People's Park UVic

At the risk of sounding like an 80s sitcom, this is a very special episode. We finally got a chance to sit down with two UVic encampment activists, Spurt and Ernie. They are two truly incredible souls who have dedicated the last three months to living the cause of Palestinian liberation. One editorial note before we get started. This is a discussion about Palestine-Israel between three anti-Zionist Jews. Throughout the interview, all three of us were conscious of the need to center Palestinian voices during this time of crisis for the Palestinian people. This podcast has and continues to seek out Palestinian activists and thinkers in order to amplify their stories and their perspectives. And also, in an era when tremendously powerful state and non-state actors are trying as hard as they can to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. It is more important than ever for anti-Zionist Jews to make their voices heard and stand up and fight with their Palestinian brothers and sisters. Jews and Muslims, Palestinians and Canadians, Arabs and First Nations, among all of us, there can only be one righteous demand. Free Palestine. Welcome to another episode of Seeds of Revolution. I'm really excited about this episode. I've been wanting to do this for a really long time for, I guess, seven or eight weeks now. Our guest today are Burton Ernie, who are two members of the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Victoria. Good afternoon, Burton Ernie. Hello. Immediately, we agree to those code names and I'm laughing at you. And you immediately regret those names. Oh, absolutely not. No, this is, that's joyful. I suggested Mia and Wallace, but Ernie vetoed that suggestion. Burton Ernie. Burton Ernie. I'm for whoever's at home listening to this. I am Burton. I am Ernie. And thank you so much again for doing this. I really appreciate it. And I know the people who listen to this podcast are really going to want to hear voices of people who are the most deeply involved in the encampment. Did you start just by introducing yourselves with as much detail as you feel comfortable giving us where you come from, how you're involved with the university and the encampment? And I think most importantly, what brought you to this cause? I am Ernie again. I'm not a puppet, but yeah, I'm a student at UVic. I've been a student at UVic for several years now. And will probably continue to do so in the future. I immediately forgot everything else that you asked me. Just however much detail you want to give us about how you came to be a member of the encampment and how you came to the cause of being pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist. I mean, I think, I came to the encampment, I just showed up and then I've been here. I like to say that the tense just kind of like built up around us and that's how I got here. And you've been here since the beginning, right? Yeah, day one. It's currently day 50 today. So that seems monumental somehow. I don't know, I mean, I came to this movement because it came to anti-Zionist, it's even hard to think about that because it seems so obvious and natural to just do that based on what's going on. Like there is a genocide in Palestine, an act of genocide against Palestinians. And that's why I'm here and that's how I got here. Like of course there are minor details along the way but really, you know, that's the core of it. And you're a Jewish anti-Zionist, correct? Yes, yes. I am a Jewish anti-Zionist, yes. And I think that's important in so far as I'm a Jew and I'm an anti-Zionist and those things are related because they're both a part of me but also at the end of the day, the important thing is the anti-Zionism in this movement space because this is a genocide against Palestinians that is being perpetrated by Zionism, by the settler colonial state of Israel. Bert, same questions. Who are you? How did you get here? Hi, I'm Bert. I am also an anti-Zionist Jew living here on the unceded territories of the Okongans speaking peoples, including the wassanic and Songheese nations. I am a Jew of color that grew up in mainstream Jewish spaces south of the colonial border in the United States of America. My road to anti-Zionism took a while because of that context in which I grew up and was also somewhat easier for me because of the specific intersections in my body that alienated me from much of the mainstream Zionist structures to begin with. I only started calling myself an anti-Zionist probably in the last three, four years. This round of accelerating genocide because the genocide against Palestinians has been going on since minimum 1948, but since October 7th, this round of accelerated genocide activated me. For me, that is related to my Yiddish kite, my Jewishness in the ideas I take from Torah in the ways I try to live my life in relation to Torah and Jewishness, and it is also informed by the fact that my grandmother was a concentration camp survivor and the ways that surviving systematic genocide has impacted my family and the world view, and also the only person that any of that is really relevant to, is me at the end of the day and people are often interested in that and I don't mind sharing and the journey to being an anti-Zionist to in this moment or being an anti-Zionist in general is not contingent on Jewish values or Jewish authorities. It is simply the, in my opinion, only ideologically coherent position to have in the face of a genocide and you don't have to have my positionalities to see that and so many people in our spaces who are Jewish and who are not Jewish just come to this because without those extra bits of context, just because they see what's going on in Palestine and they know that it is wrong, it is unjust and it needs to be opposed in every way, shape, or form possible. Yeah, my anti-Zionism is informed by my Judaism because my entire life is informed by my Judaism. You can't really separate the two. You can't separate the two and that is the piece that makes that, that is the piece that makes that relevant but that's that's only relevant, yeah, in so far as that's how I got here. Right? Yeah, it is not the thing that we need to be, I suppose, like highlighting is the, is Palestinian liberation and in that is also Palestinian