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Stefanie Fox Not in our names. We refuse to allow Jews to be a moral cover for genocide and apartheid and for the U.S.'s own financial and imperial interests that drive our support of Israel. You know, we refuse to have Jews be used in that way. And we will do everything, everything we can. Not only refuse that, but to actually deliver the material change needed to see a very different world.
Sanam That's Stephanie Fox, the CEO of Jewish Voice for Peace, a massive grassroots organization in the United States that's been really at the forefront of the public protests and the student protests against the genocide in Gaza, and more recently on the question of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, which is illegal. (...)
Kavita Ramdas I'm Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. And I'm Kavita Nandini Ramdas. (.)
Sanam Apologies for my sound. I am on a phone at the moment. So if the sound sounds slightly strange, it's because of technology. But I'm very excited because we also have Sole with us this morning, top of the hour, as they say on the news. So it's welcome.
Kavita Ramdas Hello. Hello, Sole.
Sanam Our guest this week is awesome.
Kavita Ramdas She is really awesome.
Sanam I mean, the guests, I have to say, I'm like, all of them are just, it's been such a privilege to be able to reach out to people and have the guests that we've had. But this week, Stephanie Fox. And thank you, Kavita, because you know her, right? //S02: Yes.//
Kavita Ramdas No, it was so great because I serve on the board of Visualizing Palestine, which is an organization that has been using infographics and storytelling to be able to translate some of the horrors that, you know, we've been aware of for so long. But it's so rare to have a strong Jewish voice, being able to stand in support and allyship with this work. And she's just been quite amazing. And you remember, Sanam, that I was so involved with the volunteering for Zoran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York. And Jewish Voice for Peace played a really critical role in that. So it was great that she was willing to come on our show.
Soleh I think that they've been really important in this kind of cultural shift and like narrative shift away from kind of separating the ideas of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment kind of being the same or anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism being equated. And they kind of flipped this, the identity politics thing on its head and actually use their identities to advocate for something that other people might get much more backlash for because they, you know, would get accused of anti-Semitism basically for whatever they would say against Israel or even just like in support of Palestinians. And also kind of reclaiming the, because like there is a lot of anti-Semitism when it comes to anti-Israel, like Tucker Carlson or people like him are, you know, such an obvious example. And kind of reclaiming that and not letting it be used for like anti-Semitic sentiments is also really important and like something I think that they have been driving.
Sanam We spoke with her before the war started, but they have recently issued a new statement and just to paraphrase what they've said, Jewish Voice for Peace denounces the immoral and illegal war on Iran launched by the United States and Israel. These attacks expand the endless wars that could destroy the lives of tens of millions of people. We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and against the U.S. and Israeli governments' imperial war mongering. And then they continue to acknowledge the protests, the protests that happened back in January, saying the diverse peoples of Iran have risen up in courage against their government's brutal oppression for decades, including massive protests over the past two months against crushing economic hardship and for the future of freedom and democracy. For this, there's been horrific repression at home, but let's be clear, the history of imperialist regime change war mongering and violence and crippling sanctions on Iran and the rest of the region has reinforced the oppression of the Iranian regime. This is so true, you know, the question of the irony, I think, of saying that the Iranian regime killed protesters that had been out on the streets who, in the name of freedom, and now we have bombs dropping on people. And the excuse being sort of bandied around is that, oh, this is to liberate them, this is to free them. And yet, three weeks into the war, we've had over 20 hospitals destroyed, schools destroyed, oil depots, petrochemical plants. I mean, this is de facto chemical warfare. And then, of course, the gas fields, the Israelis hit, and then the Iranians have been retaliating against. So the escalation has been extraordinary, and this is something that I've been really worried about from the beginning, because the logic of this war is for all sides to escalate, and there are no guardrails. And the other day, a missile or a projectile nearly hit the Boucher nuclear plant. And if there was radioactive spillage, it would affect the entire region, actually. So, you know, we're all sitting here warning and kind of, you know, screaming into the wind, and there doesn't seem to be anyone really in charge. Nobody really seems to be taking any action. You know, I'm like, where are the Chinese? Where are the Turks? I don't know. Who listens to, who's listening? You know, who does Mr. Trump listen to? And then, of course, there's this dark humor in all of this. I don't know, Sus, whether you've been following the question of whether Netanyahu's alive and all the AI memes. I knew you were going to bring this up. I've been obsessed with it. I've been absolutely obsessed.
Soleh When we were sent the outline about, you know, let's talk about the state of the war and whatever, I was like, 100% she's going to bring up the AI Netanyahu finger nonsense.
Sanam Well, it's the finger, it's the ear, it's the cuff, you know, the latest.
Soleh No, I'm not following the AI. I'm like, well, what do you think of this whole, like, narrative that people are saying that Iran is winning, whatever that means?
Sanam Look, this is what we call asymmetric warfare, which means that you've got two nuclear powers, you know, two powerful entities fighting a much weaker entity. And when you have this kind of a dynamic, for the weaker one to survive, they've won. That's basically, so anytime, you know, this is always, you know, when Israel would bomb Hezbollah, right, the fact that Israel as a state is going after a non-state actor, if Hezbollah survived, effectively, they'd won. So this is the same narrative here, that if Iran survives, it's winning. That's why the logic of escalation is in play, because the Iranians are trying to escalate the pain of this war, the economic pain of it, to get the world to sort of stop, or to get the Americans and the Israelis to stop. The Israelis are trying to escalate to do as much damage because they want to really decimate the state. And even if the regime survives, they want it to be completely crippled, but they're going after, you know, public infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, and it's really about destroying the nation, I think. And then the Americans are stuck in the situation of being the world of military power, and yet, you know, being hit by this tiny, you know, militarily, Iran is minuscule in terms of its budget and so forth. So they're trying to escalate because they can't be perceived to be losing. But, you know, today's news is that Iran hit these F-35 planes, which are, they cost, I don't know how much...
