Tsedek! is a collective of decolonial Jews fighting against both state racism in France and for an end to apartheid and occupation in Israel-Palestine. We are breaking away from the discourse promoted by the Jewish institutions that are supposed to represent us and from the majority of French Jewish anti-racist groups. It’s time we make our voices heard and build together a Jewish anti-racist and decolonial front. This manifesto is our first step.
Jewish and decolonial
For a decolonial Jewish voice – As decolonial Jewish activists, we understand the extent to which our society is structured by its colonial and racial history. As Jews, we do not forget that it is European nation-states that orchestrated our destruction, that of our histories and cultures. That it was they who turned the Jew into a parasite, a foreigner within the state, thereby justifying the persecution and extermination of Europe’s Jews. That it was also them who caused the uprooting of Jews from their societies in Arab and Muslim countries, by pitting the colonized against one another and supporting the Zionist nationalist and colonial project.
Today, the French state and its assimilationist policy continue to harm Jews. Neither too visible nor too barbaric, we are acceptable provided that we remain eternal victims, to enable the state to dream of itself as our protector. In reality, it continues to fabricate the conditions of our disappearance through its identitarian approach to secularism, its emphasis on a so-called « Judeo-Christian » culture, and its association of French Jews with the state of Israel – which turns us into separate citizens.
Being and remaining Jewish – The history of Jewish communities has shaped a multiplicity of relations to Judaism, Jewishness, and non-Jews. This plurality has collided against the walls of the white identity of European nation-states, which made Jews one of the first figures of otherness. A product of this European modernity, Zionism produced a reductive, ahistorical and ethno-national version of Jewish identity. With the support of Western countries, it has become an extension of Judaism, even its incarnation, and has transformed our experience of Jewishness in France. By transforming religious discourse into nationalist discourse, Zionism destroys and distorts the foundations of Judaism and adopts precisely the structures from which Jews have historically been excluded from Western society: nation-state, colonialism and race.
Tsedek! brings together Jews of different origins and backgrounds, both believers and atheists. For us, the creation of an ethnocracy is not a prerequisite for Jewish emancipation and self-determination. We are reclaiming a Jewish identity by combining it with an anti-racist struggle and by proposing a cultural alternative that emphasizes the preservation of Jewish cultures and solidarity with other historically oppressed groups and minorities. Our Jewishness is built around shared traditions, joy, the pursuit of social justice and the repair of the world, which rests on three pillars: justice, peace and truth.
For an internationalist activism against colonialism, fascism, and imperialism – We wish to fight alongside those who are challenging the economic, political, and symbolic violence that neo-colonial France continues to exert on the world, particularly in its overseas territories and in Africa. French and European immigration policies, and the xenophobic treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, are yet another illustration of Western coloniality. From Calais to Lesbos, borders, walls and barbed wire kill, and we stand by migrants and undocumented workers.
Against state racism
The fight against antisemitism is a fight for equality that must be led alongside other anti-racist struggles – We are at odds with state institutions and organizations that claim to combat antisemitism by defining it as an exceptional and separate form of racism, and by reducing it to individual and ahistorical behaviors. What should be a struggle for a more just world, everywhere and for all, finds itself instrumentalized in favor of a moralizing enterprise and too often misused as a tool for racist governance or in defense of the Zionist colonial project.
Refusing to identify the structural forces that produce racism prevents the convergence of anti-racist struggles, protects the interests of the state, and offers a pathway to authoritarianism. Like all racism, contemporary antisemitism is a political phenomenon. Although it has its own historical specificities and is shaped by various mutations, antisemitism remains the product of nationalism and white supremacy, which feed reactionary ideologies. Our response must therefore also be political. We refuse to separate the fight against antisemitism from other anti-racist struggles, and wish to participate in the construction of a political project of justice for all.
Overcoming the instrumentalization of antisemitism – In France and elsewhere, conservative pro-Israel organizations and state institutions claiming to fight antisemitism continue to conflate “Jew” and “Zionist” by presenting any criticism of Zionism, the occupation, or Israeli apartheid as intrinsically antisemitic. We refuse to let the fight against antisemitism be diverted from its egalitarian objective to become a tool of authoritarian governance that targets Muslims, the left and human rights organizations in particular. We refuse to be the moral guarantor of a state that persecuted and exterminated our own people. The security or rights of Jews must not be used to justify policies that discriminate against other minorities or limit freedom of expression, as we have seen with the banning of demonstrations in support of Palestinian people, the deprogramming of activists at public conferences, or the expulsion of imams.