voices, right? And so, you know, the question of me being a Jewish anti-Zionist is related, is only related as it's related to me. And I do want to spend the bulk of this conversation, centering the encampment and the movement for a free and democratic Palestine. However, before I get there, I would like to ask you one or two questions about being a Jewish anti-Zionist because I do think, even though we hear about Jewish voices for peace, for example, there's still an overwhelming equation in my mind between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. and a lot of, if not most, of Jewish anti-Zionists, like the three of us in this room, are sort of, if not completely marginalized. What, if any personal price have you paid, whether it's family or friends, if you feel comfortable talking about it, specifically, because you're Jewish anti-Zionists, I don't need names, I don't need locations, but I'm just wondering, like for me, I know, we don't talk about Palestine at the dinner table, because it's either we talk about Palestine, or I have a nice dinner with my family. I don't get to have both. - For me, I hesitate to say that I lost everything because I didn't, but after October 7th, as it was after being vocal about it, my entire community was essentially lost, no longer available to me. - This is family and friends. - And this is mostly like community here in Victoria. I think family is different because they're family. Conversations are difficult, but you will still eat dinner together at the end of the day, and those conversations are also necessary. But in terms of my day-to-day Jewish life, it was starting from scratch. And that's, I mean, how Bert and I found each other, really, but yeah, it was really fucking hard, and it continues to be really hard. And I think that that resonates with so many people. - Yeah. - It didn't hit me as immediately hard because I am relatively new to the city. I was literally just in the beginning process of trying to establish myself in the Jewish community here. When October 7th happened, and it sucked, I, I don't know if anybody remembers this besides me, but October 7th was Simhattora, and I was gearing up to go to a Simhattora thing at a place. And then I got the first email about what had happened, like the thing, and the immediate framing was already so violent and retributive during the hours where nobody knew anything that I just threw up my hands. I was like, I can't, I am not comfortable being part of a space that is like that. And that was really desperately hard because I was searching for Jewish community. - What about your family? - My family is, I think I'm very blessed in that it has been less difficult with my family than other families for reasons of complicated, very specific family dramas. My father, who I think is a person I am closest to that I'm actually in conversation with about this, is functionally a liberal Zionist, self-identifies as a diasporist, and I don't agree with him on everything. And also he's not apologizing for, or like doing Israeli government. Medina Israel, the Zionist entity of Israel, apology, the way that he has oriented this is very much like, well, the state of Israel fucked it. And I was alive before it existed. My father's very old. I was alive before it existed, and apparently I will be alive after it existed. So he's a very specific sort of nihilist. And I am very grateful for that in this time, seeing all of my friends and community members now, like I found Ernie in this, and I found so many other people, and seeing the ways that their families are completely self-destructing around this issue, the ways that our communities are completely self-destructing, the way that Zionism has crept into everything. So even the existing progressive Jewish spaces are still forced to bow and capitulate to the demands of Zionism on Turtle Island, in order to function, in order to access funding, that has been like institutionally quite horrific, because there aren't alternatives in quite a few places where there are true alternatives that aren't at least a little bit funded by these same Jewish institutions that are also Zionist institutions. There are so many, like there are so many Zionist institutions that are not Jewish, and also so many Jewish institutions that are, and the way those are trying together puts, puts so many organizations, so many progressive Jews, so many left Jews, so many Jews who are coming to anti-Zionism in a really difficult position, and I don't envy them, and also, there's a genocide, it's time to, like what we're doing is making an alternative space, and it's hard, and we gotta do it. I was actually just thinking there is a wonderful alternative space, which I've had the pleasure of being invited to now for the third time, which is the encampment, and I'd love for you to tell us about the encampment, and what the experience has been like, and what it is like to live the cause of supporting Palestine every day, Ernie, for I guess more than 50 days. - 50 days today, yeah. It'll be more than 50 days when this goes up, unless Kevin Hall, if you're listening, divest, divest, it could be, we could be done, if you divest, it's very simple, anyway. - I'm sorry, I wanna interrupt for a second, maybe I can sort of center a little bit better than I did the first time. A lot of people, especially over a certain age, look at the encampment, I think, oh, those dirty hippies, why don't they get a job? What is the reality that you know because you lived it, and I know because I've seen it, and I'm like, what is the reality of these people who are seven days a week, 24 hours a day, dedicating themselves to this cause? - Yeah, I mean, well, we have jobs, right? Like, the majority of the people within the encampment go to work from the encampment, go to a class from the encampment, work from home from the encampment. And I think that's maybe a funny place to start, but it's just like, not something that I necessarily expected going into this, but the encampment has become normal life in a sense, in a sense that all of this is very abnormal, and deeply messed up, can I swear? Deeply fucked up. Waking up every day around people who are, like, there for the exact same reason that you are to do our part to end a genocide, right? To