Soleh Hassan Piker had that on live stream.
Sanam Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's everyone's like, you know, it's like the underdog and everyone's getting excited about it. But the truth is that militarily, if this continues, there is no way that Iran can win. I mean, it depends on how much damage they're willing to do. And what really, really upsets me is that we have a regime that is willing to sacrifice the nation for its own survival. And then we have an opposition that has tied itself to Israel and the United States. And it is also willing to sacrifice the nation in the name of getting rid of the regime. So it's two extremes. And it's like hate and rage.
Soleh What opposition meaning, like, monarchists or pro-war people?
Sanam I mean, it's the monarchists. It's the MEK, the Mujahideen. You know, they call themselves different National Resistance Council and things. But it's these... But the monarchists in particular, because Reza Pallavi, the Shah's son, has been operating a kind of a strategy, which is very MAGA, very far right. Like, it's very much like you're either with us or against us. You know, align with me and shut up, you know, that kind of thing. But they have been the cheerleaders. He was like the Pied Piper of this war. One of the things that really I find disturbing is that it was almost as if the 12-day war in June was like a prologue to this, to lull people into a sense of confidence that, oh, war isn't going to be so bad. It's going to be targeted. It's going to be limited. They're going to come and get the big guys and then we'll be fine. (.) And it was a way of... It was like bait and switch. And curious, you know, Kavita, from where you're sitting, how the effects of this war are playing out as well. I think it's really important to know that it's not just contained in Iran, obviously.
Kavita Ramdas Well, I'm in a village in India and I've just been grumbling to Soleh, saying that I've been looking forward to having my favorite snacks. And every single little provider of jalebi and samosas and vada pao has been pushed out of business because there isn't any cooking gas to be had for love or money. And the reason there isn't any cooking gas has a lot to do with the fact that this illegal and completely irresponsible war that the United States and Iran are waging have essentially put India into a sort of a death spiral. Because we are so dependent on imported gas and oil. So I know that sounds very trivial, Sanam, compared to other things. But I think it gives us a sense of how awful and how widespread the implications of this are all around the world.
Sanam I also heard that in Sri Lanka, they now have Wednesday off. Like, people don't go to school. People don't go to work. Just, yeah, to basically ration and ration.
Kavita Ramdas And I was talking to my family in Karachi. My husband's family is all in Karachi, in Pakistan. And there, of course, they've got an ongoing war with Afghanistan. But they also depend on oil from Iran and gas. And they haven't had piped gas, which we used to always think was so fancy in Pakistan because they got piped gas. And, yeah, things are really tough.
Sanam It does make you wonder how little we know about supply chains and where they come from and these waterways and what's going on.
Soleh I was like, I have to say, I feel like everybody, including me, of, like, my generation hearing about this is suddenly looking at a map and going, Oh, I didn't know Iran had that little bit on the other side, too. (.)
Kavita Ramdas It's funny because I think your point about geography, Soleh, is so interesting. I remember my first international affairs, international relations class, and it was actually with Aqbal Ahmed, the Pakistani intellectual and scholar. And we were all shocked because we came to class. And, you know, it was the U.S. And I was in my junior year. And I thought I was so smart. And all he had was a blank map of the world. And he said, we are not discussing anything about international politics until you fill out this map and you put in where the waterways are, where the mountains are, where the... And it's been so... That just makes me think of what you just said.
Soleh Because, yeah, we had the same in my, like, modern Middle Eastern history class at MIT. And our professor made us, like, the first exam was fill in a map of the Middle East with the countries and the rivers.
Sanam I had a slightly different version of this. In the second grade at our Tehran Community School, which was the best school in the world, we were doing, you know, geography and world maps and things. And I missed the class. I was sick the day that they did the continents and the waterways and things like that. So I'd show up a couple of days afterwards and there was a geography test, quiz, pop quiz. And they put the world map. And I just remember sitting there, like, age seven or eight, looking at this thing and just assuming that all the big bits were land and all the smaller bits were the water bits, right? So I kind of color it in very, very happily, green and brown with, you know, all the oceans and the land masses all blue. And I got a zero. And so ever since then, I've been quite conscious about my geography. Yeah, but yeah, the Straits of Hormuz, you know, and also I remember when I was about nine or ten, we went to Bandarapos on a family trip. And we went on these amazing, beautiful, double-decker wooden boats, double-decker. And they were really narrow, but incredibly steady. I don't know how they operated, basically how they balanced. And as kids, we were just sort of watching what's going on and sort of understanding, okay, this is also our country. And it was tropical. I mean, the weather was tropical.
Kavita Ramdas Sanam, do you know that even now in India, the word in Hindi and in Urdu for haba is bandarga, comes from Parsi into Hindi and into Urdu. It's so interesting.
Sanam Well, and on that slightly happier note, I wanted to wish everybody a happy Nauru's. It is, we are starting a new year.
Soleh And is it 1404? (.)
Sanam It is 14, it's always 21, 21. (.) So what are we, 2026? (.)
Kavita Ramdas 1405.
Sanam 1405, yeah, 1405.
Kavita Ramdas You know, it's a big celebration in Mumbai as well, because we have the big Iranian community, the Zoroastrian community. So Nauru's is a big deal here.
Sanam Do they do the fire jumping there? //S01: Yes. Yeah. Yes.//
Kavita Ramdas Yes.
