It may be hard to recall the mood in the United States immediately after October 7. Major Jewish institutions assumed that there would be a resurgence of global Jewish unity. President Joe Biden and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum described Hamas’s attack as the greatest act of violence against Jews since the Holocaust. The unexpressed hope among many leaders of American Jewish organizations was that October 7 would spur support for the State of Israel among a new generation of Americans, particularly American Jews.
“Frankly, we don’t know how long it’s going to last, but across American Jewry is a reawakening of identity,“ said Elliot Cosgrove, the rabbi for one of New York City’s largest and wealthiest Conservative synagogues. The slogan “Everything Changed After October 7” became a justification for Israel’s relentless — still ongoing — assault on the Palestinian people, but also a call for the emergence of a new Jewish subject, one united under a single flag of the Jewish nation, unapologetic, proud, and assertive.
Yet only a few weeks after October 7, long before major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International named Israel’s invasion of Gaza a genocide, thousands of Jewish activists who had organized with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) occupied Grand Central Station in New York City and dropped a banner reading “Never Again for Anyone.”
The message was unmistakable. Against the prevailing narrative that October 7 was a “pogrom,” a link in a chain of endless violence against Jews that culminated in the Holocaust, the banner suggested a different interpretation of past and present. For these activists, the lesson to draw from Jewish history was one of solidarity with the Palestinians, who have been for a century now rendered stateless and rightless at the hands of a powerful, militaristic nation.
The sit-in at Grand Central Station was followed by JVP sit-ins at the Capitol Rotunda, the Israeli embassy in Chicago,…
Auteur: Benjamin Balthaser
