How to pressure Israel into submitting to peace

Using the tools of Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS)
Suzanne Weiss, February 2024
To Toronto Independent Jewish Voices (IJV)

Genocide in the world, until now took place away from public eye. The world did not see the Jewish Holocaust. They barely heard of it even after the war.

A big difference between our struggle against Israeli apartheid today and that of South Africa is the unprecedented support for Israel by imperialism which shields Israel from international law – although Israel’s crimes are seen by the world in live stream.

How this is done, Omar Barghouti emphasizes:

  1. By the US who props up Israel with military arms and funds and with the complicity of the imperialist countries such as Canada.
  2. And it is done by dehumanizing Palestinians with lies in racist narrative.

The US amplifies fabrications and propaganda with the complicity of their military, diplomatic, political, corporations, and institutions.

Omar Barghouti points out that we can use pressure above all against Israel — because unlike South Africa, Israel is extremely dependent on the global markets.

We can do this with the world campaign of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.

We in Canada have for years supported the Palestinian right to be free from the Israeli occupation.

We have stood in these years with the majority of the peoples throughout the world to end Apartheid –and now in the last four months with the staggering genocide — which aims to eradicate the existence of the Palestinian people.

We’ve had immense demonstrations throughout the world indicating our solidarity and love for our Palestinian sisters and brothers. It’s has been inspiring. And we continue to have them. We’ve had various projects which have brought the Palestinian struggle in view to Canadians.

We take note that Israel warns that the killing will continue until it is satisfied. And the US and its supporters turn a blind eye.

What should we do?

Naomi Klein says it’s time that we focus on the method of BDS. She agrees with Barghout that Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a powerful method because it is goal oriented: We strive to achieve Palestinian rights.

The intent of BDS is to choose a target, to be strategic. It isn’t enough to have legal arguments. It isn’t enough to be ethical. We have to be impactful to be effective.

BDS challenges the complicity of the chosen target, whether it be the governmental, its structural organizations, corporations, or institutions, and demands it to break with complicity – because these links sustain Israel in some way. Without these links, Israel cannot continue its criminal genocide.

Importantly, BDS challenges the media complicit in the dehumanization of the Palestinians done by Israel. We, the defenders of Palestinian freedom, focus on humanity: Palestinians deserve freedom, justice, equality, self-determination, dignity, –like everyone else.

What is the strength of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions?

BDS is a way to apply pressure in forcing Israel to heed the opinion of the world’s peoples, and to submit to international law.

Omar Barghouti is quoted with emphasis by Naomi Klein, “It is a profound ethical and moral obligation in these times to act to end the complicity –to do no harm.”

BDS is a movement of strength with broad global support of tens of millions. BDS is led a Palestinian leadership, the largest coalition in Palestinian society.

BDS mobilizes pressure through organizations, through global collective effort. BDS invites everyone to participate to push for policy changes.

BDS is a rights movement, anchored in the Declaration of Human Rights. It is a world movement. It is intersectional.

BDS allies with movements against anti Semitism, against Black racism, Islamophobia, sexism, anti Queer discrimination, and for Indigenous rights. These movements could also use BDS and in that way add strength to achieving world justice against racist complicity. Palestine freedom is part of that intersectional movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dQlFgMhxcI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfVwIbTt4pc

 

 

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LEILA KHALED TO SPEAK: FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE NOT WAR

Suzanne Berliner Weiss, activist, author of  Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey:

I am proud to add my name to the supporters of Leila Khaled, a world-renowned leader of Palestinian resistance. It will be an honour for us all to hear her testimony at a forum in Australia on fighting climate change, not war.

I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust carried out by the German Nazis. I was saved by the solidarity of many individuals and a whole community who protected Jews and others marked down for death. The world’s peoples did not know of the mass murder being committed, although their governments knew, were silent, and thus, complicit.

Another crime was initiated in 1947 with the Nakba, the catastrophe, when the Israeli government with military might, expelled over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.

This crime continues to this day in the name of the Jewish people — without their consent.

The world’s peoples did not know the extent of the Palestinian misery but were rudely awakened in 1969 by the courageous Leila Khaled. She demanded freedom, dignity, equality, and peace for the oppressed Palestinians.

The world’s people were once again awakened on October 7 with the same demands to end the cruel occupation and daily bombardment of Gaza. Today, we all insist on an immediate enduring cease fire to the genocide.

Leila Khaled has dedicated her life to the resistance and for a free Palestine. It will be an honour to discuss with her and to work together on better ways to live in equality, dignity, and peace to save this planet.

Read more articlesNewer

Nick Riemer, academic, refugee and union activist says Leila Khaled must not be prevented from speaking in Australia.

