6mo ago

Israeli-born author renounces citizenship, calling it 'a tool of genocide'

www.middleeasteye.net

Avi Steinberg, an Israeli-born author, announced on Thursday that he had formally renounced his Israeli citizenship.

Justifying his decision in an article for the left-leaning news publication Truthout, Steinberg said that Israeli citizenship had "always been a tool of genocide" that legitimised settler colonialism.

"Israeli citizenship is predicated on the worst kinds of violent crimes we know of, and on a deepening litany of lies intended to whitewash those crimes," he argued in the op-ed.

11 comments

I wonder what that process is like. Do you have to go to the embassy and tell them they're a bunch of genociders?
Edit: that's exactly what you have to do. Here's a bunch of accounts of the process. https://guidetorenouncing.carrd.co/
- I get that individually it’s a strong protest statement but it strikes me that overall this is exactly what we don’t want people to be doing. If all the ethical and anti-Zionist Jews renounce then who will be left to vote against Netanyahu and his ilk?
  
  You can't vote against fascist genocidiers.
  You can't even remove them via judicial means, as netanyahu has shown.
  
  Ethical anti Zionist Jews either stay in Israel to sabotage Israel, or leave.
  Paying taxes and contributing to the Apartheid is in no way ethical when they have the option to leave and go to Europe or the USA etc.
one can think of a few European countries that owe land and reparations to their persecuted Jews. The Palestinian people, however, never owed Jews anything for the crimes committed by European antisemitism, nor do they today.
Its really fucking bonkers that land wasn't taken from the Germans after the war to establish a Jewish State.
But, then again, Balfour and other non-Jewish Zionists were antisemites. They wanted to expel the Jews by any means necessary
Not sure why you didn't publish a link to the article that he wrote in his own words about this
https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-citizenship-has-always-been-a-tool-of-genocide-so-i-renounced-mine/
Power to him. Strong gesture.
I wonder how many Israelis have done this since they shifted from ethnic cleansing to full-on Genocide 2 years ago.
While I agree with his criticism of Israel, I can’t help but note that it’s pretty easy (and therefore meaningless) to give up something you aren’t using. His words matter but giving up his citizenship seems like a hollow sacrifice.
- The author was born in Jerusalem to American parents and raised in an Orthodox setting. In 1993, his family moved back to the US, first to Cleveland and then to Boston, where his father got a job as a director at Harvard University.
  I'm sure people doing this are burning at least some social bridges within the wider community, in order to make waves there and beyond. That's probably the biggest sacrifice. Maybe since they recently started trying to draft even Orthodox Jews into their military for the first time ever, some more people's eyes will be opened?
  
  You don’t know that any social bridges are being burnt. This seems like a big “meh” to me, which would make total sense. Make a big deal about it in writing, while it doesn’t actually cost you that much. Perfect political action: superficially poignant, but ultimately meaningless.

11 comments