This Passover, we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name
Wed 24 Apr 2024 09.27
I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf.
The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself?
But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.
What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it.
That false idol is called Zionism. Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate
It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.
It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba.
From the start it has been at war with dreams of liberation. At a Seder it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism equates Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and client states.
From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.
Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly: it has always been leading us here.
It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet. We, in these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from Zionism
It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.
Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked by the youngest child.
Including the love we have as a people for text and for education.
Today, this false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds of academics, of journalists, of poets – this is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the means of education.
Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call in the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students daring to ask them basic questions, such as: how can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?
The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long.
So tonight we say: it ends here.
Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by nature.
Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that state, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred – including against us as Jews.
Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations.
Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in that chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.
Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder: the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike, the ritual that is inherently portable, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but each other: no walls, no temple, no rabbi, a role for everyone, even – especially – the smallest child. The Seder is a diaspora technology if ever there was one, made for collective grieving, contemplation, questioning, remembering and reviving the revolutionary spirt.
So look around. This, here, is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost.
We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. Freedom from an ideology that has no plan for peace other than deals with murderous theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world.
We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children to be afraid, that wants us to believe the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress and beneath its iron dome, or at least keep the weapons and donations flowing.
That is the false idol.
And it’s not just Netanyahu, it’s the world he made and that made him – it’s Zionism.
What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from Zionism.
And to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say: “Let our people go.”
We say: “We have already gone. And your kids? They’re with us now.”
Naomi Klein is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the professor of climate justice and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, was published in September
This is a transcript of a speech delivered at the Emergency Seder in the Streets in New York City
Miko Peled, a well-known Israeli-American activist humanrights activist and author hailing from an Israeli military family, has sparked debate with his candid discussion about the ongoing brutal war on Gaza conducted by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Advocating for significant changes both in Israel and globally, Peled’s viewpoints have drawn attention to the urgent need for addressing the crisis in a more profound manner.
Peled asserts that the situation in Israel is deteriorating rapidly, going as far as to label it as the “beginning of the end” for the nation. He emphasizes the importance of transparency regarding the reality of the catastrophic situation in Gaza, highlighting the severity of the ongoing war.
Rather than advocating for minor adjustments, Peled stresses the necessity of comprehensive, transformative changes in societal attitudes and behaviors to address the root causes of the problems effectively. Expressing dissatisfaction with Israel’s leadership, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Peled criticizes their endorsement of aggressive measures against Gaza and their perceived lack of efforts to halt the violence. Peled also condemns Jared Kushner’s suggestion of demolishing Palestinian homes for financial gain, drawing parallels between this proposal and historical atrocities committed by the Nazis.
Peled scrutinizes the response of the United States to the crisis. He contends that the U.S. should play a more proactive role in ending the violence and advocating for justice for Palestinians.He envisions a world where fairness prevails and the rights of Palestinians are upheld.
Displaced Palestinian children wait to receive food in Rafah, Gaza, on Feb. 9. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
BY IRFAN GALARIA
FEB. 16, 2024 12:08 PM PT
In late January, I left my home in Virginia, where I work as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and joined a group of physicians and nurses traveling to Egypt with the humanitarian aid group MedGlobal to volunteer in Gaza.
I have worked in other war zones. But what I witnessed during the next 10 days in Gaza was not war — it was annihilation. At least 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. From Cairo, Egypt’s capital, we drove 12 hours east to the Rafah border. We passed miles of parked humanitarian aid trucks because they weren’t allowed into Gaza. Aside from my team and other envoy members from the United Nations and World Health Organization, there were very few others there.
Entering southern Gaza on Jan. 29, where many have fled from the north, felt like the first pages of a dystopian novel. Our ears were numb with the constant humming of what I was told were the surveillance drones that circled constantly. Our noses were consumed with the stench of 1 million displaced humans living in close proximity without adequate sanitation. Our eyes got lost in the sea of tents. We stayed at a guest house in Rafah. Our first night was cold, and many of us couldn’t sleep. We stood on the balcony listening to the bombs, and seeing the smoke rise from Khan Yunis.
