{"id":1601132,"date":"2024-04-09T17:15:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T17:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/?p=311736"},"modified":"2024-04-09T17:15:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T17:15:28","slug":"illegal-real-estate-sales-of-palestinian-land-are-happening-around-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/09\/illegal-real-estate-sales-of-palestinian-land-are-happening-around-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal real estate sales of Palestinian land are happening around the US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Illegal real estate sales of Palestinian land are happening around the US\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/5XzSXHPPXErXxPn5ZuaroO?si=6e0ff3e909294bd5&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Six months into the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, there is little use denying that what is taking place before our eyes is an intended land grab. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have called for Gaza to be &#8220;resettled&#8221; and for the Palestinian population to be expelled. And in the US, the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich have their allies and accomplices who hope to profit from the theft of Palestinian land. Across the US, real estate events advertising the sale of land parcels in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem have begun to appear. Activist, journalist, and filmmaker\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RadicalEleanor\"  rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eleanor Goldfield<\/a>\u00a0joins\u00a0<em>The Marc Steiner Show<\/em>\u00a0to discuss the recent protests against one such real estate event in Baltimore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Studio Production: Cameron Granadino<br>Post-Production: Alina Nehlich<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m Marc Steiner and welcome to another episode of Not In Our Name here on The Real News Network. My guest today is Eleanor Goldfield, a creative radical activist, journalist, and filmmaker whose work spans many mediums including photography, video, film, the written word, and weaving it all through music, poetry, and visual art. She hosts the podcast Act Out, co-hosts the podcast Common Censored with Lee Camp, and co-host of the podcast Silver Threads with Carla Bergman. She produced the award-winning documentary called Hard Road of Hope about West Virginia as a place that weaves together its reality as a resource colony and as a radical inspiration. And still has time for frontline action in organizing and training. Welcome, Eleanor. It&#8217;s good to have you with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you so much for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m really glad you&#8217;re here. So let&#8217;s start with this working Gaza and this real estate because until I started reading all your stuff, which I was blown away with, by the way, it was really solid writing. We&#8217;ll get to that in a minute. Talk about what&#8217;s happening in Gaza with this real estate and what brought you here in the first place in terms of that part of a struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yeah, I mean the real estate event, they&#8217;ve held these, and I say they, it&#8217;s various real estate companies. The one that was hosting this event in Baltimore is CapitIL, Capit I-L. And they&#8217;re selling&#8230; If you go to their website, their properties are all in Jerusalem. And so they&#8217;re not selling properties in Gaza dot, dot, dot yet, question mark. But these events have been popping off in various places. New York, New Jersey, and now in Baltimore. And so basically, when folks heard that this was happening, there was movement both in the legal sense, both in terms of saying that this is illegal because of the contested land in Israel and occupied Palestine, but also because it goes against the Civil Rights Acts in the United States because these events are only open to Jews. And not only just Jews, but hyper-religious Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, some folks were saying when they tried to register for the event, they had to do a Zoom call with the organizer and the organizer asked to see their bookcase to see if there were Jewish books on there. They demanded to know where they daven, who their rabbi was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where they daven?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, who their rabbi was. If another shul could recommend them to the organizer, they wanted to see it. I would never have gotten it, let&#8217;s put it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Neither would I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s not just Jews, it&#8217;s like the far right conservative Orthodox Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But can we step back for just a second?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, there&#8217;s something&#8230; I mean, I want to come back to how you found out about this, but who are they? Because clearly, I&#8217;ve read before from other people in some of the Israeli press saying that people are salivating over the Gaza beaches and taking them over. Not the biggest reason they&#8217;re fighting, but that is there. So talk a bit about&#8230; Give us some more background. Who are these people? I mean, what is this about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So in terms of&#8230; I have not been able to get statements from the real estate agencies or anybody involved with them. But as we know, the people who are taking over these lands, again, this is not Gaza, this is Jerusalem. But I think it&#8217;s interesting that because a lot of people&#8230; The people who are paying attention are paying attention to Gaza. But right now, in the West Bank for instance, and of course also in Jerusalem, there&#8217;s been a lot of violence. But it&#8217;s that the people think that because people are focused on Gaza, people aren&#8217;t going to notice what&#8217;s happening in the West Bank in Jerusalem, basically other occupied territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the people putting this on are these real estate agents. And then they&#8217;re working with people in the states, whether that be these Orthodox communities here in Baltimore who put this on at the synagogue or the communities in New York and New Jersey who coordinate basically with these real estate companies that are based in Jerusalem to create these events and get people to buy property. Because that&#8217;s the whole point of Israel is to get a bunch of Orthodox Jews to move there and to occupy that space. But again, you can&#8217;t just be Jewish. You have to be a certain kind of Jew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have to be from or don&#8217;t come in the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From, by the way, folks, it means religious and Yiddish. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. That&#8217;s the legal aspect that people were fighting. For instance, the Palestinian Association for Liberation, PAL, their legal arm basically has sent out these basically legal papers saying that this goes against US law because you can&#8217;t have a real estate event saying only these particular kind of people can buy this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s against the law. Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Absolutely, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so they got one to shut down, I believe in New Jersey, the event to shut down. And actually, here in Baltimore, the event was moved probably because of protest, not because of the legal aspect. But we&#8217;re not sure because it&#8217;s not like the synagogue released a statement saying, &#8220;This is why we&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And which synagogue in Baltimore did you say this was?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shomrei Emunah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So which is a very right wing, super Orthodox synagogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&#8217;m agreeing with you, not because I&#8217;ve been inside, not that they would let me, but because I-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think they would let me inside either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, they wouldn&#8217;t. But because I saw the people who were outside the synagogue counter-protesting our protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Got you. And so who was the group that was protesting?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it was a coalition of groups, Jewish Voice for Peace, CARE, and then also PAL, as I mentioned, the Palestinian Association for Liberation. There were people like me who aren&#8217;t directly affiliated with any specific organizations who just wanted to show up and support. So there were several different groups and then a lot of different just regular individuals who wanted to show up. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you know what? She was speaking. You&#8217;ve moved into the hotbed of the struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s usually where I&#8217;m most comfortable, to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, you&#8217;re in it now, sis. You&#8217;re here. I mean, the Zionist movement in Baltimore has a huge presence, very powerful. But so is the movement of Jews will oppose them. We&#8217;re living in a place that&#8217;s going to be one of the centerpieces of the battle in America be right here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did not know that when I moved to Baltimore that there was such a strong Zionist Orthodox community. I mean, everywhere around where we were, there was just like, &#8220;We stand with Israel&#8221; placards in people&#8217;s yards and things like that. And of course, a lot of Israeli flags. My favorite is the Israeli flag that meshes into the American flag. So it just becomes one giant colonialist shitshow flag. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a total digression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please. Go ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Decades ago, we designed the flag and it was a flag that put together the Palestinian flag and the Israeli flag. And then one of the versions, we turned this Israeli flag into a black and red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like it. Well, I feel very strongly that they should not be allowed to use Magen David for their violent terrorist colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mean the Jewish star Magen David?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So I want to take that symbol back because they should-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why do you say that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because it is not a symbol of colonialism. It is not a symbol of terrorism. It is not a symbol of what the Israeli state, the nation state of Israel is. And so I&#8217;m offended, as a Jew, that they used that symbol to perpetuate the genocide that is going on right now in Gaza. Well, even before that, that they used it for the violent occupation that is the state of Israel. And so I feel that part of what&#8230; Like I feel that Nazis should not be allowed to use Viking symbols, although that&#8217;s to a far lesser extent than Israel with the Star of David. It&#8217;s the misuse of a symbol that has a totally different meaning than what you&#8217;re using it for. And in fact, I mean just to be a bit of a history nerd, but the Star of David was not even the official symbol of Jews until basically the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s why people listening, you might know if you go into a church or something that&#8217;s really old, you might see it or even older buildings because it was just the symbol of the shield of David. So it wasn&#8217;t even a symbol of the Jewish people necessarily. And so I think-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a Jewish symbol, but not-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t the symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not exclusively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Right, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so it&#8217;s just a total bastardization of a symbol that has far more