

2) How does it feel to be on a hunger strike for 5 days now?

Being in an open ended hunger strike is tiring but at the same time it’s a whole different experience than just protesting or peacefully marching. It was very difficult once I started and not so focused on why I wanted to start one but getting to the second and third day made me realize how far Palestinians go for their rights and freedom. It’s such an exhausting experience for someone like me who never really experienced hunger living in a first world country. Now that I am about to enter my sixth day, I do feel quite drained but I am still very motivated to keep going in solidarity with my people who’s rights are continuously being abused. 

3) If you could send a message to the prisoners, what would it be?

If I could send a message to the Palestinian prisoners and I wish I could, I would say: people from all over the world are supporting you and that our cause has never gone in vain nor did our rights and freedoms which have always been ignored and violated by the Israeli occupation. What you’re doing is something that will be recorded in our history for many years to come. As a Palestinian Canadian, I am honored to be part of such people with such strong will to fight for their rights. You are the heroes of Palestine and hope of it, like my father would say. 

4) How has family and friends responded to your decision to strike?

My family has taken a negative stance on this at first and suggested endless alternative ways to stand in solidarity, I know they are worried but at the same time proud of what I am doing and the cause I am doing it for. Most of my friends didn’t know about my hunger strike until my third day in, but the ones whom helped me and supported in my taking this decision have been to this day supporting me and standing by me. I am also proud to say I have inspired a couple of them to start their own hunger strike or to join others on a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners.

5) Did you decide to strike for the sake of empathizing for the prisoners on a personal level or was this an attempt to raise awareness of the issue publicly?

I started a hunger strike mainly to support the struggle behind the bars of Israeli jails, nonetheless, I am doing this as a personal experience to understand what they go through. At first, I did not want to do it to raise awareness but now that I am on my fifth day many have told me that talking about what I am doing will inspired and make people aware of how serious this situation is and it cannot be ignored any longer. 

6) How do you feel about the media coverage of the Palestinian prisoners on strike?

The media coverage on this issue in North America specifically has been very shameful, I have not yet read nor heard about the hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners on Canadian news. However, I am not surprised that Canadian new agencies are taking such a shameful decision to ignore this issue because many other humanitarian issues in Palestine have been ignored in the past. Today, more than 2000 prisoners are on hunger strike, if this is not worthy of coverage then what is?

7) Anything else you would like to share?

I would finally like to share something with every human being who stands for oppressed people who face injustice daily that this issue is very serious and raising awareness is critical in such situation. Educate yourself and raise awareness about it in any peaceful way possible. Our voices need to be heard and people need to know about this oppressive, inhumane occupation.

Related articles

• Palestinian prisoners in mass hunger strike (aljazeera.com)

Published June 4th, 2011: The 8 Stages of Genocide | Palestine

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

   A couple of years ago, if you asked a random person on the street in any western country about whether they support Israel or Palestine, answers would probably range from “What’s Palestine?”, ” I think the violence should stop on both sides”, “none”, “Israel” and some rare encounters with those who support Palestine. Israel’s systematic genocide has made the public eye and the news remove the Palestinian person from the mind. I will review the 8 steps of Genocide recognized by The International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf

1)  Classification:

“All languages and cultures require classification - division of the natural and social world into categories. We distinguish and classify objects and people. All cultures have categories to distinguish between “us” and “them,” between members of our group and others. We treat different categories of people differently. Racial and ethnic classifications may be defined by absurdly detailed laws — the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the “one drop” laws of segregation in America, or apartheid racial classification laws in South Africa. Racist societies often prohibit mixed categories and outlaw miscegenation. Bipolar societies are the most likely to have genocide. In Rwanda and Burundi, children are the ethnicity of their father, either Tutsi or Hutu. No one is mixed. Mixed marriages do not result in mixed children.” 

