Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I'd written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently I, and the poet I was to read with at the conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.
We decided to hold our reading anyway in Washington, DC during J Street's inaugural conference at an alternative location. We were hosted by Busboys and Poets. The room filled with a spectrum of ideas. We read our poems and during the Q&A, no one was shouted down. Not the Israeli army Refusnik, not the liberal Zionist apologist, not the Palestinian student who asked us to include more about the Palestinian people in our poems, not just the land or idea of nation-state, a point beautifully made and incredibly profound. No one shouted down moderator Lalia Al-Arian, brilliant journalist and activist, whose father was a Palestinian political prisoner in America, now freed because of his daughter's persistence. The crowd was cool and civil, though broad in opinion.
Since the Second Intifada I have thought, wrote, and spoke about these issues, but over the course of these last several weeks, I have arrived at a new beginning. Prior to now, I muddled this issue in complexity. But I have come to realize it is actually simple and clear. I am a Jewish-American man in solidarity with Palestinian people. I am in solidarity with Israeli and American and all people who work and risk their lives and livelihood for justice. I am not restricted to working within the confines of the Jewish-American community. Justice and the resistance to imperialism is a global, human concern for all people down to struggle. For Jews, yes, but not Jews alone. For Palestinians, yes, but not Palestinians alone. It will take us all to push and demand governments and corporate interests to create fair, equitable living conditions. It will take all people to hold history accountable for the atrocities that occur.
This is analogy. America celebrates Columbus day even though Columbus and American settlers killed, enslaved and pushed Indigenous people off land they lived on. Tragically Indigenous people have been nearly wiped out of existence and pushed to the furthest margins of our culture that revels in amnesia. Main St., mainstream American culture does not expect Native Americans to celebrate Columbus, nor care or know or imagine if they do or not. Native Americans are not a demographic population Hallmark cares to account for. It is preposterous to think Jews would celebrate Kristallnacht, the night of glass when SS troops stormed and terrorized their German ghettos. In Israel, Independence Day is called Yom Ha'atzmaut. Communities gather to play music, dance and watch fireworks. The Chief Rabbinate has declared this day a Jewish holiday in which prayers should be said. But Palestinians remember 1948 and the formation of the State of Israel as al-Nakba, The Catastrophe. A day of murder, displacement, and forced Diaspora. A day families are torn apart and ripped away from their homes. A state sanctioned celebration of their dehumanization and second-class citizenship.
For this reason alone, I cannot believe in the integrity of the Zionist project. It's built on bodies and lies. It denies the existence of people and a people. One of its slogans, rooted in the same malicious revisionism as American History and Holocaust denial, is, A land without people, for a people without land. Columbus didn't discover shit. He enacted the desires of Empire and the fetishization of "discovery". The formation of the State of Israel is rooted in blood and deceit, is the same story as all colonies built in the name of Imperialism, Capitalism and Dehumanization. Therefore, I am not Zionist.
I am not Pro-Israel because in January Israel murdered over 1400 Palestinians. They bombed schools and hospitals. They bulldoze homes and bodies. Israel builds a separation wall, as Germany did, as the United States does between here and Mexico, as the rich do between themselves and the rest of us. I am not a believer in borders. I have been mistaken for Italian, Puerto Rican, Arab and Muslim, but I am a suburban Jew who sought out hip-hop cultural space across red lines and Chicago segregation. I learned borders are to be contended and crossed. Israel believes in borders. Israel practices apartheid. On one side, irrigated lawns and swimming pools in illegal Israeli settlements. On the other side, Palestinian disenfranchisement, people denied access to drinking water, medical assistance, jobs, the ability to earn an income or vote in the country that governs them, that limits their movement with passports, checkpoints and curfews and closes them into open-air prisons. I cannot be in favor of these practices, nor the state that enacts them. These practices are to be resisted, protested and pushed against. People whose bodies are legislated against, contained, detained, and maimed by state sanctioned terror are to be stood with and listened to.
This week has provided clarity. This is not a complex issue. There is the brutality of government(s) and the need for the liberation of a people, all people. I am a Jewish person who stands with Palestinian people relegated to second-class citizenship and Israeli soldiers who refuse to enact racist militarism. I am not a nationalist; therefore I am not a Zionist. I am against the oppression of any person and people. I am not a builder of walls. I believe in equity and democratic practice, therefore I am not pro-Israel. I am an advocate for truth, justice and reconciliation. I believe in this. I believe in this now. I believe in the work ahead.
Drew Westen: Leadership, Obama Style
Genuine leadership means setting the agenda. It means taking tough stands. Leadership is a quality Barack Obama showed on the campaign trail. It is a quality he has failed to show as president.
Loading comments… 
Many of its former subjects got offered a state or found other ways to build a state.
All agreed to what they got. Except one group who thought that they should get it all. Because of their greed they missed the self determinat
Now they have to ask, very, very politely their neighbors for some of the land they rejected before.
Cause now their neighbors from all sides are not very pleased with their behavior. Especially Jordanians
Did I miss any one? Oh, yes, Americans, Europeans, Saudis, Kuwaitis are not to enthused either..
The punishment for being short-sigh
Realpoliti
This is a map from the United Nations website.
http://dom
never missing an opportunit
If some outside authority says "half of your garden now belongs to someone else, and you, of course, can keep the other half" is that a "missed opportunit
I suspect it is simply unwillingn
Lemme clue you in. You cannot ev en imagine how ecstatic Palestinia
Hows that for realpoliti
"MosheDaya
NO chance.
ZERO possibilit
"The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishm
The Palestinia
The absolute best that they can hope for is some kind of provincial status in which they have theoretica
THAT would, by no conceivabl
Israel has postured a position of seeking a 2 state solution for years, while constantly expanding its illegal expropriat
It has done very well, so far, in diverting the internatio
Neither Israeli, nor Jordan nor Egypt nor ( i suspect) lebanon would allow Palestinia
These neighborin
Not fair you say? Get used to it.
Small demilitari
Try Jordanians if they're interested in re-unifica
What you, and the Likud Charter, are describing is by no measure a state.
At best it is a province.
"This is what you can have, under the control of the Knesset. Take it or leave it", is not negotiatio
Why is the Israeli government continuing to present the pretense that it will enter negotiatio
But wait, aren't those exactly the characteri
It is noteworthy that the Czechs and Slovaks would not sign the Lisbon Treaty unless they were given exemptions stating that their government
The indigenous people of Palestine had a state imposed upon them by the British Mandate, the League of Nations and the United Nations.
It is the kind of imposition which neither you or I, or any sensible person, would approve in the 21st century.
To suggest that Palestinia
"Imposed" on them?
Most of smart people are absolutely ecstatic to have their own state. As did Jordnains and Palestinai
"Never missing an opportunit
Now if Germ.any wanted to follow the Ar-bic model, the refugees would be placed them in decrepit camps, deny them Ger.man citizenshi
I commend your honesty, bravery to speak out despite your detractors
A Jewish pro Arabist rap artist is neither here nor there.
There now a Jewish state, successful
Therefore, the argument whether one is or isn't a Zionist is hopelessly out of date.
Since most ideals of Zionists have been realized, one can now either support the result of its ideals- the existence State of Israel--- or not.
You've made your choice.
To disagree with the methodolog
I may well, do, in fact, love the country I live in.
But it is not, by some long way, perfect. I reserve, absolutely
Disagreein
Peace will be acheivable when Palestinia
Palestinia
Nothing else is available, nothing else will be available.
Palestinai