Wendy Bacon, journalist and researcher: “I am appalled that the Albanese government will not provide Leila Khaled with  a visa”

Ecosocialism 2024

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Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Workshop Opportunity: Lessons From the Holocaust with Suzanne Weiss, Holocaust Survivor

Independent Jewish Voices is offering this powerful and moving talk featuring Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and longtime social justice activist Suzanne Weiss. If you would like to have Suzanne present this talk for your school, student association, faith group, community organization or union, get in touch with us. We’d be happy to work with you. Contact lessons@ijvcanada.org
Suzanne’s talk draws on her experiences surviving the Holocaust as a child in Vichy France and lessons from her lifetime of social justice activism to explore how we can fight racism in our present time. In relating her powerful story, she provides listeners with both a history which we must remember and the inspiration to make a difference in our world.

MY VIEW: “The Other Betrayal of Anne Frank”

MY VIEW: “The Other Betrayal of Anne Frank”
(Toronto Star, January 23, 2022)

by Suzanne Berliner Weiss

The Toronto Star, our city’s daily, published on January 23 a two-page feature article called, “The Other betrayal of Anne Frank.” The article landmarks an investigation on a suspect who betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis. The betrayal of her secret annex hideout also led to the death of Anne Frank and others hidden with her in a Nazi concentration camp

In my book Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, which tells the story of my survival, I explain that in the scramble to secure individual life, many Nazi collaborators tore the fabric of society by betraying neighbors, sowing suspicion, preying on their neighbors’ fears, and enriching themselves in a struggle for personal survival. (more…)

Activism, Sexism and Resistance

Below is my 15 minute contribution to a panel discussion given on May 22, 2021 on zoom in La Grande Transition, a post-capitalist international conference. My talk is based on an article — A Socialist Woman’s Experience in the Socialist Movement — published in March-April 2021 in a socialist magazine, Against the Current.
* * * *

Like all women, I have coped with the threat of sexual and physical assault and harassment. For women, this threat is omnipresent. It was a constant hazard of my younger years. Later, the danger of sexual attack shaped decisions of where I lived and with whom, where I worked and whether I felt able to speak and act freely. All told I suffered more than a dozen threatened sexual assaults. I suspect that this count is not unusual.

When I joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) USA in 1959, at the age of 18, anxiety of sexual assault was an obstacle to my participation in political activity. The threat could come from a stranger or from an intimate friend.

I fell victim to this threat in the dormitory of a socialist conference. It was evening, and an intimate friend flew into a rage. He bellowed and whacked me, with furniture and props flying around. It was behind closed doors, but the uproar was heard outside the room, and the assault left visible marks on my face. Yet the next day, socialist friends averted their eyes and showed no concern.

(more…)

Lessons from the Holocaust

Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorates the Jewish martyrs of massive and murderous ethnic cleansing.
Today I speak as a survivor of this genocide. We lost six million Jews, a great calamity for all the world’s peoples. It was the time of the Second World War, in which tens of millions perished (40 million). Now, we analyze and try to make sense of that horrific experience and seek guidance for today’s challenges.
This is a story of survival against Nazi racism, nationalism, and colonialism which holds many lessons for humanity. It is a story of resistance! It is a struggle for unity and solidarity by individuals and entire communities to counter disaster and destruction.

My Story
I come from the Nazi Holocaust in France. Back in 1942, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler marked me down for death because I am Jewish. Hitler feared that if I lived, I could give birth to Jewish children who would seek vengeance.
Hitler and his movement didn’t merely hate Jews; they saw Jewish annihilation as a central historic goal.
When I was one year old, and still with my mother, the Nazis organized a massive raid in Paris which arrested thousands of Jews and imprisoning them in a sports arena called the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiv).
The French authorities, in league with the German Nazis, had campaigned against Jewish immigrants and refugees, blaming them for the war that began in 1939, and its mounting hardships. The pro-Fascist government of Vichy passed harsh laws against Jews, even worse than the ones in Poland, from which my mother had fled.
In Poland, Jews such as my mother lived in ghettos, denied higher education and entry into professions. My mother belonged to the socialist Bund and worked for a socialist world. She escaped to France, which held the reputation of the 1789 revolution, with its promise of brotherhood, liberty, and equality. She found work in Paris and married. She joined the Jewish Union for Resistance and Mutual Aid. (The organization still exists and is sister to the United Jewish Peoples Order in Canada – UJPO). (more…)

James P. Cannon: The Comrade I Knew

by Suzanne Berliner Weiss

James P. Cannon

On April 22, 2021, I gave the following short talk in honour of James P. Cannon (1890–1974), an outstanding socialist leader who helped found the U.S. Communist movement in 1919 and subsequently became a central leader of Trotskyism on a world scale.

My talk is based on my experience as personal secretary to Jim Cannon during the last two years of his life. In the discussion period, I referred to Cannon’s many volumes of speeches, letters, and articles available from Pathfinder Press (see below).

In the discussion after the presentations, I strongly suggested studying Socialism on Trial and Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trials, in which Cannon provides a popular introduction to and defense of the ideas of revolutionary Marxism. One outstanding one lesson is how the working class looks at its battles against the system of capitalism. The majority of these struggles are for their alienable rights as human beings and as members of a society. Cannon explained that workers looked at the Russian revolution not as an insurrection but as a defense of these rights.

