Zionism Pursues Its Attempted Hold-up on Jews the World over

by French Jewish Union for Peace / October 12th, 2024

The Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), French Zionist Consistory, and their members and allies called for a demonstration on Sunday 6 October in the following terms: “Next Sunday 6 October, with a group of Zionist institutions, community organizations and citizen groups, we are organizing a large scale demonstration at Paris; we will assert our solidarity with the people and the state of Israel in the existential war that they have waged for a year, we will honor the memory of the victims of the pogrom of 7 October and we will denounce antisemitism”.

This call sets up once again the confusion between Jew, Zionist, and Israeli. Happily, there are among the citizen groups of this country organizations which have nothing to do with this confusion. The confusion between the state of Israel – Zionist and supremacist – and its Jewish population is grossly misleading in that a significant part of this population, if it has only partially broken with Zionism, denounces the Netanyahu government and its judeo-fascist allies. [This is] a government that has deliberately sacrificed the hostages to engage in a genocidal operation in the Gaza strip and escalate ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Never has the Jewish population in Palestine been as threatened for its long-term existence as by this politics. But how does one dare to speak of this potential existential threat when the existential threat for the Palestinian people on Palestinian soil is here and now?

To respect the Jewish values of equality and dignity of all mankind, one life must value another life. To honor the victims of 7 October without having a minimum of empathy for the victims of Gaza is frighteningly violent and constitutes acquiescence to the genocide in course.

The utilization of the term ‘pogrom’ is inappropriate to describe the murders of civilians committed not against Jews as such but against colonizers and occupiers. The term resonates as a reminder of actions led before and during the destruction of the Jews of Europe, encouraged by Tsarism and the dictatorships of Central Europe. [This is] hardly comparable to the actions, if murderous, of a population enclosed for more than 15 years in a blockade by land, sea and air. Many of us experience the usage of this term as an insult to the memory of our families.

This demonstration claims to denounce antisemitism. We are unhappily obliged to note that the unqualified defense of a state that claims to act in the name of all the Jews of the world and practices ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and now genocide, can only provoke renewed antisemitism, putting in danger Jews everywhere around the world, summoned to be accomplices at the risk of being designated as traitors.

Combatting antisemitism is an urgent task, but in standing with all victims of racism, with all the racialized. This is what we are currently engaged in.

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Launch of the ‘European Jews for Palestine’ network, at the European Parliament 3 October 2024

The new European Jewish network, European Jews for Palestine (EJP) has been launched in the European Parliament at Brussels this Thursday 3 October 2024.

[Video of the meeting, 1 hr 22 mins, with English subtitles]

The event is a product of work by members of the new organization, as well as European Deputies, directors of European anti-racist organisations and Palestinian representatives.

This meeting coincides with the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah).

“We mark this important moment in the Jewish calendar by a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people and a call to put an end to the genocide in Gaza and to Israel’s war crimes”, declared Gabi Kaplan, co-founder of the network and spokesperson for EJP.

EJP is a collective of more than 20 Jewish groups from fourteen European countries. These organizations, sharing the same opinions, met for the first time in March 2023 in Paris and officially established their European organization in September 2024. The event in the European Parliament on 3 October marks the first public appearance of the network.

The EJP network rejects “the ideology of Jewish supremacy of the Zionist state” and denounces “the cynical conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism”. The network advocates the “decoupling of Judaism from the colonialist doctrine of Zionism” and commits itself to promote “equal rights for all in historic Palestine, from the river to the sea”.

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These statements have been published on the website of the Union Juive Française pour la paix, 25 September 2024 and 4 October 2024, and have been translated by Evan Jones.FacebookTwitterReddit

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The Union Juive Française pour la Paix was established in Paris in April 1994 during the commemoration of Passover. In 2002, the UJFP becomes a foundation member of European Jews for a Just Peace, successor to the International Jewish Peace union, created in 1982. From the UJFP’s charter: “The colonial character of Zionism has developed with the acceleration of the ‘judaisation’ of the totality of historic Palestine and of ethnic cleansing, [embodied in] the passage of the ‘Basic Law’ in July 2018]. The fate reserved to Gaza, open air prison, the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel can only revolt all those who defend human rights across the world.” Read other articles by French Jewish Union for Peace, or visit French Jewish Union for Peace's website.