call the University of Victoria on its BS, right? It is really unlike any other experience that I have ever had and probably unlike any experience that I will have because while we are holding ourselves in this community space, we are all in constant grief and different varying levels of grief, but we are all grieving and we are all doing this work together at the same time in the varieties of different ways that we do this work. Why is the encampment a good strategy for helping to promote Palestinian liberation, as opposed to protest marches, as opposed to a million other strategies? Why is the encampment so valuable at this moment? - I think there are a couple of things that are very important to name about encampment strategy. Um. The number one being we started on May 1st, students started trying to hold this university accountable October. There have been meetings that have gone nowhere, there have been walkouts as protest that have not meaningfully moved to dial, there have been all of these other, the people at home can't see my air quotes, so air quotes like acceptable forms of demonstration, more tolerable modes of action, and of course, the goalposts move every time because they didn't like when the walkouts happened either, they don't like what the thing that is currently inconveniencing them is always the thing that is over the line. And that happens in every movement, this idea. So the encampment is not coming out of the vacuum, a bunch of students didn't wake up on May 1st and were like, oh, we're going to start with an encampment. This is after multiple other negotiations, offers and requests and begging to connect with the administration and have the university divest failed, it is after walkouts as disruption failed. So like that, that's a number one piece that gets lost in this all the time in the story about the encampments that this is not the first move. The second thing is that what we are seeing with the Palestinian liberation movement, the Palestinian solidarity movement worldwide right now is a very awe-inspiring moment. The sheer numbers of people mobilizing everywhere to get this genocide to stop and all of our struggles even on these hyper-specific lands and these hyper-specific cities is in fact connected, we have been called the student InstaFada by folks in Palestine and that is an international movement that we are part of and every university participating in that is in itself power as well, is in itself leverage. So we are hyper-specific to the land we're on and hyper-specific to the university and cause we're trying to divest and this is absolutely in part of that failed conversation. That we're trying to force and also it is part of something much bigger. Can you talk a little bit, either Bert or any talk a little bit about what the connection is between New Vic and Palestine and what we mean by divest. I know for us it's sort of axiomatic but there might be people out there who don't quite understand why students and non-students are camping out at the University of Victoria to promote Palestine liberation. What's the connection? I'm going to give Ernie a moment to pull up the thing that very much goes over this specific ways that you Vic is complicit in this genocide by saying that you Vic is in fact complicit in this genocide money from students is going into at best black boxes that fund the genocide at worst directly making money off of the deaths of Palestinian men, women and children and they are doing that with tuition money. They are doing that with land that isn't theirs and by doing that as a university they've made every part of this institution complicit and we refuse to be complicit in this or money out of genocide. To speak to this specific demands we have five demands, divest, boycott, condemn, affirm and make campus safe. Those are the big headings. Divestment is the divestment from all investments connected to companies that contribute to the genocide of Palestinians. In the University of Victoria's specific context, a few of the more major players include Black Rock and Scotiabank as well as there is least space to Thyson Crepe Marine Systems which is not an investment but is still a target. It includes boycott which would include a UVIC supporting the BDS movement, boycott divest, sanction movement and the cutting all ties with Israeli universities and the third is condemn, it is now eight months into this genocide and Kevin Hall and the rest of the board, the University of Victoria has still yet to call this a genocide. Let's move on to number four to second and I say this sort of knowing the answer because I'm an American Jew. Why is it so hard for the President of this University? Sort of a rhetorical question but at the same time it's not like why is it so hard for these men and they're overwhelmingly men to stand up and say the deaths of 30,000 plus people, 12,000 innocent children is wrong and we condemn it. If we're getting boycott, forgetting divest, why is that part so hard? Again, I know it's a ridiculous question but for the life of me cannot understand it. Because if they said that then they would have to reckon with every, they would have to reckon with the sheer horror of that which would include divestment because it's a slippery slope. To not acknowledge the genocide is to keep yourself safe from having to do anything about it. That's a really good point. And that goes for institutions and that also goes for individuals. To turn a blind eye is the easiest way to not have to put any work in. A popular chant over the last eight months has been say it loud or say it more not a conflict not a war. In it you frame these things as conflict as war, institutions and individuals feel like there's a both sides and the both sides implies a third side which is not taking a side. And as long as you frame it like that, you can just get away with saying whatever and doing whatever that doesn't impact your day to day. The horror of genocide and the specific reason that genocide and like the terms genocide and crimes against humanity were created is because they are abhorrent and the moral imperative to stand up against them is implicit in the human condition. I'm working my way very slowly through an interesting book about the development of those