depth and beauty in its meaning than Zionists could ever really understand, to be honest. That was a digression. I apologize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen, the way we had this conversation, there&#8217;ll be a number of digressions taking place without a doubt. What you just said for me, and I think that probably is for a lot of Jews, when we use the word Nazis or Nazism and somehow that gets connected to Zionism, it&#8217;s really difficult for people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s difficult for me. As we said, before I walked in, before we walked in together, I grew up in a home in a family where there was a constant presence of people with numbers in their arms, people who lived through concentration camps in my living room and family who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis. And families who were forced to go to Israel because they couldn&#8217;t go anywhere else in &#8217;48. They weren&#8217;t allowed to come here so they had to go to Israel to create this place. So for the Jewish world, it&#8217;s a really difficult emotional moment and movement, especially now as things are shifting and the Jewish community is really splitting and dividing in ways it never has before. Well, that&#8217;s not true either, but it&#8217;s a very different way of splitting right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And I think I&#8217;m reminded of what&#8230; Actually, a friend of mine said his mother is a Palestinian Jew. Well, where does that fit in to the plan, the ideology of Zionism? It doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mean a Jewish woman who grew up as Palestinian in&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, yes. Her family goes back hundreds of years. But here&#8217;s the thing, mine doesn&#8217;t. Mine does not. My father&#8217;s family, he was able to trace them back to southern Spain basically right around the inquisition. His people are not from Palestine and that&#8217;s okay. And that&#8217;s why the idea to me, like you were saying that part of your family were Bundist, what they said is that there&#8217;s this beautiful Bundist poster that I&#8217;ve used in my writings, which basically says, &#8220;Wherever we are, that&#8217;s our home.&#8221; And to me, that is what the Jewish diaspora is. We have always made a home wherever we are, and we have a right to do so. To me, it is anti-Semitic. And by that, I mean the popular idea of anti-Jewishness. It is anti-Jewish to say that you only belong in one place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is so fucked up to me. That is colonialism to say that you belong over here. Everything else is ours. Because I have no connection to Israel or occupied Palestine. I&#8217;m not a desert person. It&#8217;s not my thing. I have no connection to that and nor should I be forced to, because like you said, no one else will take me. And so the problem to me is that like we were saying before is that when we&#8217;re talking earlier, I think the feelings that we have in the Jewish community about Zionism are very, very complex. And it&#8217;s very important that we have these conversations within our families and our communities, and we have those conversations with love and understanding for where people are coming from. And also in the lived reality, Zionism is a disgusting and horrific colonialist ideology that should not exist for the safety and security of anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As James Baldwin said, &#8220;If I&#8217;m starving, I&#8217;m a danger to you.&#8221; You can never have safety when somebody else is oppressed, especially if you&#8217;re oppressing them. So the idea that Jewish safety is found on the other side of a genocide, the Jews should already know that that&#8217;s not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, let me step back here. Let&#8217;s unpack some of these things you just said. You said a whole lot just there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which I&#8217;m not surprised at the reading which you wrote that you pack lot into those words. But let me just&#8230; You mentioned the Bundists. People listening to us may not know who the Bundists are. It&#8217;s not like a&#8230; Doesn&#8217;t roll off your lips like Zionism or Nazism or racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not Taylor Swift. It&#8217;s not a well-known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taylor Swift. Yes. Was she a Bundist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Talk for me just who are the Bundists?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, I&#8217;ll say this basically that as long as Zionism has had a home in Jewish communities, anti-Zionism is at a home. And the Bundists basically, the ones that I&#8217;ve researched the most, primarily in Central Europe and of course Eastern Europe as well, but basically people that were fighting for Jewish rights and thereby human rights. Because a lot of Jewish radicals have never just focused on Jewish rights, but rights of all of the people, of all of the oppressed to have a right to basic freedoms. As Emma Goldman said, &#8220;Everyone&#8217;s right to beautiful things and a right to freedom.&#8221; Emma Goldman, my sister from another mister, rad Jewish woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&#8217;m sure other people could speak to this more eloquently than I can. But Bundists were basically workers and members of the Jewish community who were the other side of this Zionist debate in saying that, no, our right as human beings is to be at home where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So given the work that you&#8217;re doing around this issue of buying real estate, stealing Palestinian land, and selling it to Jews, especially what we&#8217;re talking about and having some right-wing Jewish congregation, Orthodox congregation being the ones who are perpetrating this, that&#8217;s a real problem. And I hear what you&#8217;ve learned from that doing this. One of the things that I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about lately is that anti-Semitism has been around a long, long time. And as a Jew, I always grew up with them seeing that people hated us for all the wrong reasons. And this is the first time I think in our history as a people, this complex history isn&#8217;t just a history, it&#8217;s very complex history that we are causing the rise of anti-Semitism because of what we are doing. Whenever I talk about Israel-Palestine, I always use the word we&#8217;re because it&#8217;s me, then I can say, you&#8217;re not but not in my name, but you&#8217;re doing it in my name. So that&#8217;s why I think this is a very complex moment. I mean, it&#8217;s really hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is so hard. And that&#8217;s also why I say the feelings are very complex, but&#8230; Well, not but, and the feelings are very complex, and the cause of those complex feelings is really simple. To quote one of my other favorite people, Nietzsche, &#8220;These Zionist Jews have become the monsters that they were trying to fight.