As we approached the European Gaza Hospital the next day, there were rows of tents that lined and blocked the streets. Many Palestinians gravitated toward this and other hospitals hoping it would represent a sanctuary from the violence — they were wrong.
There were a limited number of local surgeons available. We were told that many had been killed or arrested, their whereabouts or even their existence unknown. Others were trapped in occupied areas in the north or nearby places where it was too risky to travel to the hospital. There was only one local plastic surgeon left and he covered the hospital 24/7. His home had been destroyed, so he lived in the hospital, and was able to stuff all of his personal possessions into two small hand bags. This narrative became all too common among the remaining staff at the hospital. This surgeon was lucky, because his wife and daughter were still alive, although almost everyone else working in the hospital was mourning the loss of their loved ones.
I began work immediately, performing 10 to 12 surgeries a day, working 14 to 16 hours at a time. The operating room would often shake from the incessant bombings, sometimes as frequent as every 30 seconds. We operated in unsterile settings that would’ve been unthinkable in the United States. We had limited access to critical medical equipment: We performed amputations of arms and legs daily, using a Gigli saw, a Civil War-era tool, essentially a segment of barbed wire. Many amputations could’ve been avoided if we’d had access to standard medical equipment. It was a struggle trying to care for all the injured within the constructs of a healthcare system that has utterly collapsed.
I listened to my patients as they whispered their stories to me, as I wheeled them into the operating room for surgery. The majority had been sleeping in their homes, when they were bombed. I couldn’t help thinking that the lucky ones died instantaneously, either by the force of the explosion or being buried in the rubble. The survivors faced hours of surgery and multiple trips to the operating room, all while mourning the loss of their children and spouses. Their bodies were filled with shrapnel that had to be surgically pulled out of their flesh, one piece at a time.
I stopped keeping track of how many new orphans I had operated on. After surgery they would be filed somewhere in the hospital, I’m unsure of who will take care of them or how they will survive. On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.
On my last day, as I returned to the guest house where locals knew foreigners were staying, a young boy ran up and handed me a small gift. It was a rock from the beach, with an Arabic inscription written with a marker: “From Gaza, With Love, Despite the Pain.” As I stood on the balcony looking out at Rafah for the last time, we could hear the drones, bombings and bursts of machine-gun fire, but something was different this time: The sounds were louder, the explosions were closer.
This week, Israeli forces raided another large hospital in Gaza, and they’re planning a ground offensive in Rafah. I feel incredibly guilty that I was able to leave while millions are forced to endure the nightmare in Gaza. As an American, I think of our tax dollars paying for the weapons that likely injured my patients there. Already driven from their homes, these people have nowhere else to turn.
Irfan Galaria is a physician with a plastic and reconstructive surgery practice in Chantilly, Va.
This street in Old Jaffa was amazing for its architecture
Yafa (Jaffa), once known as the Bride of the Sea, is a Palestinian city rich in history, culture, and resilience. Overlooking the Mediterranean, Yafa was a thriving Palestinian hub before 1948—known for its bustling markets, historic architecture, and vibrant cultural life. Today, though much has changed, the heart of Yafa remains deeply Palestinian, a testament to the unbreakable bond between its people and their land.
A City of History and Prosperity
For centuries, Yafa was one of the most significant cities in Palestine. With a history dating back over 4,000 years, it was a center of trade, agriculture, and culture. By the early 20th century, Yafa was a leading Palestinian city, known for:
• Thriving orange groves, especially the famous Jaffa oranges, which were exported worldwide.
• A bustling port, connecting Palestine to the rest of the world.
• A cultural renaissance, with newspapers, theaters, and literary circles flourishing.
The city was home to tens of thousands of Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—who lived, worked, and contributed to its rich social fabric.
