JOIN’s Values When Engaging Israel and Palestine
Israel and Palestine are having a growing impact on justice work and organizing in our country. This impact is felt greatly by the Jewish community. For JOIN for Justice to continue to play its role as trainer of Jewish clergy and leaders organizing for justice in the United States, JOIN must take Israel and Palestine into account. When communities – including our own – and justice efforts are fractured, we cannot build the power needed to work for justice in this country. In addition, half of the world’s Jews – a diverse and multi-racial community – live in Israel. American Jews’ future is wrapped up with theirs – and is therefore wrapped up with the future of Palestinians, whose fate is inextricably linked to that of Israeli Jews.
This document clarifies the values that JOIN will turn to when discerning how to act when issues of Palestine and Israel impact our work and the work of leaders we train. JOIN will plumb these values when deciding how to train leaders to navigate times that Israel/Palestine impacts their organizing and the work for justice and how to make other decisions about our future path and work.
JOIN for Justice trains and supports organizers, clergy, and leaders across the American Jewish landscape to organize for justice in the United States. Its primary constituencies include: Jewish institutions and synagogues, clergy, and lay leaders; Jewish social justice organizations, leaders, and Jewish organizers; and Jews of Color and disabled Jews. Each part of this ecosystem brings its own resources and talent to the fight for justice in the United States, and racial justice in particular. The fight for justice requires the courage and strategic insight of Jewish social justice leaders and organizers, the power, relationships, and commitment of established Jewish communities, and the brilliance and intersectional wisdom of Jews who have too often been pushed to the margins. JOIN’s contribution to the work for justice rests on engaging all of these communities.
By definition, JOIN’s broad reach means that the people we train and work with hold a wide swath of strongly and sincerely felt beliefs about Israel and Palestine. People who agree on many justice issues in the United States disagree strongly about Palestine and Israel. JOIN’s effectiveness derives from our ability to train Jewish leaders and organizers with a wide variety of stances.
Notwithstanding the passionate views across the spectrum, it is not JOIN’s role in the justice ecosystem to tell people what to believe about the political future of Israel/Palestine or to issue statements about what should happen in the Middle East. We have always prioritized making an impact over issuing statements that would be purely symbolic, even on subjects that make up the core of our work. For example, even on an issue central to JOIN’s mission as racial justice, we have focused on supporting people to do the work rather than releasing statements. There are other ways, though, that JOIN can account for Israel and Palestine.
JOIN’s training can teach people how to respond when issues of Israel/Palestine impact domestic organizing or risk tearing apart movements. In addition, JOIN has an opportunity to provide more support and guidance to Jewish leaders and organizers for navigating Israel/Palestine in a way aligned with our common values when it inevitably comes up in the context of our work.
JOIN assembled a 12-person task force made up of JOIN alums from all of JOIN’s training programs who represent the broad programs, identities, and stances on Palestine and Israel that make up JOIN to help JOIN discern how to adapt to this moment. That task force surveyed an equally broad sample of 150 JOIN alums. This document is the result of their work.
JOIN holds four core values when it engages with how Israel and Palestine impact our organizing for justice, our communities, and broader justice movements. They are informed by the values that JOIN has held for many years.
JOIN’s long-held values
JOIN will draw on these commitments made in its past values statement:
- “Every person is worthy of dignity and respect.”
- “We believe in a more just world where there is political, social and economic equity and the fair distribution of resources, where everyone can live with dignity and are the authors of their own story. We dream of a world where we agree that we must reject any system that holds people down because of who they are, and where we all assert our interconnection and our belief that we are accountable to each other and want to build that world together.”
- “For JOIN, relationships always matter— when it comes to building power, when it comes to sustaining movements, when it comes to leadership, when it comes to connecting with individuals and groups who are different. Our training asserts that solidarity, successful strategy, powerful action, and societal change are predicated on relationships, and focuses on organizing that brings disparate communities together.”
