The movement in solidarity with Palestine has a sizable presence of progressive Jewish Americans. As an anti-Zionist rabbi, Brant Rosen has made it his life’s work to build religious and cultural community for other likeminded Jews whose solidarity with Palestine runs deep. The Marc Steiner Show returns with another edition of ‘Not in Our Name.’ Studio Production: Cameron GranadinoAudio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Marc Steiner: Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us as always. And this is another part of our episode of our series, Not in Our Name. We’re talking to the rabbi, Brant Rosen. He’s a rabbi at Tzedek Chicago, a consciously anti-Zionist congregation, founded in 2015. He’s a former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, co-founder and co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. He’s written in many journals. His newest book is Wrestling in the Daylight, a Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity, and we’ll be linking some of his articles in Tikkun and Truthout and the Jewish Forward that you’ll see on this site and can read for yourself. Brant, welcome. Good to have you with us. Brant Rosen: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Marc Steiner: When I read the pieces you’ve written, one of the things that really came out to me is the pain of what you write about. It’s not like, oh me, oh woe is me. The kind of pain I’m talking about is the pain of watching Israel do what it’s doing at this moment in terms of the occupation of the war and the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I think that that’s something that many people don’t really get when it comes to especially Jews who say, no, not in our name. Brant Rosen: Yeah, I would say that the pain, there’s primary pain and secondary pain I suppose. I think the primary pain is the pain that I feel for the Palestinian people and what they’re going through and what is being inflicted on them with and has been for decades, but I think in the past year plus now, just to unbearable, genocidal levels. I follow the news very, very carefully and I read every day about mass murder that’s going on in Gaza, in the West Bank, now in Lebanon, and that is a deep source of pain just as a human being, as a human being of conscience. I’m sure there are many who feel the same way, probably not enough, but there is a growth of solidarity of Palestinians around the world. I think secondarily as a Jew, not just as a human being, but as a Jew, I feel pain because a spiritual tradition that I cherish very deeply is being used as the pretense for this genocide and for this oppression and has been for many, many decades. And I mourn what is being done in my name as you put it, and also what is being done to a centuries-old, very venerable spiritual tradition that stands for ethical behavior and for promoting justice. Marc Steiner: I was going to wait until later to ask this, but since you said what you said, I’m going to talk about this now. A long time ago, in 1971, I wrote a poem called Growing Up Jewish. And in that poem there was a line that I wrote that said, how does the oppressed become the oppressor? And it’s something I’ve been wrestling with a long time, given kind of the very nationalistic and racist attitudes within my own family, other people I know, Israelis, other people in the Holy Land itself. And I’m just curious reflecting on that because it goes beyond just being Jews. It can be for any culture and how the oppressed end up being an oppressor as we have become in the Holy Land. Brant Rosen: Yeah, I mean, I think there are many ways to understand this. I think we know that on an individual level, people who suffer abuse will often become abusers themselves. That’s certainly true on the interpersonal level. And I think on some level, I think it works in the collective as well, a community that has gone through the trauma of oppression, especially the Jewish community that has lived through centuries of anti-Semitic oppression and violence, primarily in Europe at the hands of Christendom, and then later culminating in the Nazi’s genocide against them during World War II. I think you can understand that one mindset that can emerge from this experience is a never again to us, that we must do whatever we can to survive because we were almost wiped out, and that is a recipe for oppression. This attitude I think stems from trauma and is handed down generationally, generational trauma is something that’s very real, can turn people who have a legacy, a historical experience of oppression into oppressors themselves, especially when state violence becomes part of the mix. Right? Jews were a stateless people for most of our history, and once we had a nation and an army and the support of the international community behind us, much of that trauma, unfortunately tragically can be kind of metabolized into the kinds of things that were done to us we now do to others, namely the Palestinian people. Marc Steiner: I didn’t ask that question obviously, and you didn’t respond to the question that way either as an excuse or as a justification. Brant Rosen: No, it’s an explanation. Marc Steiner: Yes, an explanation of what we’re facing and why. And so I wonder, as a leader of part