The Israeli occupation has portrayed the Palestinian way of culture and life as “barbaric” and in this way, has segregated it from the Israeli/”Jewish” way of life. This has been attempted through education in schools. Other efforts to segregate Palestinians from Jews/Israelis include the use of the holocaust card in light that the Palestinians do not wish for the Jews to acquire their own land and be free as Jews who have suffered and “earned” this right. Israel attempted to portray Zionism as the only way that Judiasm is true and in this way linking this genocide to a higher figure instead of a government. Israeli Youth are forced to serve in the military at 18 years of age and so it has become part of social norm on the excuse of religion.

2) Symbolization:

“We use symbols to name and signify our classifications. We name some people Hutu and others Tutsi, or Jewish or Gypsy, or Christian or Muslim. Sometimes physical characteristics - skin color or nose shape - become symbols for classifications. Other symbols, like customary dress or facial scars, are socially imposed by groups on their own members. After the process has reached later stages (dehumanization, organization, and polarization) genocidal governments in the preparation stage often require members of a targeted group to wear an identifying symbol or distinctive clothing — e.g. the yellow star. The Khmer Rouge forced people from the Eastern Zone to wear a blue-checked scarf, marking them for forced relocation and elimination.”

The Israeli occupation used the Star of David (The 6 pointed star on the Israeli flag) on the Israeli flag as a symbol of royalty to the struggle of the Jews in the Holocaust. This star was used by Hitler’s forces to segregate the Jews from the rest of society and placing it on the flag attempts to “justify” the creation of the state of Israel. Why “fix” a genocide massacre with another one?

3) Dehumanization:

“Classification and symbolization are fundamental operations in all cultures. They become steps of genocide only when combined with dehumanization. Denial of the humanity of others is the step that permits killing with impunity. The universal human abhorrence of murder of members of one’s own group is overcome by treating the victims as less than human. In incitements to genocide the target groups are called disgusting animal names - Nazi propaganda called Jews “rats” or “vermin”; Rwandan Hutu hate radio referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches.” The targeted group is often likened to a “disease”, “microbes”, “infections” or a “cancer” in the body politic. Bodies of genocide victims are often mutilated to express this denial of humanity. Such atrocities then become the justification for revenge killings, because they are evidence that the killers must be monsters, not human beings themselves.”

The picture below explains the above and reveals the war crimes committed against the Palestinians by the IDF. The Palestinians are terrorists that want to strip the Israelis of their right to exist so they must be obliterated from the earth and are therefore dangerous and do not deserve humane treatment; that is how they are dehumanized.

http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2010/08/eden-abergil-exemplifies-the-standards-of-the-most-moral-army-in-the-world.html 

4) Organization:

“Genocide is always collective because it derives its impetus from group identification. It is always organized, often by states but also by militias and hate groups. Planning need not be elaborate: Hindu mobs may hunt down Sikhs or Muslims, led by local leaders. Methods of killing need not be complex: Tutsis in Rwanda died from machetes; Muslim Chams in Cambodia from hoe-blades to the back of the neck (“Bullets must not be wasted,” was the rule at Cambodian extermination prisons, expressing the dehumanization of the victims.) The social organization of genocide varies by culture. It reached its most mechanized, bureaucratic form in the Nazi death camps. But it is always organized, whether by the Nazi SS or the Rwandan Interahamwe. Death squads may be trained for mass murder, as in Rwanda, and then force everyone to participate, spreading hysteria and overcoming individual resistance. Terrorist groups will pose one of the greatest threats of genocidal mass murder in the future as they gain access to chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons.”

