Pro-Palestine activists in the suburban town of South Orange, NJ, are once again being harassed and slandered by bad-faith actors who support Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On January 26, a local synagogue, Congregation Oheb Shalom, was holding an event in which a soldier from the Israeli military spoke about his participation in the genocide. These types of events have increasingly faced protests by local activists, including many anti-Zionist Jews in North Jersey.
Zionists, politicians, and local news outlets — which have consistently reported with a clear bias against pro-Palestine protests — are all running with the narrative that this was an act of antisemitism. As Left Voice has repeatedly covered, anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism. There is a long history of anti-Zionist Jews organizing against Israel’s crimes, and they continue to make up a significant part of the movement for Palestine, including in New Jersey.
Many of the Zionists trying to incite a moral panic about the protest are the same people who have spent the past year harassing their neighbors for demanding an end to genocide and apartheid. They are the same people who have doxxed and threatened teenagers for holding high school walkouts, sought to get people fired from their jobs, showed up at protests to yell Islamophobic rhetoric, and proudly cheered on a live-streamed genocide, all while playing victim anytime they are met with opposition.
Now, in response to this protest, they are going on the offensive, demanding that South Orange politicians ramp up policing in the community. South Orange and its neighboring town Maplewood already have a well-documented history of police brutality which disproportionately hurts Black and Brown people and contributes to the economic and racial segregation that is common throughout Essex County. Calls for more policing are an attempt to repress the right to protest, and risk making these towns more dangerous for Black, Brown, and immigrant people. South Orange has already demonstrated the overlap between racist policing and repression of the movement for Palestine with its bogus charges against Lisa Davis, a Black woman and local activist.
If you host a war criminal, you should expect protests. It is dishonest for anyone to claim that the demonstration was antisemitic. Everyone who cares about racial justice and basic democratic rights should mobilize against this attack on pro-Palestinian activism in New Jersey.