of the Jewish community, what you think we can do? How do you change hearts and minds, not just in Israel, but in the Jewish community about this war? I mean, on Yom Kippur, I spoke at a synagogue about what we’re talking about now. Response was mixed to say the least. But when you see the masses of younger Jews saying, no, this is not right. This is not who we are, not in our name. We can’t tolerate this. How does that organize and take place inside the Jewish community, and how is it approached to begin to change hearts and minds and the understanding in our own country? Brant Rosen: I’m not in the changing hearts and minds business. I’m not interested, I mean, I know that sounds harsh, I’m not interested in changing hearts and minds. I think it’s fruitless in my experience, and I’ve been doing this a long time on this particular issue, especially in the Jewish community. If we’re talking about changing individual hearts and minds, people are not ready to change until they’re ready to change, and nothing, I can continue to do what I do and others like the young people who you were referring to who are mobilizing in increasing numbers and massive numbers as part of the Palestine Solidarity movement. I think all of us are exemplars. We’re not doing this to change hearts and minds in the Jewish community, but we’re well aware that the Jewish community is watching us, and often they’re watching us in fury. They’re sickened by us. But I think in other cases it’s planting a little bit of a seed. They know we exist. They know what our message is. Maybe they might pay attention to parts of that message and park it away for the time being. But actively trying to change people’s minds who aren’t prepared to be changed I think is fruitless and a waste of energy and a waste of time and a waste of resources. I think we need to build a movement. We need to participate in the up building of the Palestine Solidarity movement and be a real Jewish presence in that movement, which we are doing. And that’s really the first order of business. If and when others in the Jewish community are ready to join us, hem muzmanim le’ashot et ze, as my grandfather used to say, they’re welcome to do it. But in the meantime, I’m not going to spend my time trying to convince parts and minds to think a way that they’re not prepared to think. They have to do it in their own time if they’re going to do it at all. But in the meantime, we can provide role models for them for a different Jewish way. Marc Steiner: So one more question in that realm. As somebody who’s spent a lot of time in his life as an organizer, community, union organizing, issue organizing over the years, does that have a role in organizing something within to say no about what’s going on in Palestine Israel? Brant Rosen: I think it’s a little different than union organizing. I think when we talk about building movements for, mass movements for communal justice, I mean I would compare it more to the Civil Rights movement perhaps, or the anti-Apartheid movement. In those cases, they weren’t going individual by individual as you would if you’re doing union organizing where you’re really building individual relationships through one-on-one. Let’s look at Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. If you read Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he was responding to liberal clergy in the South who were doing that kind of engagement. Those liberal clergy were trying to change hearts and minds in the South. These were white liberal clergy, and they had written a public letter and said, we are trying to address this through relationship building and engagement with these white supremacists, and please don’t come to Birmingham. We don’t need any outside agitators. We’ve got this. That’s who he was addressing in his letter. King had a different approach to organizing, and I think rightly so. He was saying that when it comes to transformative change, societal change, it’s not about trying to change individual hearts and minds. It’s about creating tension. It’s about going in the streets and saying, no, this is wrong. And that power, as Douglas said, power concedes nothing without a demand, and King said something similar in the letter. I think the kind of organizing we’re talking about, about building mass movement for transformative change in a real way is just a different model of organizing. I just don’t think it’s going to happen if we try to convince one person at a time. Marc Steiner: As somebody who is in the middle of all that, and demonstrations are taking place by Jews and others in this country against what’s happening at this moment to stop the slaughter, in terms of the work you’re doing in similar work, how do you see it taking effect in whole? How do you see it grabbing not just hearts and minds, but also for serious political change that turns this around, that stops the ability of the United States from continuing to arm Israel and allow them to destroy the Palestinian people? How do you think that happens? Brant Rosen: Well, historically it’s happened. It’s not happening the way we would hope it would happen right now after over a year of protest. But historically, I’m going to use another example, use the anti-Apartheid movement against the South African