Organized genocide conducted on the Palestinians involved the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the arresting, killing and torture of those who resist. Small businesses and farms are subject to removal at any time. Israel continues to prolong “peace talks” and has been the biggest contributor to the division of the Palestinian efforts to establish a political system by finding ways to make Hamas and Fateh fight each other instead of the occupation. They have also invalidated the previous Palestinian citizenship and allowed Jews to Israeli citizenship with almost no restrictions. A Palestinian citizenship is granted in Gaza and the West Bank on difficult restrictions and conditions, one of them being the possession of an Israeli identification card. Palestinians who meet the conditions for an Israeli Citizenship are excluded from “several aspects  of the Jewish welfare state and are therefore denied equal “democratic citizenship”. While enjoying the fruits of Jewish civil rights, such as access to courts of law and private property; and political rights, access to the ballot and to government; they are denied social rights and economic rights in the form of social security, education and welfare, or access to land and water resources of the State”

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestinian_nationality).

Israel has conducted research since the 1930s ,before the establishment of Israel, on each village in Palestine and sent spies to establish organized ways of occupying the land. They had information on the economy, occupation status, etc.. to determine the level of difficulty of the invasion of each village. They had plans based on the Baltimore agreement to occupy the north of Jordan and send the displaced Arabs to Iraq. Resistance exists and this is what the Zionist Israelis fear today.

After The Balfore Agreement signed by Britain to enable the displacement of Jews into Palestine, Zionists began planning mass terrorist attacks on sites where the British had stayed in order to avoid any British occupation. The hanging of two British soldiers by the Zionists forced Britain to evacuate Palestine and leave it to the Zionists. They have killed 169 British people with a total of 500 terrorist plans.  Even after this, The Zionists sent mail packed with automated explosives to some British figures in Britain that also increased the death count.  The 33^rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, was bribed with 2 million dollars (which is equivalent to billions today) to support the establishment of the Jewish state.(Award winning Aljareeza Documentary – The Nakba)

 Other efforts of organization include Jewish only roads, checkpoints, the 8 meter high separation wall encircling the West Bank and the prevention of ownership over land. All of which are illegal under international law and face criticism as acts of Apartheid.

5) Polarization:

“Genocide proceeds in a downward cycle of killings until, like a whirlpool, it reaches the vortex of mass murder. Killings by one group may provoke revenge killings by the other. Such massacres are aimed at polarization, the systematic elimination of moderates who would slow the cycle. The first to be killed in a genocide are moderates from the killing group who oppose the extremists: the Hutu Supreme Court Chief Justice and Prime Minister in Rwanda, the Tutsi Archbishop in Burundi. Extremists target moderate leaders and their families. The center cannot hold. The most extreme take over, polarizing the conflict until negotiated settlement is impossible.”

Israel’s attempts to portray Hamas as terrorists and by holding negotiations and agreements with Fateh to polarize the sects. The segregation of the population through difficult checkpoints and the building of the wall causes isolation which encourages polarization. Targeting specific influential leaders who are moderate in views by raiding their homes and arresting also contributes to the polarization. Israeli Jews who protest against the occupation are abused and beaten by the Israeli forces.

6) Preparation:

“Preparation for genocide includes identification. Lists of victims are drawn up. Houses are marked. Maps are made. Individuals are forced to carry ID cards identifying their ethnic or religious group. Identification greatly speeds the slaughter. In Germany, the identification of Jews, defined by law, was performed by a methodical bureaucracy. In Rwanda, identity cards showed each person’s ethnicity. In the genocide, Tutsis could then be easily pulled from cars at roadblocks and murdered. Throwing away the cards did not help, because anyone who could not prove he was Hutu, was presumed to be Tutsi. Hutu militiamen conducted crude mouth exams to test claims of Hutu identity. Preparation also includes expropriation of the property of the victims. It may include concentration: herding of the victims into ghettos, stadiums, or churches. In its most extreme form, it even includes construction of extermination camps, as in Nazi-ruled Europe, or conversion of existing buildings – temples and schools – into extermination centers in Cambodia. Transportation of the victims to these killing centers is then organized and bureaucratized.”

Explained in previous points. Victims of this genocide evacuated the countries and lived and are living in refugee camps in poverty.

