This week police impounded 700 sheep, claiming they had passed through a forbidden zone. To retrieve the animals the shepherds paid 150,000 shekels to the settlers’ regional council
Sheep being freed this week after their owners, shepherds in the Jordan Valley, were forced to pay an exorbitant sum. It’s the latest settler method to embitter Palestinian lives.
Seven-hundred sheep are scampering to freedom. A few pause to gobble weeds, some are actually limping. The dash for freedom evokes the galloping of antelopes in Africa when they ford rivers. Equal measures of unbounded joy and great turmoil. The sheep have just been liberated from the pen that was built specially to hold them after they were impounded by Israel’s security forces. The animals were ambushed when they passed through what has been declared a forbidden zone. Their owners, Palestinian shepherds who reside on the other side of the highway, had to pay the inconceivable, draconian sum of 150,000 shekels (almost $40,000) in cash to the Jordan Valley Regional Council, run by the settlers, in order to get the animals back.
For hours, Border Police troops kept watch over the sheep and the shepherds, until representatives of the latter were able to round up the ransom. It’s not the first time that such gargantuan fines have been levied on Palestinian shepherds here. No such fines, it’s safe to assume, have ever been levied on settlers who own flocks.
This new measure – disproportional punishment aimed at bankrupting the shepherds – fits well with the other methods that have been wielded lately against the pastoral communities in the northern Jordan Valley, with the aim of making their lives miserable and ultimately cleansing the region of their presence. Settler violence, arrests, fences, land expropriations, home demolitions, prevention of pasturing of animals, and all the other means have now been supplemented by this new method. We’ll leave them penniless and maybe then they will leave their lands. The money, it goes without saying, goes straight into the settlers’ coffers, with police backing.
Early in the morning of Monday of this week, Aiman Ada’is and some of his brothers headed out to pasture with the family’s sheep. That’s the custom in this season, when the Jordan Valley is spectacularly carpeted in vivid green. The extended family’s home – a collection of huts, tin shacks, tents and animal pens, lacking electricity or running water – lies opposite the settlement of Masua in the northern part of the valley. The Ha’oved Hatzioni (Zionist Worker) movement established this settlement in 1974, after it had been an outpost of the Nahal brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, and named it for the ancient Jewish custom of lighting torches (masu’ot) on nearby Mount Sartava.
Since then, the shepherd community across from the settlement has been fighting to cling to the land it still has, whatever hasn’t already been seized from it by force. Since the formation of the present government, a little over a year ago, the shepherds’ living conditions have worsened, and since the war began, things have only been more difficult. The violent settlers have donned uniforms to serve in the local emergency squads and as volunteers in the police force, and their behavior has become even more tyrannical. But what happened on Monday this week tops everything.
At around 8:30 A.M., the shepherds passed through the rocky land south of Masua on their way to the grazing lands in the mountains, west of the Jordan Valley highway. A Border Police force, which was already waiting for them, ordered them to stop and escorted the large flock of some 700 sheep to a pen erected by the regional council that morning. The animals were herded into the crowded pen, the shepherds were ordered to retreat eastward a few hundred meters to the edge of the highway, and the festivities began. The shepherds’ families arrived, along with a Palestinian television crew. The latter weren’t allowed to approach the sheep – they had to stand on a distant mound to film them. We too were not permitted to get close to the sheep. The animal pen was now a closed military zone.
The penalty was clear-cut and painful: immediate payment of 150,000 shekels to the regional council, or the sheep would be taken to an unknown destination in the two large trucks that had been brought to the site earlier. The shepherds were fearful for the fate of their sheep. Some of them had left lambs behind at home, waiting for their mothers, and as it was, the sheep were left without water and food for hours, pressed up against each other and probably frightened. The shepherds were no less frightened. The Border Police had arrived in at least five large vehicles, together with a number of local settlers in uniforms who strutted around with the usual lordliness. War or no war in Gaza, here the sheep shall not pass without a proper Zionist response.
