We thank Jonathan Rochkind, a fellow member of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, for inspiring this statement about why the struggle for Palestinian freedom is inextricably linked to freedom and justice in the United States. JVP is a nationwide grassroots Jewish organization working for Palestinian freedom — and a world where all people everywhere live in freedom, equality, and dignity.

“When crimes against human rights and dignity are normalized, it doesn’t stay localized to one place. Instead, it enables it against anyone and everywhere.”

— Tina Bernstein and Arthur Camins

The reported death toll in Gaza is now over 75,000, including approximately 17,000 children. The health care system has been decimated. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians, violence, and forced civilian mass evacuations continue in the West Bank, and now in Lebanon. There is complete destruction of human habitation in Gaza. People are starving. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This continues despite the declaration of a ceasefire.

And all of this has been done with the support, cover, complicity, and encouragement of the United States.

There is a direct line from normalizing war crimes in Palestine to Trump’s extrajudicial execution of people on boats in the Caribbean. From getting used to dehumanization of Palestinians — to the kidnapping and detention in camps of immigrants here.

When crimes against human rights and dignity are normalized, it doesn’t stay localized to one place. Instead, it enables it against anyone and everywhere.

Within the anti-authoritarian organizing eUorts, there is the claim that including Palestinian freedom in our movements was too divisive, too dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Excluding opposition to U.S.-enabled genocide and violence and land theft in the West Bank has been used as a wedge to defeat, confuse, and divide us.

Now the same narrow exceptionalism is being used to undermine the struggle for the rights of our queer and trans neighbors and loved ones.

The only way we can defeat authoritarianism is to build movements that benefit everybody.

That includes our queer and trans siblings. That includes all our immigrant neighbors. That includes solidarity with the Iranian people’s movements against repression at home and bombs from abroad. That includes Jews and Palestinians in solidarity. When they come for one of us, they’re going to have to face ALL of us. This is the only way we keep each other safe. This is how we win.

The onslaught we face has given rise to massive opposition, but it is divided. Solidarity will not always be welcome. However, we must not be put off. While supporting one another, we must continue to assert our solidarity. Solidarity is survival! Solidarity is a verb. It requires action.

No Kings, No War, No Camps!

Abolish ICE! Free Palestine!

Tina Bernstein
Arthur Camins

Editorial Note: Tina Bernstein can be heard in a podcast interview with ALBB recorded days after Israeli’s aggression on Gaza in response to the October 7th attack by Hamas.

Dear Editor:

The Beacon City Council is discussing a possible humanitarian ceasefire resolution. As Jews, we support passage.

Jews speak with many voices from varying values and politics. Like other Jews of our age, we grew up in the dark shadow of the Holocaust. Though our parents were not survivors of the Holocaust, we had family members who survived fighting with the resistance, were hidden by a kind Polish family, and survived by playing dead in a pile in Treblinka and then lived to testify at Nuremberg.

“We know deep in our marrow that Jews cannot be safe anywhere in the world, while Palestinians who share the same piece of the Earth are not free. Not all Jews of the diaspora–now or in the past–regard a Jewish state as central to their identity or safety.”

— Arthur Camins and Tina Bernstein-Camins

We grew into adulthood amidst the conflicts of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. We have direct, devastating familial experience of government-led efforts to silence dissent during the McCarthy period. As Jews, we learned vital lessons that we’ve carried through our lives into retirement and in how we raised our two children.

Lesson 1: The German and world silence as the Nazis attacked and eventually rounded-up and murdered Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, and dissidents taught us to never relinquish our power to speak up and stand against injustice, no matter how intransient the perpetrators or how dim the prospect for justice. During the civil rights movement, the segregationists argued that "You can't legislate people to love one another." Maybe not. However, in the face of pitched conflict, the moral and political power of direct action and legislative demands for new laws led to an end to egregious de jure discrimination. We know that no path to mutual empathy and respect, peace, democracy, and justice for all is possible while people are killing one another. In the face of the Hamas October 7 attack and Israel’s murderous attack on innocent Gazans, we call on our City Council to not remain silent.

“In the face of pitched conflict, the moral and political power of direct action and legislative demands for new laws led to an end to egregious de jure discrimination. ”

— Arthur Camins and Tina Bernstein-Camins

Lesson 2: Never again means never again for anyone. That is why some of our grandparents organized labor unions, fought for school integration, and marched on Washington in 1963. It is why we’ve followed in their footsteps. It is why we joined others to protest the U.S. horrific napalming of North Vietnam. It is why we've fought racism our whole adult lives. It is why we demand that our government cease its diplomatic and financial support for Israel's wholesale annihilation of Palestinians—entire families, children, educational institutions, mosques—anything that remains. We know deep in our marrow that Jews cannot be safe anywhere in the world, while Palestinians who share the same piece of the Earth are not free. Not all Jews of the diaspora–now or in the past–regard a Jewish state as central to their identity or safety.

Silence is the face of injustice is acceptance. We call on the Beacon City Council to stand up and pass a resolution to demand:

1) An immediate permanent ceasefire between Hamas and Israel;
2) An end to U.S. military aid to Israel;
3) A release of all Hamas-held hostages and Israeli-held political prisoners;
4) Condemnation of any killing of innocent civilians;
5) Condemnation of hatred against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, and Jews.

Arthur Camins and Tina Bernstein-Camins
Beacon, NY