apartheid. That was a similar kind of popular grassroots movement that was very much a coalition of forces, and there was a palpable Jewish presence in that coalition. It was just the constant application of pressure and to build popular support until politically, the political elites could not ignore it, and it became a liability to continue that political support until that tipping point is reached, and that tipping point was reached. I remember it well, I’m sure you do too, that the United States was a strong ally of apartheid South Africa, and then the Black Congressional Caucus under the Reagan Administration introduced an anti-apartheid bill and Reagan vetoed it, and they overrode the veto, and then dominoes began to fall. It wasn’t only United States. United States was a prominent ally, but political support began to fall all around the world as a result of the boycotts, the protests, the economic pressure, the popular pressure. And that is, I think, the same playbook that we are hoping for this time around. I think it’s just a much, it’s been a much harder prospect. We have the popular support. I mean, if you look around the world, popular support for the Palestinian people is rising rapidly, and it’s happening in the international community too. Countries like Ireland and other European countries, certainly countries that you expect to support Israel, but now some of the Western countries as well. But the popular support is not really translating into that political tipping point. The United States support for Israel is still rock solid. Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t seem to matter. I think a lot of this has to do with commercial interests. I think the weapons industries are supporting the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party. Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, they’re basically funding this genocide, but profiting from it, I should say rather. United States is funding it. So it’s a daunting, daunting foe to be going up against and after over a year of doing this, we’re no closer to a ceasefire. In fact, we seem to be more closer to a larger regional war. So it’s been, I think it’s, within the movement, it’s raised lots of questions about tactics and about strategy and about why isn’t what we’ve been doing working and how do we need to shift. But in terms of raising awareness and popular support, I think Israel is about as isolated in the world as it’s ever been. Marc Steiner: You spent time going back and forth to Israel, and there’s always been, and it was different 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but there’s always been a movement within Israel against the occupation and the persecution and oppression of Palestinians. It’s always been there. Where do you see the state of that now? When you look at, I remember in some of the articles I’ve been reading that you wrote and also articles you refer to that I read, Israel has gone so far right. The kind of neo-fascist parties in Israel have gained so much strength, and what is it, almost 2 million Israelis, many of whom were on the left, have left Israel. They’re gone. So you’re left with this vacuum and this power of the right. So I’m curious, from your journeys inside, how do you think a movement develops that changes that from the inside? Brant Rosen: I don’t think the movement can change itself from the inside. I think it can only change because of external pressure applied from the outside. Israel is not going to save itself. I think right now, the left in Israel is a shambles. Marc Steiner: Yeah. Brant Rosen: What left there is is basically protesting for the return of the hostages, but not really actively protesting the genocide that Israel is committing. I think these are still Zionists. In other words, they consider themselves left liberal, but they’re still promoting a Jewish apartheid regime, a democracy for Jews, but not for non-Jews. The number of Israelis who are genuinely standing in solidarity with Palestinians is very, very minuscule. I know many of them well, in fact, and they are, what they’re up against is just hard to even fathom. Many of them are just indefatigable. They’re constantly going out to the West Bank to do productive presence in villages when settlers are attacking. They’re forming deep important relationships with Palestinians and Palestinian movements. But their numbers are just so minuscule and they’re up against it in a major way. As you say, many of them are leaving the country, and that’s increasing the rightward, the far rightward trend. But there are others who aren’t. I have a good friend, a very dear friend who is an Israeli member of the Palestine Solidarity movement, and she says, I don’t have a second passport. I can’t go anywhere. This is my home. And what they’re stuck with is really, is very, very hard. It doesn’t look good. Their crackdown on them is fierce. Marc Steiner: What do you mean? Talk a bit about that crackdown when you say it’s fierce. Brant Rosen: Well when they protest, the police come down hard on them violently. Many of them are jailed. I mean, look, I need to put it in perspective. It’s nothing compared to what Israel is doing to Palestinians, and it’s also nothing compared to what Israel is doing to Palestinian