- “Working across difference: The Talmud teaches us that “a prisoner cannot free themself from prison.” None of us can be free if we insist on acting alone. Both inside and outside Jewish communities, we work amidst diversity—of race, nationality, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, gender identification, religious observance, histories, political views, class, and many other distinctions. As a matter of principle, we seek to work with people who have a range of identities, experiences and beliefs. JOIN is committed to creating spaces for this wide diversity to interact.”
- “Always learn with curiosity and humility: We’re curious about what is and what might be. We must never be too certain of our own correctness.”
- “Tell our stories and listen to the stories of others.”
Core values to inform how JOIN will engage with questions of Palestine and Israel’s impact on our work
Relationship
When it comes to addressing Israel and Palestine’s impact on organizing, JOIN holds:
- It is important to remain in a relationship across differences and listen deeply, even when it comes to Israel/Palestine. There is, more often than not, room for people who disagree on those issues to work together on other issues – and challenge and learn from each other when it comes to Palestine and Israel.
- The Jewish community needs allies and relationships – it is not big enough to succeed or work for justice if it goes it alone. We also lean into our teaching that there are no permanent enemies. Since power is built on organized people, we have to lean into partnership.
- Jewish tradition teaches about “machloket le’shem shamayim,” conflict in the name of heaven. One opposite of conflict in the name of heaven is cancel culture. JOIN has much to teach on what constitutes conflicts in the name of heaven and those not in the name of heaven.
- There is much to learn from Jewish Israelis and Palestinians organizing in relationship for a shared future.
Collective liberation
When it comes to addressing Israel and Palestine’s impact on organizing, JOIN holds:
- Collective liberation is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but really living it out is hard. It’s not kumbaya, it’s struggle. It’s sometimes heartbreaking. It’s even harder within JOIN’s work once we strive to apply it in the real world across our constituencies and partners’ full spectrum of views. But sticking with it is necessary for our own integrity and effectiveness. We may not be able to fully realize this immediately – but we will stay on this path.
- Collective liberation for all peoples means that the future of Palestinians and Israeli Jews are intertwined.
- Collective liberation for all peoples leads to a commitment to equality, justice, safety, and thriving for all people in Israel and Palestine.
- JOIN’s constituencies will disagree on how to get to a future where both Jews and Palestinians thrive – but they share a commitment to that future.
- We will not proscribe policy positions on Israel and Palestine, but we will teach the importance of a future where both Palestinians and Jews thrive.
- Grief should not be bound by borders.
- There is no liberation in isolation – liberation requires coming together across differences, and organizing is the best way we know how to do it.
Valuing all human life, and valuing it all equally
When it comes to addressing Israel and Palestine’s impact on organizing, JOIN holds:
- We must value all human life equally, and believe that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. That includes both Palestinians and Israelis – equally. We reject the assumption that Jewish safety entails devaluing Palestinian life or that the cause of liberation requires devaluing Jewish Israeli life.
- People are never disposable and should never be sacrificed for a cause. Innocent lives lost should always be mourned.
- We will teach against the dehumanization of any people as a tactic or ideology.
The interconnectedness of all Jewish people
When it comes to addressing Israel and Palestine’s impact on organizing, JOIN holds:
- We are a Jewish organization that embraces both Judaism’s particularistic value of peoplehood and its universalist value of the imperative to create a better, more just world. We believe that our Judaism guides us to a commitment to all Jews and to all of humanity.
- The fate of all Jewish people is intertwined and we are invested in their welfare. None of us are ever disposable.
- That means we are invested in the 50% of the Jewish population that lives in Israel that is the most multi-racial Jewish community in the world and that, itself, grapples with issues of justice.
- It also means that we are invested in all of the Jews in the United States. Established Jewish institutions are a key part of our constituency, and when those of us in those communities feel pain, we all have a responsibility to recognize it. And, Jewish activists are also a key part of our constituency – all of us should feel and honor what those of us in those communities feel, too. We are not served by turning our backs on each other.
- Loving a group of Jews does not require agreeing with them on everything. Sometimes, it entails challenging each other. The Talmud teaches that there is no rebuke without love and no love without rebuke.