&#8221; And it&#8217;s really uncomfortable. And like you said, when somebody talks about Nazism and Zionism in the same breath, it is super uncomfortable. I was talking to a friend the other day and I was saying something about, &#8220;Oh, well, Jews don&#8217;t prophesize.&#8221; And he was like, &#8220;Yeah, and you don&#8217;t commit genocide either.&#8221; And I was like, &#8220;Ouch.&#8221; But I was like, &#8220;I mean, you&#8217;re right, but holy shit that burns to hear it in that context.&#8221; But it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Yeah, that&#8217;s true.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think that our job right now as Jews who do not believe in Zionism as an ideology that is in any way helpful or just, our job is to sit with that discomfort and figure out in our communities how to deal with that and how to generate that [foreign language 00:16:30]. Like how to pursue this justice and how to pursue it in a way that makes the world or at least olam ha-ba, like the world to come a better place, not just for Jews, but for all of the people who are oppressed. Because our place as Jews has been historically often and should be with the oppressed. So how do we grapple with these really uncomfortable and complex emotions in order to do that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to talk about our association with liberation movements as Jews. But I got to say this one thing as we started this conversation earlier, that when we were sitting with our colleagues here, Max and Kayla and you. And you said a couple of things that really setting me off that I had not really thought about before. Uncomfortable things. And it made me think about when I was a young civil rights worker in Eastern Shore and sometimes in Mississippi and Alabama, there were white people in the south who came over to us because they sort of shifting. And I feel like this is a moment, I don&#8217;t want to say this. It&#8217;s really hard even to say. I never in my life would think that inside the Jewish world, we would start looking at what we created as an oppression to others. And your Nietzsche quotes, some of the things you said earlier when we&#8217;re sitting around together, is popping off in my head and thinking about the real consequence of that and what it means and how serious this is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s really hard to grapple with, which is why I think it&#8217;s also been really beautiful to see that there have been a lot of Jewish community members, whether that&#8217;s through just Jewish Voice for Peace or some kind of organization like that, or through religious spaces. There&#8217;s been a lot of connection to that Jewish grief and connecting to what it means when the Jews are the perpetrators, because that has not been our history and how to grapple with that. And how to grapple with the realization that the monsters we have fought are now the monsters that we are becoming. And when that&#8217;s done in our name, what is our duty? And for me, I think it might be not easier because it is a level of fear and heartbreak to have the people you&#8217;re facing be people that you were raised to respect and think were on your side. That is something that I&#8217;m not able to process yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I think it&#8217;s been a little bit easier for me than perhaps some people because I have been in the anti-war movement since 2002 when we were threatening to go into Iraq for the second time. And when I realized that, oh, this is being done in my name as an American and so my job is to fight that. And so I have a little bit of a history of feeling that responsibility. And so I think that that&#8217;s also something that is new for a lot of folks in the Jewish community is because we have not had to grapple with that. So I think, yeah, it is very, very uncomfortable. But again, I think that as a good friend of mine once said who&#8217;s Dine, he said, &#8220;The way that we pray is through action.&#8221; And I think that that can also be very true for Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this is true of your own history. The way that we process and the way that we understand our history is to try and make sure it doesn&#8217;t happen, never again. It&#8217;s not just a platitude. So when we act, it is a way of prayer. It is a way of putting out into the world tikkun olam and olam ha-ba. So I think that is something that can be very powerful in these moments. And also, just contemplating and dealing with that grief of knowing that our community might never recover from the deep soul-wrenching severing that is happening right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;re right. What&#8217;s happening right now with the Palestinians and Israelis, this could become one of the most decisive moments in human history out of the west. And there&#8217;s no telling where I could stop. I mean, it could expand where it is, but it could erupt in this country, it could erupt through Europe. I mean, it&#8217;s a real danger point beyond just Israel-Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is. And to your point about legit anti-Semitism that we see on the rise everywhere, I mean, having gone to a lot of protests where the right-winger, MAGA people talking about how the Jews own everything. And then you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Well, Biden&#8217;s sending Israel weapons every 36 hours.