Inside the resurgence of Jewish-led Palestine solidarity

This article Inside the resurgence of Jewish-led Palestine solidarity was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Over the last year and a half, the movement for Palestinian liberation has become one of the largest American social movements of the decade. Not only that, there has also been an incredible resurgence of the Jewish left, as Jewish Palestine solidarity organizations, such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, organize a growing contingent of young Jews for an end to the genocide in Gaza. As Israel violates its ceasefire agreement and commences an aggressive bargaining campaign, one that killed 400 people in the first night, this movement is only going to grow as the world collectively reckons with the destruction that has been caused.

But as Jewish Studies scholar Oren Kroll-Zeldin discusses in his new book “Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine,” this movement is not new. Instead, these last two years are simply a striking example of a trend that has run through decades of Jewish life as the Jewish left presents itself as an alternative to what Peter Beinart named the “American Jewish establishment.” 

Kroll-Zeldin chronicles a number of Jewish groups that have been in the news recently, from Jewish Voice for Peace to All That’s Left in Israel. This also includes the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, or CJNV, an organization that coordinated Israeli Jews and Jews from around the world to engage in a strategy called “co-resistance,” where they work with Palestinians in the West Bank to block Israeli Defense Forces and settler attacks and bear witness to the brutality of the occupation. 

For Kroll-Zeldin, the book was not just an academic study, but an auto-ethnography as he defended Palestinian farms on a 2020 CJNV delegation — a transformational event for him, which he describes as providing a new pathway back into Jewish tradition.

I talked with Kroll-Zeldin about the resurgence of Jewish-led Palestine solidarity, the work and critiques of “co-resistance,” as well as the role American Jews can have in building up resistance to Israeli violence.

Your book came out in 2024 alongside a number of other books about Jewish anti-Zionist and Palestine solidarity activism, but obviously you started writing it much earlier. How did you get the sense that there was an emerging trend you wanted to write about?

I’ve been feeling it on a personal level for 15 years, and then started seeing groups like IfNotNow, All That’s Left and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence develop. All these groups where young Jews are really coming to the forefront and speaking out in profound ways. There’s a clear and stark divide between older and younger generations of Jews, specifically when it comes to Palestine, Israel and Zionism. So I thought there was something to investigate here because it’s not just me and it’s not just anecdotal.

Two books, “Threshold of Dissent” by Marjorie Feld and Geoffrey Levin’s “Our Palestine Question” also came out recently. Those two books are providing a 100 year history that leads to the present that I was examining. As I’m reading those books I’m thinking “wow,” because the conversations that were happening in 1922 and in 1956 and in 1979 and in 1988 are the exact same conversations — and in the exact same places, using the exact same language —  are happening today. So it became clear that it’s not a return, but maybe a resurgence of activity, and now we are seeing there’s a stark generational divide.

What was your journey to rethinking Zionism, all the way to your on-the-ground organizing?

In many ways this book is an auto-ethnographic project, though I’m not exactly in the generation I was researching. My own process of unlearning Zionism very much mirrors what I heard time and time again in working with people and doing interviews from my book. I grew up in a normative Jewish household. Judaism and Zionism were almost synonymous, although not exactly, and I was taught to question everything. But the one thing I was not ever taught to question was Israel or Zionism. To put it in Jewish language, I felt like the simple son in the Haggadah from the Passover Seder, the one who didn’t even know what questions to ask. 

As I got older and started to encounter Palestinian narratives, something didn’t match up. There’s certain values that I was raised with that I don’t see manifesting here in stories that I’m hearing from Palestinians and in the research I’m doing on Palestinian history. That’s when I started spending time on the ground in Palestinian communities, specifically in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and bearing witness to the occupation and apartheid first hand. 

That is what really made it impossible to ignore — seeing the impacts. I didn’t think that there was any justification for the things I was seeing. I didn’t think that there was a sense of possibility for Jewish safety in treating others in this particular way, and instead there is a safety net in solidarity. There’s a certain way in which Jewish safety and security is inextricably linked with that of the Palestinians. For me, it was bearing witness to occupation and apartheid that made me really understand how deeply interconnected those two things were. I don’t know that I ever would have been able to understand it the same way had I not been able to bear witness to it.

What is the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and how did you get plugged into it?

The Center for Jewish Nonviolence is a group that was intended to be a Jewish presence and voice on the ground in Palestine and Israel to resist the mechanisms of occupation and apartheid and in solidarity and connection with Palestinians. It was started by Ilana Sumka, who had spent many years building deep connections on the ground with Palestinians. She is Jewish, and after the Israeli military uprooted a whole lot of trees in the Tent of Nations in the West Bank, she was on a phone call with Daoud Nassar, whose trees were uprooted. She asked what she could do to help and be in solidarity, and he said she should bring a delegation of Jews to come and replant the trees to show the world you are in solidarity. And that’s what birthed the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, or CJNV, which is committed to both a Jewish presence in resisting apartheid and occupation, but also following the lead of Palestinians who are asking for that Jewish presence on the ground. 

