Published: 10 April 2025
Last updated: 10 April 2025
This article is one half of a debate. Read It isn’t a Seder if it contradicts the core narrative of the Jewish people.
The Jewish Council of Australia (Jewish Council) is collaborating with the Loud Jew Collective (LJC) to host a ‘Palestine Solidarity Seder’ this year, 5785. The LJC has hosted an anti-Zionist Seder for some years now and the Jewish Council, as an organisation committed to fostering diverse expressions of Jewishness, is eager to work with them this year, just as we were eager to join six other Jewish groups in a call to sanction Israel in March.
It is both unsurprising and disappointing that some in the Jewish community have responded to our initiative with outrage. Still, I am grateful for the opportunity to briefly respond to their denunciations.
This Seder identifies itself as anti-Zionist. However one might define Zionism, it is a political ideology which has led to the displacement of Palestinians from their land, and the prioritisation of the rights of Jewish people over the rights of Palestinians. Many people who identify as anti-Zionist reject this prioritisation of the rights of Jews over the rights of Palestinians, whilst still acknowledging the spiritual significance of the land of Israel to Jewish people.
Not all of our 1000+ Jewish signatories identify as anti-Zionist, and we have many different views within the Council itself. That said, all of our Jewish supporters are horrified by the criminal atrocities that Israel is committing in their name and against the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. Forensic Architecture, led by Eyal Weizman, has documented many of these atrocities in great detail, and recent days have brought revelations of new crimes, such as the execution and mass burial of 15 clearly marked aid and emergency workers in Gaza. According to Israeli Human Rights Organisation B’Tselem, Israel has killed more than 1000 Palestinians in Gaza since March 18 2025, more than 300 of them children. In this period, Israel has continued to block aid and displace the population while publicly discussing plans for ‘voluntary immigration’.
Comments10
Martin25 December at 04:21 am
When the Gazans decide to elect as their leader someone more “committed” than Hamas has been to “fostering diverse expressions of Jewishness”, “rejecting the prioritisation of the [Muslims] over the rights of [Jews] and “acknowledging the spiritual significance of the land of Israel to Jewish people”, then perhaps the idea of permanent peace between the Jews and Palestinian Arabs could be a remote possibility.
David Schulberg9 August at 09:17 am
Ohad, you infected the Pesach seder with your antiZionist poison and you did similarly with Anzac Day, drawing attention to the Surafend massacre in order to demean the significance of that day, even insanely suggesting that it portended what happened to the Palestinians 30 years later.
Our Jewish community must reject the obscene ideas being spread by your Jewish Council of Australia that are only undermining our solidarity and beschmirching our values.
Steve Israel17 April at 08:33 am
Ohad, Shalom. As an Israeli Jew and a politically liberal Israeli, I understand your comments but I find them very sad. It doesn’t make me angry but I find it very disappointing to make the automatic and very superficial and reductive assumption that Israel and Zionism as reflected at a Pesach seder is all about “military victories, ethnic supremacy or a high-tech occupation”. To make that statement is such a blatant (and willful?) misunderstanding of what Israel and Zionism are all about. Are there Israelis who would fit that description? Of course there are (including the majority of the government). But is it the whole story or a part of the story? Where on earth is your sense of context? Many of us fight the government and its direction and it’s misleading reading of Zionism while our kids (who feel the same) do their months of reserve duty wherever there is felt to be a need (including Gaza and Lebanon). There are hundreds of thousands of us out in the streets here calling for a return of Zionism and Judaism to its many core concepts which are being trampled on by the government and its supporters. And I believe that we’ll get there in time. But you reduce our complex reality to a series of simplistic slogans with little or no nuance? That really is very disappointing indeed.
Ian Grinblat14 April at 11:30 pm
I must agree here with Melinda Jones. It is a headline-making construct to impose a Israel-Palestine lens on the current war.
Also Ohad, when you say that the Palestinians are being oppressed, you leave it open to the assumption that Israel is the oppressor – is Hamas not an oppressor?
Yehuda Aharon13 April at 12:10 pm
An anti-zionist seder is one that focuses on liberation for all, rather than liberation for us but not them (as the wicked child on said).
It may be convenient to focus just on our own tribe, but we cannot forget the humanity of others and the haggadah reminds us of this.
Ben11 April at 08:20 pm
Do you realize that Pesach is an inherently Zionist holiday? What do you say at the end of the seder? Next year in Al-Quds? The other half of this debate is written so much better and so much more logically.
Raf11 April at 12:31 am
I’m so proud to be an anti-zionist Jew. Our joy will not be broken! And our safety lies in the communities we build here, in the diaspora. The actions of a rogue political entity somewhere else by no means represent me as a Jew. Chag sameach to all
Leia10 April at 08:27 am
So great to see the Jewish Independent publishing this article. Thank you for amplifying diverse Jewish opinions on Zionism.
Simon Krite10 April at 07:27 am
This “Palestine Solidarity Seder” is not an act of conscience—it’s a grotesque inversion of Jewish tradition and a betrayal of the very values it claims to uphold. To weaponise the Seder—a celebration of Jewish liberation—as a platform for demonising the Jewish state is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s morally bankrupt. It pretends to honour Jewish ethics while openly aligning with those who deny the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
The hypocrisy is staggering: cloaking anti-Zionism in faux spirituality, invoking Isaiah while collaborating with groups that excuse or ignore terrorism against Jews. It selectively moralises Jewish suffering while dismissing the generational trauma that led to Israel’s founding. And to do so from within Australia—a nation whose own history of colonisation and contested land rights is conveniently ignored by these self-righteous activists—adds a layer of brazen anti-Australian sentiment to the mix.
This is not about peace. It’s a politically opportunistic performance that insults Jewish history, undermines Australian civic values, and emboldens those who traffic in double standards and selective empathy.
Melinda Jones10 April at 03:10 am
On general principles, Ohad, we have no dispute. I actively work for peace, with Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun. Our disagreement is about whether Judaism and the Seder are particularistic or not? At what point should self-defence trump universalistic ideals? Pesach is a celebration of Jewish survival. It is not to flag wave or to claim superiority over any one else.