Sanam We've been doing it like guerrilla fire jumping. We take little candles out into the side streets and have somebody sort of watching it. And then my mom comes out and we jump.
Soleh Here we, we did it on the, in Jesus Green on the, in the park. And then a group of Iranians came up to us and we're like, are you doing charshan besuri? And I was like, yeah. It was perfectly nice. They had like music and they had a bigger fire or whatever. And then suddenly a flag comes out and, and we start, they start going,
Kavita Ramdas lari jani mord, berakh sim, bacha. I was like, oh, okay.
Soleh The flag was the, was the Pallavi, like, salmon.
Sanam Well, it's, yeah, I mean, it's not the Pallavi.
Soleh It's not a Pallavi flag, but it's been co-opted by them. It's a monarchy flag. Yeah. The, what they said about lari jani was like, oh, he, he's dead. //S01: It's good that he's dead. Like, let's. Celebrate.// Let's dance, guys. Yeah. //S01: Yeah.// Was I a huge fan? No. Is it a red flag that we're celebrating that. Anybody has died. Anybody. Yeah.
Sanam Also, I mean, it's, you know, he was killed. So he was the national security advisor and he was one of the most prominent figures in the regime. And he was killed at his daughter's house. And in trying to get him, they actually killed about a hundred other civilians and destroyed a whole other, you know, like a whole entire compound of homes and things that of people, of other people. So, so yeah. So every time they, you know, when you hear these things, you have to think about, as the Americans say, collateral damage, but it's other human beings and other lives that are, that are being lost. It's a very poignant moment for, I think, for all of us. I did an event the other night, which was quite interesting and fun on poetry and propaganda. And I think we've got a new, new project coming along because it was so lovely to be able to talk about current events and then anchor it in, you know, what the poets, Persian poets, Irish poets, Shakespeare, you know, what's been said before. And the audience really liked it and, and I, and it just kind of made our world of geopolitics and international relations just a bit more human and kind of soul food. So, so, so I think that we might be doing a little bit more of that, but yeah.
Kavita Ramdas God knows poetry is the only thing getting me through the day these days.
Sanam Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Stephanie Fox from Jewish Voices for Peace. (10 seconds pause)
Kavita Ramdas Hi and welcome.
Sanam Welcome, Stephanie. It's lovely to have you with us.
Stefanie Fox What an honor.
Sanam Thank you so much for inviting me. First of all, I have to say that I have been fangirling about JVP for a long time. I was so in awe and kind of relieved to see the protests in the Rotunda when the Israeli attacks happened on Gaza and subsequent times. And when you guys have led the protests and so forth. Can you sort of walk us through what it's been like for you as JVP? What is it that JVP does? Who are you? Who are your members? The nature of your work and your values.
Stefanie Fox Absolutely. Yes. So, I have the honor of being the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which is the world's largest progressive Jewish organization in support of Palestinian rights and freedom. The largest Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. And we have hundreds of thousands of Jews who are working for a vision of freedom, justice, and equality for all people, no exceptions. And for a free Palestine, you know, as part of that. And we work in the U.S. We have over a hundred chapters and local groups all throughout the country. We have a rabbinic council. We have students on, you know, dozens and dozens of campuses. And all of that grassroots power is really devoted to the kind of change that we think will sustain and create that better world. Primarily at this point through shifting the role that the U.S. plays in upholding and sustaining Israeli oppression, apartheid, and genocide of Palestinians. And so, anyway, so we've been around as a grassroots organization for nearly 30 years, working community by community to change things in the way that I think change always happens, which is delivered by everyday people coming together and fighting for what's right. I would say that over, you know, the past 830 days that it has been of the genocide in this form, the core of our organization has stayed very much the same as being a group of U.S. Jews fighting for freedom in this way. But our specific mandate within the broader Palestinian liberation movement has just become, like, clarified and honed. You know, these hundreds of thousands of Jews, as you were talking about, like, in that particular protest and in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of protests since, like, just Jews simply making the very simple and clear and important message, like, not in our names. Like, we refuse to allow Jews to be a moral cover for genocide and apartheid and for the U.S.'s own financial and imperial interests that drive our support of Israel. You know, we refuse to have Jews be used in that way, and we will do everything, everything we can, not only refuse that, but to actually deliver the material change needed to see a very different world. So it has been a time of amplification of what we've been doing all along, but a much bigger form of it. And we're probably, by every measure, three times this size organization we were three years ago. And I think that reflects the meteoric growth of the Palestinian freedom movement overall. And I think that's the kind of contradiction we're all facing, right? That we are seeing more grassroots power in this movement than it's ever been, mobilizing with, like, more force and more sophistication than has ever happened before. And yet we're, of course, horrifyingly aware that we have not stopped the genocide, you know, a ceasefire in name only, and that it is the moment for us to continue to escalate and grow our work so that all of that power actually ends this sort of U.S.-Israel genocidal war machine that continues unabated in spite of all of that growth.
Kavita Ramdas Thank you for that, Stephanie. You began by saying you're the world's largest anti-Zionist Jewish community-based organization. And that word has now begun to be thrown around with such alarming misconceptions. And I think it would be great for our listeners and for us, really, to understand how you understand Zionism and why, as a Jewish peace group, you think this is so important for us to be able to have a clear understanding. Because I think many, many, many communities, both in the European context, in the UK, where Sanam is based right now, and here in New York City, where I live, are being told that to be anti-Zionist is tantamount to being anti-Semitic. And it would be great to hear your perspective on this and how you do your work in educating and changing perspectives on this very critical issue. (.) Absolutely.