The summonses were issued quickly: two demands for payment to the Jordan Valley council, each to the tune of 75,000 shekels, to be paid by Ada’is Shehadeh and Ada’is A’id, the shepherd brothers. “Details of the charge: capture and transporting of animals. Capture of 150 sheep [although the shepherds claim 700]. After Jan. 22, 2024, an additional sum will be added for moving, guarding, feeding. Executed by Roman Pasternak. To be paid by Jan. 22, 2024.”
Not a word about the reason for the seizure of the sheep, if there actually was one, or about the dubious legality of the action. Members of the community knew that if they did not pay the fine immediately, the future of their sheep would be at stake and the amount of the fine would only rise. A crowdfunding operation was immediately launched among the pastoralist communities in the area, and within a few hours, a large black envelope was brought to the site containing 150,000 shekels in cash. But the Jordan Valley Regional Council, headed by David Alhayani, declined to accept a payment of that size in cash.
Time was beginning to run out. Some of the shepherds spread prayer mats on the ground and began to recite prayers. Despair was written on everyone’s face. Volunteers from the Israeli organization Looking the Occupation in the Eye were at the site, among them Rachel Abramovich – wife of the veteran television news commentator Amnon Abramovich – who with the other women in the group is doing inspiring work on behalf of the shepherds. Another arrival was Rabbi Arik Ascherman, from the Torah of Justice organization, who is active here with infinite dedication on behalf of the shepherds’ rights – and he came up with a solution. The NGO would pay the fine with a check and the shepherds would reimburse it with the cash.
After the passage of quite some time, in which phone calls were made and bank transfers executed, the matter was settled. When 150,000 shekels entered the account of the regional council, the Border Police allowed the shepherds to reclaim the sheep. The pen was opened, the sheep stampeded toward freedom. “We are here to separate the sides,” one of the police officers said, without explaining which two sides he meant. “We are the Border Police.”
The Israel Police did not respond to a request for comment from Haaretz.
A few dozen kilometers to the north, close to the Green Line and Beit She’an, is the pastoral community of Ein Hilwa. Alongside each of the concrete slabs that the IDF installed a few years ago at the entrance to it and every other every shepherd community throughout the entire Jordan Valley, bearing the message, “Firing zone, entry prohibited,” someone has also recently stuck Israeli flags in the ground. The lands of these communities were long since annexed to Israel in the eyes of these settlers, who don’t like to be called settlers – some of them are, after all, good kibbutzniks and moshavniks, people of the Labor movement.
The brothers Adel and Kadri Darajma, aged 61 and 57, respectively, live at Ein Hilwa together with their families and their animals. During the past year they lost 200 head of cattle, they relate. Some were impounded, some were stolen, some were killed by settlers. Outside their tents a few cows are grazing – the boniest, thinnest cows I have ever seen, other than in film clips about drought in Africa. As cows are impounded every time they take them out for grazing, the owners are fearful of leaving their compound, and the cattle are dying of hunger. In one case, the brothers relate, and Rabbi Ascherman joins them in the telling, cows were taken by a mysterious hand in the dead of night from the grazing areas and transported far away to land of the Hemdat settlement, where they were impounded by regional council inspectors as strays.
Here, too, the cattlemen were forced to make huge payments to the regional council to redeem their livestock. On January 1, they paid 49,000 shekels, and on January 15, another 143,910 shekels as payment for the “capturing and transporting of cattle.” Attorney Michael Sfard, who represents Hilwa, last week sent a sharply worded letter to council head Alhayani, asserting that the council’s acts of seizing the cattle were illegal, were executed without even minimal explanation, stem from a policy of grave discrimination toward the Palestinian herders who have lived in the area for generations, are accompanied by extraneous considerations that are intended to displace the communities from the region, and are part of systematic and deliberate harassment on the part of the local council and other governmental authorities.
