American Jewish Peace Archive: Julie Iny 

03-10-2024

In lieu of the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, the Hannah Arendt Center has decided to publish excerpts from the American Jewish Peace Archive — a project of Jewish American activist and oral historian, Aliza Becker, that is sponsored by the Center. Hoping to serve as a comprehensive archive of American Jewish activism on behalf of self-determination for both Jews and Palestinians, the Archive contains over 200 transcripts from interviews with U.S. and Israeli Jews whose activism spanned the years 1967 to 2017. 

In February, we shared the story of Simone Zimmerman, who is one of the founders of the organization, IfNotNow (a movement of American Jews organizing for equality and justice for Americans, Palestinians and Israelis), and who served as the national president of J Street U. Today, we’re sharing the story of another U.S. peace activist, Julie Iny, who in 1996 was one of three co-founders of Jewish Voice for Peace (along with Rachel Eisner and Julia Caplan), an organization that has played a central role in the American movement for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and which currently self-describes as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.”

Julie Iny was born in Los Angeles to a Mizrachi father and an Ashkenazi mother. Iny’s father’s family are Iraqi Jews from India, and Iny’s mother’s family has roots in Ukraine. She grew up in the Hashomer Hatzair socialist Zionist youth movement and attended a summer program and at 18, a yearlong program sponsored by the movement as a teenager. She also developed close relationships with Israeli cousins from her father’s side. Visiting Israel with a group with a social justice mission helped Iny begin to explore the complexities of the political questions at the heart of the political struggle in Israel-Palestine. “Because of Hashomer Hatzairs social justice emphasis — even if it wasn’t as frank as it could have been vis-à-vis Israel — the seeds were there. We did meet with Israeli Palestinians. That helped me to think critically.”

With that powerful experience in mind, Iny went to college at UC Berkeley where she sought out the Israel group on campus, called Israel Action Committee. “I was told that the Israel group on campus at Berkeley was welcoming of diverse perspectives…, and that it was okay to be a progressive Zionist, which was my identity at the time, within that group,” she remembers. “Then I discovered that actually wasn’t true, and that they were very focused on a pro-Israel education that wasn’t nuanced in any way.” To meet her needs, she formed a chapter of the Progressive Zionist Caucus (PZC) with her friend Julia. PZC “was really the student organizing, campus-based organizing connected to Habonim Dror and Hashomer Hatzair. The guiding values were probably anti- occupation, pro-peace, pro-coexistence.”

Iny returned to Israel in 1994 where she had negotiated a college independent study. She did an internship with the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development and worked as a volunteer with MK Benny Temkin of the Ratz Party, “which was the civil rights and peace movement party.” Shortly after she got there, Temkin’s office fired their foreign affairs coordinator. “At the age of 21, I was offered a job to be the foreign affairs coordinator for the party.”
 
Iny recalls that time with fondness: 

In the midst of the Oslo process, my job was going to the Knesset, finding out what was happening, and translating that. I was there in a very hopeful time, and I was part of this youth activism. There were so many young people within this political party who were leaders. Then they were working with their Palestinian counterparts. There were things like a motorcycle ride for peace that was Palestinians and Israelis together, where we went to Ramallah. There were a lot of meetings between Palestinians and Israelis. The day of the Oslo Accords signing there was a rally in Gaza, or right at the Erez checkpoint near Gaza, and Palestinians came to the border with Israeli and Palestinian flags. It was a really amazing, joyous, optimistic time.

 
She returned to Israel in 1996 with her family for a cousin’s wedding shortly after Netanyahu was elected prime minister and saw firsthand how the Oslo Accords were being subverted when Netanyahu ordered the opening of an ancient tunnel near Al Aqsa mosque. The LA times wrote, “Palestinians said the tunnel could undermine the foundations of the mosque and they viewed its completion as a move aimed at strengthening Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Many Palestinians describe Al Aqsa, the most significant Muslim shrine outside Saudi Arabia, as a political and spiritual ‘red line’ on which there can be no compromise.” The decision sparked unrest and eventually riots around the Mosque. This led Israeli security forces to open fire on a crowd of Palestinans, claiming they were provoked by stone-throwers. Fifty-three Palestinians and 14 Israelis were killed in a series of clashes, both in Jerusalem, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Iny, who was in Jerusalem during this clash, recalls the moment, and how it shaped her organizing:

I had never been to Al-Aqsa Mosque. I went with my parents, and that day, I met this Palestinian storekeeper. We ended up talking to him. He made me a ring out of a bead and a piece of wire. My brother thought I should have given him money, but I knew it was more of a friendship gesture. 

I went back [another day alone]. I was going to bring him a chocolate orange that I had, and I also wanted to see Al-Aqsa Mosque, which I had never seen. As I was getting close, people started pounding on the walls. There were older Palestinian men. I learned a little bit of Arabic, well enough to say a few things, and I asked them which way was to Al-Aqsa Mosque. They said, “You don’t want to go there.” Basically, I ended up being there the day that Netanyahu opened tunnels. It was a political and controversial move, and there were riots that day, and people were killed. I ended up taking refuge with that Palestinian storekeeper that I had met in his shop. I talked to him about peace and everything, while being protected from the riots as well.
 
Then I went home [to the U.S.] All of the traditional organizations didn’t seem to exist. I was just distraught, having been there during the Oslo Accords, and having been there when things felt really optimistic, and forward moving, to then see this violation of the Accords by Netanyahu, and then a lack of reaction about the way that this threatened the progress towards peace. I spoke to my former campus friends, Julia and Rachel, and we decided we’d hold a demonstration. That’s when we actually discovered that a lot of peace organizations didn’t exist anymore, that people had closed up shop, because they felt that things were done. 

We had it in front of the Federal Building. Our message was that America, as a cosigner on the Oslo Accords, had a responsibility to enforce them and to maintain, make sure people were maintaining their agreements. That’s where we protested. We were really pleasantly surprised, as young adults and grassroots organizers, by the number of synagogues, and also some Arab organizations that came out. It was a pretty broad group. People came from Sha’ar Zahav. Pam Baugh, who was the rabbi of Or Shalom, which is Reconstructionist. Maybe Michael Lerner in Tikkun. We called it ‘A Jewish Voice for Peace’ because we felt like there was a big silence in the Jewish community. That started JVP.

The American Jewish Peace Archive is a project of Aliza Becker under the sponsorship of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. The Archive is in the process of being finalized for public view. For questions pertaining to the American Jewish Peace Archive or how to access interviews, please contact Aliza Becker at [email protected]