The Nakba and the Loss of Yafa
In 1948, terrorist Zionist gangs carried out a genocide on Yafa residents, forcibly displacing more than 95% of its Palestinian population.
• Homes and businesses were stolen, and Palestinian families were forced onto boats or fled on foot, leaving behind generations of history.
• The once-thriving Palestinian neighborhoods were either destroyed or repopulated with settlers, while the remaining Palestinians were subjected to racist, military apartheid rule and oppression.
• Many of Yafa’s historic mosques and cultural landmarks were turned into museums, nightclubs, or abandoned, a deliberate attempt to erase Palestinian heritage.
Yafa Today: A Story of Resistance
Despite decades of attempts to erase its Palestinian identity, Yafa remains a city of resistance and survival:
• Thousands of Palestinian families still live in Yafa, preserving their language, traditions, and history.
• Palestinian activists, artists, and organizations work to revive the city’s heritage and protect Palestinian homes from ongoing demolitions and gentrification.
• The call to prayer still echoes from Al-Manshiyya and Al-Ajami mosques, a reminder that Yafa’s Palestinian spirit cannot be silenced.
A Symbol of Hope and Return
For Palestinians, Yafa is more than a city—it is a symbol of return, justice, and the right to live freely on their ancestral land. The streets of Al-Ajami, Manshiyya, and the old port still whisper the stories of those who once called Yafa home.
Though occupied, Yafa’s soul remains Palestinian, waiting for the day when its exiled sons and daughters can walk its shores once again, not as visitors, but as rightful inhabitants.
Yafa lives on—in memory, in history, and in the hearts of Palestinians everywhere.
• Attackers: Zionist terrorist gangs “Irgun” and “Stern,” operating under the orders of Haganah commander David Shaltiel.
• Casualty count: about 360 people killed, with atrocities committed against women, children, and the elderly.
In the aftermath of the Deir Yassin Massacre: Heart-wrenching images of orphans left in the wake of tragedy, symbolizing resilience amidst the devastating aftermath
Description of the event: In 1948, a tragic event called the Deir Yassin Massacre occurred. This was an attack on the Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. The village had around 750 people and 144 houses, with separate schools for girls and boys. Zionist terrorist gangs, known as the “Irgun” (active between 1931 and 1948) and “Stern” (founded in 1940), carried out the attack following the orders of Haganah commander David Shaltiel as part of a plan. Approximately 120 men from these gangs attacked the village, causing destruction, killing its residents, and taking control. After the initial attack, the members of the Zionist gangs celebrated by committing more atrocities against innocent women, children, and older people in the village. They even paraded with the bodies of the victims and heartlessly threw them into a village well. The total number of people who lost their lives in the Deir Yassin Massacre was about 360, making the impact of Zionist violence during that time extremely distressing.
Reference:
[1] Al-Khaldi, Walid. “Deir Yassin, Friday 9/4/1948.” Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1999.
[2] Kana’aneh, Sharif and Nahed Zitawi. “The Palestinian Destroyed Villages, Number ‘4’, Deir Yassin.” Birzeit: Birzeit University, Center for Documentation and Research, 1987.
[3] De Reynier, Jacques. “Deir Yasin, April 10, 1948.” In Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971.
[4] Pa’il, Meir [Interview with]. “Jewish Eye-Witness.” In Daniel McGowan and Mark Ellis, ed., Remembering Deir Yassin: The Future of Israel and Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1998.
[5] Palumbo, Michael. The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland. London: Faber & Faber, 1987.
[6] Muslih, Nour al-Din. “Expelling the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Thought and Planning, 1882 – 1948.” Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
The red carpet that is 1 meter wide and 5 mm thick, which is made from Palestinian blood from 200000 people who were killed and injured by Netanyahu would be around 53.5 miles long.