Stefanie Fox You know, Zionism is what it does, right? And it's the political ideology that led to the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes in order to create a discriminatory ethno-state with exclusive rights for Jews over those indigenous Palestinians on their own land. That is what Zionism always was and has continued to be in the carrying out of the unchanged policies of the Israeli government, which we now see in their most grotesque and mask-off form through the continued genocide. But it is this ideology, and as a Jewish group, why then be anti-Zionist? Of course, all folks, anybody who cares about ending systems that create such catastrophic harm should be anti-Zionist. But for Jews, there's a very personal stake, because Zionism suggests that Jews require that supremacist nation-state to answer the very real question, historically and today, of Jewish safety. And as a Jewish organization, we believe that everywhere in the world, Jews belong and should be safe. And, of course, though, that real safety will never grow from guns and checkpoints and walls and a police state. And that true safety will be built through forging real solidarity and fighting for a world where all are living in dignity and safety and freedom. And so anti-Zionism is the obvious choice for anybody and for all of us who support liberation and justice for the Palestinian people, including their right to return to their homes and land, and a future for all people on that land and all land, where freedom and safety and equality are the baseline.
Sanam It's amazing how over the last 20 years of having lived in America, self-censorship becomes so embedded in our, kind of, in our own mind and in our own hearts. So this conversation, on the one hand, I'm like, oh my God, we're actually having the conversation. But the minute this issue of anti-Semitism and Zionism comes up, the question of Israel as a state comes up. And I'm curious about what you think. But my explanation when I talk to people is that we criticize the Iranian regime. That doesn't mean I'm criticizing the entity of Iran, or certainly not Islam or whatever other cultural things that mean. We mean like the Trump-Mega thing, but doesn't mean you're against the United States or the people. So do you see that same kind of analogy in terms of Judaism, Israel, Zionism, or what happens to the state of Israel? So if we were in charge, what would be your vision of what happens to Israel, the state, the people, the rights, and so forth, and security that both sides obviously need? (.)
Stefanie Fox Yeah, you know, it's interesting, though. The conversation often turns to the question of the right of states. Where are we in the world today that we are talking about the right that rogue, genocidal ethnostates have in some sort of intrinsic rights rather than the rights of human beings literally surviving, if they can, a live stream genocide for more than two years? You know, the red herring of it all is so obvious on its face, but we get trapped in these cycles of conversation. And it's like the simple idea that we want a society rooted in both like just the basics of international law and human rights norms, which have been so massively eroded in the last three years, let alone many decades, but we're living in the consequences of having decimated those norms, right? But so a society rooted in what we say would be, you know, democracy, what would it look like to imagine a society rooted in democracy and equality rather than dispossession and domination? If you talk about, for instance, South Africa ending the system and regime of apartheid, what was possible in a society rooted in equality and for all under the law, you know, we get brought into these conversations that really take us away from the very simple, very obvious realities of what is so wrong with the world today, with the state of Israel as it functions and as it always has functioned. We try to stay rooted in that and not get sort of thrown in that way.
Sanam What is it that you do? I mean, if somebody says, hey, I want to join you, what is it that you guys wake up and do on a daily basis or in your chapters or your members? (.)
Stefanie Fox So our chapters and members across the country work at sort of transforming things politically, financially and culturally. So we really understand that from the U.S., that U.S.-Israel alliance upholding Israeli apartheid is held in place by those different sort of pillars of support. Our members and chapters are doing the day-to-day work of shifting and transforming the way that that functions. So for instance, boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns allow for everyday people to withdraw the complicity of their institutions, their cities, their states in those, you know, oppressive systems upholding Israeli apartheid or in the corporations that are war profiteers off of the genocide, right? And so our chapters in almost 20 cities and states across the country right now are working in coalition to to end Israel bonds sales in cities and states where they live. Israel bonds are unrestricted loans that go directly into the Israeli treasury and fund settlement expansion, the genocide. So my finance knowledge is absolutely rubbish. Tell us what a bond is.
Sanam Yeah, yeah, exactly. Tell us what. And presumably bonds give interest rates to people.
Stefanie Fox Bonds are basically an unrestricted loan to the Israeli government where the money goes directly from our pension funds, our city budgets, our state budgets. In the hundreds or tens of millions of dollars, money directly from our communities into the Israeli treasury, completely unrestricted to commission these war crimes. And that money is invested as a loan from from the U.S. side to the Israeli government. So over a quarter of that debt that Israel holds, it turns out that carrying out a genocide and constantly escalating wars of aggression throughout the region is very costly for the state of Israel. And it's underwritten by American taxpayers, obviously, with the billions of dollars sent by our federal government. But it's also underwritten by other billions of dollars sent from our cities, states and institutions. By the rest of us. By the rest of us. By the rest of us. Yes. And so everyday people are doing a beautiful job of saying, absolutely not. Like, do not invest our money in this. And it turns out also that it tends to be a bad investment, honestly. I was going to say. It's a bad investment. So it also betrays the fiduciary responsibility that these treasurers and others are holding in making these
Kavita Ramdas choices. So, Stephanie, that's why we see, for example, I've seen city council meetings where young members of, well, of any age, actually, you're right. It's very intergenerational. Members of JVP are attending a city council meeting and then they stand up and they say, we don't support this proposed city council decision or resolution because we feel it's a poor use of our tax dollars. And those
Stefanie Fox are local tax dollars in that case. Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So like in the city of New York, as we're talking about, the former comptroller of New York, Brad Lander, who was in office before this term, agreed to divest from Israel bonds in the city accounts, right? Sell off those bonds. And Mark Levine is the new comptroller. And there is a very active campaign to insist that that become ongoing policy, right? So it's a decision made at that local level. They're also in state pension funds. They're also unions will have them in the pension funds, things like that.