&#8221; So it is like what Israel says the US does. I felt like I once had a comeback for that that was more legitimate than it is now. It&#8217;s still Jewish space lasers are bullshit, but this whole APAC runs the country. I&#8217;m like, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know that I can argue with you.&#8221; So it perpetuates more like actual violence against Jews. And so how do we grapple with that at the same time as understanding that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. And to suggest that belittles the actual anti-Semitism that&#8217;s happening, and it muddies those waters. So I think it&#8217;s really important to make that distinction and to recognize that there is violence against Jews that happens through, as you were saying, people hating Jews for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So neither one of us are prescient, it doesn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I try, but-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wait, I do too, but I do my best. But I&#8217;m curious in terms of how you perceive the role of young Jewish activists in the struggle at the moment and the power that they actually have and probably don&#8217;t know that they have to alter the situation, and how you organize that. I mean, at heart, my history has been as an organizer, different community organizer, a labor organizer, whatever. So how do you see that happening? How do you see that shift taking place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s beautiful, actually. What I think a lot of&#8230; And folks younger than me, I&#8217;m 37, they&#8217;re like-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you&#8217;re such an old woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know. I&#8217;m a woman now. No, but I see 16, 18-year-olds that are in this fight that are on the front lines. I mean, there was a beautiful action where folks locked down and stopped access to a Lockheed Martin plant that sends weapons and creates weapons to send to Israel, several Jews. I mean, the people who blocked Biden&#8217;s access to the State of the Union. So he had to take an alternate route, a bunch of Jews. And again, this is part of our history. There&#8217;s so much organizing in our history. So I think we&#8217;re well suited to this work, first of all. And secondly, I think that the powerful thing is that you can do something by working in our own communities. I&#8217;m a huge advocate of organizing the folks that you know. And understanding that we, as younger Jews, have the ability to meet people where they&#8217;re at. So I&#8217;m sending my dad rabbinical statements from Jewish Voice for Peace. I&#8217;m not sending him the Electronic Intifada article. I love Electronic Intifada. And there are Jews who work there like my comrade, Nora Barrows-Friedman but it&#8217;s like-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who you turn me onto, by the way, with your writing and-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I adore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230; I never read her before-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She is so good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230; before I read your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. An Electronic Intifada is wonderful. And also, I&#8217;m not going to ask my dad to read that because you&#8217;ll see the name, he&#8217;ll be like, &#8220;Nope.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think it&#8217;s-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[inaudible 00:24:27], get out of here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, exactly. It&#8217;s important to meet people where they&#8217;re at. And my partner is Jewish too and he&#8217;s gotten a lot of people responding to him saying, &#8220;Look, I grew up Zionist. I had my bar mitzvah in Israel and all of this, and now I see it. I get it, thank you.&#8221; So I think that that&#8217;s also the powerful thing. People are shifting, particularly younger people. And recognizing that the work that we&#8217;re doing of just sitting down and having conversations is super powerful. And I&#8217;d say that for anything. I&#8217;ve sat down in Louisiana with old white dudes and been like, &#8220;Hey, talk to me about why you hate Democrats. I do too. But why do you think Trump&#8217;s the answer?&#8221; So having these conversations in communities that are willing to listen to you, I think is super important and also recognizing when they&#8217;re not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to go up to the Orthodox guy waving an Israeli flag ready to spit in my face. You&#8217;re not ready to have this conversation, sir, okay? And same thing for any issue. So I think that it&#8217;s important to recognize our history of organizing, plugging into that, meeting people where they&#8217;re at, and knowing that our role as Jews is always on the side of the oppressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two things popped in my head as you were speaking about that. One was the history of Jews in movements to fight oppression. In part because we were oppressed in the civil rights movement, in the labor movement across in Europe fighting the Nazis, fighting the fascists. But as a younger person in this movement, where do you see the future? Are you hopeful that things can change? Do you see a light that you can build and organize towards that actually see something different than what we have now? I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Germany now, who&#8217;s Israeli. He&#8217;s among almost 2 million Israelis, almost all of them on the left who left Israel. The entire Israeli left is now in Europe or South America or Vietnam. They&#8217;re everywhere, but they&#8217;re not in Israel. I&#8217;m curious how you see the future playing out, how you see this playing out, how you&#8217;re organizing playing out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hope is a tricky concept, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is. Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To quote Klee Benally who was a brilliant-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quote who?