THE NES MANIFESTO AND APPEAL

NES WE SOCIALIST JEWS

AND IL CENTRO INTERNAZIONALE DI BRERA

PRESENT

THE NES MANIFESTO AND APPEAL

25 Kislev 5784; 7 December 2023

We Socialist Jews

Considering that anti-Semitism is re-exploding in Europe in the media, in the institutional, academic, civil, and production worlds, in the political world of right and left, with the old motivations, accusations, and modalities, which have their roots in Christian anti-Semitism and even further back in time; it reverberates in the Middle East with the propaganda of Hamas and other militant Islamist movements that are openly anti-Jewish, a variation on the theme, reinterpreting the same anti-Jewish modalities and prejudices of Christian, fascist and Nazi matrix; it echoes far across the world, fuelling the anti-Jewish hatred that for centuries has discriminated, persecuted, and eliminated Jews in thought and/or action.

Considering also that there are repeated acts against Jews or against Jewish tangible or intangible property, e.g. stumbling stones burned, hostage posters torn and daubed with hooked crosses, stars of David drawn on doorways to mark Jewish families, Jewish cemeteries vandalised and burned, shops forbidden to Jews, synagogues daubed, flags with the Star of David burned, planes attacked, slogans shouted against Jews, attacks on Jewish property, anti-Jewish chants in stadiums, provocations and threats against Jewish students, desertions at cultural events, street demonstrations where people shout anti-Jewish slogans, boycotts of Jewish universities and academies, exclusion from political and cultural circles, political marginalisation, social marginalisation, intimidation and physical attacks on Jews wearing the kippa, murders against Jews; this and more is happening today in the heart of Europe and in various countries around the world.

Considering also that anti-Semitism, which has affected much of Western literature, art, science and knowledge and for centuries mystified historical reality and law, has become the instrument of struggle in the Middle East conflict, again mystifying and distorting the meaning and interpretation of facts, history and documents.

Asserting that anti-Semitism remains the main problem of the conflict in the Middle East, so much so that Israel's right to exist is questioned, and in everyone's opinion even its right to exist, despite the fact that it is perhaps the only country in the world that has rebuilt its national entity within the narrow limits of its historical land, comparable to an Italian region.

Considering that anti-Semitism (Christian, right-wing, left-wing, Islamic, ...) and terror continue to feed an explosive mixture of false propalestinian propaganda everywhere, hiding racist, homophobic and anti-women positions and a programme of extermination of the Jewish people.

Stating that this propaganda, which continues to rage, shifting attention against the so-called 'persecutors and torturers Zionist Jews', is bankrupt both because it is anti-Semitic and because, by fuelling the culture of hatred against the Jewish people, it only intensifies the Middle East conflict.

Also stating that this propaganda, which supports Hamas in its stated wicked intent to increase the Palestinian deads, which are useful to increase the international pressure on Israel, thwarts the hope that a movement to fight for the liberation of the Palestinians from the dictatorship of an organisation like Hamas that rules by terror can come to life.

Emphasising that this aberrant propaganda only hinders the long-awaited and hoped-for self-determination process of the Palestinians.

Recognising that of this global anti-Semitism, the infamous UN World Conference Against Racism, Durban 2001 - which was held in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack on 9/11 - and the global BDS Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel are emblematic examples, whose intimidating and inciting effects of anti-Semitic hatred and violence are persistent and pervasive.

Also stating that abused terms such as apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonisation, Zionism equals racism, Zionism equals Nazism, racial superiority, ethnic cleansing, fascist, racist, xenophobic, referring to the Jewish people, are false, unacceptable and to be rejected, as are slogans such as Get the Zionists out of the squares or universities or Free Palestine from the river to the sea, that share Hamas' goal of eliminating the Jewish state.

It also states that statements of paternalistic equidistance being spread among ordinary people are a serious mystification of the dramatic situation at hand.