citizens of Israel either. There are examples that have been documented of Palestinian citizens of Israel just being jailed indefinitely for posting a Facebook post. So I want to keep perspective here that Israelis, while they are being violently treated by the authorities, whether it’s by the police or the border police or the Secret Service of Israel, it’s nothing like what they’re doing to Palestinians. But it means taking their physical safety in their own hands whenever they go out to protest or when they go out to work in protected presence in the West Bank. I know many of them who have broken bones and they’ve been knocked out and shot at. It’s not easy to be a Palestine Solidarity activist within Israel these days if it ever was. Marc Steiner: As the leader of an anti-Zionist synagogue, as someone who’s deeply involved in the movement, a huge part of your existence is inside that movement. So I’m curious where you think this movement goes in this country? Where does it go and what strategically can be done and are people doing to end the support of this kind of apartheid regime in Israel and its oppression of Palestinians, and where do you see it going? Brant Rosen: So are you referring to the Jewish movement specifically or the movement writ large? Marc Steiner: Well, the entire movement, yeah. Yeah. Brant Rosen: I hesitate to speak too much for the movement itself because I think Palestinians really need to speak for themselves, the ones who are leading the movement. I think there’s a sizable Jewish part of this coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, of which I’m a member and very active as a part of that, but it’s ultimately not up to me to dictate or to prognosticate what the tactics and the strategies should be for the movement going forward. That’s really for the Palestinian leaders themselves. As I said before, I think there is probably some reassessment going on given that so much effort has been put into protests, both the outside game and the inside game, I should say. I think what happened to the DNC and the inside game and the undecided movement being shut out of the DNC, I think was a huge wake-up call that many people who were working the inside game just had doors slammed in their face in a way that was something of a rude awakening. I don’t think we should stop trying to change things politically within the Democratic Party, but I think there may be some strategizing about how to work politically to recruit new candidates in different kinds of ways. I am not the best person to ask. There are other people like Beth Miller, who’s the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, who might have more to say on that particular subject. But something needs to shift and something needs to change, and I think much of it will be continuing to hammer our message home that we can’t stop and we can’t let up if for any other reason, but for the moral importance of it, that we’re living in a time of genocide. In a time of genocide you don’t stay silent. If there’s anything that we know as Jews and as people of conscience is that you don’t stay silent. When history judges us, we don’t want to be judged as ones who didn’t speak out when this happened. Marc Steiner: I agree completely. I mean, that is an important statement to make towards the end of the conversation together, at least this one today, because we do have to stand up. I’ve been inside the anti-occupation movement since 1968 and after trying to enlist in the Israeli army, and I didn’t get in there, thank God. Then you meet Palestinians and left-wing Israelis and the world shifted. But it seems in many ways that we are at a critical juncture more than I’ve ever seen before, just in terms of this war. The outright oppression of Palestinians on the West Bank being shot and put in prison. The 50,000 plus people who have been killed, maybe more, because of the ones who are stuck under the rubble, who aren’t being counted, and this very right-wing, Israeli government that’s also deeply imbued with the fundamentalist leadership, religiously fundamentalist leadership. It’s as if Jerry Falwell took over the United States of America. We are at a very critical place, and as someone who is really helping lead some of this, running a congregation in the middle of this movement, it seems to me, when I said organizing earlier, I was talking about how you take it beyond Palestinian Americans or Jewish Americans and get a larger population to understand what is being faced, what it’s doing to the Holy Land, what it’s doing to us. This has to be a much kind of larger movement to say, no, this has to stop. Brant Rosen: Yeah, I think that’s another piece of it too, I agree with this, what you’re saying, and I think another piece of it too is that the way people get their news, and thus the way they construct their narratives is very limited, especially around Israel. If you look at the mainstream media narrative on Israel, it’s just unbelievable to me that when I read the New York Times and the Washington Post and Watch, which I try not to do that often, but enough just to know what’s being said and the major networks, it’s the Israeli narrative right down the line. Just every single day there has been an article on the front page of the