Kavita Ramdas And is there any other country other than Israel? Like, could there be an Iran bond or an India bond? Oh, I'm sure there's an Iran bond. (..) I'm just pointing out how rare it is for any, there's not a France bond either or a UK bond.
Stefanie Fox Right. There are a few other sovereign bonds, but far and away the Israel bonds are because they, for historically, have been used as a political statement. And you actually, the state of Israel is very direct in saying it's a way of BDS proofing the economy, meaning that for other campaigns, which our people are also involved in, of saying, like, for instance, corporations that are also making money hand over fist because of the genocide. And we should not be invested in war profiteers full stop period anywhere in the world, including in Israel. Companies that, like, make their money off of occupation, surveillance, et cetera. And so in BDS campaigns, pulling money out of those corporations or pushing those corporations to pull out of Israel, that has an impact on the Israeli economy. And these Israel bonds basically underwrite that, ensure that the economy can continue to forward this unending war. It's a war economy that needs constantly fueled and funded. Historically, our mayors and governors have been able to just be like, we're proudly sending $200 million to support Israel, like basically doing it as like a contribution to the genocidal war effort. But because there's been such a sea change in what the common sense is across American cities and towns and states, there is an opportunity to translate that understanding of what's right into the policy of where our money is going as taxpayers. And so more and more people are doing that, not just raising our voices in sort of broad protest, but really making it targeted so that we can withdraw our complicity. Like, it's not an act, it's not even at this point, an act of solidarity. It's an act of saying, I don't want to be literally complicit with my money in these war crimes.
Sanam Stephanie, on this financial stuff, if you read the statutes of the Nuremberg tribunals, right, people can be brought forward to the court. One of the things is if you aid and abet war crimes and genocide. And aid and abet is a very broad term. Yes. But I think about it in terms of, well, if my taxes are going towards weapons and support, then I am being de facto forced into aiding and abetting and becoming a war criminal. That's correct. Can we not collectively join up and say, I don't want to pay my taxes because I don't want to be a war criminal?
Stefanie Fox Well, you know, the point you're making of, like, being forced to be complicit in genocide and ongoing apartheid is, you know, it's what in many ways gets me up every morning to say, like, I refuse.
Sanam You know, when I say, like, this is a huge movement of Jews just simply saying I refuse,
Stefanie Fox it's a huge movement of all people, right, saying I refuse to be complicit in this. It's obscene and I think that there's lots of ways to translate that into collective action that can actually end that complicity, right? And so your suggestion of, like, tax resisting is, you know, the anti-war movement has a proud history of that as a tactic. The call for international solidarity in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions from Palestinian civil society, which originated in 2005, is, you know, in so many ways our best bet of translating that feeling you're talking about, Sanam, of, like, how dare those in power put me and my own money, even, into complicity with the crimes against humanity, boycott and divestment allows for us to turn that individual feeling into a form of collective action that could actually shift the bottom line for those war profiteering corporations, pull the money of those investments out of where they currently are supporting Israel. We should never understand the way that U.S. policy, or U.K. policy for that matter, is sort of immutable, that, like, okay, this is where our tax dollars go and that's where it will always go. They would like us to think that.
Sanam You know, they would like us to feel like... They'd like us not to even know, right? Like, they just, they'd rather we just... Right, to not even know, pay up and shut up. Yeah, it's sort of...
Stefanie Fox Exactly. And so I think that there's, you know, what is our responsibility, not just to, like, be like, it's a bummer that billions of dollars of ours are going to the, you know, to a genocide right this second, as we walk and breathe, but actually to say we can organize in all of these ways and insist upon a change in that. We actually have an obligation to do so. Stephanie, can I ask you something personal?
Kavita Ramdas When you're leading movements like this, and on the one hand, we are saying that it is intergenerational, and yet, even in our own family, as I told you, I have a family of extended Jewish relatives. We can definitely see a difference amongst people who feel just very strongly that being aligned with the state of Israel is part of their core identity. And you said earlier that you work on the cultural level, on the policy level. And the financial. //S03: And the financial level. Right. What am I talking about?// I'm just curious, how do you do this at a personal, cultural level in which you're shifting perceptions that have been long held and that are almost sacrosanct? As Sanam said, you know, you couldn't even raise this issue, much less have an open discussion like this, and what are your, what are your strategies that you feel have worked? Um, great question.
Stefanie Fox Well, you know, I think on a, on a few different levels, we work culturally, right? There's, um, the, the fact is that like what you're describing of sort of this period of time in which Jewish identity, what the, the state of Israel and worked very hard to fuse Jewish identity with Zionism, with, with unconditional support for its policies. Right. And it's very important when you're doing culture shift work to like have the longer arc of history and memory at hand. You know, as long as there has been Zionism, which it's a 19th century movement that drew its vision and ideology from other colonial movement and nation state ideology at the time, it's just bread and butter. It's not a, it's not unique. It's not exceptional. But, you know, as long as there has been a Zionist movement, there have been anti-Zionist Jews. That's true. And in fact, it's only since really 67 that a sort of consolidation of American Jewish identity identity around a Zionist politics was even common or the norm, you know? So I think it's like really, it's in living memory that this became the supposed always (.) core Jewish identity. It's very, very short in the millennia of Jewish history. It's the tiniest blip, you know, quite honestly.
Kavita Ramdas And so that's a great way to remind us of just the timeframe on that.