words which is neither here nor there, but because those words are so big and so overwhelming and so scary, acknowledging them is the impetus to action. And if you don't want to take action, the easiest way to not do that is to just not even walk through that door. - Yeah, you know, I say that question about. President Hall. And then I remember, you know, I read Papa Chomsky's book 50 years ago, Manufacturing Consent, and he lays it all out. Like exactly what you two were saying is you have to begin by a very specific way of framing the quote unquote conflict or quote unquote war. And if you frame it properly, then you can encourage people to bury their heads in the sand. So you're 100% right. Which kind of ties into the the fourth demand to segue back to that. Like the third demand being calling it a genocide and the fourth demand being reaffirming the Palestinian right to resist and the right to return. Those go hand in hand. It's that slippery slope that you're talking about. And the fifth, I think, is make campus safe, which is vague in its wording, I think personally. But what make campus safe is making sure that both Palestinians and community members that have been resisting genocide for eight months on campus off campus, but within the specific context of campus are not penalized for the work that they've been doing and are also able to go to school with the sports that they need, live their lives with the supports that they need. And in that includes having as little possible interaction with the cops, which is no interaction at all if you ask me. And I think if you ask anyone else at the encampment, it's right in the demands. We demand that the University of Victoria keep police off our campus to keep the pressure on the UVic administration specifically. There have been a couple of instances in which encampments have disbanded because universities have entered into an agreement. I know University of Oregon, University of Washington. There's a couple of instances in which encampments have been successful or more successful. Why, in your opinion, is the University of Victoria being so stubborn? Because those other universities prove that it can be done. I mean, they can negotiate and come to an arrangement with the movement. I ask myself this question every single day. Did you know Thompson Rivers University not only got their demands met in like four days, they're also like actually they disclosed within their 30-day time frame. What do you mean disclosed? So Thompson, this whole bit that I'm about to do, we're going to need to fact check because I'm remembering posts. So I'm just naming that. But Thompson Rivers University in BC had their encampment up for four days max and reached a deal with their administration that they would disclose all of their investments in the Zionist entity. And I believe enter a plan for divestment. So that sounds correct. I think that sounds correct. Yeah. And a thing that we have seen with other universities is reneging on these promises that were made to get the tent off their campus and time for graduation or whatever. But the last I checked, they were coming through. So what's your next problem? I don't know. What's your guess? I mean, probably a financial investment in genocide. I mean, if it's making the money or keeping their bottom line all right, then that I mean, this university operates as a business, this university is a business. And so at the end of the day, what is important except for keeping it afloat? What is important except for keeping it going and keeping it profitable? If you are invested in genocide and you refuse to look at it or call it a genocide, if you are completely apathetic to basic humanity. And the bottom line is your priority. Of course, you're dragging your feet. It is a it's a it's a disregard for humanity. And in that, it's a disregard for your students. It's a disregard for what your institution is teaching. What the professors at the institution is teaching because the institution is not a person. It just it does come back to that in in in so many situations, right? One thing and I'd love for you to comment on this. You know, one thing that really pisses me off personally. I walk here from where I park and I walk by First Nations House. I log on to the UVA homepage and it's all about territorial acknowledgments and indigenous issues and indigenous programming. It all rings so hollow in the face of the university's refusal to even enter into negotiations about potentially condemning a televised genocide. And that for me has been a source of real anger ever since I moved here from the states. Because the states we don't even do land acknowledgments. We barely even gotten started toward down the road of reconciliation, which is its own problem. But Canada and Victorian particular seems to in some cases justifiably pride itself in the lengths that's gone to reconciliation. And on the other hand, that reconciliation in the scope of what is happening in Palestine seems to me so hollow and so meaningless. Do you want to go or do you want me to go? I think we have both that things to say. I just want to thank you for naming the parallel indigenous land back struggles, which is something I think is so so important to name and also completely forgot to name. Because there's a lot of things to be naming right now. But that is so important and so core and part of why it is so egregious to us the UVA community that UVA specifically is not divesting. And there is a lot of Canadian liberalism and exceptionalism about Canadian liberalism that I could do a whole other podcast about frankly. You're wrong. I need content. I'll take you up on that. But no, I think we're both originally from the United States of America. I think based off of our pre podcast conversation, I've lived here a little bit longer. And I've had a lot of time to just see the ways that reconciliation is performed here. And the way that that performance is used as an excuse to not go to further action. I'm not going to speak for our indigenous friends within the encampment. Several of them are speaking quite loudly on their own. But this is like I am learning from them about indigenous struggle here and learning about how they relate what has happened as again, a genocide of varying