Report
From Rome to Paris, a European Jews for Palestine movement launches
The official launch event of European Jews for Palestine took place last week at the European Parliament offices in Brussels, following in the footsteps of the U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace. EJP rejects ‘the centralization of Jewish life around the state of Israel.’
In March 2023, in Paris, 20 Jewish groups from 14 European countries met for the first time during an international conference organized in solidarity with Palestine. From there, they decided to band together on a common path, formalized in September 2024 as the European Jews for Palestine (EJP) network.
Among their ranks are the Berlin-based Jewish Bund and the French Tsedek (Hebrew for “justice”), which have spearheaded major demonstrations in recent months calling for an end to the Israeli military assault on Gaza. They also include an Italian Jewish organization, the Jewish Anti-Racist Laboratory (LEA), active at the grassroots level since 2020 and advocating for an end to apartheid in Palestine, and which has been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Among LEA’s initiatives was the collection of more than 160,000 signatures, delivered to President Sergio Mattarella in January 2024, on a petition demanding that the Italian institutions take a clear stand against Netanyahu's policies.
The official launch event of European Jews for Palestine took place last week at the European Parliament offices in Brussels, following in the footsteps of the U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace. The event was hosted by three MEPs, Marc Bottenga (The Left, Belgium), Mounir Stouri (Greens/EFA, France) and Hanna Jalloul (S&D, Spain), and was joined by a number of representatives of anti-racist organizations from European and Palestinian civil society.
The date of October 3 was chosen for its significance: it coincides with the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which marks year 5785 in the Jewish calendar. “We mark this important moment in the Jewish calendar with a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people and a call to end the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s war crimes,” said Gabi Kaplan, co-spokesperson for EJP and a member of the Danish group Jews for Just Peace, during the opening remarks.
He added: “We felt the need to organize collectively as Jews to express our opposition to Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing, colonial occupation and apartheid in Palestine.” During the gathering, the speakers denounced the “cynical conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism,” while not downplaying “the growing and real dangers of contemporary anti-Semitism.”
EJP is founded on “the commitment to counter anti-Jewish hatred wherever it manifests,” but also “its exploitation,” specifically the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which “represses dissent and silences all criticism of Israel.”
This is in reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization established in the late 1990s to promote Holocaust remembrance. In 2016, its plenary assembly approved and released a definition of anti-Semitism in 11 points, seven of which have to do with attitudes toward Israel.
In just a few years, the definition has become legally binding in many European countries (no less than 29), despite the fact that there are other definitions, such as the Jerusalem Declaration, drafted by Jewish diaspora academics and Israelis who maintain an openness towards criticism of Israel.
The Jewish organizations that make up the EJP have been branded anti-Semitic in their home countries and isolated. Hence the need to network with other organizations, because “despite the genocide in Gaza, those at the head of European Jewish organizations continue to uncritically support the state of Israel,” the EJP writes in its founding document, “claiming to speak for all Jews, ignoring and silencing the growing dissent within the communities.”
“We are not as marginal as they’re claiming we are. Since October last year, hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world have taken to the streets against the war under the slogan ‘Not in my name,’” Kaplan concluded.
EJP rejects “the centralization of Jewish life around the state of Israel” and instead seeks ”to create community everywhere, beyond national borders and colonial traditions,” said Eleonore Bronstein, of the Belgian group Ajab and De-Colonizer, during the inaugural event in Brussels. “We build our Judaism with bridges. And precisely because we are Jews, proud of our history, children and grandchildren of the exterminated and persecuted, we stand unequivocally with the Palestinian people.”
The network is calling for “equal rights for all in historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” and a “dignified future of justice and freedom.” The first concrete battle is the fight to stop Western arms shipments to Israel: “The atrocities being committed in Palestine are being carried out with the complicity of the United States and the European Union. … We cannot deal with the ongoing Nakba in Palestine without taking a look at the colonial attitude here in our own countries.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/da-roma-a-parigi-nasce-in-europa-la-rete-ebraica-per-la-palestina on 2024-10-08