> https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/24/naomi_klein_seder?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=9573552723-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-9573552723-193096760 > > Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Their Voices for Palestine, Oppose the “False > Idol of Zionism” > Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for > a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of > Passover, held just a block from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck > Schumer, to protest ongoing U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. > “Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol,” said award-winning > author and activist Naomi Klein, one of several speakers at Tuesday’s rally. > “They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. > And that false idol is called Zionism.” > > AMY GOODMAN: Among those who addressed the crowd during the seder was > award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein. This is some of what she had > to say. > > NAOMI KLEIN: My friends, I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he > came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The > ecofeminist in me has always been 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, of course, a less literal way of > understanding this story. It is a lesson about false idols, about the human > tendency to worship the profane and shining, to look to the small and > material rather than the large and transcendent. > > What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic > Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false > idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are > profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism. > > 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. It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the > Promised Land, a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across > faiths to every corner of this globe, and dared to turn it into a deed of > sale for a militarist ethnostate. > > 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 collective 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 has long equated Israeli safety with Egyptian > dictatorship and unfreedom and client state. 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. And as we know, Moses was saved from that by being put in a basket and > adopted by an Egyptian woman. > > Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm, and it is time > that we say 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 shall not > kill,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet” — the commandments > brought down from the mount. 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 that we place on questioning a practice embedded in the seder itself > with its four questions asked by the youngest child. It also betrays the love > that we have as a people for text and for education. Today this false idol > dares to justify the bombing of every single university in Gaza, the > destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses, the > killing of hundreds of academics, scholars, journalists, poets, essayists. > This is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the > infrastructure and the means of education. > > Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call the NYPD and barricade > themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students asking them — > > CROWD: Shame! > > NAOMI KLEIN: — students embodying the spirit of the seder, asking the most > basic question, asking questions like “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 its very nature. Our > Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for > all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred > 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 this 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. This ritual, > light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but one another, even > with — we don’t need walls. We need no temple, no rabbi. And there is a role > for everyone, including especially the smallest child. The seder is portable, > a diaspora technology if ever there was one. It is made to hold our > collective grieving, our contemplation, our questioning, our remembering, and > our reviving and rekindling of the revolutionary spirit. > > So, tonight — 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. > We want freedom from the ideology that has no plan for peace, except for > deals with the 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 afraid, that wants us to believe that the world is against us so > that we go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending the weapons and > the donations. > > That is a false idol. And it’s not just Netanyahu. It’s the world he made and > the world that made him. It’s Zionism. What are we? We, in these streets for > months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, 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 are with us now.” > > AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein, speaking at > what was called the “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on Tuesday > at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, a block from Senate Majority Leader Chuck > Schumer’s home. Special thanks to Hana Elias, Eric Halvarson and Ishmael Daro > of Democracy Now!
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