Observing with concern that books such as the Protocols of the Elder of Zion and Mein Kampf, basic texts of Nazi ideology, and such as The End of the Jews by Hamas, are disseminated as indoctrination tools to fuel anti-Jewish hatred.

Also noting with concern that anti-Semitism returns, as in times past, to the folds of law when in December 2023, South Africa submits to the UN International Court of Justice its petition against Israel in response to the terrorist act of 7 October 2023; and that this petition initiates a false and anti-Semitic accusation/political condemnation of genocide, which is intended to confirm the baleful existence of an alleged Jewish conspiracy over "usurped" land, on which "bloodthirsty and vindictive" Jews plan and carry out the "genocide" of Palestinians.

Questioning with concern what development a generalised 'culture' may have that, eighty years after the Shoah, produces with anti-Semitism such a high level of manipulation of reality, what the future goals may be, what solution is possible in the Middle East as a result of indiscriminate anti-Semitism that still identifies Jews as the worst enemies.

Not feeling represented by a certain Left that, instead of solidarity, manifests strong hostility, instigating hatred and violence; a Left that has never really come to terms with its historical anti-Semitism; that does not understand or value diversity; which is handing over its cultural heritage of political, civil, economic, social, and national struggles and demands to the Pope and a Right that today - without having made either of them any acceptable self-criticism - stand as the bulwark of the fight against anti-Semitism, women's rights, workers' rights, animal rights, and environmental rights.

Recalling that Jews have helped found, grow, enrich, and manage anarchist, revolutionary and reformist Left movements everywhere in the world and have been among their protagonists.

Convinced that anti-Semitism is one of the main causes of the progressive degradation and crisis of the Left, whose vicissitudes, since its origins, are notoriously intertwined with the history of Jews in Europe, in Israel, in the world.

Concerned that a 'Jew-free' and increasingly hostile Left would contradict its origins and lose its cultural and political identity.

Hoping that the diverse world of the Left will be self-critical and will reject anti-Semitism once and for all.

We declare the birth of the NES Noi Ebrei Socialisti - We Socialist Jews,

on the Eve of Channukkah 5784, 7 December 2023, two months after the Pogrom of 7 October, in remembrance of the Jews' prodigious victory against the occupation of Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) by the Seleucids.

The text of the NES Manifesto follows below:

Article 1 Purposes of NES

1. The NES is formed to collectively represent, interpret and act politically as a bulwark against anti-Semitism and racism and to protect Judaism and cultural diversity.

2. The NES stimulates the debate to refound Socialism on a solid and shared Jewish cultural basis, a multicultural and federalist Socialism, for social and environmental equity, which includes and values diversity.

3. The NES is formed to counter populist and authoritarian right-wingers, heirs of fascism and Nazism, on the rise in Europe and in different parts of the world.

4. The NES is formed to denounce anti-Semitism on the Left, which today more than ever makes free and equal Jewish participation in democratic initiatives difficult.

5. The NES is formed to defend us against Islamic anti-Semitism that is showing its most violent face.

6.The NES is formed to oppose all forms of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, anti-Roma, ableism and racism against women, Africans, indigenous peoples and migrants.

7. The NES believes that the great Jewish and socialist tradition, from which it draws its inspiration, is today an antidote to the awakening of nationalist and authoritarian drifts in the world and can contribute to solving the serious social and environmental problems that afflict it.

8. The NES is constituted as a group coordinated by shared rules in order to make a concrete contribution to social criticism along with knowledge, defence and construction of the ideals of Jewish socialism; to reach as political and cultural interlocutors those subjects who refer to the ideal values of the left without at the same time being victims of the anti-Semitic prejudices so violently re-emerging; to emerge from the isolation in which Jews feel forced; to openly confront the world.

Article 2 (Who the NES is)

9. The We of the NES makes explicit a collective dimension, it circumscribes and diversifies; it manifests an idea of struggle for cultural and political survival. The collective dimension of the We, which gives meaning and strength to the NES, expresses an otherness with respect to rampant individualism, evokes resistance.