This picture taken during a media tour organized by the Israeli military on February 8, 2024, shows Israeli soldiers standing near a bulldozer inside Gaza City.(Jack Guez / AFP via Getty Images)
This story was originally written in Arabic by a 14-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza named Lujayn. Along with one of Lujayn’s relatives, I have translated it into English. She initially wrote this story for her mother and then decided to share it with the world. It recounts her family’s forced displacement from the house where they were sheltering in Khan Younis. This was the fourth time Lujayn had been displaced since Israel’s assault on Gaza began.
Lujayn describes an increasingly common tactic of the Israeli military in her narrative: bulldozing buildings with people still inside. In addition, Lujayn’s story serves as a warning to the world about the dangers of Israel’s threatened invasion of Rafah. If she were displaced again, she and her family would have nowhere to go.
Lujayn is a brilliant student. She had been planning to go to university to study mathematics. But there are no more universities left in Gaza, and Lujayn has no permanent home. All she can do right now is survive and tell her story. For Lujayn as for many Palestinians, storytelling is a form of resistance. She asks the international community to take action to stop the Israeli military from killing her friends and threatening to kill her mother, her family, and herself. She particularly asks that the people of the United States of America pressure their elected representatives to stop funding Israel’s genocide.
This is what happened. On March 2, 2024, my dad went to bring us supplies from Rafah despite the danger on the road. He stayed overnight in Rafah because there was no transportation at night. That night, suddenly, the situation changed. The sound of explosions and missiles was everywhere.
My mom, me, and our extended family were sheltering together with four other families and eight unaccompanied children in a home in Khan Younis. We came out of our rooms and hid in the area beneath the staircase. There was gunfire and strange sounds everywhere. We tried to understand what was happening, but we couldn’t because there was shooting and chaos all around.
Mom kept telling me, “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” but I could see how she looked around anxiously. She told me, “I need to understand what’s happening. Stay away from the windows.”
I could see strange green light lines entering from the window, and I heard the sound of bullets. I told her, “No, it’s dangerous,” but she insisted. She said, “I have to understand what strange thing is happening.” So, I climbed under the staircase. She came back and she told me, “Come quickly.”
We hurried downstairs, and Mom told everyone: “The bulldozer is demolishing the house in front of ours, and the tanks have surrounded us from all sides. We need to get out quickly before they come towards us.” No one thought going out was a good idea. Mom told them that she would go out first. If they allowed her to pass, she would signal to us to come out. Everyone told her she shouldn’t go out. We knew that people were dying outside.
As we were talking, two teenage girls and three children suddenly came to the front door. One of them was covered in blood, crying, and screaming. They were the children of the family whose house had been demolished. Their father was also in Rafah like my father, but their mother, sister, and the rest of the family had been martyred under the bulldozer as it destroyed the house while they were inside. Everyone was stunned.
Mom told me to bring her my first aid supplies. She started to wipe the blood from the little boy and sterilize the wounds. Then she bandaged them while trying to comfort him.
Suddenly, we heard a loud noise. The bulldozer was coming for our house. Mom stopped and told me, “I must go out and try to stop them because we’ll die under the bulldozer. I’ll try to go out and tell them that we are civilians. If they hit me and let you all out, then you leave after me. If they hit me and continue to demolish the house, know that I tried everything I could with my last hope that you would be safe.”
I started crying. Everyone told her to stop, saying the army would kill her. At the same time, we could hear the bulldozer approaching. Mom quickly went out and stood in front of it, exactly in its path, and started telling them that there were civilians, women, elderly, and children in the house. The bulldozer kept coming.
Suddenly, a tank flashed its light and the bulldozer started backing away. As I was coming out of the house, I saw Mom next to the tank, refusing to move. Suddenly, green lines covered my mother’s body and head. I understood that the tank’s machine gun was aimed at her. I knew they were going to shoot at her while she stood there. I closed my eyes. Suddenly, the green light stopped flashing, and the tank started signaling, and two people from the house came down the stairs, carrying a white flag.
