Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine

By Oren Kroll-Zeldin. New York University Press, 2024. 280 pages. $30/hardcover or eBook.

Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing

By Rebecca Vilkomerson and Alissa Wise. Haymarket Books, 2024. 344 pages. $55/hardcover; $22.95/paperback; $9.99/eBook.

Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism

By Shane Burley and Ben Lorber. Melville House, 2024. 288 pages. $19.99/paperback; $12.99/eBook.

In June 1934, 18 months after Hitler came to power and began the most intensive period of Jewish persecution in Germany’s history, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) met in Pennsylvania to discuss how to be of assistance to German Jews living under increasing threat. After much debate, the assembled rabbis decided to reject limiting themselves to only moral appeals and voted instead to also embrace “nonviolent resistance,” as quoted in a New York Times article covering the event. For these rabbis, this meant attempting to launch an international boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign to pressure the new Nazi government to end its increasingly oppressive policies toward Jews. At the close of their gathering, Rabbi Samuel Goldenson, the president of CCAR, congratulated the rabbis for standing up for Jewish safety and equal rights. At the same time, he warned, “Realizing then, as everyone must, that in the spread of intolerance we Jews are always the first victims, it behooves us to be especially watchful of our own conduct and not commit the folly of believing that similar illiberalisms may not develop among ourselves.”

Today, an increasing number of U.S. Jews argue that this is exactly what has happened within the Zionist movement and, since its founding in 1948, in the policies of the Israeli government. This growing segment of the Jewish community rejects the notion that the only way Jews can be safe and free in this world is to systematically rule over, displace, dispossess, discriminate against, imprison, wound, or kill Palestinians. Three important new books speak to this shift in outlook among U.S. Jews, and each of these books deserves to be seriously considered by Quakers around the world who also want to foster a just peace in Israel–Palestine.

Unsettled is a good place to start. Written by a scholar in theology, religion, and Jewish studies at the University of San Francisco, this book tells two overlapping stories. The first is Kroll-Zeldin’s own long and sometimes painful discernment journey to “unlearn Zionism.” This journey required him to critically examine the rationalizations, myths, and miseducation that he had received from his family and his mainstream Jewish community and then compare these claims to the actual history and policies of the State of Israel toward Palestinians. Over time, he finally came to see Israel’s behavior as a violation of his deepest moral commitments as a Jewish activist inspired by the Jewish tradition’s prophetic call for peace and justice. The second story in the book is his patchwork quilt of the many similar journeys of the even younger generation of U.S. Jews he interviewed who have joined the Jewish solidarity movement for Palestinian freedom and equality through such rapidly growing organizations as Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence.

Moving on from these stories of personal awakening, moral transformation, and taking courageous action, Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love offers an even deeper dive into the development of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), one of the main Jewish organizations that spearheaded the Jewish solidarity movement in support of Palestinian freedom and equal rights since its founding in 1996. The book begins with a foreword by Omar Barghouti, one of the Palestinian founders of the international nonviolent boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign pushing Israel and their Western government and corporate enablers to abide by international law. The book ends with an afterword by Stefanie Fox, the current executive director of JVP, who speaks to both the future hopes of JVP’s organizing in light of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the destruction of Gaza that followed. In between are an introduction, eight thoughtful chapters, and a conclusion by two previous JVP leaders: Rebecca Vilkomerson, who joined the organization in its early years and served as its executive director from 2009 to 2019, and Rabbi Alissa Wise, who cofounded the JVP Rabbinical Council in 2010 and who from 2011 to 2021 served in a wide variety of roles within JVP, including its organizing codirector, deputy director, and interim co-executive director.

As a Quaker organizer working within the growing interfaith network of Apartheid-Free Communities convened by American Friends Service Committee, I was fascinated to read this remarkable nuts-and-bolts case study of faith-based organizing for peace and justice. Vilkomerson and Wise cover JVP’s founding and growth; the sharpening of its political perspective and its internal political education efforts; the building of movement partnerships with Palestinian human rights organizers and a variety of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular allies; the joys and pains of confronting their own religious communities with a tough love prophetic challenge; transforming JVP’s approach to racial justice work; and how they have weathered pushback from the organized Zionist establishment in the United States and increasing repression by both U.S. and state governments, along with a wide variety of U.S. cultural institutions like the media, college campuses, and Christian Zionist churches.

One chapter that I found particularly moving was focused on JVP’s nuanced approach to fighting the ongoing reality of anti-Jewish bigotry around the world without falling into the mainstream Jewish establishment’s cynical weaponization of “antisemitism” as a way to suppress Jewish and Gentile resistance to the many U.S.-backed Israeli policies that abuse the human rights of Palestinians. In it, the authors explain that JVP does not just look at the current cataclysm in Israel–Palestine through the single lens of the Holocaust, as important as that is. Nor does it look only through the single lens of the frequently ignored Nakba which highlights the unjust founding of the State of Israel through terror gangs, ethnic cleansing, and domination or its later expansion through military occupation; an evolving system of apartheid; and, most recently, a brutal campaign of mass murder and war crimes. JVP looks instead through both lenses at the same time. It therefore works to develop an approach to fighting antisemitism around the world that does not rely on the immoral and counterproductive marginalization and oppression of Palestinians.

Shane Burley’s and Ben Lorber’s Safety Through Solidarity takes this theme even further. These two authors offer chapters that carefully define what antisemitism is; describe how it is related to other forms of bigotry and oppression; and explain where it came from, what it looks like today, and how to fight it without falling into the trap of defending the militaristic and oppressive policies of the United States and Israel toward the Palestinian people. As they state, “We see fighting antisemitism, and fighting for freedom, equality, and justice for Palestinians, as part of the same struggle for a better world.”

I particularly appreciated their later chapter on the “two traditions of fighting antisemitism”: one focused on the morally inconsistent and unfaithful “just us” perspective of most Zionist groups and the more morally consistent and faithful “justice” path that seeks Jewish safety through solidarity and liberation for all. I think better understanding and discerning between these two traditions would help modern Quakers. While Friends have a long history of defending both persecuted Jews and persecuted Palestinians, many Friends today are often confused, silenced, and muted in their solidarity work because of the common conflation of “antisemitism” with principled criticism of the human rights abuses caused by U.S.-backed Israeli policies.

I believe that learning from the Jewish activist wisdom embedded in these three books can help Quakers find our way toward a more robust peace and justice ministry.

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Steve Chase is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington (D.C.) and an organizer of the Quaker caucus of the interfaith Apartheid-Free Communities initiative. He is also the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlet Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights and is the interview subject of the QuakerSpeak video entitled “Moving Closer to a Beloved Community: A Quaker Rethinks Israel–Palestine.”