“Why I Support BDS”
Published in the New Haven Register April 30, 2017
The Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians, and the behavior of some Israeli settlers, do not reflect the Jewish moral code by which I was raised. Rather, they mirror the actions of the oppressors of European Jewry particularly at the turn of the 20th century and in the 1940s: violent pogroms by Russian cossacks drove my grandparents to seek refuge in New Haven in 1905; during WWII, governments conducted roundups of Jews in all German-occupied territories, ghettoizing, deporting, and murdering until the allied countries prevailed.
My family celebrated the formation of the Jewish state in 1948, yet at that time and to this day Palestinians were forced from their land into refugee camps – ghettos – their rights and livelihoods severely curtailed, their lives continuously threatened and taken. The ironies are tragic: many descendants of European Jews have themselves become oppressors; having routed Palestinians and destroyed their homes, Israelis claim their own existence is threatened by those they have banished and marginalized.
My Jewish upbringing requires me to stand up and resist injustice, not to perpetrate it. I support BDS as a means to protest nonviolently. Speaking truth to power, so-called “fringe” groups like JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) and PEP (Promoting Enduring Peace) recognize that only with equality for Palestinians – the other Semites – is a just, ethical and enduring peace possible.
— Susan Klein New Haven