Stefanie Fox I think, you know, cause we're in this urgency all the time. And the compression of the sort of culture of silencing and, and that you're talking about can make it feel the walls close in and you feel very focused on those, those four walls around you. But you have to, when doing this work, see the longer arc and understand and really draw strength from, you know, those sort of movement ancestors and, and even elders in the community still today who say, no, no, like Shotzi called her the people's babia, like this, this amazing elder that we, may her memory continue to be for a blessing, who, who passed away a couple of years ago, Shotzi Weisberger would say, you know, I'm older than the state of Israel. Like, I know I can tell you for a fact that this is not core to Jewish identity. But I will say to your real question though, because for many people, in spite of that history, memory can be short. And there are an enormous set of very intentional ways that Zionist culture building inside of American Jewish life over the last half a century, century has fused those identities and made it feel to Jewish Americans like the answer to questions of Jewish safety and Jewish and Judaism itself required this ethnostate. So what we have, we do is a kind of many fold, but on one hand, we have, you know, rabbis and spiritual leaders and independent hover road and synagogues, et cetera, all over the country who are building a Judaism beyond Zionism, you know, who are, who are really reclaiming and extending those histories that I'm talking about in ways because as a Jewish people, there's a desperation to honestly secure and save our beautiful tradition from its being weaponized and brutalized and desiccated in this way. And so there's religious work in that way. There's liturgical work and community work, having space to come together. There's also work that is about unlearning and letting go of the kind of racist conditioning that many of us were raised with. And so we have things like a storytelling project called Wrestling with Zionism, where people come together and just honestly work through their own histories of understanding how and why they were raised to dehumanize Palestinians and to do the internal work of letting go of that. So it operates on a lot of different levels.
Sanam Stephanie, it's, it's, I'm sitting here listening. And in so many ways, it's so personal because I grew up in Iran and we had, and there is still a very vibrant Jewish community. There's still synagogues and so forth. And even with the, is the, with the Islamist revolution that the, we, that we all had to endure, actually they didn't target the Jewish community. They did not target the Christian community. They targeted people that they were against politically. So, you know, we were Shias and they targeted my family. And then the, the group that they targeted as, as a religious minority were the Baha'is because they come after Shiaism. So there was kind of a, you know, from in their theocracy, they don't accept Baha'is. But the Jewish population has lived there and they feel very Iranian. And it was only during the Iran-Iraq war when everyone was trying to get their sons out of Iran because they didn't want their boys being carted off to war, that we saw a sort of a, shift of migration of Iranian Jews going into Israel. And I remember meeting some in Tel Aviv in the late 90s at the time. They still felt very Iranian. And in my universe and in the Iranian cultural history, we didn't understand anti-Semitism. And it doesn't, it's not an issue for us. It's not our issue. And yet, when I moved to the, to the United States, anything that I said, anytime I said, oh, you know, is the state of Israel is doing, everybody just assumed that I was anti-Semitic. There was an, I'd have an allergic reaction to it because I'm like, this isn't my issue, but, but it's being pushed on us. And now 30 years later, it's, that's become normalized as if, if you're a Muslim or if you're a Middle Eastern or if you're, then you are anti-Semitic. And, and we're like, but this isn't our history. //S03: Yes.// And how we've ended up vilifying a whole other part of the world. I'm just curious about kind of how, where did that narrative fit in or what the challenges are that you deal with?
Stefanie Fox Oh, absolutely. I mean, part of what you're talking about is also like the just reality of diasporic Jewish identities all throughout the world. And when we say, you know, what is an anti-Zionist Jewish politic? It's a diasporic one that really claims and honors our many, many varied Jewish histories. There's not one Jewish history. And we have incredible leaders in JVP, in our Black and Indigenous and Jews of Color, Sephardi Mizrahi network that do the work of intellectual thought leadership that you're talking about, Sanam, of making sure that we talk about like the way that Zionism works to flatten all of Jewish history and also insist on Jews of the Arab world to be able to return to their homes out that, that have been forced expulsion because of the impacts of the Zionist movement. Right. And to ensure that those paths home for, for Jewish people are not through the state of Israel and through the oppression of Palestinians denying other people access to their ancestral home.
Sanam Because actually, you know, the kind of, if you take it full circle, anti-Semitism and Zionism, there have always been kind of cousins of each other, right? That, that you could argue that, oh, if you're going to have an exclusionary, you know, Jewish state, then, then all countries can say, okay, all the Jews should go to Israel. I mean, that's, that's the danger, right? That, that it creates this, this, this kind of extremist weaponizing identity.
Kavita Ramdas In fact, the only person in the Balfour Declaration who opposed it amongst British politicians was the only Jewish British politician, Montague, who said exactly what you just said, Sanam. He said, I refuse to accept this Balfour Declaration because it's basically a, a cover for anti-Semitism in the UK. (.)
Stefanie Fox Right. Well, you know, Zionism, as you're saying, Zionism and, uh, modern anti-Semitism emerge both from this world of Western nation-state building concepts that really defined the other as the most essential way of building a nation-state is to have the other that you oppress and push out and, and dominate the, the reclamation necessary inside of Jewish community of our histories and our futures is important here. So that beautiful multiplicity of Jewish life and where we, like, belong and have community is very much a threat to the Zionist and Israeli narrative. It has to be flattened into this, like, Jews were always oppressed. Somehow Palestinians become the proxy for the crimes of the West and everything for liberal Nazis. And that's projected in order to carry out ongoing dispossession, ethnic cleansing, just genocide. (.)
Sanam I've got so many questions for you. Number one, from what you're saying, you would be in direct opposition groups like AIPAC. Yes. An AIPAC light, which we're now seeing in the UK and elsewhere. I mean, the way in which these movements have, have, have spread. Sure. Do you get scared? Do you get threatened? Do you, do you worry about your own safety and security? Tell us what that side of life is like to be a peace activist in this universe. (..)