10. Jews culturally characterise the NES. Judaism is the key element in helping to understand and solve the problems of modernity. There are core elements of Jewish identity that we want to call 'common goods', which cannot be negotiated or assimilated. Among the common goods of Judaism are the Law, its interpretation and the Memory of persecution, fundamental cultural issues that have consequences for identity and its free exercise and that must be safeguarded and protected.

11. Socialists because the NES intends to place itself in that great socialist tradition that Jews helped found and grow, according to a vision opposed to the dominant liberalist, capitalist and consumerist economic model that is devastating the planet.

12. The NES rejects any form of lashon hara (backbiting), an unfortunately commonly accepted practice to insult and denigrate opponents. The NES exercises open and public criticism that arises from collective discussion.

13. The NES considers unacceptable categories in use today such as secular, religious, denominational, theological referring to Jews because they do not represent the complexity of the Jewish world and are divisive; therefore, the NES proposes: neither religious nor secular, Jews, because in Judaism the aspects of material and spiritual life are connected and inseparable.

14. The NES is open to all who share the values of the NES, the miracle of Jewish survival yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Article 3 (Cultural References of the NES)

15. The NES explicitly uses Judaism, of which Jewish Socialism considers a legitimate heir, in a political key to interpret and address the problems of modernity. A few examples apply throughout: Pesach, the revolution for the self-determination of the enslaved Jewish people; the Law, norms of civilised coexistence to deal fairly and responsibly with newly won freedom; Shabbat, the acquired duty and right to rest, study and contemplation, which includes employer and employee, man and woman, citizen and foreigner, working animals.

16. The NES evokes the Pesach revolution as a politically founding moment, when Jews freed themselves from slavery and, through what today would be called a struggle for self-determination, built their identity as a people and nation in accordance with a specific and defined Law and culture, different from that of other neighbouring peoples.

17. The NES considers Judaism to be an expression of cultural diversity, not individual but collective, and counts Jews among the indigenous peoples; these original and diverse peoples, with their own identity and a specific and complex connection to the Land, have over the centuries been deprived of their Land and persecuted to the point of extermination.

18. The NES evokes the specific bond of the Jewish people with the Land. Thousands of years ago, Jewish Law led the Jews to live on a Land and to be an integral part of it in ways more complex and articulated than simply occupying or dwelling in a place. It is not the land that belongs to the people, it is the Jews who belong to the land of Israel and the Creator assigns the land and its borders to them: every aspect of Jewish life, linguistic, political, social, juridical, spiritual, energetic, biological, food, environmental is intimately connected to that land and defines its bond. The Creator is the source of revelation of Jewish law in Eretz Israel, a law that has been established, exercised, practised, desired, recognised.

19. The NES also recalls the exiles to which the Jewish people were forced. In the diaspora, which lasted two thousand years, they followed and applied the same precepts until today, and thus preserved and strengthened their right and cultural bond with their homeland. No people has asserted an alternative right to the Jewish one over Eretz Israel, over the Land of Israel. No other people has superimposed itself, except by force and violence.

20. The NES evokes the political value of Jewish resistance to evangelisation, assimilation, universal homologation; the Jews, survivors of secular persecutions - forced conversions, expulsions, discrimination, massacres, ghettos, pogroms, up to physical and cultural extermination, up to the Shoah - have fought for life and identity and to return to the land where they belong. This same resistance is expressed by the indigenous peoples, historical victims of racism.

21. The NES is inspired by the great movements of Jewish struggle and resistance, Pesach, Hannukkah, Purim, Masada, the Bar Kokhba revolt, ... the resistance to the Inquisition, ... the Warsaw Ghetto revolt..., resistance that took extreme and heroic forms of survival in the ghettos, among the Marranos, in the labour and extermination camps, in the pogroms.

