It has come to our attention that the French-Israeli lawyer, G.W. Goldnadel, has threatened to take the decolonial activist Houria Bouteldja to court for having written ‘it is not possible to be innocently Israeli’ in a text condemning antisemitism and discussing how it is produced and spread. Some interpreted this as fallacious and others incorrectly deemed it to be essentialising. From the vantage point of the anticolonial literary and political tradition, the application of this expression to Israelis has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious essence but is produced by collective social and power relations. As anticolonialist Jews of different nationalities, including Israeli, we agree with Bouteldja’s words which speak for us as it did for several generations of anticolonialists before us. It is because one cannot be innocently Israeli that Avraham Burg requested that the record of his Jewish nationality be effaced from the national registry of the State of Israel after the passage of the Nation-State Law.[1] It is because one cannot be innocently Israeli that brave Israeli citizens struggle against the colonial politics of the state and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is because no one can innocently accept the reality of colonialism that sixty young Israelis have just refused to serve in the occupying army.[2] It is because it is impossible to be innocently Israeli that the human rights organisation, B’Tselem, recently denounced Israel’s ‘regime of Jewish supremacy’ and Apartheid.[3] As the Tunisian Jewish writer Albert Memmi wrote, ‘the colonial reality is not a pure idea: it is an ensemble of real-life conditions. Refusing to see this means either physically surrendering to these conditions or fighting to transform them.’ The responsibility of Israelis in Palestine in the face of this colonial reality is obvious to the anticolonial activists there who bear witness to the fact that neither it nor the murderous identities it produces can be overlooked. Committed to freedom, this responsibility paves the way to the dignity that each human being aspires to. In a world drifting ever further into more authoritarian and inequitable rule, the fight for dignity comes at an increasingly higher cost. The rancid atmosphere that has been created powerfully penetrates a growing number of political schools and media organisations. The campaigns of intimidation and defamation such as those targeting Houria Bouteldja should be alarming to anyone worried about the retreat of democracy. The tactics of censuring an activist they wish to silence and of isolating and discrediting her, both within and beyond the public sphere, reminds us of those of our antisemitic oppressors. These are the methods of those brown-shirted forces of tragic years past. The onslaughts they wage in the media leave no one out, including members of the French Union of Jews for Peace, who they call ‘shameful Jews’ and who they try to have excluded from public debate. We French, Israeli, Belgian, US-American, British, Australian, and North African Jews, walking in the footsteps of the warriors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, of the workers’ movement, of the European Resistance fighters, or of the struggle for anticolonial liberation reject these cabals who, in the name of defeating antisemitism, are in fact involved in obscuring its understanding as a form of racism. Instead they generate an antisemitic amalgamation of Jews and Israelis. It is because the decolonial movement takes the fight again antisemitism seriously, without disconnecting it from the anticolonial struggle, that it is denounced today by the biggest reactionaries in the French political sphere. But it is for this very reason that the decolonial movement is a part of our family and vice versa. We therefore demand that, if G.W. Goldnadel wish to pursue any legal proceedings against Houria Bouteldja that he come for us as well.
Gil Anidjar, professeur, Columbia University, New York / Etats-Unis
Simon Assoun, militant antiraciste, éducateur spécialisé / France
Ariella Azoulay, Professor of Modern Culture & Media and Comparative Literature / Etats-Unis
Rudi Barnet, metteur en scène, créateur de «Une Saison au Congo» de Aimé Césaire en 1967 et du festival “50ème Droits!” / Belgique
Haim Bresheeth, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London / Israélien, Royaume-Uni
Rivkah Brown, Vashti Media, London / Royaume-Uni
James Cohen, professeur d’université, /France
Laurent Cohen, Ijan / Espagne
Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, Ijan / Espagne
Jordy Cummings, lecturer and Trade Unionist, York University / Canada
Sonia Fayman, UJFP / France
Caroline Gay, comédienne / France
Henri Goldman / Belgique
Jean-Guy Greilsamer, UJFP, issu d’une famille victime des nazis et de la collaboration / France
Ramon Grosfoguel, professeur d’université / Etats-Unis
Georges Gumpel, Militant anticolonialiste, Partie Civile au procès de Klaus Barbie / France
Gabriel Hagai, Rabbin / Israélien, France
Aaron Jaffe, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Liberal Arts, The Juilliard School, New York / Etats-Unis
Sara Kershnar. Coordinatrice internationale de IJAN
David Landy, Trinity College Dublin / Irlande
Ronit Lentin, Trinity College Dublin (retired) / Israélienne, Irlande
Alana Lentin, universitaire / Australie
Zachary Levenson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina / Etats-Unis
Les Levidow, Senior Research Fellow, Open University / Royaume-Uni
Daniel Levyne, UJFP / France
Yosefa Loshitzky, SOAS University of London / Israélien, Royaume-Uni
Joëlle Marelli, traductrice / France
Anat Matar
Jean-Claude Meyer, Juif alsacien et antisioniste, dont le père a été fusillé par les nazis le 14 juillet 1944 et dont la famille a été déportée et tuée à Auschwitz, UJFP / France
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, NYU / Etats-Unis
Dominique Natanson, animateur du site Mémoire Juive & Education / France
Atalia Omer, Senior Fellow, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School / Etats-Unis
Charles Post, City University of New York / Etats-Unis
Ben Ratskoff, Editor-in-Chief of PROTOCOLS / Etats-Unis
Michael Richmond, Jewish writer, London / Royaume-Uni
Brant Rosen, Rabbin, Tzedek Chicago / Etats-Unis
Simona Sharoni
Richard Silverstein, journalist, Tikun Olam / Etats-Unis
Santiago Slabodsky, Jewish Studies Professor / Argentina / Etats-Unis
Stephen Suffern, avocat aux barreaux de Paris et de New York / France
Marianne Van Leeuw-Koplewicz, éditrice / Belgique
Michel Warschawski, militant anticolonialiste / Israël
[1] Https://www.francepalestine.org/Un-descendant-de-l-aristocratie-sioniste-veut-quitter-le-peuple-juif-Israel-le
[2] https://ujfp.org/nous-prenons-nos-responsabilitessoixante-jeunes-annoncent-leur-refus-de-servir-dans-larmee-israelienne/
[3] https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_e ng.pdf