Stefanie Fox You know, um, there are a lot of threats against foremost Palestinians and Palestinian organizing and then anybody who is willing to stand alongside Palestinians fighting for freedom. And that's always been true. It's a very violently repressed movement all throughout the world, most foremost inside Israel, but also here in the United States always has been with the current fascist dissent of our own U.S. government as well. Like, you know, Project 2025 authored by the Heritage Foundation, there's an addendum called Project Esther, which is a manual for how to take apart the Palestine movement in order to kind of sharpen the tools. JVP is listed as one of, like, three or four organizations. And I think people should know, it's true, that, that the, that being in this movement isn't without risk. You know, like, we have, you know, we have, like, five active lawsuits against us right now, you know, which these Trump aligned law firms just throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to slow down our work. And there are constant threats. To be honest, it is scary to say, to have, you know, the White House say we're on a list with eight organizations, you know, these for, for criminalization. But I think that what I was trying to get at, not to be, it's not to be falsely humble. It's to say that it's a terrifying political conditions that we, that have been allowed to be set as somehow normal. And so when I feel some of that fear about what is the, the part of it that's facing JVP or me individually or my family, whatever, it's that, it's that long view again. It's to say, I feel fear. Okay. That's part of my, my experience right now. And I feel enormous gratitude to get to be in this life doing this work and to be doing anything else would be much more scary to be accepting these violent, violent conditions and thinking there was no better life would be terrifying at a really different, different level.
Sanam Yeah. Thank you. So we have a bunch of questions that we always ask our guests. Do you want to go, Kavita, with the, with the first one? Oh, sure.
Kavita Ramdas So you've kind of already alluded to this, but we're going to ask you anyway, what's a radical idea or an allegedly radical idea that you think should be normal or that you don't think is radical at all? Oh, so many.
Stefanie Fox That every human life is equally valuable, full stop, you know, really shouldn't be a radical
Kavita Ramdas idea, really not present in our politics. I mean, I feel like that's the Miss Rachel story, right? Son of Miss Rachel is this wonderful, you know who she is. She's the, she's the influencer woman who's been supporting kids and yeah, exactly. Radical idea. Okay, Sanam, you go next.
Sanam Question number two. If you were in charge right now, determining a US policy positionality vis-a-vis Israel, Palestine, what are the three things that you would do and insist upon?
Stefanie Fox Well, I would put people and people thriving, living in dignity, with freedom and equality in the center of the policymaking. And everything would then flow from, very easily from that. That would mean full divestment and end of US funding of Israel. It would mean divestment from the systems of harm driven by corporate profit in our politics, war and militarism, prisons, deportations, you know. And then it would mean investing in the life-sustaining programs and vision that we all need to thrive from, from the, you know, all around the world and here at home. Pretty clear. (.)
Sanam So on the question of divestment from, from Israel and militarily and so forth, if the US isn't party to that conflict, what will it look like tomorrow?
Stefanie Fox Yeah, you know, we always say that, like, the US likes to pose, like, it's quite a costume to imagine they can pose as this anymore, but likes to pose as sort of an honest broker, quote unquote, right? When in fact, it's a full partner in Israel's crimes. And so if the US were not, by billions of dollars, funding, fueling, diplomatically defending at all costs, Israel's crimes against humanity and ongoing apartheid and genocide, well, then the possibility of actual diplomatic negotiations that the people on the ground living there actually ultimately have to decide their futures, futures rooted in, which we carry forward the values of, like, international law that must be fulfilled, then I think that's actually possible. But it's literally not possible while the oppression, the system of oppression is being driven and underwritten and armed by the US government. So it's withdrawing that role.
Kavita Ramdas So I'm going to skip the question about the money, because I think you've explained to us very well. //S01: But I'm going to...//
Sanam Although the money question, just for you to know, is if you had a billion dollar, or if you were a billionaire, what would you do? So you might, you're welcome to answer it. You're welcome to answer it.
Kavita Ramdas But I just also wanted to give you space to answer the what gives you hope. So you can choose, or you can do both.
Stefanie Fox Okay, I can choose. I mean, if I was a billionaire, I would say there should be no billionaires. I would say, let me give my money back to the people and places I extracted it from, because I would have done so to get that billion dollars. What gives me hope, I think, is, I mean, it's just, it's organizing. People saying, you know, these systems of domination and oppression are not inevitable. And if we come together, we can build something really different. And we can root that vision in hope and an idea that we could all thrive next to one another. And actually, it happens. If you get enough people together, and you believe enough in what you're building together, (..) like, enormously impossible feeling things are simply made possible. And so just, I'm so grateful to get to be in a movement of people who can feel despairing, but refuse those politics of despair through organizing.
Kavita Ramdas I do want to say that I think just statistically, Stephanie, you have had a lot of wins. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes when we do this, we say, well, what gives you hope? And you think that it's kind of some abstract thing. But you could, like, list off what you folks have done. And I'm just wondering if you want to say a couple before you end, because I think it's important for people to leave with a sense of the tangibility of hope. Yeah.
Sanam Yeah. As I said, for me, JVP has been such a standard bearer for an entity that gives the rest of us courage and cover, frankly, because it's very easy to get smeared with anti-Semitism if you're not Jewish and you stand, you criticize Israel. But I also see the movements here in Europe. And I was going to ask you, to what extent has JVP expanded its reach? Or is there, are there some sort of coalition building and so forth? Do you take some pride in the fact that, you know, maybe you've also inspired some of that work that's going on?
