Published: 30 April 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The close of the Trump era finds the millennial anti-occupation group at a crossroads
ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON in June 2019, the anti-Israeli-occupation group IfNotNow sent its roughly 2,000 members an unusually candid email. “First and foremost: we owe you all, the leaders and members of IfNotNow, an apology,” it began.
Part strategy document, part confessional, the email—signed by IfNotNow’s full-time staff—responded to discontent that had been brewing for months. IfNotNow had become too hierarchical, many members said, leaving local chapters unsupported while paid national staff pursued projects in which the rank-and-file had little say.
The staff email committed the group to a process of teshuva, or repentance, borrowing a Jewish religious concept that requires an offending party to repair, to the degree possible, the damage they have done.
But for many disgruntled IfNotNow members, it was too late to fix an organization that had veered off course. Nearly two years later, the group remains in the throes of an identity crisis.
Founded in 2014 by young Jews who opposed American Jewish institutions’ support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza that summer, IfNotNow has become one of the best-known Jewish organizations opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Its early, rapid growth—from 13 trained members in fall 2015 to over 1,300 two years later—enabled high-profile protests and national media coverage.
In confrontational actions against establishment Jewish groups, from local federations to “pro-Israel” politicians to programs like Birthright Israel, IfNotNow forced debate on once-marginal policy ideas—like imposing conditions on American aid to Israel—that are gaining support among progressive politicians. It also created a community that was unabashedly Jewish, progressive, and anti-occupation.
FULL STORY What happened to IfNotNow? (Jewish Currents)