Against state-sponsored Islamophobia – Contemporary European nationalism is structured around Islamophobia, and it is the figure of the Muslim that today represents otherness and the intruder. The increasingly normalized theory of the great replacement legitimizes the persecution of post-colonial immigrant populations, refugees, and non-white asylum seekers. The conspiracy theories that characterize antisemitism are now also mobilized against Muslims, accused of wanting to destabilize and divide our societies. Collective memory must not turn a blind eye to the analogies between today’s Islamophobia and last century’s antisemitism, nor to the way in which the fixation on an imaginary « Islamo-leftism » echoes the Judeo-Bolshevism of the first half of the 20th century. In the face of state racism, we fight alongside our comrades targeted by Islamophobia.
For an end to apartheid and occupation in Israel-Palestine
The state of Israel is an offshoot of European colonialism, and owes its existence to the dispossession of Palestinians and the denial of their rights – Neither a « religious conflict » nor a « civilizational struggle,” Israel-Palestine is a colonial situation. The oxymoron « Jewish democracy » designates nothing more than a sham democracy, reserved exclusively for Jews. Therefore, only a genuine process of decolonization will achieve justice and equality. Today, two blocs with radically unequal strength and means are pitted against one another: on the one hand, a supremacist, colonial state that flouts international law and benefits from the support of the Western powers; on the other, a colonized, oppressed and dispersed population, whose acts of resistance are seen as illegitimate. We stand by the Palestinians and Israelis who are fighting for a truly democratic alternative, which would grant the same rights to all the inhabitants of the region, from the river to the sea.
The anti-racist struggle can only be anti-Zionist – Zionism integrates and extends the racial logics of European modernity. It seeks to make Jews white, to emancipate them using the same mechanisms that have historically been used to oppress them. In this process, non-European Jews are candidates for whiteness, and Palestinians constitute a foreign and unassimilable body. We will not turn a blind eye to the racism of the Zionist enterprise – which also has Jewish victims – because we believe it is important to replace the discourse opposing Jews and non-Jews, which benefits the Israeli regime, with an analysis of the settler/indigenous relationship.
Many Jewish voices within French anti-racist circles seek to reconcile anti-racism and Zionism, presenting it as a liberation movement compatible with so-called « progressive » values. Zionism is a racist colonial and ethno-nationalist project, whose structural links with antisemitism are increasingly apparent. We see this particularly in the unconditional support that far-right movements around the world provide to Israel’s policy of colonization and apartheid. Colonial systems produce and reinforce fascism, supremacy, and racism, including antisemitism. Zionism has no place in anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles, nor in the fight for human rights. A Jewish anti-racist voice can only be anti-Zionist.
Jews against Israeli apartheid – We are concerned to see that for many Jewish people, Judaism and Zionism are one and the same, that Jews and the state of Israel are one and the same. This articulation runs through all our spaces, be they family, community or institutional. For many Jews, calls for the liberation of Palestine are perceived as a threat to our security. We refuse to let the painful history of antisemitism be used to play with our people’s fears and legitimize a colonial enterprise that denies Palestinians their rights. On the contrary, like other Jewish anti-Zionist activists – in the past and present, from Israel and elsewhere – we believe that the security of Jews, including Israelis, cannot be achieved through colonization and the oppression of the Palestinian people. We also know that colonization destroys settlers and their humanity. It exposes them to the situational violence of the colonized, as well as to that of their own system.
Tsedek! supports Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and rights, including through the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign. As long as the « Jewish right to self-determination » is pursued to the detriment of Palestinians’ collective rights, it will not be legitimate, and we will not be able to achieve a just peace.
As French Jews, we are not responsible for Israeli policy, but it is carried out in our name. We therefore have a responsibility to change it. In solidarity with Jewish anti-racist, anti-occupation and anti-Zionist collectives around the world, as well as with Palestinian and Israeli groups, our struggle is not a solitary one. It is part of an international uprising.
Join us
Tsedek! 