Am I a self-hating Jew?

'The Judaic culture has a great and wonderful history of strength, solidarity and resistance - today we may not be a great race - but we can, once again, be a great people. For me, not only is the situation desperate and disparate, but, more than anything, an embarrassment - an embarrassment for all that my holocaust-surviving grandparents fought for. Lying in their graves, they turn, turn and turn in sheer disbelief. If only their suffocated silence could screech their thoughts of, ‘WHAT IS GOING ON??!!’. For all the nights they slept rough, for all the food they were starved of, for all the limbs they lost and all the holocaust-remembrance ceremonies held ever since 1945 - the justification of divisions in the name of security is a farce when we have learnt many times that two, three, ten or twenty cultures can co-exist in peace. Just as my grandparents (and many of yours too) stared back death in the face with hope for peace - we can do too. Remember, the only thing more powerful than the British and American Governments and NGO’s who are funding the occupation, is the British and American civil population. The time has come, the stakes are raised and the mirror is holding high the glinting reflections of what our grandparents dreamt of. Tear down the Israeli ghettos and the wall of death and say, ‘No nations- No borders- not in my grandparents, mine or my future generation’s name.’ [diary extract April 2007]

In 2007 a delegation of people from a range of backgrounds, including some of us Jewish, went to Palestine to stand in solidarity with the people affected by the occupation. It was an intense experience to say the least. It was an educational exchange where spaces were created to share strategies of how we in the UK could best support educators and students under the occupation whilst their lives are made a misery by the occupation. Since then resources have been sent, twinnings between schools and universities have taken place and many more people have been active in exerting political pressure on the Israeli State in support of the liberation of the Palestinian people and the education of all people.