I. RECLAIMING JEWISH VOICES OF CONSCIENCE ON ISRAEL-PALESTINE

In response to violence and repression against Jews in Europe in the late ninetieth century, prominent Jews challenged the prevailing idea that Jewish safety required a homeland of their own in historic Palestine. The Nazi Holocaust galvanized world sympathy and support for this idea, known as political Zionism. The state of Israel was established in 1948.

Before, during, and after the establishment of Israel, Jewish notables such as Ahad Ha 'Am, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Albert Einstein expressed grave concern about the impact of a Jewish state on the indigenous population of historic Palestine. Their dissent centered on upholding the longstanding Jewish ethical tradition of justice, equality, and freedom.

Jewish safety never required exclusive Jewish sovereignty in historic Palestine, where for centuries Palestinian Christians, Jews, and Muslims had made their homes and thrived. Yet with deliberate and well-documented intention to create a demographic majority, including supremacy over the indigenous Palestinian population, Israeli forces destroyed Palestinian villages, expelled or "transferred" the Palestinian population, and eventually repopulated the land with Jewish-only settlements, making return for Palestinians impossible. Indigenous Palestinians refer to this period as the Nakba, which means the Catastrophe in Arabic. Over time, Israel’s expansionist policies of conquest, militarism, and occupation created an infrastructure of systemic injustice. Palestinians responded with violent and non-violent resistance.

Jews of conscience spoke out about these injustices committed in their names as Jews. Part I chronicles and seeks to reclaim, affirm, and reckon with early voices of dissent through 2008.