My years with Cannon are also discussed in my memoir, Holocaust to Resistance, pp. 154-9. See also James P. Cannon on Defensive Formulations and the Organization of Action   

                                                  ***

I met James P. Cannon in 1960 when his partner Rose Karsner invited me to their home for a chat. Jim gave a cordial hello and listened while Rose asked me about my student activism for Cuba and Black freedom. She was also interested in my background, which was similar to hers – the Jewish community in Eastern Europe. Rose was highly regarded by the party as one of its founders and as a serious organizer well versed in the theories of Marx.

A decade later, I served as Jim Cannon’s personal secretary. Rose had recently died of cancer. The impact of this blow was of great concern to Jim’s comrades. They convinced Jim to review his life’s work in speeches, writings, and letters, which were consequently published in several volumes. I was the fourth person to serve as his full-time assistant. In addition, two male comrades lived with him and provided companionship in the evenings.

When I joined the household, Jim was 82. Physically frail, and suffering from emphysema, he exuded an air of dignity.

Visitors came from time to time, and Jim greeted them with pleasure. He was glad to hear reports of developments in his party. He welcomed varying points of view.

Jim, first and foremost, championed the working class, and its international efforts. In his conversations, Jim seethed over the crimes of capitalism. He watched the Watergate corruption scandal, which led to Richard Nixon’s demise. He cheered Nixon’s downfall and even more the way the disgrace exposed the deceptions of the supposedly democratic political apparatus.

Jim bemoaned Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinian people. What a terrible turn Israel was foisting on the Jewish people. In their name — the Israeli government was abusing the calamity of the Holocaust and acting criminally against the innocent Palestinians and Arab peoples.

Jim no longer had the energy to review his remaining personal papers, but he agreed to be interviewed by Harry Ring, a party writer and activist whom Jim had known since the thirties.  Jim was gratified by the leading role his young comrades took in social movements, particularly against the war, in the Black freedom movement, and women’s liberation.

To gain more insight into the man, Harry tried to get Jim to talk about himself, but Jim was reticent. Finally, Jim softened a little and mentioned a number of small personal incidents highlighting his own inadequacies and regretting his own behaviour. He liked to repeat the dictum, — “Man know thyself.” — Then he would add, “Man forget thyself.” — I identified with that. It threw a light on the unselfish focus in his dedication to improving the human condition.

Jim’s books, articles, and speeches are guides to apply Marxism’s dialectical method in the US and Canada. — It was an honour to have had a close link with this great giant of labour and socialism.

                                              ***

Books by James P. Cannon:

Published by Pathfinder Press:

The Coming American Revolution
America’s Road to Socialism
The Communist League of America: Writings 1932-34  
The First Ten Years of American Communism
The Left Opposition in the US: Writings 1928-31
Letters from Prison
Notebook of an Agitator
Speeches to the Party
Socialism on Trial
The Socialist Workers Party in World War II
Speeches for Socialism
The Struggle for a Proletarian Party

Published by Resistance Books:

Building the Revolutionary Party
Fighting to Socialism In the ‘American Century’
The Revolutionary Party: Its Role In the Struggle for Socialism

Prometheus Research Library

Dog Days: James P. Cannon vs. Max Shachtman in the Communist League of America, 1931-1933
Early Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-28

A Socialist Woman’s Experience

Published in Socialist Magazine, Against the Current

March 2021

Suzanne Weiss speaking at a demonstration in Toronto, 2019.

1. Barriers to Women’s Participation

FROM ITS BEGINNINGS in the 1800s, modern socialism has embraced equality and liberation for women. The socialist movement has made a major contribution to political, cultural, and intellectual changes challenging women’s second-class status. For many women, joining a socialist movement opened the road to developing their talents, achieving social influence, and contributing to social change.

(more…)

Socialism Is a Democratic Transformation

By Suzanne Weiss

This zoom talk was given in a panel organized by Socialist Action Canada in October 2020. It focuses on the defense and expansion of democratic rights of fighters for a new society representing their human needs.

Sixty-one years ago, I learned how a socialist transformation would be possible in the heart of the beast, the USA.

I learned from socialists who had met Lenin and Trotsky in Moscow, who knew the Russian Revolution first-hand: Jim Cannon, Rose Karsner, Arne Swabeck, and others, members of my local branch in Los Angeles. They drew on ideas in the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels and the History of the Russian Revolution by Trotsky.  

They published their view of revolutionary strategy in a book called Socialism on Trial, which was our socialist recruitment handbook at the time and is now on line.It’s a transcript of a famous court case which should to be read and studied today, especially in the climate of growing mass social movements.

In 1941 Cannon and seventeen other socialists were arrested and charged with conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government by force and violence. — That’s the eternal slander of the political police against socialists, then and now.

(more…)

Join Independent Jewish Voices Solidarity in Uncertain Times

For over 12 years, Independent Jewish Voices Canada has been standing up for peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, and fighting antisemitism, white supremacy and colonialism at home. IJV opposes the Israeli occupation and supports the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Donate to support our work: www.ijvcanada.org/donate Join us: www.ijvcanada.org/join-ijv/ Video by Jesse Freeston www.jessefreeston.comSHOW LESS