Everyone tried to understand what Mom was saying. The army was signaling for us to leave, and when the tank signaled with the green light, we understood that we should go to the nearby school. Mom moved quickly and urged us to leave. Everyone was trying to get out.
Mom told me not to be afraid and lifted the injured boy up by his legs, while the girl carried her brother by his arms. We started walking behind the others. Mom was panting, and her breath was short. I understood that she needed her inhaler for her asthma. When I tried to give it to her, she said there was no time, just keep going quickly, don’t stop. If we stopped, bullets might hit us.
A few hours later, the soldiers shouted in Arabic that we must clear the place through a certain route to another place. So we went outside. On both sides of the road, there were tanks, soldiers, and bulldozers. A soldier was speaking Arabic and selecting people, including women, to be arrested and taken to Israel. Those of us who remained were taken to a partly destroyed building three hundred meters away from the school. We stayed outside from nine or ten in the morning until eight at night, waiting in front of the entrance to the building.
Everyone started getting hungry and thirsty, especially the children. Suddenly the soldiers brought water bottles and started handing them out. Mom told us that we shouldn’t accept water from the occupation army, and that we would leave soon. She asked everyone to be patient, and added that if anyone couldn’t bear it, they could drink.
The little boy with us asked why. She told him it was because the soldiers were taking pictures of themselves while pretending to be kind to show the world how well they were treating people, but in reality they were demolishing houses on people’s heads and trampling them with their bulldozer at dawn. She was right. One of the soldiers was taking pictures, and we refused to take water from them.
I stood in front of the building’s entrance. I couldn’t even sit down when a soldier told me to sit and aimed his rifle at me. Mom came and stood in front of me, speaking forcefully in Arabic and English, telling him not to scare her daughter, as there was no room. There were elderly people next to me and if I sat so close to them, I might hurt them. For a moment, he aimed his weapon at her. She remained standing between me and him, the distance being approximately a meter and a half.
I was scared, but even more than that I was amazed and asked myself where Mom got this strength from.
Everyone was afraid, and most were crying, but she stood still, speaking and comforting me. The soldier left, and Mom sat me down. It was around eight in the evening. She placed me and the others with me in the middle, while she stood at the end near the soldiers. She told me: “If they let us go together, it would be good, but if they didn’t let me go with you, take the money and the phone. You’ll definitely find Dad outside.” She instructed the others where to go.
They separated us and took us for inspection. Strangely, they let us pass without any searching. We kept walking until we reached the last tank. Mom was holding my hand in one of her hands and the hands of the two little children in her other hand. Suddenly, the army was gone, and it was dark. Mom switched on the flashlight, and we saw Dad come running towards us from a distance. The father of the little children from the house we’d seen bulldozed was also approaching us, running. Dad hugged me tightly. Then I felt Mom stopping as if she had been waiting for this moment to catch her breath. I couldn’t believe we had made it out alive.
After this experience, Mother, I have to tell you something. I learned two things that I won’t forget. First, we must not let go of our strength, courage, and faith in God’s will at any moment. Second, we don’t turn our backs on those in need, no matter what. You didn’t leave the boy or his sisters alone. You carried their brother with them. You stayed by their side and told me: “They have no one else but us.” I won’t forget any of this. I’ve become certain that the occupation can never destroy our faith, our strength, our courage, our goodness, or our compassion.
I don’t know if the war will stop while we’re still alive, but what matters is that there are many people resisting with what is more important than weapons. Every day, a father walks under bombardment to feed us. A mother stands against bulldozers and tanks hoping to protect her daughter, knowing that even if she dies, what matters is that her daughter will live. A grandson carries his grandmother and never thinks of leaving her behind for even a moment. A sister pulls her brother out from under the rubble, away from death, and tries to save him.
Mom, this is my country, this is my people. Every generation of Palestinians will pass these lessons onto the next.
