As Occupy protests continue across America, an internal struggle is percolating over how the movement relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pro-Palestinian activists trying to insert the issue into the protests are using the movement’s language to attack Israel. But some left-wing Jewish activists warn that these efforts will give ammunition to the movement’s critics and make it harder to build a big tent in support of Occupy Wall Street’s main thrust.
“We are being sidetracked by some in our community and some outside our community who are insisting on integrating this into the Occupy Wall Street platform,” said Daniel Sieradski, the organizer of Occupy Judaism, which has staged Jewish religious services at Occupy Wall Street’s main encampment in New York’s Zuccotti Park and inspired similar efforts at other protest sites.
At Occupy Oakland, a Jewish contingent first erected a sukkah — one of several nationwide — and several weeks later a Jewish tent canopy.
Pro-Palestinian activist groups have mounted a number of small demonstrations and events at Occupy sites. At the New York and Boston encampments, a group called Existence Is Resistance held events calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including specific convicted terrorists. And on Nov. 4, a small contingent of protesters marched from the Occupy Boston encampment to the Israeli Consulate, where approximately 10 people staged a brief sit-in.
Conservative critics have zeroed in on instances of anti-Semitic rhetoric by individual protesters and on the pro-Palestinian actions.
Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor at Commentary magazine, accused Occupy liberal supporters of “making a deal with an anti-Semitic and radical devil,” citing the march on the Boston consulate. In his blog post, Tobin wrote that it is no longer possible for the movement’s Jewish defenders “to assert that the sort of anti-Zionism that raised its head in Boston is an aberration.”
“It’s a wide-open, horizontal organization,” countered Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and of the Jewish Labor Committee. “You’ll hear a lot of voices, but its key focus has been on economic issues. A lot of people will try to latch on to Occupy Wall Street and use it to promote their causes.”
Appelbaum was one of 15 prominent liberal Jewish activists, labor leaders and former elected officials who signed onto a Nov. 1 statement defending Occupy Wall Street from charges of anti-Semitism. Appelbaum recently hosted an event at his union’s headquarters on how Occupy Wall Street and the labor movement can work together. The event drew fire in an email sent to activists by Michael Letwin, a Labor for Palestine activist and member of Occupy Wall Street’s Labor Outreach Committee.
“Does Stuart Appelbaum really belong in OWS?” Letwin asked, calling Appelbaum the “chief trade union defender of apartheid Israel.”
Sieradski argues that positions on Israel should not be a litmus test within Occupy Wall Street, and that both Zionists and anti-Zionists should be able to “feel that their voices can be respected.”
Pro-Palestinian activists, however, express anger at those they see as trying to exclude their cause from the movement.
Kade Crockford, an Occupy Boston participant who helped organize the consulate sit-in, lashed out at “Zionist so-called leftists” within the Occupy movement who, he claimed, “obstruct expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians even when the majority in the larger group supports it.”
Some Jewish pro-Palestinian groups have tried to tie the Palestinian cause to Occupy Wall Street.
Earlier this month, Young, Jewish, and Proud, the youth chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, released a statement assailing “the 1 percent in our own community” and calling for young Jews “to occupy Jewish institutions that actively obstruct human rights for Palestinians, like AIPAC, the Jewish federations, Birthright, the Jewish National Fund, Hillel and the foundations of right-wing philanthropists.”
Addressing these issues within the movement’s leaderless, consensus-driven culture can be difficult — even within an affiliated subgroup like Occupy Judaism. When Sieradski circulated a proposed statement on Occupy Judaism’s email list that called for keeping the focus on economic issues while acknowledging that many in Occupy Judaism opposed Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, it failed to garner consensus support after being blocked by anti-Zionists.
Sieradski, however, hailed a resolution adopted by the Occupy Wall Street general assembly in New York as evidence that the movement would not let itself become “hijacked by others’ political agendas.”
That Nov. 11 statement of autonomy said that any declaration not issued by the general assembly “should be considered independent of Occupy Wall Street.” It warned: “Those seeking to capitalize on this movement or undermine it by appropriating its message or symbols are not a part of Occupy Wall Street.”