pace on this land to the genocide happening at varying paces over the last 76 years and now in acceleration in Palestine. And I've seen some very beautiful friendships form between Palestinians in our space and indigenous folks in our space over those shared experience. It is so important to name that the Palestinians being genocided, the Palestinians being ethnically cleansed off that land or indigenous caretakers of that land. And that does not have to contradict. As I often hear in Jewish sinist spaces, the fact that Jews are connected to that land as well, these things are not separate. The state of Israel, as it exists, is a settler colonial entity doing settler colonialism and settler colonial violence, which is ethnic cleansing, which is genocide. And that exists at the same time as yes or temple was in Jerusalem. These things exist at the same time. Yeah. I don't even think I have anything else on that except to just like agree. You've just like many other institutions, but I go here and exist within this context. Seems to be and I also want to preface this by saying and also that everything that I say is my own opinion and it's not indicative of what the entire encampment thinks or of what both of us think even, right? But it seems to me that often these struggles struggles for liberation, so including Indigenous liberation on Turtle Island here are often used as just a piece in the toolkit in order to keep the university going. It's the university is a colonial institution. It cannot separate itself from that no matter how much it wants to. And so it is no surprise that it is enacting colonialism in various ways, including including refusing to do anything about Palestinian liberation. I just want to point out one really glaring example to me. Outside of our camp is a sign saying that the manicured lawn we are occupying is going to be developed into a memorial for the children found in cam loops. Oh God, time escapes me. I don't remember how many years ago this was in the last couple of years. The remains found under residential school in cam loops. They're saying that about their manicured lawn which is done in an extremely colonial style that used to be a camus field. So the layers of that land being taken turned into part of the colonial structure and then memorializing indigenous lives without restoring it to its original thing is something that I've been thinking about and wrestling about as I go in and out of camp. Or just that horrible irony if God forbid they do use force to clear out the encampment using force to clear out an encampment of pro-Palestinian liberation movement activists from a space of land that was taken over that they're now going to repurpose ostensibly as a memorial to people who were killed in a cause that was anti-liberation anti-indigenous. I think we can say genocide. Yeah. The residential school system is also part of genocide. Yeah. It's a terrible tragic irony where you don't know whether to laugh for Christ sometimes. It stuns me to silence every day which isn't really conducive to talking on a podcast but it's just true. I think one of the things that thinking about all of these intersections and thinking about like the things that bring us to that camp is something that's key to not just our role in our our our our space our time our bodies in camp but also to our camp itself. We are for collective liberation starting with Palestine and that is something that is I'm really proud of for our camp specifically. We are in the interest of connecting all of these knowledge pieces connecting these struggles from Turtle Island to Palestine. That's not that's not just a champ for us. We're taking that seriously connecting all of these struggles connecting to struggles we haven't even named in this podcast and I'm not going to because we don't have that time podcast be podcasting and I get distracted. But we are there's a genocide in Palestine. We're here for Palestine and when Palestine is free we will all be free and that is not because necessarily when the Zionist entity falls everything else will automatically crumble know it's because we are building together the community necessary to take on the rest of the oppressive structures that keep us all from being free. And that's something I'm really proud of in our space. Speaking of the collective nature of your space how does governance work in the encampment? Does it follow and occupy model where all decision-making is collective absence of hierarchical decision-making? It's to not dull details on how we make decisions more specifically. It is a horizontal. There is no leader. There is no group of leaders. There is no one group that organizes the encampment. We are all individuals who have come together in community and we make decisions in community. As a member of Camus anarchist books and infosha, sounds a little sounds a little anarchist to me. I don't know if that's a fair label or not. I would say so, but I am just one person and I'm within this encampment as one person who happens to have similar tendencies. What is important is not the label identification of exactly what we are doing to make it legible to everyone else. What is important is how our community relations are creating a better world both materially within the camp and also part of a global movement to free Palestine. I think I would just say that in lieu of organizational leadership we are making sure as a collective to be mindful of whose voices we're centering and that can change depending on context and specific thing that we're dealing with, but generally that means we're prioritizing Palestinian voices in our camp and the indigenous folks of Turtle Island. I don't think that priority is necessarily hierarchy, but we are here for a reason and we are all hyper aware of the reason we are here. We are hyper aware of what is happening in Gaza every day that we're there. It is not hierarchy to understand that some people have more skin in the game when it comes to certain decisions and that is factored into decision making, which this is all theoretical and dancing around it, but I think that it's important to name. Yeah, this is a community that is organizing around a cause and decisions are made on a community level. One of the things you all