As Rabbi Alissa Wise scrolls through social media, her feed
is littered with videos of dead Palestinian children, parents holding their
lifeless bodies with screams caught in their throats and eyes sunken with
grief.
Like millions around the world, she has been haunted by the
gruesome scenes flooding out of Gaza, where civilians have endured more than
two weeks of an Israeli siege and bombing campaign that has collapsed homes,
destroyed vital infrastructure and sparked a humanitarian crisis.
The airstrikes have killed more than 4,600 Palestinians so
far, including an estimated 1,900 children, and wounded at least 14,000 others,
according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Another 1.4 million
people have been internally displaced, the United Nation’s Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
“It’s wretched. I wake up every single morning with tears in
my eyes, rage in my heart and I channel it into action,” Wise, a rabbinical
council member with Jewish Voice for Peace, told CNN. “My coping mechanism is
to yell into the void, yell into the halls of Congress.”
She feels the same grief and horror over Hamas’ surprise
attack in Israel on October 07, when the militant group brutally killed more
than 1,400 people, including civilians and military personnel, and abducted
over 200 others, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel says its mission in Gaza is to root out and destroy
Hamas, which governs the small territory. But it is the 2.2 million
Palestinians living there, unable to escape, who are bearing the brunt of the
attacks.
It is these lives that Wise and other Jewish American peace
activists are mobilizing to save with their calls for an urgent ceasefire.
Lately, thousands of Jews and allies marched on Capitol
Hill, where they carried Palestinian flags and rallied in support of
Palestinian rights, while Wise led a smaller sit-in with hundreds of activists
inside one of the Capitol buildings.
The action was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and
IfNotNow, two of the largest US Jewish groups calling for a just and peaceful
resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At the sit-in, led by two dozen rabbis, they blew shofars, a
traditional horn made from ram’s horn and used in Jewish rituals, and shared
testimonials from Palestinians suffering in Gaza. They wore shirts that read,
“Not in our name,” and unfurled banners demanding a ceasefire.
The activists also called on the US government to stop
providing aid to Israel, which Wise says “encourages and funds the mass murder
of Palestinians.”
Wise was one of more than 355 activists, mostly Jewish,
arrested during the event, according to Jewish Voice for Peace spokesperson
Sonya Meyerson-Knox.
Thousands more Jewish Americans continue to gather in
protests across the United States, calling on President Joe Biden and other
elected officials to rein in Israel – arguing more civilian deaths is not the
answer to Hamas’ deadly attack.
“As Jewish people whose ancestors went through the Holocaust,
when we hear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant use words like ‘the children of darkness’ and ‘human animals’ to
describe Palestinians, we feel the resonances of that in our bones,” said
IfNotNow political director Eva Borgwardt, referring to recent comments made by
the Israeli officials.
“We know exactly where that language leads, and we are here
to stop what they clearly intend to be a genocide. We will come to the doors of
our lawmakers; we will be at the doors of our lawmakers for as long as it
takes.”
Moments after Rabbi Wise was released by authorities, she
learned one of her closest Palestinian friends lost his entire family in an
Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
“I fell in a puddle on the floor. It was a very sobering
reminder of exactly what we’re trying to prevent,” Wise said. “It’s critical
for American Jews to stand up and say, ‘never again’ is never again for
anyone.” The slogan has been a rallying cry of the Jewish community since World
War II.
“If we’re going to learn anything from history, it’s that
the things that we stand for are for everybody, no exception, and that includes
Palestinians,” she added. “We’re pulling back on organizations that suggest
Jewish safety must come at the expense of Palestinian life. We say, it’s not
either-or, it’s all of us or none of us.”
In addition to organizing civil actions, Jewish Voice for
Peace and IfNotNow are also educating communities through digital media,
engaging with journalists, organizing petition drives and coordinating
telephone and email campaigns aimed at elected officials and news
organizations. Much of their work is done in partnership with smaller Jewish
groups, as well as Arab, Muslim and Palestine solidarity activists.
Jewish Voice for Peace, founded in 1996, describes itself as
the largest Jewish pro-Palestinian organization in the world, with over 440,000
members and supporters across 30 states. IfNotNow also has a large US network,
with tens of thousands of Jewish members who have taken direct actions to
protest the Israeli occupation since 2014.
“The work of our movements over the past nine years and
decades of work by our predecessors has been preparing all of us to meet this
horrific, genocidal moment,” Borgwardt said.
“Stopping this war
feels like the biggest test of our lifetimes. We understand how we got here and
that to end this nightmare and achieve true safety for Palestinians, Israelis
and Jews, we need to end decades of occupation and apartheid and fight for
equality, justice and a thriving future for all.”