If the money and the animals are not returned immediately, Sfard is threatening, he will instigate legal proceedings against the regional council. Sfard too relates that in at least the case mentioned above, the cows were stolen by settlers and taken to other areas, where they were seized by inspectors from the regional council as strays. In another case, a trap was laid for the Palestinian herders, Sfard says. A settler called them the evening before and told them that their animals could graze in a certain area the next day. When the herders arrived there the next day, inspectors were waiting for them there and seized the cattle.
Council head Alhayani made do this week with a curt response to Haaretz’s query: “The inspectors operated according to the council’s bylaws.” To the question of what justified the draconian punishment, Alhayani didn’t bother to reply.
Support our work: https://democracynow.org/give We continue to look at the International Court of Justice’s interim ruling in South Africa v. Israel with Stockton University professor Raz Segal and human rights lawyer Diana Buttu. We discuss Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the ruling, the role of the United States in stymying international action and more. We also hear more from ICJ president Joan Donoghue’s delivery of the ruling, including the court’s acknowledgement of the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
As horrifying scenes from Gaza have been recorded, published, and replayed around the world, people have been jolted into action and have thrown themselves into solidarity work. This surge of activism is fuelled by visceral reactions to the harrowing realities of Israel’s ongoing genocide unfolding on the global stage. People are realising, by the thousands, that zionism is a political program of indigenous erasure and primitive resource accumulation.
Many new activists and reactivated organisers seek to translate their emotional responses into tangible support. They are also searching for community hubs, often in the form of organisations, that confront zionism and colonialism – the root cause of this genocide. Whether activists know it or not, they are looking for an anti-zionist home for their organising efforts. It is exactly the moment, therefore, to provide an honest discussion on some of the essential characteristics of this organising, firmly rooted in the principles of Palestinian liberation and decolonisation, peeling away any remaining layers of confusion or mystery. This essay aims to open the overdue conversation with some suggestions for individuals to consider as they search for their anti-zionist organising home.
If we accept, as those with even the most rudimentary understanding of history do, that zionism is an ongoing process of settler-colonialism, then the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement. The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought. We write this as a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American who live and work in Palestine, and have seen the impact of so-called ‘Western values’ and how the centring of the ‘human rights’ paradigm disrupts real decolonial efforts in Palestine and abroad. This is carried out in favour of maintaining the status quo and gaining proximity to power, using our slogans emptied of Palestinian historical analysis.
Anti-zionist organising is not a new notion, but until now the use of the term in organising circles has been mired with misunderstandings, vague definitions, or minimised outright. Some have incorrectly described anti-zionism as amounting to activities or thought limited to critiques of the present Israeli government – this is a dangerous misrepresentation. Understanding anti-zionism as decolonisation requires the articulation of a political movement with material, articulated goals: the restitution of ancestral territories and upholding the inviolable principle of indigenous repatriation and through the right of return, coupled with the deconstruction of zionist structures and the reconstitution of governing frameworks that are conceived, directed, and implemented by Palestinians.
Anti-zionism illuminates the necessity to return power to the indigenous community and the need for frameworks of justice and accountability for the settler communities that have waged a bloody, unrelenting hundred-year war on the people of Palestine. It means that anti-zionism is much more than a slogan.
A liberation movement
Given the implications of defining anti-zionism, we must reorient ourselves around it within the framework of a liberation movement. This emphasises the strategic importance of control over the narrative and principles of anti-zionism in the context of global decolonial efforts. As Steven Salaita points out in ‘Hamas is a Figment of Your Imagination’, zionism and liberal zionism continue to influence the shape of Palestinian resistance:
Zionists [have] a type of rhetorical control in the public sphere: they get to determine the culture of the native; they get to prescribe (and proscribe) the contours of resistance; they get to adjudicate the work of national liberation. Palestinians are entrapped by the crude and self-serving imagination of the oppressor.
We have to wrestle back our right to narration, and can use anti-zionist thought as a guide for liberation. We must reclaim anti-zionist praxis from those who would only use it as a headline in a fundraising email.