Stefanie Fox The way organizing works, you know, it's all in relationship. And so it's a loop of hope we give each other. Being in relationship with those sort of emerging anti-Zionist Jewish organizations all over the world is really so beautiful to us because, you know, we're an internationalist organization. And it's easy in the U.S. to pretend the U.S. really wants to be the center of the world and pretend no one else exists. And also it's very, as an organization, it's actually core to our values that we see organizing all over the world and understand its relationship to us and ours. And so, yes. In short answer, we're very happy to already have a lot of those connections and are committed to growing them and being of support where we can to say, here's how we did it here in our context in the U.S. What might work to grow anti-Zionist Jewish organizing in your own context, in your own countries? And to the question of grounded sort of material reasons for hope, I would say, you know, we talked a lot about Israel bonds. And just in the last month, campaigns in four different cities and states have run, four, four, thank you, have divested almost $30 million from those bonds. In just the last month, there's like, it's, you know, and it's very hard to get the newspapers to report it, but it's really happening city by city, state by state. Locally, those things are underway. And also, you know, the election of Mamdani shows us what can happen in the electoral arena when our movements translate their power into those kinds of wins for governing power as well. So we have many reasons to hope in spite of the very, very horrific news that comes in daily.
Sanam You mentioned the media. How do you navigate and what would you do if you were in charge at the BBC or in, you know, CBS these days? Or what would be your policy if you were in charge there? I would have a lot to say. I do have a lot to say.
Stefanie Fox What I mean, to start, we've been taught, you mentioned earlier, Sanam, the literal legal structure that says if you're, that dictates, like, who is, couldn't be held accountable (.) for manufacturing consent for genocide. And I think that the mainstream media in the U.S. has a grave responsibility in manufacturing consent and allowing for what everybody with their bare eyes could tell was happening from the very beginning. You know, right now we're working with a coalition to demand the New York Times retract this completely debunked propaganda piece called Screams Without Wars that came out in December of 2023 that really set the foundation, like, you know, was cited in U.S. congressional testimony and... By President Biden. By President Biden.
Sanam By President Biden. Used as sort of... Could you just explain, just because people may not have remembered, may not remember what that was yet.
Stefanie Fox Yes. So this particular piece is, makes the case and the claim and says that it's presenting evidence to establish the idea that there was a coordinated, focused, intentional campaign of mass sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women on October 7th. And that evidence simply was not presented and does not exist in that article. And it's been debunked by other reporting, by sources named in it, by the families of the, you know, of those who were killed on the day and are alleged as victims in the article, by, you know, 60 journalism professors. It's just purely a propaganda piece. The writers, the co-authors of it, one of whom tweets saying that Gaza should be a slaughterhouse and all should be killed, and not even a journalist prior to working on this piece, and her nephew, a food blogger, just very obviously been fully debunked in all ways. And the Times, the supposed paper of record, refuses, refuses to retract it. And it continues to set a precedent for the way that supposed reporting and journalism can justify some of the most horrific crimes against humanity in our lifetimes, you know? And as a Jewish person whose family has endured anti-Semitic persecution through the centuries, it's very familiar to see the way propaganda is used to justify and set the scene for genocide, (..) frankly. It is not an understatement to talk about the role of mainstream reporting and corporate media in actually a set of responsibilities for this ongoing genocide. And then contrasted with that, and precisely because of that, you see the way that the Israeli government and military has targeted the unbelievably brave Palestinian journalists on the ground, more of whom have been assassinated than in any war in, I think maybe ever, certainly
Sanam in the last 50 years, you know, who have been targeted. And their families, like literally in their homes, yeah.
Stefanie Fox And their families, because of their telling of the truth. I mean, I just...
Sanam I mean, the irony of having Western journalists play into the propaganda or the silence, silencing of the genocide when their own colleagues... Their own colleagues. I mean, it's, it's, you're looking in the mirror and it's your own colleagues who are, who are paying the price is... //S03: Yes.// I mean, others are paying the price as well, but, but, you know, you have affinity with your own professional...
Stefanie Fox That you would think, you would think. It's also another thing that people who are outraged and feeling this, you know, like, yeah, these, how dare they use passive voice? It'll be like, Gaza Health Ministry alleges child killed by bullet. The way that they will actually twist language to refuse to name the actors and the system of what's actually happening.
Kavita Ramdas And I think in a way, having had Gaza and Ukraine play out simultaneously, side by side, was also so painful to watch because, you know, three children would die in the Ukraine and you would hear Russia targeted, dah, dah, dah, you know, strike, massacres, three children. And then you would hear Gaza Health Ministry claims 200 children died, 15,000 children died, you know, and it was just... Exactly. That was really hard.
Stefanie Fox Just the, just the inherent, the weight of that sort of incredibly racist dehumanization of Palestinians that is just like taken as a, as a, as a ground floor for the way, the discourse. You know, it's also, we can hold our media makers and, and, and corporate media accountable, whether it's writing letters to the editor or it's... Okay.
Kavita Ramdas So we put you in charge of policy. We put you in charge of media. I just want to say a huge thanks, Stephanie. We've been so lucky to have you with us and you have left us with some very, that's what I love is when people say, well, hope is this kind of like ephemeral thing. And I'm like, no, no, hope is really tangible. It's very tangible.
Sanam Hope is, hope is, you know, hope is great. But it's the strategy that, that really matters. So, so, so that you guys have hope and strategy and you have fabulous people and it's really a joy to talk to you. Thank you, Stephanie, for joining us. //S03: Yeah, I hope to see you in person.//
Stefanie Fox Yeah, I would love to. I'll come back anytime. This was really a treat. Thank you so much. (..)
Sanam This was If You Were In Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at icanpeacework.org and follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe and please tell everybody else who might like the show. My thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible, to Little Monster Media for our music. And of course, to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you. Thank you.