manu

Chicago IJAN co-sponsored and participated in a large demonstration against a fundraiser for the Israel “Defense” Forces.

During the High Holy Days, Jews observe a ritual called tashlich, in which we symbolically cast our sins into a moving body of water. This year, Chicago IJAN gathered to cast away the sins of the occupation of Palestine, the colonial Zionist project, and the complicity of the U.S. government and U.S. Jewish community in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people. Together, we acknowledged these wrong-doings, and recommitted ourselves to making them known and making them end. Using materials from AJJP in Philadelphia, we conducted the ceremony at rush hour across from the Israeli consulate, at one of the busiest intersections in Chicago, on a bridge over the Chicago River.

{image_1}

{image_2} 

{image_3} 

{image_4} 

{image_5} 

{image_6} 

{image_7} 

Chicago IJAN co-sponsored and participated in the highly successful counter-protest to Ehud Olmert’s speech at University of Chicago. Click here to check out the amazing video of this event. This action received substantial media attention both locally and within Israel.

We marched to celebrate dyke, queer, and trans visibility and resilience. The Dyke March took place in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood which has a fierce history of immigrant, labor, anti-gentrification and queer activism – we drew connections between the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the struggles being fought by companer@s in Pilsen against displacement, gentrification, and oppressive border and immigration control.

Supper Club Fundraiser for Viva Palestina featuring poems, reflection, and a reading by our own Noah Lepawsky from his play about his time in Palestine. Viva Palestina succeeded in its goals to:

1) Distribute necessary medical aid to the Palestinian people,

2)Highlight the inhumanity of the continued siege of this devastatedarea, and

3) Amplify the shift in public policy and growing solidarityof people around the world towards greater support of the Palestinianstruggle.

Chicago IJAN organized a counter-demonstration at the Chicago Walk with Israel. Our lively demonstration countered the idea that there is only one Jewish voice, a Zionist one.

{image_1}

{image_2}

{image_3}

From Jewish immigrant labor organizers in New York City, to people working for social justice in Europe and Latin America, to the Black Panthers– many organizations have used study as an integral part of building movements. Chicago IJAN has worked to build on these legacies, using political education to inform our anti-Zionist and Palestine solidarity work. Our ten-session study group began in September and will go until mid-January. We hold meetings every two weeks for two hours at a time. The material includes academic articles, poetry, creative nonfiction, film, and art work. Group members take turns facilitating. Our study group has been an overwhelming success, and have about 10 core participants. Plans are percolating for future continuations and new versions of the study group!

Members of Chicago IJAN participated in a picket at the performance of the Bat Sheva Dance Company, a group sponsored by the Israeli government. The demonstration’s theme was “Don’t dance on Gaza’s graves.” This action was in solidarity with the call for a cultural boycott of Israel, a campaign that has drawn compelling parallels between the need to boycott Israeli-supported events and the boycott against South African government-sponsored groups during Apartheid in South Africa.

IJAN organizers officially launched the Campus and Student Network this past September, which will be a space for connecting Jewish anti-Zionist activism across campuses, as well as sharing news, resources, and discussion.

We hope to expand the student network as a place to connect andunite Jewish anti-Zionist, anti-racist, anti-imperialiststudent activists doing Palestine solidarity organizing. The network will be aplace for building the leadership of campus organizers working onBoycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaigns, standing in defense ofacademics critical of Zionism/Israel, and expanding anti-Zionistpolitical analysis and activism for ourselves and within ourorganizations.

Similarly, the network will be a forum for Jewishanti-Zionist student activists to share news, create and distributeresources, strategize and discuss the implications of doinganti-Zionist work as Jewish students. At this point, IJAN studentorganizers are focused on making the US anti-Zionist Convening inDetroit a space to bring anti-Zionist Jewish student activists togetherto discuss and build the network into its potential, so we’re intent onpublicizing the Convening to as many student activists as possible. Ifyou would like to get involved in Campus and Student Network organizingfor the US anti-Zionist Jewish Convening, please contact us atstudents@ijsn.net!

 From November 20-22, IJAN organizers attended the Campus BDS Conferenceat Hampshire College, the first US campus to divest from Israel.The conference was an inspiring gathering of students from more than 50colleges and universities, and Palestine solidarity movement activistsfrom across the U.S., working together to expand and solidify Boycott,Divestment, and Sanctions work on our campuses and in ourcommunities.  Hampshireorganizers shared lessons from their divestment campaign and looked tothe work ahead of them to maintain divestment and grow the explicitcommitment of the campus to Palestinian liberation. At the conference,IJAN organizers facilitated severalrequested workshops.