While our collective imaginations have not fully articulated what a liberated and decolonised Palestine looks like, the rough contours have been laid out repeatedly. Ask any Palestinian refugee displaced from Haifa, the lands of Sheikh Muwannis, or Deir Yassin – they will tell that a decolonised Palestine is, at a minimum, the right of Palestinians’ return to an autonomous political unit from the river to the sea.
When self-proclaimed ‘anti-zionists’ use rhetoric like ‘Israel-Palestine’ – or worse, ‘Palestine-Israel’ – we wonder: where do you think ‘Israel’ exists? On which land does it lay, if not Palestine? This is nothing more than an attempt to legitimise a colonial state; the name you are looking for is Palestine – no hyphen required. At a minimum, anti-zionist formations should cut out language that forces upon Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies the violence of colonial theft.
The settler/native relationship
Understanding the settler/native relationship is essential in anti-zionist organising. It means confronting the ‘settler’ designation in zionist settler-colonialism – a class status indicating one’s place in the larger settler-colonial systems of power. Anti-zionist discourse should critically challenge the zionist (re)framing of history through colonial instruments, such as the Oslo Accords and an over-reliance on international law frameworks, through which they differentiate Israeli settlers in Tel Aviv and those in West Bank settlements.
Suggesting that some Israeli cities are settlements while others are not perpetuates zionist framing, granting legitimacy to colonial control according to arbitrary geographical divisions in Palestine, and further dividing the land into disparate zones. Anti-zionist analysis understands that ‘settlers’ are not only residents of ‘illegal’ West Bank settlements like Kiryat Arba and Efrat, but also those in Safad and Petah Tikvah. Ask any Palestinian who is living in exile from Haifa; they will tell you the Israelis living in their homes are also settlers.
The common choice to centre the Oslo Accords, international humanitarian law, and the human rights paradigm over socio-historical Palestinian realities not only limits our analysis and political interventions; it restricts our imagination of what kind of future Palestinians deserve, sidelining questions of decolonization to convince us that it is the new, bad settlers in the West Bank who are the source of violence. Legitimate settlers, who reside within the bounds of Palestinian geographies stolen in 1948 like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, are different within this narrative. Like Breaking the Silence, they can be enlightened by learning the error of colonial violence carried out in service of the bad settlers. They can supposedly even be our solidarity partners – all without having to sacrifice a crumb of colonial privilege or denounce pre-1967 zionist violence in any of its cruel manifestations.
As a result of this course of thought, solidarity organisations often showcase particular Israelis – those who renounce state violence in service of the bad settlers and their ongoing colonisation of the West Bank – in roles as professionals and peacemakers, positioning them on an equal intellectual, moral, or class footing with Palestinians. There is no recognition of the inherent imbalance of power between these Israelis and the Palestinians they purport to be in solidarity with – stripping away their settler status. The settler is taken out of the historical-political context which afforded them privileged status on stolen land, and is given the power to delineate the Palestinian experience. This is part of the historical occlusion of the zionist narrative, overlooking the context of settler-colonialism to read the settler as an individual, and omitting their class status as a settler.
Misreading ‘decolonisation’
It is essential to note that Palestinians have never rejected Jewish indigeneity in Palestine. However, the liberation movement has differentiated between zionist settlers and Jewish natives. Palestinians have established a clear and rational framework for this distinction, like in the Thawabet, the National Charter of Palestine from 1968. Article 6 states, ‘The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.’
When individuals misread ‘decolonisation’ as ‘the mass killing or expulsion of Jews,’ it is often a reflection of their own entanglement in colonialism or a result of zionist propaganda. Perpetuating this rhetoric is a deliberate misinterpretation of Palestinian thought, which has maintained this position over a century of indigenous organising.
Even after 100 years of enduring ethnic cleansing, whole communities bombed and entire family lines erased, Palestinians have never, as a collective, called for the mass killing of Jews or Israelis. Anti-zionism cannot shy away from employing the historical-political definitions of ‘settler’ and ‘indigenous’ in their discourse to confront ahistorical readings of Palestinian decolonial thought and zionist propaganda.
