Why Rabbi Susan Talve was called a ‘real terrorist’ by St Louis activists

A meme created and posted by HandsUp United on Monday has caused an uproar in St. Louis activist circles. The image that circulated on social media bears the photo of Rabbi Susan Talve, the leader of St. Louis’ Central Reform Congregation. Rabbi Talve is well known figure in the Ferguson protest movement and interfaith community of St. Louis. The controversy surrounds the commentary in the meme about Rabbi Talve referring to her as a “Real Terrorist” for her support of Israeli apartheid and its oppression of Palestinians. The image is part of HandsUp United “Real Terrorist” campaign calling out St. Louis power brokers for their role in perpetuating systems of racial oppression and includes photos of St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, Missouri Senator Jamilah Nasheed with the hashtag #?RealTerrorist.

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/called-terrorist-activists/#sthash.QcycpTIk.dpuf

An open letter from St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace

Dear Rabbi Talve,

The Mishna calls Aaron, the first Israelite high priest, “Ohev shalom v’rodef shalom / a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace.” We know, as Jews, that it is not enough simply to want peace. Peace must be pursued. The Bible uses the same word to command us to pursue justice. We know that peace, however much desired, cannot be achieved without justice. In recent days, your reputation for being a pursuer of peace and justice has been called into question and this has made us question our own relative silence. We write to you today in full awareness of and gratitude for all of the work you do on behalf of peace and justice in our community and beyond. We write to you specifically because of your values and because we can no longer patiently sit by as you defend the oppression of Palestinians at Israeli hands. This hypocrisy tears at our local community and ripples painfully far beyond it. We write you in hopes that our Jewish community can come together to work for Black and Palestinian liberation.

We are Jews who, like you, have been on the streets supporting justice for Mike Brown and actively working within our communities to end white supremacy and dismantle structural oppression. We commend your courageous and outspoken stand in support of Black struggle and many other social justice issues.

We are also Jews who stand with the indigenous people of Palestine who have been oppressed for more than 65 years by Zionist policies that privilege Jews over Palestinian Muslims and Christians, including near-daily assassinations, mass incarceration without charge, torture of children, collective punishment, demolitions of families’ homes, destruction of farmers’ olive groves and livelihoods, indiscriminate bombings, tear-gassing of entire villages, segregated roads and legal systems, and denial of access to holy sites, to name just some of Israel’s myriad apartheid policies.

For more than a year, we have struggled to reconcile your righteous stand on challenging U.S. domestic racism with your stated commitment to Zionism and defense of Israel. We have reached out to you, met with you, heard your requests to wait, and to give you more time and to understand how hard it is for you to reconsider your stance on Israel. We found hope when you opened your synagogue to an event by St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace and in the positive response to our words by many of the members of your congregation. We have wanted to trust — and still want to believe — that you too can be an ally in challenging Israel’s system of racial oppression, which is itself a form of white supremacy, as you challenge white supremacy here in the U.S.

To the Members of St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace:
As Jewish progressive activists, we write to you with deep concern about your open letter to Rabbi Susan Talve. We are extremely disappointed in your letter and believe that it betrays the movement for peace and justice to which we, too, belong.

Rabbi Talve is certainly capable of eloquently responding if she chooses, but we are speaking up independently of her to register our concern about your letter.

We are not angry because you disagree with Rabbi Talve on issues, methods, or actions. We are angry because you have chosen to be silent in the face of an ugly personal attack by a group with which you are aligned, against a leader in our community whom we greatly respect.

Your letter was written in the aftermath of the controversy generated by the group Hands Up United, who posted to their Facebook page a meme with a photograph of Rabbi Talve, calling her the vicious slurs of “a terrorist” who “supports genocide.” Political disagreements with her are no excuse for demonizing her with those libelous words.

The silence of your organization when your ally publicly refers to Rabbi Talve this way is appalling. You wrote no such open letter to Hands Up United condemning their choice of words. We can only assume that your failure to condemn these lies means you are in agreement with them. This is unacceptable for an organization that seeks to be a “voice” in our community. No serious Jewish organization should sink to such depths of false personal attack.

It was not easy to write this response. While many may see us as inflexible and dogmatic, we are actually a group of Jewish Americans and Israelis with diverse perspectives, which we see as a strength that helps us grow, learn and struggle together authentically. We wish to offer such a space to others in the Jewish community grappling with what is happening in Israel/Palestine.

It may not come as a surprise that we ourselves have found local Jewish institutions to be inflexible on this topic, and we have suffered exclusion and negative professional repercussions for how our beliefs are perceived. Surely if we are all progressives and all — yourselves included — feel demonized, something has gone wrong. We are not communicating.

Recently, STL-JVP has been portrayed as seeking destruction, dissolution and nonexistence of a place many of us hold dear; in fact, our vision is quite the opposite. Our hope for the future lies in an Israel/Palestine — and a world — where nobody is oppressed or excluded because of their racial, ethnic or religious identity. We want life, not destruction. We want freedom for all peoples of that land to thrive as full human beings — including Jews, Palestinians, migrant workers and African refugees.

Tragically, the Israel that began in 1948 and exists today is nothing like that vision. The creation of a Jewish State has necessitated a Jewish majority, which has required the forced removal of most of the indigenous Palestinian population, and the ongoing killing, incarceration and ghettoization of Palestinians in order to maintain an artificial Jewish majority. As American Jews, we are welcomed to join that majority while our Palestinian friends, including those here in St. Louis, are excluded because of their ethnicity and religion. In fact, Donald Trump’s recent call for a ban on Muslim immigration is not dissimilar from the immigration policies Israel has maintained since its creation.