22. The NES is also inspired by the revolutionary and reformist movements of the Left in which numerous Jews have participated fighting for their own and others' emancipation, the recognition of civil and political rights, ... the French Revolution (1789), ... the Roman Republic (1849); ... the Bundist Revolution (1905); the October Revolution (1917); ... the Red Biennium (1919-20); the Resistance to Nazi-Fascism (1943-45); ... the Sixty-Eight Movement ...

23. The NES expressly refers to the two great organised resistance movements, the Bund and Zionism, extraordinary interpreters of the recent history of the Jewish people, the expression of a very ancient and legitimate aspiration for emancipation and self-determination in the diaspora and in Eretz Israel.

24. The NES refers to the Bund (The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia) for its memorable struggle to the bitter end against anti-Semitism in the workplace and on the streets, with self-defence groups, with mass strikes and demonstrations in cities with large Jewish populations; and for the struggle for Socialism, Federalism, National and Cultural Autonomy, full recognition of the civil, political, cultural and national rights of the Jewish people and the building of a multinational state. The Bund, with its 'Doikeyt, We are here now', holds a place of honour in Jewish revolutionary history and contributed to the foundation of social democracy. Imbued with both socialist and traditional values, the Bund placed socialist internationalism in the national tradition and the struggle for the liberation of peoples in the perspective of a socialist and federalist, worldwide and permanent revolution.

25. The NES refers to Zionism for its extraordinary struggle for self-determination and national liberation, for the return of the Jews to their land after two thousand years of exile and dispersion; it is the political and national realisation of a millenary dream, it is the idea that anti-Semitism cannot be overcome except by the establishment of a Jewish state capable of guaranteeing the cultural and physical security of the Jews in it: a state that welcomes them when they need it, a government that represents them, and an army ready to defend them, ensuring with the 'law of return' their permanent right to live in Israel. With the Jewish state, there will be no repetition of what has happened over the centuries, and especially just before or just after the Second World War, when no country welcomed the survivors of extermination camps.

26. The NES is aware that the ideas and values expressed by the Bund and Zionism are not yet fully realised and stands today as an interpreter of Jewish resistance everywhere, in the diaspora and in the Land of Israel: Jewish emancipation cannot be said to be complete and finished until anti-Semitism is finally defeated.

Article 4 (Where the NES acts)

27. The NES is not limited to Italy, but will be active wherever there are Jews, in the world and in international Jewish organisations.

That is why it is given a name in Hebrew,

Noi Ebrei Socialisti

We Socialist Jews

אנחנו היהודים הסוציאליסטים

which intends to connect with the historical parties of the Zionist Left, Meretz and Haavodah, and be inspired by their cultural and political heritage. The NES proposes to open a dialogue of confrontation with the Left in Israel that has been defeated twice: inside the country by a long-lasting right-wing government, which we hope to overcome for a return to a socialist vision; and outside, in the West, by an increasingly hostile Left.

Article 5 (The future, the conflict)

28. The future, after the anti-Semitic pogrom of 7 October, is unpredictable and it seems today risky to speculate on solutions to the conflict in the Middle East from outside; it is also difficult to foresee a calm and lucid political confrontation because of the anti-Semitic propaganda.

29. The NES proposes to initiate a complex reflection that takes into account, if it is still possible, the cultural and traditional aspects of conflict and coexistence, without allowing itself to be caged by the schematic categories of current politics that so far unfortunately seem to fail in a mission of reconciliation.

30. The NES, in support of the ongoing demonstrations in Israel, which have been calling for a new government and the release of hostages for some time, launches the following Appeal, of which the Manifesto is the Foreword, hoping that it will be an impulse for the start of a new policy.

APPEAL FOR A UNILATERAL AND PERMANENT (PEACE) NEGOTIATION

The NES Noi Ebrei Socialisti - We the Socialist Jews, with the Manifesto that constitutes its premise, launches the following Appeal for the creation of a Permanent Unilateral Negotiating Table (for Peace), which openly, continuously and insistently calls for negotiations.

