Bill Ayers

Teaching Art in Prison

Teaching Art in Prison

Monday, December 4 at 7 pm

https://www.goodmantheatre.org/show/revolutions/

The genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza—preannounced by officials in the Israeli government and leaders of the Israeli Defense Forces—is underway, and that murderous reality has focussed the world’s attention and created an essential and necessary urgency here in the US. Everyone of good will is united in calling for a Ceasefire Now! We have a unique responsibility here because without unrestrained USeconomic and military resources and support, complicity and arms, Israel could not have created the open-air prison that is Gaza, could not have constructed and expanded settlements in the West Bank, could not have built an apartheid system designed to disempower and ultimately disappear the Palestinian people. Salute to Jewish Voice for Peace for exercising free, fearless speech and putting their bodies on the line, and salute to Palestine Legal for fighting back on behalf of those who are targeted, suppressed, doxed, and punished for speaking truth to power. Gaza is this generation’s VietNam. Speak up! Act out!And yes, make your holiday with family uncomfortable by asking everyone explicitly to know the facts and face reality.

Jewish Voice for Peace and PARCEO Explainer

What is antisemitism?

Antisemitism is grave, serious, and totally incompatible with movements for collective
liberation, and we stand against it in any form.
Antisemitism is discrimination, targeting, violence, and dehumanizing stereotypes directed at
Jews because they are Jewish. In the past decade alone, some examples of the horrifying white
nationalist antisemitic violence we have witnessed include the murder of 11 congregants at the
Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; synagogue shootings at a Chabad synagogue in
Poway, California in 2019; Nazi symbols at the January 6, 2021 US capitol insurrection,;
antisemitic hate groups and rallies; and the desecration of cemeteries. We have also seen the
use of Jewish stereotypes and conspiracy theories as part of racist ideologies. Visibly
observant Jews have been especially harassed and harmed.
We understand antisemitism as historically contextual, situated amidst interrelated conditions
and struggles. That’s why we fight antisemitism within, and as part of, broader struggles against
oppression and for collective liberation. For instance, white nationalist violence has been on the
rise in the U.S., fueled by anti-immigrant and racist manifestos, sentiments, and conspiracy
theories, such as the great replacement theory. Jews are among the targets of white nationalist
violence along with Black people, immigrants, Muslims, and trans and queer people, among
others. Our safety is bound together with the safety of all people, and none of us is free if we
aren’t all free.
Attacking Jewish individuals or communal spaces for being Jewish, or blaming the Jewish
people for the actions of the Israeli government, is antisemitic and unacceptable and flatly
contrary to the values of our movement.. Our movement for justice in Palestine stands firm as
an anti-racist movement, which of course includes opposing all acts of antisemitism.

What is anti-Zionism?

Being an anti-Zionist means opposing the political ideology of Zionism, which resulted in the
expulsion of 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their land and homes. It means standing
against the creation of a nation-state with exclusive rights for Jews above others on the land.
Anti-Zionism supports liberation and justice for the Palestinian people, including their right to
return to their homes and land. Anti-Zionists believe in a future where all people on the land live
in freedom, safety and equality.
Zionism suggests Jews require a supremacist nation state to answer the real question of
Jewish safety. We believe that everywhere in the world, Jews belong and should be safe. Real
safety does not grow from guns, checkpoints, walls and a police state. True safety is built
through forging real solidarity with all those fighting for a more liberated world.
Why is it dangerous to confuse antisemitism with anti-Zionism?
At a time when white supremacists and white nationalists take advantage of this moment to
sow confusion and promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism, misstating what
antisemitism is harms all of our work for justice and endangers our communities.
Opposition to the political movement of Zionism and/or the policies of the state of Israel is no
different from criticism of any other political ideology or policies of any other nation state, such
as the settler colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy at the foundation of the United
States.
But the Israeli government, US government, and anti-Palestinian organizations run concerted
campaigns to re-define and mis-state the meaning of antisemitism, aiming to falsely conflate it
with criticisms of Israel or Zionism. They do this so the Israeli government can avoid
accountability for its policies and actions that violate Palestinian human rights.
Conflating antisemitism with opposition to the Israeli government’s policies or ideology is
especially dangerous right now. Supporters of Palestinian rights are losing their jobs, being
doxxed and harassed online, being attacked physically, and facing congressional censure for
trying to save lives.
In fact, the agenda of white nationalists, war profiteers, and anti-Palestinian organizations has
nothing to do with protecting Jewish people, and all to do with harming our intersectional
movements for justice.
War mongers try to make it hard, but it’s actually really clear and simple: Fighting for Palestinian
freedom and against antisemitism are intertwined. We are deeply committed to both.