do and I had the privilege of being invited by you to attend on Friday was Friday Shabbos, which I thought was really beautiful and you were the first people to get me to go to Shabbat services probably in 30 years. So could you talk a little bit about Shabbat services at the encampment where it came from your role and making it so just such a wonderful space. I mean it was a really loving and enjoyable space and I say that as somebody who didn't know anybody and has only known the two of you for probably collectively two hours. Yeah, I mean first of all I'll take it as a great compliment that we convinced you to go to Shabbat after that long. That always feels like a win for me. Shabbat I think is just the culmination of community relations that we've been talking about. It is a specific moment of cultural sharing, not to say that we don't have others, but it is a specific moment of cultural sharing that recurs, surprise every seven days. And Ernie for our non-Jewish listeners, what is Shabbat? As I as I feel like we explain it to the camp, it is a time to reflect on the week past, rest, and rejuvenate yourself for the week forward. And it happens on Friday night. night. Our first camp Shabbat was me with my candlesticks and my kiddish cup on a milk crate because we didn't have enough tables yet, just with a bunch of. Because I knew that there were going to be a bunch of our anti-zynes Jewish kin in the space. And then I was like, well, there's enough bread who else wants to join. And then we just did that. And that was on day three. And I think at the time I was really just like, I need this because we don't know if we're going to last a weekend. And all of these people that I have been building relationship with since October are here. And I need this for my regulation. I need this for my yiddish kite. And I want to feed other people. And so that was like any good Jew. You just got to feed everybody. The stereotypes are not useful. And that's how it started. And then we did it again. And it became something that other people were finding. Meaning and regulation and joy. And there are so many people in that space who's only exposure to Shabbat or Shabbat. However, you want to pronounce it or the secret third and fourth ways people are inventing and camp, which is lovely. This is their only exposure. And I am so glad that it is something that is that is regulate regulatory and like something that we can share and bring as a as a service to the space. Because if it was really just for us, then we would just do it in a corner, honestly. And I mean, we kind of did, right? Like Shabbat started because Bert and I do Shabbat on Friday nights. And if we're in camp, well, you do it where you are. That milk crate is in my tent, actually. So, you know, it also stores things, but it's symbolically it does live there. But it really started because this is how we move through the world. This is how we move through our communities. This is how we often move through our grief. And, you know, it follows that if we're in community with people, then they should be able to join us if they so want to. And it's become such an important for me. And I also hear from other people an important part of their weak structure. It's it does warm my heart. But I don't know how else to put it sharing sharing song and ritual and bread with so many wonderful people who I have grown to care about so much. It is in service to like nourishing both our bodies and our souls. In order to keep being in the space and doing the work that we're doing, people, my favorite thing is that in the past few weeks, you know, I sit, I'm sitting in a lawn chair in the morning, usually reading or on my computer and someone will offhandedly say, "Oh, it's Friday today. It's Shabbat tonight. I'm so excited." That is that makes me want to cry. It's so I don't know. I hope you can hear the joy in my voice. But being able to share with community members, being able to share with with Palestinian community members, being able to share with Arab community members, being able to share with everyone who is in that space, whoever is in that space. Just a piece of how we move through the world and, you know, hope that it can function similarly for them is, it's freaking awesome. I think it's also a sort of necessary moment once a week. And if it wasn't what we're doing, it would be something else. Like there's nothing inherently special about it being like the Jewish Shabbat moment that is this, but it is, in our space right now, this is what it is. Where we need a moment to grieve that word there another week, a moment to reflect on why we're still here, and a moment to propel us into the week ahead. And as we've refined our camp shabbos, like we do try to make sure we hit all of those things because we need to have that space to keep moving forward. The first, the first Friday, May 3rd, we didn't know if we were going to last a weekend. Now we're looking at a university that seems pretty clearly to want to wait us out and building, um, building response to that, um, building resilience to that frustrating and irresponsible strategy on behalf of the university. And so the marking of time, I think, has become more and more important as we go along. That marking of time is I said to somebody recently that I feel like I, at this point, I follow two calendars, one of which is the camp calendar, um, and one of which is the Jewish calendar. And I'm kind of having this moment of reflection where they are also a little bit one in my head because, because of how like Shabbat as ritual is within the space, but as the weeks go on, um, time feels very weird within the camp end, especially if you were there a lot. Mm-hmm. And I don't know quite how else to explain it other than to say that. And so it is, it's kind of a wake-up moment. Oh, it's been another week. It's been another whole seven days. It's been this many more days, and this many more days of genocide, this many more days of Kevin Hall and the University of Victoria ignoring genocide. And that is so much grief. And it's also seven, it's been seven more days of creating community connections that we can take out of here. It's been seven more days of learning from each other. It's been seven more days of building resilience