“I’ve chosen to get arrested” – daughter of Holocaust survivor on tomorrow’s anti-proscription protest

“I have decided to do more than stand under the banner and witness”, says Jewish Peacenik Carolyn Gelenter

Carolyn Gelenter is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and has ancestors who escaped antisemitic pogroms in Europe. She has frequently spoken out against the thuggery of police under Keir Starmer’s war on protest and free speech against Israel’s genocide.

Carolyn was asked to be part of a group of Holocaust survivors and descendants tomorrow, bearing witness to the stand that will be taken by a thousand or more members of Defend our Juries (DOJ) – who will hold placards in London tomorrow supporting non-violent direct action group Palestine Action against the Starmer regime’s decision to ban it as a terrorist group – and the expected harsh police response. Several DOJ organisers were arrested this week simply for organising Zoom calls to discuss this weekend’s protest and many members and other anti-genocide protesters have been arrested and dozens face charges, including many Jews.

Carolyn wrote to Skwawkbox to say that she has decided to do more than bear witness and that “I have chosen to be arrested” by participating in the anti-proscription protest:

As the daughter of a Polish Jewish holocaust survivor, I am proud to work with a core group of older Jewish women of conscience called ‘Jewish Peaceniks UK’ to organise support for Gaza. I  am also honoured to stand under the banner  ‘Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against the Gaza Genocide’  on the demonstrations for Palestine. We have been asked to stand witness on the 6th of September to the mass arrest of over 1000 people, willing to get arrested in support of a group of mostly young people, who passionately wished to stop our government’s complicity in the genocide and starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the violence throughout the West Bank. 

The arrests of those who are holding up placards against genocide and in support of the proscribed group, are against the rights of democracy and free speech and are made more shocking by the fact that it is happening under the jurisdiction of a Labour government.

She goes on:

I have decided to do more than stand under the banner and witness. I have chosen to get arrested. Whether others are doing this action, or witnessing the arrests in solidarity, or marching, it is more urgent than ever that Jewish people speak out about the falsity of the government claim of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and that criticism of the state is anti-semitic. 

Zionism is a political ideology supporting a nation state and has nothing to do with being a Jew. To claim otherwise is in itself a form of anti-semitism, objectifying Jewish people as one entity with one belief. What people are doing here today is the true honouring of the memory of those victims of the Holocaust: Jewish, Roma, communists, socialists and trade unionists, the differently abled. 

Israel is far from representing the entire world’s Jewry. It does not act for me.  I stand today with humanity for all.

The British state and media continue to present support for Israel as if it is ubiquitous among all Jews – propaganda that is fundamentally antisemitic but was nonetheless pushed during the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and continues to be even during almost two years of Israel’s genocide of almost half a million Palestinians in Gaza.

But many Jews disavow Israel and its actions – and many are at the forefront of anti-genocide protest, like Carolyn Gelenter and her fellow members of Jewish Peaceniks UK, ‘Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against the Gaza Genocide’ and other anti-Zionist and anti-genocide groups, even if they are frequently airbrushed out of existence by UK media and politicians.

The UK government and Israel weaponise Jewishness to defend the racist and murderous ideology of Zionism; the antisemitism is theirs, not of the opponents of Israel, its crimes and its racism.