For a full training on antisemitism from a framework of collective liberation, contact PARCEO at
antisemitismcurriculum.org

We are living in perilous, frustrating, horrendous times. It’s hard to do anything — brush your teeth, take a walk, read a book — without remembering that now, right now, bombs are falling on families in Gaza, bombs made in USA. As a child of the Vietnam war era, I can’t help that familiar feeling. What can we do? It isn’t enough. And . . . what will we tell our grandchildren we were doing while the bombs were falling?

Clearly the two periods, the two conflicts, the two dilemmas are different in so many ways. But there are disturbing similarities — some of which are infuriating, and some that might give us reason for hope. Let me explain.

First there is the dreadful logic of counterinsurgency warfare — the thinking of the rich military powers that hold total air superiority and very little on the ground. “We are not against the civilians,” US generals in Vietnam declared, “but we have to make them suffer enough that they will kick out the bad guerrillas who are the reason the bombs are falling.” This crime that claimed to be a “strategy” justified the cowardly practice of a ten-year pounding of an air war — which inevitably had the opposite effect. At Ben Tre in 1968, an American major declared, “we had to destroy the town to save it.” That’s the logic of Israel’s war on Gaza, a preannounced genocide.

Another parallel is the dehumanization of those being bombed. The comments of the Israeli War Minister that “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” is only one example among many. I well remember being in US army boot camp we were subjected to a regular diet of racist “othering” of Asians as “gooks, slopes, mama-sans.” American General William Westmoreland declared, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.” Biden and Netanyahu and all their supporters think nothing of the children being blown up, trapped under rubble, burned with phosphorous bombs. They are just the cost of policy.

Which brings me to the next horror of the logic of imperialism. It is the delusion that military might, the ability to project violence, to tear bodies apart, is how a war is won. American generals have always been frustrated. “We won every battle; we beat the enemy every time we faced them.” But the truth is that the outcome of conflict only depends partly on military force; equally important are the moral, psychological, and political dimensions. The US inflicted unspeakable military suffering on the Vietnamese people but was steadily losing the war. Israel’s isolation, the exposure of the horrors of the war and occupation, do more damage than bombs.

Needless to say, all of these blunders, costing hundreds of millions of lives, making billions of dollars for the war industries, destroying thousands of veterans’ lives, were repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the dead-end logic of imperialism.

On the other side, what do we learn from the Vietnam era about movement building and resistance to the war? We tend to look back on that period with a single lens — there was a war, everyone agreed that the draft was terrible, there was a huge anti-war movement. But it was not such a straight line.

Today it can be frightening to see the kinds of assaults and repression people face for opposing the ethnic cleansing and bombing in Gaza. Campus groups are banned, job offers are withdrawn, people are fired, lives are threatened. Social media shadow-bans criticism of the war, university presidents bow to demands from ultra-Zionists. In Israel it is worse. Anyone voicing any doubts about apartheid or the war faces firing and often beatings.

But remember that back then the powerful did everything they could to squash opposition to the American war in Vietnam. In 1965, 70% of Americans supported the war. Dissent was met with repression — imprisonment, firing, and slander. Protesters were called anti-patriotic, sullying the memories of those Americans who were killed. The government subpoenaed membership lists of anti-war organizations. The press, from local outlets to the New York Times, ridiculed the movement as spoiled and misguided kids.

In time, yes, Americans’ disgust with the war grew. In time, the heart of the anti-war movement became the soldiers themselves and the veterans who had come back from the horror and were eager to expose the war crimes that were rampant. But it took courage and constant organizing to reach that point.

In many ways, the exposure of the criminal enterprise of the occupation has proceeded more rapidly, the shift in understanding the colonial project has been broad and deep. The self-proclaimed fascists in Israel like finance minister Bezalel Smotrich can continue to spin their fantasy of domination. But the ground is crumbling under them.

As people around the world come to understand the reality of occupation and mass murder, the possibility of a just solution seems more attainable than ever.

When Biden loses to the fascist in 2024, you can count on the establishment Democrats to blame Rashida Tlaib and the progressives—and they will be wrong. The Democrats are doing this to themselves: enabling every move Israel makes with knee-jerk predictability; fanning a cold war in Asia; engaging a proxy war in Europe; and most despicably, embracing a pre-announced genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Front page NYT today:”US Urging Israel to Limit Gaza Fatalities.” There’s a low bar. Subtitle: “Ally Is Advised on How To Spare Civilians.” In terms worthy of the Onion we learn that Blinken/Biden are recommending dropping “smaller bombs.”
Stop the Genocide!
Cease Fire Now!