"Why are you here"?: American Jewish Activists Living in Israel-Palestine

Abstract

As tensions between Israel and Palestine deepen, diaspora communities have become further polarised. Among the Jewish community, Jews living in America feel torn between two centres of Jewish life, America and Israel-Palestine. For left-wing Jews, particularly, engaging in Israeli-Palestinian politics feels like a moral obligation to transform the Jewish community (Kroll-Zeldin 2024). This thesis explores Jewish Americans residing in Jerusalem and engaging in anti-occupation activism and their desires to belong within the community after feeling disillusioned by their Jewish institutional upbringings. Activists seek to forge a community that meets their moral and ethical demands while navigating moral and ethical complications. Since the war that started on October 7th, 2023, the ground has shifted and become more polarised, leading activists, myself included, to seek alternatives. Within the activist community, I argue that at times they reproduce forms of exclusion. Outside of the activist community, as they work in partnership with Palestinians, I argue that sometimes deep relationships are not necessarily cared for.