Take Action: Tell the JCPA to truly stand for dignity and human rights

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Take Action: Tell the JCPA to truly stand for dignity and human rights

David Bernstein, President, and Susan Turnbull, Chair, Jewish Council for Public Affairs

As his first act as president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, David Bernstein published an op-ed demanding that our community choose allies in the fight for justice not on the basis of shared values of freedom and dignity for all people, but based on who is most likely to support the actions of the state of Israel.

IfNotNow knows that the freedom of the Jewish people is directly tied up with the freedom of Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. We know our freedom cannot be achieved absent the freedom of our neighbors.

Join us in telling the JCPA that our Jewish identity is deeply linked with our desire to fight for a world where everyone has freedom and dignity — and they need to reflect that identity in order to be able to speak for our community.

Sponsored by

IfNotNow Movement

To: David Bernstein, President, and Susan Turnbull, Chair, Jewish Council for Public Affairs
From: [Your Name]

We are members of the Jewish community whose Jewish identity is deeply linked with our desire to fight for a world where everyone has freedom and dignity. We have strong connections and relationships to non-Jewish allies in that fight based in this shared set of values.

This week -- as his first foray into the public conversation -- your new CEO, David Bernstein, wrote in the Forward that these shared values “pose the most significant community relations challenge of our time.” He argues that the Jewish community should choose our allies not based in common values but rather in a worldview that supports Israel unilaterally.

That viewpoint represents an out-of-touch establishment that is moving backwards in time while the next generation of Jews becomes more and more disillusioned with the hypocrisy of Jewish institutions. Unsurprisingly, these are the same institutions who fail to understand the diversity of the Jewish community and the binds of identity, family, and friendship that compel us to fight for a more just future for all people.

We know that the old establishment’s view of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are shaped by the history of anti-Jewish oppression and Jewish suffering and Jewish death. However, for us, it is exactly this history that leads us to believe that our freedom cannot be achieved absent the freedom of others here in America or our neighbors in the Middle East.

It is this history that fuels our belief that ending the occupation is critical to building a world where all human beings can flourish free of oppression, that we as Jews cannot be truly free as long as we are denying freedom to another people.

We are deeply troubled by Mr. Bernstein’s claim that Jews should partner in repairing the world only with those who will stand with the old-guard establishment of the Jewish community on Israel.

We, the undersigned, demand that David Bernstein and the Chair of your Board, Susan Turnbull release a joint statement clarifying how you plan staying true to your stated belief in “human rights for Jewish people and others” -- here and throughout the world -- given this apparent change in policy.

We look forward to your response.