to what for whatever is next, both for the struggle and the next. And it's seven more days, and it's seven more days in all of the complexity and myriad of feelings and world circumstances. And here's circumstances that it is. And any one of those things, the grief, the joy, the overwhelm, the the monotony, all of that could become an endless blur. But we hold, we hold this specific ceremony to not let that happen. It is often so difficult to look beyond the next 24 hours because it is so uncertain of what is to come, whether that's encampment specific or broadly. But Shabbat is grounding because it's it kind of recenters how passage of time moves outside of the encampment. And I guess within the encampment, but I don't experience it that way. For the first few weeks, I said that every 48 hours is six years and it doesn't quite feel like that's the correct amount of time anymore. I don't know what is. I have to stop trying to quantify it because it's just, it just feels bizarre. It doesn't doesn't make sense. And Shabbos helps make things make sense, at least within the context of community. And there are so many people, so many community members that I hope when this is all over and Palestine is free and we have packed up our bags, I hope that they will sit at my Shabbat table. And yeah, I don't know. The only other thing I want to name is that we're not the only ones holding ceremony in that space. Our ceremony is just really, helpfully once every seven days at a time where many people are returning to camp for the weekend or simply coming back from work and class. And it is a time where it is a ceremony that's time bound and that's one of the nice things. And I want to give so much love to our, the other folks in our camp from many different traditions and peoples who are also holding ceremony on camp. All of the ceremony is really necessary and grounded. I feel I need to share a story with you too. There's a reason I'm sitting here tearing up, listening to you talk about Shabbos. So, you know, I grew up Jewish and there was something my rabbi said to me that is stuck with me for 30 years. I don't know why. And I just figured it out as you two were talking. He said that Shabbos is actually the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, more so than Russia's shown and more so than young Kapoor. And I never got it. That was just something he said. But I couldn't quote anything else he said to me. But I still remember that. And I think the reason I remember that is so that 30 years later, and this is the part where I maybe tear up a little bit 30 years later when I'm at your service for the first time in those 30 years. That's when I feel as a rock-ribbed atheist, like I'm actually living an authentic Jewish experience, which is being in camp with you and being a part of the movement to liberate Palestine and sharing that ceremony with the two of you. And I think that's why I remember that 30 years later. I don't want to cry. We're both just making faces at each other. It's to be authentically Jewish, right, is to just exist. You are authentically Jewish in your Jewish existence. If you are Jewish, you are authentically Jewish. And I think that there's so much about the way that Jewish institutions currently function in the way that actually very specifically Zionism as an ideology functions that makes us feel if we are anti-Zionist Jews. Whether we are religious or atheist or whatever weird intermixture, weird affectionate community is the thing that makes us feel the authenticity, right, like being in community with other people with other Jews and other non-Jews, moving through the world in the way that you want to move through the world and you are seen in that. That is what makes that feeling of authenticity, even though you've been authentically Jewish from the get-go. Can I add something to that? I think it's that plus being in a space that's for liberation. It's feeling authentically Jewish because being in the encampment and advocating for liberation of Palestine is to me what Judaism should of always and should always be about, which is freedom and liberation and community and peace and bread and land and security and love. And that it was only in that space that I again for a long time have felt that authentic Jewishness. There is a lot to reckon with in both our texts as Jews and the inheritance we have and there's a lot to reckon with the way that Zionism in manufacturing consent for this 76 years of genocide has eroded the soul, the nashima of our Jewish communities, institutions and Jewish ways of being. Like hollowed them out. In the service of settler colonialism, in the service of fascist genocidal entity that it is not the main reason like we said at the beginning that Jews should be coming to Palestinian liberation and also learning to look beyond Jewish institutions for Jewish meaning. However that happens but we live when we live so in this context which is where most of the people I know aren't hard looking for that is in some ways refining modes of Judaism that work, modes of Judaism that speak to our souls and speak to the people we want to be. And it is so important to me that we carve this space where we can take anti Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism as a given and don't have to say it over and over and over again where we don't have to frame our Jewishness in constant opposition to people who hate us or people we are told and created a fiction about hating us where our Judaism is not a relitigation and redistribution of trauma where our Judaism is not secondary to faith in a state. And as Jews we are given an opportunity in this reckoning right now to find that space. And that is for us to work through. And Judaism is in historically has been largely community mediated right. You have all sorts of community minhug like custom depending on where you are and and how you do things and who your grandparents were and who their great-grandparents were and what village they came from in Poland and what encampment Shabbat feels like to me is is community mediated Judaism right. We are we are building minhug we are building practice that that foundationally is liberatory and foundationally is letting people come into the space as they are and that is what is