7) Extermination:

“The seventh step, the final solution, is extermination. It is considered extermination, rather than murder, because the victims are not considered human. They are vermin, rats or cockroaches. Killing is described by euphemisms of purification: “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, “ratonade” (rat extermination) in Algeria. Targeted members of alien groups are killed, often including children. Because they are not considered persons, their bodies are mutilated, buried in mass graves or burnt like garbage.”

Above applicable to Palestinians as well.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/israeli-sniper-posts-photo-of-child-in-crosshairs/

8) Denial:

“Every genocide is followed by denial. The mass graves are dug up and hidden. The historical records are burned, or closed to historians. Even during the genocide, those committing the crimes dismiss reports as propaganda. Afterwards such deniers are called “revisionists.” Others deny through more subtle means: by characterizing the reports as “unconfirmed” or “alleged” because they do not come from officially approved sources; by minimizing the number killed; by quarreling about whether the killing fits the legal definition of genocide (“definitionalism”); by claiming that the deaths of the perpetrating group exceeded that of the victim group, or that the deaths were the result of civil war, not genocide. In fact, civil war and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Most genocides occur during wars.”

Just watch Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu talk for 5 minutes and you will analyze the above for yourself. He is the ”revisionist” along with the others who came before him. Never is the death toll of Palestinians mentioned. And it is still not confirmed in our history books as genocide.

Much more details and facts are missing from this post that could be added.

Last edited: Feb 18th, 2013

July 18th, 2011: A few minutes to remember Palestine | At the Arab revolutions march

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

How do I give justice to 63 years of genocide in just a few minutes?

63 years of torture and mass murder

63 years of illegal occupation

63 years of injustice

but most importantly, 63 years of being ignored…

  The time is now to stand up for the voiceless and join together to end the Palestinian struggle for freedom. What these Arab nations have proved to us all, is that no government can speak in our name, no government can dictate what happens to us. It is we, the people, who will free ourselves from their tyranny. So with this I will say whether it’s to Israel’s Netanyahu, Harper, Obama, Saleh, Gaddafi or Bashar:

THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED

 and here’s a shout out is to the apartheid state of Israel

ISRAEL ISRAEL YOU CAN’T HIDE,

WE CHARGE YOU WITH GENOCIDE

  Do not be fooled by the Zionists. We will not negotiate with those who dehumanize, argue with ancient history and scrutinize religion or race to justify ethnic cleansing. This is a fight for humanity no matter who you are and where you are from. With this I say, there is no justice and no peace in the middle east until Palestine is free

NO JUSTICE NO PEACE

 Here’s a quote from a Palestinian woman to all the activists who risk their lives, spend their money and valuable time on seeking justice for Palestine:

“You demonstrate that religion nor race is important when it comes to standing up for the rights of human beings. and every step you take, justice and humanity wins. I want you to trust that your actions are making a difference and changing the violence we see here in our land. Your solidarity is helping fuel our non-violent fight. Palestinians face many kinds of violence and torture, however, being ignored is the worst punishment of all. Those who refuse to hear and see us are just as bad as those who occupy us.”

  The Palestinians are honoured to have so many activists put everything on the line for Palestine. They can sabotage our flotillas, shoot us when we carry a flag in protest and displace us from our homes. But these sacrifices have never gone to waste. Israel we can see you, the world can see you. You have been exposed for who you truly are.

Let us call out to the children of Gaza

GAZA GAZA DON’T YOU CRY,

PALESTINE WILL NEVER DIE

GAZA GAZA DO NOT FEAR,

TELL YOUR CHILDREN WE ARE HERE

 I know this is an Arab revolutions protest but this is a worldwide struggle for true democracy, let’s not make the Middle East the exception. We must mention the brave people in Greece and Spain.

At this critical point in time, we must sacrifice, compromise and reconcile differences in the name of freedom. And if that means protesting in the rain, spamming our Facebook friends, signing a petition, starting a blog or sending an email, SO BE IT.

Let us set our priorities straight and never underestimate the power of education, peaceful protest and most of all unity.

THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

http://palestinianrefugeerevolution.tumblr.com/

I will post a video if it is available

Dec 15th, 2012: Exclusive: Beatboxer Ammar Abou-Agena

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

   Beatboxer Ammar Abou-Agena is slowly making his way to the top. With what started out as a hobbie confined to his bathroom (The ideal spot for some serious echo), he started his own Youtube channel and began collaborations with other youtube-famous beatboxers and is now schedule to make an appearance for a television program on TVOkids set next spring.

About Ammar: 

Beatboxing for the last 12 years of his life, Ottawa’s own Ammar Abou-Agena has always wanted an opportunity to use his talent for a good cause. He hopes to use his exposure to raise awareness by volunteering to perform for many charity events, both involving his own Islamic identity and his identity as an Arab, specifically as a Palestinian-Canadian. 

He advised me earlier regarding my blog,

 ”I’ve always wanted to have some sort of conference where.. Jews, Muslims, and Christians celebrate all together. RIS is a really good thing for the Muslims… but will not benefit anyone else but muslims themselves. Why not start some sort of organization of peace between Jews Muslims and Christians and have a yearly conference… that would be amazing. Get well known Rabbis Priests and Imams to speak and this will appeal to everyone. With no exception of religious leaders from other religions.”

“ I could simply collaberate and appeal to other youtubians to make a small minirap video about anything we want… including Islam… Maybe then start making music with people from all ethnic groups and religions? it’s all about people getting together and finding the BEST AND MOST EFFECTIVE means to spread your message!”

   He will be soon in a television program that is currently in production forTVOKids. He hosted 32 X 7 min episodes alongside another female beatboxerteaching kids how to beatbox and what it is all about. The show is called “Beats In Bites” and is produced by Genuine Pictures Inc. and will be airing either next spring or fall 2012. 

*** you may even see him on Arab television

You can catch many of his videos on his channel ( I will also post some on the music tab):

 http://www.youtube.com/AAABeatbox

His Facebook account:

https://www.facebook.com/AAA.Beatbox

Nov 20th, 2012: Students: Find an excuse to break the silence and raise awareness about Gaza right now!

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

I got this idea to bring up Gaza in my anthro class that has approx 400 people in it. luckily our lecture was on colonialism. Here’s my best recall of what i said:

“i hope you don’t mind but i want to talk about a contemporary example of colonialism. Because we often tend to talk about it like its a thing of the past rather than to look for ways to prevent future oppression. Now in the question of

 he indigenous american, nobody can say that they don’t exist. if at any time they decide to rise up against the Harper government, and the government responds by trapping them in a large open air prison and bombing them, nobody will say that the government is defending itself. On the other hand, in the case of Palestine. In Gaza the indigenous are being bombed right now! They are being bombed by the colonizer and that’s perfectly acceptable. Why is the first example not acceptable and the second acceptable?!” 
I was inspired by @maniac muslim last night. The professor kept nodding. I made it obvious what i was going to say because i wore my koufiyeh. Saw a few people nodding in front of me as i spoke. She mentioned Palestine by name earlier and sort of deflected the question. Later, i approached the prof. She knows about SAIA and is in full support. I just thought posting this might encourage others to speak about Palestine more. That is all.

Nov 18th, 2012: How I feel about what’s happening in Gaza right now

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

I’m listening to “We will not go down” by Michael Heart right now. Wondering why I have to listen to it again and realizing it’s describing the situation in the same context as the previous. I can’t sleep. my muscles ache from exhaustion and I find myself shedding a tear in distress every few minutes.

I just finished a call with a Gazan friend of mine who continues to call up her family every hour to check if they’re still alive. And every time she calls, they have to speak to eachother competing with the sound of the shelling of Israeli warplanes. Her family is in the Rafah area, currently being bombed heavily. Her mother’s cousin’s house was hit and they have no way of knowing if the house is still occupied. When she calls in and asks to speak to her grandpa, she hears that he’s managed to sleep, despite the loud raiding of bombs which could hit them at any moment. 

