The world as it could be
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- Published on Friday, 06 May 2016 09:00
- Written by editor
Dear PAOV,
Every morning I start my day reading a round-up of news related to Israel/Palestine. Demolitions, the IDF, and the ongoing humiliation of Palestinians dominate the headlines.
But there’s also often - increasingly - truly beautiful reports from the frontlines of our movement. Palestinians bravely asserting their rights, grassroots BDS victories, the courage of Israeli refuseniks, and the work of JVP chapters and members across the country.
Just one recent example: during Passover last week, JVP members held seders from coast to coast to imagine, commemorate, and recommit to every step of every journey to freedom. For ourselves, and for all people.
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Jewish Voice for Peace - Tucson hosted the first ever binational, bilingual Passover solidarity seder in Nogales, on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. The seder weaved traditional Passover rituals with modern stories of oppression, struggle, and liberation, and created a new bilingual Haggadah centred around stories of migration and cross-border solidarity.
Laurie Melrood, JVP member and one of the ritual leaders of the seder recounts:
“As it had been for generations, International Street/Calle Internacional, became one broad boulevard again for a few hours on Friday. Forty five people from human rights groups across the region sat at long tables opposite one another celebrating a latter-day border version of the Passover story.
The street, reminiscent of today’s Bethlehem and neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is now an extended vacant stretch of dirt divided by a 25-foot wall with houses and gardens on either side. The wall construction of heavy rusted raw steel slats allowed us to view one another during the ceremony. Border Patrol officers, surveillance towers in the distance, stood guard at the top of a hill on the US side and occasionally rumbled by in their 4x4s.
The seder emphasized the present day flight from endemic poverty and violence via the narratives of those who experienced it personally. Response from the attendees was often intense and emotional. All resonated greatly with our Haggadah’s message that "No one is truly free if others are not also free/Nadie está verdaderamente libre si otros no están tambien libres."
There are deep connections between Israel’s enormous investment in suppression and surveillance technology on their own border with Palestine, and with the Department of Homeland Security on both the US and Mexico sides. The results in human suffering are incalculable.
All those who shared our Passover table Friday evening, have struggled for years, some for decades, to assure that the world does hear the border voices, the Palestinian voices, that those holding the power to make the agreements to enslave and oppress, would have us forget.”
Every day brings more than its share of stark reminders about how far we are from a world of liberation. JVP is a home for me because of our ability to name and face the violence of the world as it is, while collectively visioning and practicing the world as it could be.
But to win a world without militarized borders & walls, our movement needs to grow. This month, we have a goal of strengthening our struggle with 1,800 new and renewing members of Jewish Voice for Peace.
433 people have already stood with us. Can you be one more?
Onwards,
Jesse
Jesse Yurow
Organizing Associate
All this month, we're working to build our power by bringing 1,800 new and renewing members into our movement. Membership is just $18 -- and we welcome people of all faiths and none, across the U.S. and around the world. Not sure if you're a JVP member? Click here to find out.
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