For the last eight months, I’ve been organizing with an emergent movement of young Jews in the U.S. organizing to end our community’s support for the occupation of Palestine. At our core, we fight for freedom and dignity for all. IfNotNow is grounded in the idea that our liberation as American Jews is bound up with other oppressed groups, both in this country and in Israel/Palestine. Upon getting involved with IfNotNow I knew I’d found a political home, and finally, a Jewish community I could feel proud to be apart of.
We've been working and building since IfNotNow began, as a response to violence of Operation Protective Edge. Now, as 2017 begins with a dangerous incoming Trump administration, we’re going to do something big -- and to do it, we’re going to need your help.
Today, the American Jewish Community is faced with a choice: Will we leave our tradition in the hands of out of touch leaders? OR, Will we fight for a vibrant, liberated jewish community that supports freedom and dignity for all, Israelis and Palestinians alike?
Like so many others in this political moment, I am afraid for myself and everyone else on this planet. When Stephen Bannon was named Trump’s chief strategist and our Jewish leaders were silent, I knew we had to take to the streets. This silence on Bannon is the same silence that allows the occupation to continue unchallenged for 50 years. And, the recent nomination of extremist David Friedman to be the Ambassador to Israel makes our work even more critical.
Over the past 30 days, IfNotNow has brought more than 3,000 people into the streets under the banner of #JewishResistance. We are calling on the American Jewish establishment to stop being silent and come out against Stephen Bannon.
In Los Angeles alone we organized more than 400 people to demonstrate at Breitbart headquarters, where we demanded that the LA Jewish Federation join their counterparts around the country to denounce this appointment. Our movement is being covered by The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, LA Times, and Time Magazine. We are reaching hundreds of thousands of people on social media everyday, and planning mass actions across the country in the coming months. We want to train hundreds more people as members of IfNotNow, bring thousands more into the streets, and make the connection in our community between the moral bankruptcy of our institutions, and the pro-Israel-at-any-cost politics that reigns in the American Jewish establishment.
We can’t make any of this happen without the support of our community. IfNotNow is working to raise $ 25,000 before the end of the year, and I have pledged to be apart of that fundraising. This moment demands a movement -- Will you join us?