As Israel’s war in Gaza continues, so many young progressive American Jews are finding themselves caught in the middle. On the one side stands Netanyahu’s extremist government and its supporters around the world, including inside our own communities. On the other side, acrimony reverberates across the global left. In moments when we’re already feeling enraged or heartbroken by events on the ground, this additional layer of communal fracture often leaves many of us feeling dispirited and isolated. This kind of loneliness risks creating disempowerment at moments when action is most needed.
NIF offers many ways out of this narrow place. One way is through our New Generations community (NewGen). Indeed, we prefer to think of it as a way in rather than a way out. A way in to deeper relationships with Palestinians. A way in to the activism of Israeli civil society leaders. And a way in to a network of values-aligned activists from NIF-affiliated organizations around the world.
The Naomi Chazan Global Activism Fellowship is a one-of-a-kind trip that brings together NewGen community members from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia for a week-long tour in Israel/Palestine to meet frontline activists and NIF partners. The photo essay below offers a window into the fellows’ experiences on the ground—experiences that they bring back to their home communities, helping to teach, form relationships, and push their activism forward.
Fellow Ainav Rabinowitz asks a question during a panel discussion. In so many community conversations these days, it can feel risky to surface disagreement. On this trip, participants lean into discomfort in pursuit of greater understanding.An armed guard accompanies a Jewish boy from a settler family against the backdrop of a mural made by the local Palestinian residents of the neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. On our tour with Ir Amim, the fellows saw firsthand how settler organizations are taking over Palestinian areas block by block using the law as a weapon (in addition to the threat of physical violence).In Sira Pub, a well-known activist dive bar in Jerusalem, hangs a banner demanding the return of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hersh’s image was everywhere in his home city of Jerusalem.On Saturday night, the fellows attended the large anti-government protest in Tel Aviv wearing t-shirts donated to us by Eran Nissan of Mehazkim, a progressive movement working that employs digital campaigns to promote the values and ideas of the Israeli left.In the village of Zanuta in the South Hebron Hills, the fellows bear witness to a destroyed school. As our tour guide from Breaking the Silence explained, this community is one of almost twenty that has been forcibly removed from their homes under threat of violence from settlers and the military.On the last day of the program, the fellows met our fellowship’s namesake, Naomi Chazan, former NIF board president and trailblazing former MK from the Meretz party. The fellows appreciated her poignant political analysis and keen sense of pragmatic possibility in an otherwise dim-seeming geopolitical reality.