The zionist version of ‘all lives matter’
As we see, settler-colonialism secures the position of the settler, imbuing them with rights, in this case, a divine right of conquest. As such, zionism ensures that settlers’ rights supersede those of indigenous people at the latter’s expense. Knowing this, the liberal slogan ‘equal rights for all people’ requires deeper consideration. Rather than placing the emphasis on the deconstruction of the settler state and the violence inherent to it, which eternally serves the settler to the direct detriment of indigenous communities, the slogan suggests that Palestinians simply need to secure more rights within the violent system. But ‘equal rights’, in the sense that those chanting this phrase mean them, will not come from attempts to rehabilitate a settler state. They can only be ensured through the decolonization of Palestine, through the material restitution of land and resources. Without further discussion, the slogan simply serves as another mechanism of zionism, one that maintains the rights of the settler rather than emphasising the need to restore rights to indigenous communities, who have long been the victims of settlers’ rights.
Anti-zionists cannot both denounce settler-colonialism and zionism, and centre advocacy on the claim that settlers should have equal, immutable rights. Zionists would have you believe that their state has always existed, that Israelis have always lived on the land. But a brief reference to recent history reminds us that anti-zionism must confront the ongoing mechanisms materially advancing the development of colonies in Palestine.
In 2022 alone, zionist institutions invested almost $100 million, transferring some 60,000 new settlers from Russia, Eastern Europe, the United States, and France to help secure a demographic majority and ensure a physical presence on indigenous lands. This only happens by maintaining the forced displacement of Palestinians, and by violently displacing them anew as we see on a daily basis, particularly across the rural West Bank.
There is no moral legitimacy in the suggestion that these settlers have a ‘right’ to live on stolen Palestinian land, the theft maintained by force, as long as there has been no restoration of Palestinians’ rights. No theories of justice exist in mainstream ethical or philosophical discourse that advocate for a person who has stolen something to rightfully keep what they have taken. The act of theft, by definition, violates the basic principles of theories of justice, which emphasise fairness, equitable distribution of resources, and respect for individual rights and property.
Reminding people that decolonisation is not a metaphor, some activists with Israeli citizenship, including Nadav Gazit and Yuula Benivolsky, have taken the initiative to tangibly support Palestinian liberation and renounced their claim to settler citizenship. When liberal NGOs champion ‘equal rights for all people’ with no further discussion of what this means, it is the zionist version of ‘all lives matter’, perpetuating – or at best, failing to question – the maintenance of systems of violence against Palestinians.
Having laid out some of the foundational concepts and definitions pertaining to zionism and anti-zionism, we can explore some essential strategies and tactics of anti-zionist organising.
Structural changes to support liberation
As anti-zionism necessitates the systematic dismantling of zionist structures, this process may include educational programs and protests, which serve as foundational activities. However, it is essential to be cautious of organising spaces and activities that become comfort zones for activists, lacking the necessary risk and meaningful challenges to existing structures of zionist violence. Anti-zionist organising must involve strategic policy and legal reform that support decolonisation from afar, such as targeting laws that enable international charities to fund Israeli settler militias and settlement expansion. After all, our aim from abroad should be to make structural changes to advance decolonisation, not simply shift public sentiment about Palestine.
Decolonial approaches abroad include changing the internal structures of institutions that support colonisation: charities, churches, synagogues, social clubs, and other donor institutions. This includes entities that many international activists are personally, professionally, and financially linked to, such as the nonprofits we coordinate with and large granting institutions like the Open Society Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York.
In the context of the United States, the most threatening zionist institutions are the entrenched political parties which function to maintain the status quo of the American empire, not Hillel groups on university campuses or even Christian zionist churches. While the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) engage in forms of violence that suppress Palestinian liberation and must not be minimised, it is crucial to recognise that the most consequential institutions in the context of settler-colonialism are not exclusively Jewish in their orientation or representation: the Republican and Democratic Party in the United States do arguably more to manufacture public consent for the slaughtering of Palestinians than the ADL and AIPAC combined. Even the Progressive Caucus and the majority of ‘The Squad’ are guilty of this.
