Applying Racial Justice Principles To Israel-Palestine: A guide for organizations committed to DEI
Alt Text: A group protest in support of Palestine. A sign reads: "Our Freedom is Palestine Freedom." Photo: Daniel Pelaez Duque via Unsplash
Israel's unfolding genocide in Gaza is testing foundations' and nonprofits' public commitments to DEI. If our sector is serious about racial equity, then institutions have to apply and act on racial justice principles consistently, including with Israel-Palestine. This article explores some of these principles and ways organizations might apply them around this issue.
Context
As of this writing, Israel has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza, injured over 85,000, and left virtually all of Gaza's population in a state of humanitarian disaster since October 7th. Multiple human rights organizations have concluded that Israel is committing grave human rights violations, up to and including genocide. Even so, American politicians, university administrators and even foundation and nonprofit leaders are actively shielding Israel from accountability. Israel, meanwhile, relies on the United States for the overwhelming majority of its military and political support. Because the United States plays an outsized role in enabling Israel's actions, American social sector organizations have an outsized responsibility to disrupt that enablement.
A Note On Terms
In this piece, I use the term “Zionists” to refer to people and organizations who are invested in Israel as a Jewish ethnostate. There is nothing antisemitic about this. Zionism is a political ideology tied to but distinct from religious identity, the same way Christian Nationalism is distinct from Christianity. Many Zionists are not Jewish – in fact, some of the most ardent Zionists in the United States are evangelical Christians. When I am talking about Jewish people, I will say so explicitly and be clear about which Jewish people I am referring to. Similarly, when I say "Israel," I am talking about the State of Israel and not The Jewish People (of which I am one) as a whole.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about equity principles we can apply.
1. Centering People Most Impacted
There is no scenario in which Palestinians are not the people most impacted by Zionism.
There is no scenario in which Palestinians – forcibly removed from their land, resisting a genocide, living in exile or under military occupation, and enduring ongoing abuse and land theft – are not the people most impacted by Zionism. Zionists will claim that the Jewish People are the ones most impacted by the current conflict because of historic (and ongoing) antisemitism. This is a false equivalence that weaponizes millennia of Jewish oppression against Palestinians living under Israeli oppression.
Centering Palestinians includes actions like:
Heeding Palestinian voices (here are just a few of many) and believing Palestinian descriptions of their own lived experiences
Rejecting solutions that don’t prize and protect Palestinian life, freedom, and self-determination, and
Supporting and funding initiatives led by and centering Palestinians.
2. Root Cause Analysis
Centering racial justice requires social sector organizations to reject supremacy in all its forms.
Zionist advocates will have you believe that Israel is an innocent, peace-seeking nation defending itself against terrorism (we could have a whole separate conversation about how the label “terrorism” is used to legitimize some forms of violence and de-legitimize others). This argument obfuscates the core reality of the situation: The root cause of the current crisis is Zionist occupation of the lands now known as Israel and Palestine.
The push for a Jewish ethnostate, once fringe even among Jews and sharply critiqued by Jewish luminaries including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, was clear from the start that it was a colonial enterprise with little to no regard for Palestinian life. From the slogan “a people without land, a land without people” to planned, forcible displacement of Palestinians, the Zionist movement was and continues to be transparent about its core motivation: Control of land “from the river to the sea.” The occupation is not an expression of Jewishness, but rather of Jewish Supremacy. Centering racial justice requires social sector organizations to reject supremacy in all its forms.
Here are just a few ways social sector organizations can hold a focus on root causes around this issue:
Support organizations and (maybe even join) coalitions pressuring Israel to immediately end its genocidal campaign in Gaza
Reject "both-sides" rhetoric or initiatives that misrepresent Israel's disproportionate power to halt violence and create more equitable conditions in the region
Divest from organizations and companies that do business with the State of Israel, especially the Israeli Military and in the Israeli settlements.
3. Intersectionality
Zionists leverage the proximity of some Jews to whiteness in order to protect and advance the colonization of Palestine.
Jewish safety in the US and many other parts of the world today is deeply influenced by the intersection of Jewishness and racial identity. Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of European descent) in the US, including me, have largely been assimilated into whiteness, albeit incompletely and conditionally. At the same time, Jews of Color, including Middle Eastern, North African, Palestinian and Black Jews, experience both racial oppression in general and erasure as Jews, including within mainstream American Jewish communities.
Zionists leverage Ashkenazi proximity to whiteness in order to protect and advance the colonization of Palestine. Zionist organizations including the Anti-Defamation League are redefining antisemitism to include criticism of Zionism and then using that distorted definition to inflate accounts of antisemitism and claim that Jews, not Palestinians, are under attack. This is straight out of the “White Tears” playbook, in which white people called out for racism claim they are being attacked and then weaponize their distress to garner sympathy and punish those who challenge their racism. Let’s be clear – when nonprofits lose their funding, staff lose their jobs, or students are suspended for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza, they are being Karened.
Ways that social sector organizations can practice intersectionality on this issue include:
Acknowledge the connections between Israel-Palestine and the racial justice issues your organization focuses on
Support and protect staff, grantees and partners who act in solidarity with Palestine, and
Challenge efforts to weaponize racial justice concepts against Palestinian human rights (e.g., pinkwashing)
3a. Interlocking Systems of Oppression
Israel is being built on stolen land acquired through genocide and ethnic cleansing. America is no different.
An Israeli relative of mine recently said to me: “I don’t know how you can criticize Israel – look at America.” Contrary to my relative’s intent, this argument raises an important point. Israel is being built on stolen land acquired through genocide and ethnic cleansing. America is no different. Confronting settler colonialism in Israel requires confronting settler colonialism in the United States.
Let’s get more concrete about this. Joe Biden has repeatedly said that “if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one,” referring to the military and strategic advantages it affords America in the Middle East. Meanwhile, when the NYPD breached a window at Columbia University to arrest student protestors, they used a Bearcat made in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, just two towns away from me. Military suppliers and contractors remain economic anchors in communities like mine while also creating economic interests to further militarize police and perpetuate war around the world.
Social sector organizations should be recognizing and challenging systems that enable the oppression of both Palestinians and of marginalized communities here at home. This includes the prison industrial complex, ongoing repression of Native Peoples, suppression of voting rights, and much more.
Racial equity cannot be a selective practice. If we truly believe that “none of us are free until all of us are free,” our institutions must apply intersectional race equity principles consistently across the issues we face. Anything less is performative allyship.
A Note To Readers
Many of you reading this may already be struggling to name and interrupt racism, misogyny and other modes of oppression in your organizations. If your institution will hear and receive arguments like the ones made above, great. If not, your institution may be showing you who they are and what they truly value. If you are struggling with your institution’s response to this or other equity issues and looking for support, here are some places you can go (in no particular order):
CHANGE Philanthropy and its wonderful member organizations
Loretta Ross Calling In Conversations
About Tamir Novotny
Tamir Novotny is Principal of Ahimsa Strategies, which works to build stronger containers for race equity work. Tamir is a queer white man of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, born in Israel and raised in the American Northeast.
