A citizen of the Township of West Orange takes a stance for human rights…

Photo courtesy of Tova Fry

WEST ORANGE, NJ—Dear West Orange Town Council and Mayor McCartney,

I’m appealing to you about the planned “2nd annual Israeli flag raising at West Orange’s Town Hall in honor of ‘Israel's independence day’” scheduled for April 26th. I implore you to cancel it immediately! As the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, I say, “not in my name.” I don’t celebrate the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) at the hands of ruthless Zionists with the support of the British colonial army. How do you think Palestinians feel when people want to celebrate the day their villages were massacred, their families were driven from their homes, and their land was stolen?

As emphasized by the recent pogroms in Huwarra and neighboring towns in the West Bank, the Israeli government is becoming increasingly violent and is no longer even attempting to promote the facade of a “democracy.” How can there be a democracy when only Jewish citizens are allowed to participate in and benefit from it? Many are blaming the new Israeli government as the cause of this latest unimaginable violence against Palestinians, but the origin of these atrocities is not the new, fascist government but the ideology of Zionism itself. This isn’t a “loss of control”; this is exactly what Israeli control looks like. The settlers carry out the attack under the protection of the military (Israeli occupation forces), which secures it, and the politicians back it. It’s a synergy.

Would we have held a celebration of the South African flag when it was still under Apartheid rule? Numerous human rights organizations have identified Israel as an Apartheid state, including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. A large proportion of the settlers in the West Bank are relatively new arrivals from the U.S. and Europe, while Palestinians whose families were driven from the land during the Nakba are not allowed to return, ever.

My parents fled from Hungary after World War II and the death of all of my grandparents and many of my aunts and uncles. One of my aunts, a true heroine, died fighting with the Partisans against the Nazis in Yugoslavia and was honored posthumously for her courage by the Hungarian government.

My family wanted to come to the U.S., where they each had a sister, but were denied visas because of U.S. quotas against eastern European Jews - after the war! Because they were denied entry to the U.S., they wound up penniless in what had just been declared the state of Israel, where Israeli soldiers stole a home from a Palestinian family and gave it to my parents. That’s where I was born! What is there to celebrate about the robbery of Palestinian land and homes to create a “homeland” for the Jews? Palestinians are a people, and their homeland was stolen from them.

I implore you to have the courage to do the right thing and cancel this untimely and unjust celebration.

Sincerely,

Tova Fry

West Orange