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Klee Benally who&#8217;s a brilliant Dine organizer who unfortunately died in December. But in an interview I did with him once, he said, &#8220;I have the kind of hope that burns cop cars.&#8221; And that&#8217;s the kind of hope that I have. It is a jagged and dangerous hope, and it is unpredictable, and it oftentimes walks with a despair. That is the kind of hope that I have and yet I have hope. And I think what you just said, it gives me hope. The fact that a bunch of Israelis were like, &#8220;Actually, no. And I&#8217;m out.&#8221; And I think that we are going to see, and we are seeing it&#8217;s crumbling. A friend of mine, Abby Martin, was just on Piers Morgan. And basically, even Piers was like, &#8220;Yeah, I get this is just not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even Piers Morgan. So you have the stenographers, the State Department, you have the propaganda machine struggling to keep the lie alive that Israel has a &#8220;right to self-defense,&#8221; quote, unquote, which is absurd both legally and through lived experiences. But it&#8217;s starting to crumble. And I think more and more people are starting to see that, especially in the Jewish community and having this feeling that I do not have a connection to this place. And I think a lot of this is happening through this co-organizing that we&#8217;re seeing between Jews and Palestinians. This understanding that the connection that you have to place as a Palestinian is something that I don&#8217;t and why would I? This is your home. And basically, seeing that side of the story, because that&#8217;s not something that obviously we were raised with is hearing the Palestinian side of things, most of us as Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I think that that&#8217;s a really powerful thing that gives me hope is this confluence of stories, these shared stories of both oppression and struggle and recognizing that we have this solidarity. And so I do have hope, but I also understand that it&#8217;s not going to stop tomorrow. The US imperialist machine, as Khalidi wrote in his A Hundred Years&#8217; War on Palestine&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Great book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, it is. It&#8217;s a brilliant book. It started with the UK propping up Israel and then that shifted to the United States. And United States absolutely sees itself as that protector. I mean, Biden said, &#8220;If Israel didn&#8217;t exist, we&#8217;d have to invent it.&#8221; Like, &#8220;Okay. You psychopath.&#8221; So I think we are battling the largest empire the world has ever seen and their colonial outpost of Israel and that is heavy shit. And so I think it&#8217;s also appropriate to feel weighted down by that. And again, that&#8217;s where the despair walks with the hope. But also recognize that all empires fall, all colonialism has fallen and will fall and there is hope in that. And then there is also something really powerful about understanding that the struggle is making a difference. And a lot of that&#8230; And I&#8217;m not trying to give Jews way more credit than we should have, but a lot of that I think, especially in Jewish communities, is because of Jewish organizers sitting down and having these conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s up to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. This is our fight in the worst and most twisted way. And I feel a great responsibility to decolonize Palestine for the sake of not just Palestinians, but Jews and everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I know our time is limited today and I really appreciate you taking the time here on The Steiner Show to do this. And I look forward to many more conversations and collaborations and seeing where this takes us and the struggle to free ourselves from the Zionist clutch and to free our brothers and sisters in Palestine so they can have a land of their own and for building a better world together. And I want to thank you so much for your spirit and your brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Likewise. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s good to meet you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleanor Goldfield:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Likewise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once again let me thank Eleanor Goldfield for joining us today and for her brilliant advocacy in decolonizing Jewish thought and shattering the Zionist myth. You can find more of her work at ArtKillingApathy.com and that&#8217;s Art with a capital A-K, capital A, and at hardroadofhope.com. And thank you all for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for the show and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at Real News for making the show possible. And our brilliant audio editor, [inaudible 00:31:13] for editing our show and making me sound good. Please let me know what you&#8217;ve thought about what you heard today, what you&#8217;d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I&#8217;ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Eleanor Goldfield for her work and for joining us here today on The Marc Steiner Show at The Real News Network. And once again, thank you all for joining us. Please stay in touch.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/illegal-real-estate-sales-of-palestinian-land-are-happening-around-the-us\">The Real News Network<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sale of land parcels in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem is happening in violation of international and domestic civil rights law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1533,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,82,473,3971,5582,5585,5583],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1601132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601133,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601132\/revisions\/1601133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1601132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1601132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1601132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}