We are appalled, yet unsurprised, to see two horrific displays of Jewish supremacy on the first night of Hanukkah. The first, in Tulkarem refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers set up a giant menorah amidst the rubble. In Beit Lahia, Gaza, on the ruins of the Indonesian Hospital, Israeli soldiers lit a menorah made of empty missile casings. Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates the miracle of light in darkness, and yet all these scenes illuminate is the horror and brazen cruelty of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.
These grotesque displays of racism and supremacy are the logical conclusion of Zionism, which requires the decimation of Palestinian life to enact Jewish supremacy on stolen Palestinian land. Zionism is a political ideology that envisions the establishment of an ethnostate where Jews have more rights than Palestinians. This racist and violent ideology has always used the same blueprint. First, destroy the land and ethnically cleanse the people who live there. Then, colonize it and erase all traces of a Palestinian presence. The goal remains the same: To gain as much territory for the Israeli state, with as few Palestinians or Arabs on it, as possible.
In practice, Zionism mandates and legalizes Jewish supremacy, from the river to the sea.
Since its inception, the Israeli state has weaponized and defiled Jewish traditions to justify and facilitate its ongoing theft of Palestinian land. We reject the desecration of our holy traditions. There can be no celebration on stolen land.
As anti-Zionist Jews, we refuse to be used as the moral cover for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and land theft. This Hanukkah, and every day, we rededicate ourselves to the struggle for an end to genocide and occupation, the right of return for all Palestinians, freedom for all Palestinian prisoners, a free Palestine, and to liberation and justice for all.
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