New York Times about the assassination of Sinwar from Hamas, but nothing about the fact that Israel has been massacring Palestinians in North Gaza and literally starving them to death according to a plan that was made public by the Israeli press. The killing of this one Palestinian person, but nothing about the mass murder that Israel is carrying out every single day. We need to lift that narrative up. We need to do a better job of letting people know what is going on because that media does exist. It exists on social media. All you have to do is listen to Democracy Now every morning. It will ruin your day. But I think we need to help people shift the narrative, or at least round out the very, very tiny, narrow narrative, corporate narrative that they’re being given through the mainstream media and that’s up to us. Marc Steiner: That is up to us. And I think in many ways, it’s up to people in the Jewish community like you, like me, like others, to lead that, to be at the forefront saying no, and putting it out there in the media, putting it out there in massive forums so people, because it could also be very easy for this movement to fall into anti-Semitism, which is always lurking below the surface of humanity. It doesn’t take much for it to bubble up. And that’s why even though we could be attacked as Judean Rats or whatever other people want to call us, that it’s time for us to be able to build something that really stands in the way. Brant Rosen: Yeah, and I think anti-Semitism is already starting to bubble up, but it’s not the anti-Semitism that Israel advocates and the state of Israel would have us believe. It’s not people standing in solidarity with the Palestinians. It’s MAGA anti-Semitism, it’s fascist anti-Semitism, it’s white supremacist anti-Semitism, and we’re seeing evidence of it all over the place. I mean, it’s coming right out of Trump’s mouth directly. That should also be a impetus for us to start to create real coalitions because there are lots of people who are being targeted by fascism in this MAGA moment, and we need to stand with one another. We need one another more than ever, and by being able to identify who is the common enemy and who is not is going to be really, really critical. Marc Steiner: No, we have to wind down. But that’s the point where I think that when we spoke earlier about organizing, that kind of organizing has to take place internally in the United States to pull that together, to pull people at that together, to show that there’s this movement that says, we’re not naive. We know what’s happening, and it has to stop. Brant Rosen: Yeah, absolutely. Marc Steiner: Well, I tell you, I do really look forward to staying in touch and putting together many more programs with you and really getting this to the fore because it has to come out there. We have to really, this is, as I said, after all these 50 plus years of fighting against the occupation, this is the direst moment I’ve ever seen. Brant Rosen: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. What we’re reading about is just utterly horrific. I will tell you, it’s resembling the Holocaust more and more, and I don’t say that lightly, but what’s going on in North Gaza right now is we need to shine the brightest light possible on what Israel is doing. Marc Steiner: It does. I’ll just say that when we say, when we make the Holocaust comparison, I always add, I’m not talking about the camps. I’m talking about 1933, 1935, this is how it begins. Brant Rosen: Right, and also to remind people that when we talk about genocide, the Holocaust is not the only model for genocide. There are many different forms of genocide. If you look at international law, it happens in many different ways through many different categories. And so just because something does not identically resemble the Holocaust does not mean it’s not a genocide, and it doesn’t mean it doesn’t share certain aspects with the Holocaust, mainly the dehumanization of another people and the attempt to rid one society of them because they’re seen as less than human. Marc Steiner: Well, let me say, I really appreciate you taking the time, and I do look forward to staying in touch. Thank you for taking the time with us today, Rabbi Brant Rosen. This has really been important, and I look forward to other conversations and building this conversation out and bringing more people in to see where we can take it across the country and across the globe. So thank you so much for the work you do. I appreciate it. Brant Rosen: Thank you, Marc. No, it’s my pleasure and my honor. Marc Steiner: Once again, thank you to Rabbi Brant Rosen for joining us today. Thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program and our audio editor, Alina Nelich and producer Rosette Suwali for making it all work behind the scenes and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Ideas, we’d love to hear them. Just write to me at [email protected], and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Rabbi Brant Rosen for joining us today and for the work that he does. And we’ll be bringing you more people like Brant Rosen and others together on this program to talk about what we can do collectively to stop the slaughter in Gaza. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.