The people of Gaza teach life, as Rafeef Ziadah put it. They teach us an important lesson on how insignificant the value of ourselves is. How human are we? We are silent and ignorant by choice to the suffering of the rest. After all, people are dying everyday right? Why should we bother when we are all destined to die? 

The people of Gaza teach us resilience. As a Palestinian refugee who’s never had the privileged of caressing the soil of my homeland, that is what kills me inside. I will never know what it really is like to carry a bleeding dead body. I may never hear the piercing sound of bombs going off around my neighborhood while I sleep. I may never lose a child and be forced to live with it. Maybe I’m crazy for saying this, but I wish I was there rather than here. 

I want more than anything to learn about life like the people of Gaza do. These children playing soccer in the streets while they are being shelled by Israeli forces have something that I don’t have. You find seven year olds speaking about the deep meaning of life; something you almost never hear from a Canadian child. We are sheltered people. We think we are entitled to human rights by default. 

I vowed to myself to continue wearing the koufiyeh until this genocide is over. I want the world to start asking themselves questions about their humanity. This silence we experience in our schools, universities and work place is dehumanizing us. When we fail to recognize other’s suffering, we lose a part of our humanity along with it.

The third person perspective sees this as a two people war. “There is the Arab and the Jew, why should I bother getting myself into this mess?” Don’t let this stereotype blind you from the truth. It is not the Arab and the Jew. It is the oppressed and the oppressor. It is the colonial powers versus the indigenous. 

At this point, I feel most blame towards myself. But this was my destiny to be away from my homeland. I will bring back with me the experience of the outside world one day and join them in their struggle to gain back my humanity. But for now, I must join the global movement against Israeli apartheid and work from where I stand.

August 18th, 2012: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Corey Balsam member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada on Israel and being an anti-Zionist Jew

palestinianrefugeerevolution:

“ Anyone that knows me knows that I’m very proud of my Jewish heritage. It’s just that I don’t see being a proud Jew as having anything to do with support for Israel.” - Corey Balsam

    Member of Independent Jewish Voices and recent Masters of Arts graduate from the Sociology and Equity Studies in Education department  at the University of Toronto, Corey Balsam shares his views on Zionism. You can find his thesis titled “The Appeal of Israel: Whiteness, Anti-Semitism, and the Roots of Diaspora Zionism in Canada”  here.

1. Why do you believe Israel does not speak in the name of Jews/ represent Judaism? 

     It’s interesting that you start with a question about representation. A few years ago when I “came out” against Zionism, I joined a group in Ottawa called Not In Our Name (NION). Our dual mandate, as I saw it, was 1) to stand up as Jews against a state that, rather arbitrarily, claims to speak on our behalf, and 2) to trouble the simple links that are commonly made between Jews, political Zionism, and the policies of the state of Israel. Independent Jewish Voices (Canada), the organization that I am currently active with, has similar objectives. I like to think that we’ve come pretty far in the last few years and that by now, most people have learned to separate Jews and support for Israel, but that’s probably an overly optimistic assessment. The unfortunate truth is that many people continue to buy the idea that the Israeli government is somehow representative of world Jewry, and even Judaism. This notion is of course reinforced by Israeli PR and the extreme pro-Israel stance of most Jewish establishment organizations in Europe and North America, so I can’t necessarily blame those who fail to make the distinction. But by saying that the state of Israel represents Jews or Judaism completely ignores the diversity of opinions among individual Jews, including Israelis, and fails to recognize that in the end, Israel is a state. It does not represent Jews let alone the diversity of Jewish culture and religious belief.

