Cheers to Photographer Nan Goldin’s “Fiery” Denunciation of Israel’s Genocide
On November 22, acclaimed U.S. photographer Nan Goldin spoke at the opening of a retrospective of her work at the Neuen Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) in Berlin, Germany. The gallery’s lifetime retrospective showcases her work, including slideshows and films, backed by music.
Goldin told the audience, “I have decided to use this exhibition as a platform to amplify my position of moral outrage at the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.” And she said, “My grandparents escaped pogroms [deadly riots against Jews] in Russia. I was brought up knowing about the Nazi Holocaust. What I see in Gaza reminds me of the pogroms that my grandparents escaped.”
“Never again means never again for everyone,” she emphasized. And she protested Germany’s harsh suppression of, and repression against, anti-Israel protests. She posed to German people, where the original Holocaust took place against the Jews, “What have you learned, Germany?” Responding to how protests against Zionist Israel have been slandered as anti-Semitic, she said, “Anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.” And she spoke out against violent repression of Palestinians in Germany, saying that country is “home of the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe. Yet protests are met with police dogs and deportation and stigmatization.”
Goldin walked off the stage to loud chants of “Free, free Palestine.”
Nan Goldin’s courageous use of her platform as an acclaimed and influential artist to call out Israel’s genocide, and repression against protests against it is an important event in its own right. It provoked controversy and opened debate over Germany’s brutal repression against criticism of Israel. One critic called Goldin's speech "fiery." It is a model and challenge to other artists and public figures to use their platforms to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
You can see some of Nan Goldin’s talk to the right.
Dallas, November 14, 2024. Photo: Special to revcom.us
Protesting the “World’s Biggest Zionist Conference” in Dallas
From a Revolution Reader and Revcom Sustainer in Houston
The genocidal Jewish National Fund (JNF) convened the “world’s biggest Zionist conference” on November 14-17 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas. While Gaza is getting destroyed by the U.S.-backed Zionists’ brutal murder spree and daily genocidal attacks, organizations like the JNF manufacture consent for the devastation of the Palestinian people, continuing their century-long project of settler colonialism, displacement, and ethnic cleansing.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has several pods all over the southern region of the U.S., refused to allow the JNF to invade Dallas and make plans for continued illegal settlement and expansion in Palestine without resistance. The JVP-Dallas called for anti-Zionist Jews from all over Texas and the South to mobilize a protest and resistance against the genocidal conference, to ensure that genocidal war criminals do not have a moment of peace.
Jewish Voice for Peace protests Zionist conference in Dallas, November 14, 2024. Photo: IG @JVPDFW
On the first day of the JNF conference we began our resistance by blocking the traffic from the street in front of the hotel. We were at an intersection, and five resisters signaled drivers that they would have to make a detour and go another route. We prevented them from turning right or going straight into the street where we symbolically planted a faux olive tree with several pounds of soil. Eventually the cops showed up and blocked the traffic for us. I thought (sarcastically), how kind of them to block the traffic for us so nobody would get hurt from oncoming traffic or some right-wing maniac driver.
After that those of us at the intersection joined the main protest action. Some of us sat in the street and others stood and we all chanted “Not in our names, Not on our dime, Hands off Palestine!” We sang a famous prayer in Hebrew called Atz Chaim, which translates, “It is a tree of life for those who grasp it...” This was an appropriate song or prayer since we had just symbolically planted an olive tree in the middle of the street in front of the hotel.
We wanted to let the world, as well as the Zionists at the JNF conference, know that not all Jews are Zionists who support the genocide being carried out in Gaza and Palestine. We stood our ground for about an hour before the popo started warning us that if we did not move, we would be arrested. Some of us moved, and some of us remained sitting down. Eventually, a policewoman stood in front of me and repeated that if I did not move, I would be arrested. I stared at her and did not say a word. Then another cop grabbed my arms from behind me and took me away to be handcuffed and later strapped with a thick plastic tie.
I shared the police vehicle with a sister who uses a customized wheelchair for her healthcare issues. They made her get out of her seat, which had special connections. After a while her electronic pumps and devices began to fail. The cops refused to let her sit in her wheelchair while we sat in the car in a parking lot for an extended amount of time. The system is deliberate in trying to confuse and traumatize you into a nervous state of mind, a nervous wreck, so they are intentionally, emotionally and physically abusive, to dehumanize you.
They stuffed us like animals into a cage, and took us for a ride to the police station. We refused to cooperate and answer all their nosy questions. But they insist on asking you a lot of personal information to see how “cooperative” you are. We finally told them collectively that we would not answer any more of their questions.
People had come from Charlotte, Ft. Worth, Houston-Galveston, and other southern cities to be part of this protest—and we have a determination to continue opposing the genocide Israel and the U.S. are perpetrating on the people of Gaza.
A supporter of Revolution in Texas
Demonstration November 20, 2024 outside U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv
Demonstration November 20, 2024 outside U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv
On November 20th, activists gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to express their support for a Congressional resolution being voted on that same day that would block some $20 million in US offensive military aid to Israel. The activists, who included Israelis, Americans, and dual citizens, organized under the demand “Arms embargo now!” and held signs saying “U.S. Funded Genocide” & “Jews in Palestine say ‘Stop arming Israel’”. The activists then started blocking traffic outside the embassy and poured red paint on the road, symbolizing the blood being spilled by an unchecked supply of U.S. weapons. One activist was arrested.