I’ve known Ilana for a long time and was trying to attend a delegation for many years. When I started doing research for this book it became very clear to me that CJNV was a major player in how young American Jews are acting in solidarity with Palestinians. So I went on a delegation in the winter of 2019-2020 and that was my first on-the-ground experience with CJNV. I had many experiences doing “co-resistance” activism previously, but this was my first time organized by CJNV. That experience reinforced what I already thought I knew, which is that co-resistance activism was, maybe is, one of the most profound forms of Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. It has the potential to make real, serious, material gains, but really has profound and important symbolic impacts in the joint struggle for justice, safety and liberation. 

Can you explain more about the concept of co-resistance?

So during the 1990s and the Oslo Process, co-existence was a major buzzword. There were major programs, which included funding from international organizations and governments, to ensure that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis have a chance to meet and engage with one another on a meaningful level. They would be dialogue programs or joint musical projects or summer camps like Seeds of Peace. They were really meaningful in bringing these groups of people together to interact. It was rooted in contact theory in peace studies, which says you just need to have the two groups of people who are in conflict come into contact with one another and they will realize they are both humans. We can totally co-exist and get along. 

What scholars have learned is that contact theory is insufficient in transforming conflicts towards justice and peace. In the context of Israel-Palestine, the main reason why these types of programs started to fail is they did not address the dramatic imbalance of power that existed. Oslo then started to fail and disintegrate and the situation on the ground deteriorated into the tremendous violence of the Second Intifada and the incursions of the Israeli military into Palestinian communities. Co-existence programs also fell apart, and Palestinian activists said co-existence is not the model that will work for leading towards our liberation. They made a call for a new tactic and strategy they called “co-resistance.” 

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Co-resistance is the idea that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, and Jewish activists from around the world (and international activists in general), will come together to resist the mechanisms of apartheid, occupation and state violence. Collectively, they will put their bodies on the line together to resist these injustices. Co-resistance is always led by Palestinians. Palestinians set the conditions for direct actions and whatever co-resistance looks like on any given day or any particular action or project, and they invite people to come and resist alongside them. 

Co-resistance is based on the idea that this strategy shifts the power dynamics because, one, Palestinians are the leaders, and, two, it’s based on shared political commitments. So the power dynamic also shifts. You have Jewish activists who are leveraging their privilege as Jews on the front lines of these demonstrations, so to speak, where now the Israeli military has to confront Jewish Israelis or Jews from around the world. That changes the calculus for them because this is supposed to be a military that defends Jews. Are they going to quell this demonstration? Are we going to send tear gas to disperse the crowd, even though there are Jews there as well? So this is the basic set-up of co-resistance activism.

What is the goal of co-resistance organizing?

All co-resistance actions, like most direct actions in various global settings, have two sets of goals. One is the material goals, and the second are symbolic goals. How will this action materially impact everyday life for Palestinians? Some of these direct actions meant Palestinians being able to access their olive trees or harvest their field, or rebuilding a wall or home or preventing a home demolition. The material impacts of co-resistance are not always that successful, especially because they are working against a system of state power that is so severe that even if the action is successful one day, the very next day the military or settlers might come in. [And they] act with such impunity that they can undo in a day whatever the co-resistance activists were able to accomplish. 

On the other hand, you have the symbolic elements of co-resistance, and I think that the symbolic is much more profound, useful and successful than the material. On a symbolic level this type of activism is showing that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis or Jews from around the world don’t need to be enemies. They don’t need to be working against one another. Rather, they’re showing that actually they have shared political commitments, and this is one way of demonstrating that the safety of one community is truly linked to the safety of another. Also from a symbolic level, co-resistance activists are showing what it looks like on the ground for the possibilities of a shared future rooted in equality, which is very important. 

What are some of the criticisms of co-resistance activism that have emerged recently?

There are also some criticisms of co-resistance, and we need to take them seriously. First is that even though activists are trying to address the power dynamics and they’re attempting to leverage Jewish privilege to have material or symbolic impacts on the Palestinian liberation struggle, there’s still a dramatic imbalance of power. You have these, for example, Jewish Israeli activists who can leave and go back to their homes in Israel where they enjoy the privilege of Jewish supremacy. Second, these activists don’t necessarily always have to deal with that privilege in the context of the co-resistance struggle. 