2. Do you consider yourself anti-Zionist? Why or why not?

    Yes I would. I have done quite a lot of research on the origins and development of Zionism so I can say this with a certain confidence. I have two major problems with Zionism. The first relates to the cost of establishing and maintaining a Jewish-majority or Jewish-dominant state in Palestine. If there was some uninhabited island that Jews could have settled on and set up a state it would have been a different story altogether, but as we know, Palestine was already home to hundreds of thousands of people. That fact combined with the Zionist vision of a state for the Jews necessitated and continues to necessitate the ethnic cleansing, disenfranchisement, and ghettoization of Palestinians in the land that Israel now controls. The second major problem I have with Zionism is its doctrine of shlilat ha golah, or the “negation of exile.” What this means is that all of the rich and diverse Jewish cultures that have developed for centuries around the world must be obliterated and replaced by a unified (and decidedly militant) Hebrew-Israeli national culture. This aspect of Zionism is no longer a central part of mainstream Zionist discourse, but its devastating legacy can be seen through the Jewish Diaspora.

3. Your Jewish friend calls you a traitor and a self-hating Jew for not siding with Israel. What do you tell him?

That we’re no longer friends! I don’t put up with such nonsense, especially coming from a friend. I have of course heard these slurs coming from people that don’t know me. But anyone that knows me knows that I’m very proud of my Jewish heritage. It’s just that I don’t see being a proud Jew as having anything to do with support for Israel. In fact, you might even say that by speaking truth to power, embracing Jewish cultures, and dedicating so much of my time to reviving a universal justice-oriented Jewish existence that my devotion to world Jewry is rather considerable.

4. Were you raised with these ideas in mind? If not, how did you free yourself from culture norms and traditional views? 

    Yes, I was raised with many of these ideas in mind: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, respect they neighbor, etc. What I wasn’t raised with was a sense of the particular plight of the Palestinians and the hardship that resulted from Zionist colonization. I grew up in a fairly average, Ashkenazi-Jewish household in Canada. We went to synagogue once and a while, celebrated the holidays, went to Hebrew school, and ate a lot of bagels with cream cheese and lox. Israel was always a part of my upbringing but never a big part. Thinking back, if there was anyone that really brought support for Israel into my family, it was me. There was a brief stage in my formative years as a teen when I discovered Israel and became quite the young Zionist, but that soon wore off the more I read. I think the key was that I kept an open mind and sought out information from a diversity of sources and perspectives. It took me a few years, but come my final year of undergrad, I decided that I needed to take a stand. You could say that it was at that point that I freed myself from the contemporary Jewish cultural norm of standing on the side of Israel, if only tacitly, against the Palestinians. I wouldn’t actually say that by doing this I freed myself from any traditional views, since Zionism is a fairly new ideology and Israel a fairly new state.

5. Last question: Do you have a message to the Palestinian people? 

Solidarity.

http://www.independentjewishvoices.ca/

Corey Balsam: The Appeal of Israel: Whiteness, Anti-Semitism, and the Roots of Diaspora Zionism in Canada

Read his thesis here

Our exclusive interview with him here

Authors: Balsam, Corey

Advisor: Nestel, Sheryl

Department: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education

Keywords: 

Jewish
Diaspora
Israel
Zionism
Whiteness
Race

Issue Date: 9-Aug-2011

Abstract:

 This thesis explores the appeal of Israel and Zionism for Ashkenazi Jews in Canada. The origins of Diaspora Zionism are examined using a genealogical methodology and analyzed through a bricolage of theoretical lenses including post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and critical race theory. The active maintenance of Zionist hegemony in Canada is also explored through a discourse analysis of several Jewish-Zionist educational programs. The discursive practices of the Jewish National Fund and Taglit Birthright Israel are analyzed in light of some of the factors that have historically attracted Jews to Israel and Zionism. The desire to inhabit an alternative Jewish subject position in line with normative European ideals of whiteness is identified as a significant component of this attraction. It is nevertheless suggested that the appeal of Israel and Zionism is by no means immutable and that Jewish opposition to Zionism is likely to only increase in the coming years.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/29459

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