Politicians, organisational leaders, and funding institutions must see the real political consequences of their decisions to support genocide. Reluctance within the executive leadership of international solidarity organisations to hold elected officials accountable is a red flag, as we cannot balance our loyalties between liberation and temporary political convenience. Anti-zionism requires more than political organising that is targeted at those intentionally maintaining white supremacy through zionism; it requires that we wager our access to power to dismantle mechanisms of oppression. We must stop betting on the longevity of zionism.
When we properly decouple zionism from Judaism and understand it as a process of indigenous erasure and primitive resource accumulation, the dominant political formations, the armaments industry, and the high-tech security sector are easily understood as indispensable institutions in the broader zionist project. These bodies also materially benefit from the status quo of zionist colonisation, and therefore wield their power to maintain it. This is part of a larger function of these formations to uphold white supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism globally – systems that harm all communities, albeit unequally. This helps us recognise that zionism does not serve to benefit Jewish people, even if this is not the primary reason we should abolish it. Equating global Jewish communities’ safety and prosperity with the safeguarding of colonial violence is an antisemitic and fallacious argument. It contends that in order to thrive, Jewish communities must displace, dominate, incarcerate, oppress, and murder Palestinians.
This relates to the earlier discussion of understanding Palestinians as the authors and caretakers of anti-zionist decolonial thought. We must be cautious not to portray anti-zionism as belonging in any exclusive way to Jewish activists, or requiring Jewish organisations’ initiative. Characterising anti-zionism as a practice necessarily spearheaded by Jewish activists, rather than acknowledging it as a decolonial praxis aimed at deconstructing the institutions maintaining the colonisation of Palestine, displaces Palestinian decolonial leadership. By placing undue emphasis on the role of Jewish organisations, we de-centre Palestinian knowledge, experience, and decolonial efforts in favour of non-Palestinian agencies. This is a grave error. Such a conflation not only misrepresents the objectives of anti-zionism but also inadvertently contributes to the continuation of antisemitic sentiments by equating Judaism and colonialism.
Bold solidarity
In summary, anti-zionism is not a slogan, but a process of decolonisation and liberation. Palestinians committed to resisting zionism and erasure are the caretakers of this political movement. Cities such as Tel Aviv and Modi’in are settlements, just like Itamar or Tel Rumeida in the West Bank. Decolonisation does not imply the displacement of all Jewish communities in Palestine; however, it is crucial to recognise that not every individual identifying as Jewish is indigenous to Palestine. This basic framework must be unabashedly articulated by anti-zionist organisations and allies in their advocacy. Anti-zionist organising should move towards dismantling the colonial structures through the changing of laws and policies of the institutions and formations most essential to the Israeli state project.
This essay is not an exhaustive manual; instead, it begins a much-needed conversation and presents central principles of anti-zionist praxis. These principles are non-negotiable and represent some of the markers of anti-zionist organising. These anti-zionist indicators should not be sprinkled about through emails or social media posts that one has to dig for, but should be glaringly evident in our work and analysis.
An organisation’s commitment to solidarity and conceptualisation of resistance should be transparent. Its ideals should be clear to potential newcomers as well as its donors. We have seen, too many times, organisations intentionally obfuscate what they stand for so they relate to a broad mass of people while at the same time being palatable to liberal donors. They use vague language about the future they envision, describing ‘equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis’ without a thoughtful discussion of what Palestinians will need to reach this prosperity. The dual discourse phenomenon, where contradictory messages are conveyed to grassroots supporters and financial donors, is a manipulative tactic for institutional or personal gain. It should be clear from the onset that a group’s efforts have one ultimate goal: from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Anti-zionism and solidarity should be bold. Palestinians deserve nothing less.
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Em Cohen and Omar Zahzah for their meticulous editing and thoughtful suggestions.
Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.
Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and member of the Good Shepherd Collective.
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