Rose Asaf
Occupied Palestine ’48
Zochrot
As I began to explore in my last post, my role as an observer and participant in Palestine-related activism has raised complex questions about the tension between responsible, solidarity-based activism and effective, although irresponsible, activism.
I ended my last blog post with a brief analysis of the Israeli organization, Breaking the Silence, and their role as a foil to Zochrot in their centering of Israeli voices and their anti-occupation discourse. Regardless of what I perceive as a generally centrist and somewhat irresponsible approach to advocating for justice, Breaking the Silence faces intense social and institutional backlash in Israeli society.
As with Zochrot, Breaking the Silence’s attempted activities in schools are targeted by lawmakers and right-wing actors. Students are an obvious target audience for both Breaking the Silence, which seeks to expose them to the reality of military service before they enlist, and Zochrot, which seeks to educate the larger Israeli society about the Nakba. That said, it is in the interest of people opposed to this type of work to attempt to thwart their efforts.
Less than a week ago, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a law dubbed the “Breaking the Silence Law,” which effectively bans Breaking the Silence–and other organizations that cast the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in a negative light–from presenting in publicly-run schools. Similarly, a 2011 law, known as the Nakba Law, inhibits educators from working with Zochrot, as they risk losing public funding. While the Nakba Law does not ban teaching the Nakba in public institutions and actually only bars public institutions from commemorating the Nakba on Nakba Day, the legislation contributes to a greater culture of fear that hinders Zochrot’s work.
With similar forces pushing against Zochrot and Breaking the Silence, their ideological differences and compromises do not often take the opposition into account, as anything remotely critical of Israeli policies will be criminalized and stigmatized by the state and by right-wing Israelis. That said, rather than appealing to the center, anti-occupation organizations appeal to the center of the left; Zochrot does not make any appeals and instead tries to move the center to the left. However, ideological considerations aside, an important aspect that warrants examination is the material impact of various organizations’ work, and how ideologically diverse organizations and activists can converge on material work.