When it comes to Jewish activists from around the world, there is very much an idea of parachuting in. Almost a white savior complex. We can parachute in, do something, and then we can leave and go far away, and we don’t have to really engage with the consequences. Another critique, certainly since Oct. 7 in the heightened situation of extreme violence is that there’s almost no possibility of any material gains because the military and settlers — who pose almost as much danger as the military — are acting with complete impunity. They can destroy whatever they want, whenever they want and do so without repercussions. 

People have also levied the critique of “normalization” against co-resistance activists, both Palestinian and Jewish Israeli. [They argue] that even though you’re not working within the same framework as co-existence, which was the initial target of the normalization critique, co-resistance may run into the same issues. The critique of co-resistance is basically that you’re normalizing these unequal relationships and privilege of Jewish Israelis and international Jews who depend on their access to Israel to maintain even these moments of activism. I’m myself going through a process vacillating back and forth as to whether or not, in this current moment, this is a good or right strategy, or even a strategy that should be focused on at this time. I do think it still has tremendous value, but at this point I see it merely as symbolically significant and not materially significant in any way. 

What would be the most effective alternatives then if there is diminishing returns on co-resistance activism? Is there a role for the Israeli Jewish left, or is that largely negligible now?

The alternatives are shrinking because the state of Israel, the United States government, the American Jewish establishment, all have tremendous power over the situation — and they have criminalized every single element of Palestinian resistance.

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The global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement emerged out of this question and the search for alternatives. And besides being the largest global nonviolent movement for Palestinian justice and freedom in Palestinian history, it has been intensely criminalized. I don’t know what the alternatives are. It remains to be seen what the next strategy is. Most activists are currently reacting to the genocidal violence unfolding in Gaza and now in the West Bank. It’s currently hard to imagine what the next emergent tactic or strategy will be. But history teaches us that new strategies and tactics will emerge. It’s a question of when and what. 

In terms of the Jewish Israeli left, if there is such a thing, there are two strands. There is the liberal Zionist left, often called the “peace camp,” which is still working within a framework for a Jewish state reliant on Jewish supremacy. It is a very small fringe, and the Palestinian liberation struggle doesn’t see that as a partner. 

But there is an even smaller group that is working within Israel, but also in solidarity with Palestinians. These are many of the co-resistance activists who are saying this entire system is rooted in Jewish supremacy and makes us all less safe — and the only way that we can be safe as Jewish Israelis is if we are going to ensure the safety and freedom of Palestinans as well. So I think there’s more of a role for that second group, those radical Jewish Israeli leftist activists to have a meaningful impact, both in Israel and on the global stage. They can leverage their Jewish privilege, but they’re also showing on the symbolic level the idea that Jews and Palestinians don’t need to be enemies.

What’s the role of American Jews in this organizing, both here in the U.S. and on the ground in Israel-Palestine?

These are not people who are impacted by it in their everyday lives, in the same way as Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. That’s not to say they don’t have a role. But their role, based on what I uncovered in my research from interviews and from participant observation, [relates to] what they experience and learn from bearing witness to Israeli state violence. And they can then [bring that experience] home to their own communities, to their families, to their organizing spaces, to their university campuses, to their professional workplaces.

The United States has significant power over the situation in Israel Palestine. American Jews have a significant role in that conversation in the United States. The power of American Jews should not be overstated. It’s still a very small percentage of the U.S. population. There are more evangelical Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews on planet Earth. At the same time, American Jews do have a significant say in how both the American government, and more importantly, on how American Jewish institutions teach Jews and influence the policy decisions the American government makes. So the role of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace or IfNotNow to challenge those policies is really important. What they’re doing is not just changing the conversation, they’re working to normalize American Jewish dissent towards this full-fledged support for Israel and Zionism. 

We see that impact in a few ways. Number one, like I discuss in the book, young people are much more inclined to question Israel, to critique Zionism, to speak out publicly about it. We see young people much more likely either to be active participants in — or passive supporters of — BDS than older generations, and this is because of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. 

I also think that we shouldn’t overstate the significance and work of these organizations because more and more we see the actions of the Israeli government — the hyper nationalist right-wing, violent government — and the actions of the Israeli military, actually [making the case] that these organizations are trying to make for them [by clearly revealing their destructive behavior]. Because you have people for a year and a half waking up, looking at their phones, scrolling through social media and seeing incredible destruction in Gaza. You see kids being killed every day, and people are saying, “Wait a minute, that’s not right.” 

There’s nothing that the state of Israel or pro-Israel organizations can do in the United States to convince people that this non-stop killing of children is alright. This does not match up with my Jewishness. This does not match up with my values. How do I act on that? I’ll seek out Jewish Voice for Peace or IfNotNow. This becomes an avenue and outlet for their anger and activism, and this is how they’ve been successful in organizing.

This article Inside the resurgence of Jewish-led Palestine solidarity was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/inside-the-resurgence-of-jewish-led-palestine-solidarity-oren-kroll-zeldin-book-unsettled/