Let the world know that the Jewish People, in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora, indissolubly united in the struggle against terror and anti-Semitism, courageously calls for negotiations. One-sided bargaining is what one side carries out while waiting for the other side to become willing.

The Unilateral and Permanent Negotiating Table would firmly demand:

- to renounce anti-Semitism and terrorism as forms of political struggle;

- to abandon the programme of destruction or subjugation of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

- to definitively reject the false accusations against the Jewish people of deicide, of conspiracy, of worshipping the god money, of constituting a world lobby for control and power over the media, finance and the entire world, the accusations of treason, revenge, greed, blood, the accusations of Zionism equals racism or Nazism, of colonialism, of apartheid, of genocide, aimed at the Jews and the state of Israel. All false accusations that incite violence and have caused millions of deaths over the centuries.

- to organise education and training programmes against anti-Semitism in schools, universities, political and cultural circles, and wherever possible, with lectures and intensive courses on racism, such as: anti-Semitism and Christianity, anti-Semitism and politics, anti-Semitism and law, anti-Semitism and science, anti-Semitism and art (painting, sculpture, literature and music), anti-Semitism and language, anti-Semitism in the Middle East, etc.

With regard to the conflict in the Middle East, the Unilateral and Permanent Negotiating Table would strongly reiterate that the following must be recognised:

- the human rights of everyone;

- a right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security;

- a right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to establish themselves in a peaceful state with agreed borders.

The Unilateral and Permanent Negotiating Table must commit itself:

- to stop viewing the conflict as an exclusively military problem and to contribute transforming the armed conflict into a cultural conflict.

- to take into consideration the value and culture of enemy and neighbouring peoples, examining and making the different aspects in the field comprehensively explicit: cultural, legal, traditional, spiritual, material resources, and mutual aspirations. A road never travelled.

- to enhance the fruitful experiences of peaceful long-term coexistence between Jewish and Islamic communities around the world.

- to share proposals for the fairest possible management of goods and resources - water, land, food, energy, technology, infrastructure, cities.

- to revitalise communitarian and collectivist experiences (such as the kibbutzim and moshavim) and political forms that value diversity, social solidarity and cooperation (such as Cultural Federalism or Jewish Socialism).

We identified three fundamental principles that might be asserted both with peace and in the absence of peace:

- The principle of negotiation: according to which any hypothesis of negotiation, of political or cultural confrontation is possible, any solution is not to be excluded a priori within the framework of negotiation, i.e. the place where the parties meet, any effort in this sense can be useful to obtain even a partial agreement or a beginning of mutual recognition.

- The principle of reparation: this could be introduced to clarify and redefine the issue of land and to repay and compensate for the cost of property acquired, both on the Arab and Jewish side.

- The principle of solidarity: according to which it is necessary to help those who are weaker to help themselves, and it is dutiful to offer cooperation and support to any project aimed at promoting the cultural and social well-being of the parties.

The Unilateral and Permanent Negotiating Table will redistribute responsibility for the ongoing conflict onto the real perpetrators, including those whose propaganda instigates hatred; it will give the new protagonists a chance to build a future of coexistence; it will stimulate the parties' demands to be clear and explicit; it will provide insights for a strategic idea that is unimaginable today.

From the Unilateral and Permanent Negotiating Table, new ideas and perspectives can emerge, the intensity of the conflict can be reduced, feelings and hopes for reconciliation can be born: worthy interlocutors, capable of imagination and mature political vision, will be able to be recognised to undertake a cultural revolution and a path to peace.

We demand to support us and join the Appeal

- For a Permanent Unilateral Negotiating Table (for Peace).

- For the Transformation of the Armed Conflict into a Cultural Conflict.

- For a Cultural Revolution against Anti-Semitism.

Noi Ebrei Socialisti - We the Socialist Jews

Signatures follow:

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NES Noi Ebrei Socialisti - We the Socialist Jews

Italian Version