Jewish Voices for Peace North Jersey Reflect on Historic March 10 Teaneck Protest
We came out and took to the streets this past Sunday in Teaneck, standing strong against the blatant flouting of laws, morals, and ethics in connection to the illegal sale of West Bank property happening within Zionist communities throughout the country.
Stolen land sales in synogogues are not kosher, and those involved are a shanda (SHAME) on the Jewish people for allowing these sales to take place within a temple.
As @jewssaynotogenocide so aptly put it, protesting a synagogue for its complicity in selling stolen Palestinian land is part of all fights for justice.
Speaking out against Israeli war crimes (which INCLUDES stolen land sales) is not antisemitic and is in fact part and parcel in the fight for liberation for all.
Thank you to the @guardian for this article that features several of our own NNJ JVP members speaking loud and clear about standing up for what is right and true. Click the picture to read the article in the Guardian:
Quoting the Guardian article:
In a video that has racked up 1.9 million views since 29 February, Rich Siegel, a 65-year old Jewish resident from Teaneck condemned the planned event at a recent township council meeting. “There’s a genocide going on,” he said. “People in this community are in deep mourning … What this real estate event is going to do is it’s going to fan the flames.”
Siegel attended Sunday’s event. “I think that Zionism is Jewish supremacy and Jewish entitlement and I think that this event is an expression of that,” he told the Guardian. “It’s obscene to have an Israeli real estate event while Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”
The New Jersey chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and American Muslims for Palestine have called for a federal investigation into the event, saying that it is “deeply concerning to see anyone use a house of worship to allegedly flout international law by selling off stolen land”.
. . .
Protesters on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in the last five months.
Draped in keffiyehs and Palestinian flags and joined alongside families with children and dogs, protestors chanted “Settlers, settlers, what do you say? How much land did you steal today?”
. . .
Protesters rejected charges of antisemitism. “There is a direct connection to sales like this being held here and the violence that Palestinians are facing in the West Bank,” said Adam Weissman, spokesperson for Northern New Jersey’s Jewish Voice for Peace and Teaneck for Palestine spokesperson.
“Ultimately the goal of these events is obviously to make money but the synagogues are hosting them as an ideological project with the intent of facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
“I’m Jewish. I’m not antisemitic,” said Stephen Shalom of Montclair, New Jersey. “Jews believe two things of relevance here. One is that thou shalt not steal and it’s not antisemitic to say that. And two, we believe in social justice so dispossession is a crime,” Shalom added.
Hala Al Ahmed, a 53-year-old resident from Boonton, New Jersey, brought what she said was her grandfather’s original Palestinian land deeds to the demonstration to “show the world that this is stolen land”, she said. “This is 150 years old,” she continued, waving yellowed pages protected behind a plastic film.
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