for me at least and and for others though I can't speak for them what what alienation from Jewish institution has been why it has been so difficult but why it has also created so much beauty is that I you know I no longer have to hide so many parts of myself in order to dovon in community in order to pray in community in order to do ritual in community in order to go on a tangent about Talmud in order to just be Jewish exist I no longer have to hide parts of myself that no one should be hiding right um liberation is at the forefront it's out in the open and that and that includes Palestinian liberation right so then I'm - I mean, so this is where my thinking takes me. - Can you be authentically Jewish and not be for Palestinian liberation? - Well, I think about, you know, I think about Passover stories and I think about, you know, the poem stories. I think about, you know, the Holocaust and the entire story of our tradition is a story of liberation, of struggle, of freedom from authoritarianism, of freedom from slavery. - So, is it, I know I'm being more judgmental than maybe you might be comfortable with, I can be that way, I understand if you might be hesitant. But the more I think about it, you know, is it not the reverse of what the media is doing to equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? Is it not in fact, at least arguable, that the only quote unquote real Jews, in terms of the most authentic, are the ones who are fighting for Palestinian liberation? - I'm going to disagree with you and I'm going to get to my reasoning in a classic bird roundabout way. (laughs) Even if we take Paisach as a Passover, as a microcosm of our texts and our inheritance as Jews, it is liberation for the Israelites, the Hebrews. I don't remember which phrases used in Exodus, but whatever. And it's also a story of an enacted genocide against the, the people of Mithraim, the oppressors of us in the story that we tell at that time. - The canines, yeah. - And our return from Mithraim to, what would then become the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, is also one of conquest and blood and war. And all of that exists in the same texts as Loyisa Goi. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they experience war anymore. And all of these things live in just juxtaposition as someone whose Judaism has been endlessly litigated in so many spaces, I'm so uninterested in anything more than the bare bones definition of who is a Jew, like some there are Jews in this town that I think are rabidly genocidal in their rhetoric in the ways that they move, in the ways that they use their power. And they're still Jewish. And the problem is not the Judaism. The problem is the Zionist rot, the Zionist entity that has enlisted every single Jew in the diaspora against their will with more or less consent depending on the individual in the service of protecting the settler colonial project. And going into this game of real Jew, not real Jew, Jew that actually is understanding Torah versus Jew who isn't understanding Torah is such a dangerous slope for so many reasons. And I think it is also so, so slippery to anti-semitism, like actual anti-semitism because anti-semitism doesn't actually care if your pro or anti-Palestine anti-semitism works like so many other isms and is present in every space across the political spectrum, across the solidarity spectrum, and must be combated wherever it is. And when you start assigning folks, when you start saying that people are real or not real based off of their political actions as opposed to their identity, what are like there are anti-Palestinian anti-semit in this town who have pointed at me specifically and said I'm not a real Jew, like that's not useful, that's not useful. I'm not going to let Zionism tell me who is or isn't a Jew in either direction. I resoundedly agree and I try to put my finger on it. It isn't even useful to have the conversation of authenticity in this context because it serves to break down to isolate and to, and ultimately that is in service to oppression and service anti-semitism. It is not my, I don't want to think about whether or not someone is or isn't authentically Jewish. I want to think about whether or not they are doing the bare minimum to move through this world as a person who doesn't suck. A lot of Jewish people in this city who actively probably don't like me very much are still Jewish and also they're actively supporting a genocide and they are using their Judaism maybe as a justification for that. And that's the problem, right? Is to not decide who is or isn't Jewish because oh my God, we've been doing that since ever, literally since time immemorial for the Jewish people, it has been a question of are you authentically Jewish, are you not authentically Jewish? We can be done now. We can be done. I'm hanging, I'm hanging it up. What really truly matters is, at the end of the day, Jewish, not Jewish, authentic or not authentic, which is just whatever, are you condemning the genocide of the Palestinian people and what are you doing about that? Beyond just condemning it, right? Do you support Palestinians right to return? What are you doing about that? That is the question and that is the question that I'm asking them irrespective of their identities. And I ask myself that too, right? Because we all need to recenter ourselves and why we're here every day all of the time. Why we're here? And my Judaism, I see it as inherently liberatory. But we got a lot to reckon with in there, you know? So some final thoughts on Palestine, on Palestinians, I would just love to hear from both of you, Bert and Ernie. And it's almost tried to phrase it this way, but I think outside of our progressive bubbles, a lot of people might think this way, which is why do you want us to care so much about the obscure corner of the world and what's happening to these people that will never meet in this obscure place that we'll never go to? Why is this so important? Because they're people. That's three words and that's really it. Because they're people, because if I, as a person, deserve safety, care, comfort, home, food that is edible community, then why should that be a question for anyone else? It isn't a question. That question in itself is, I don't even know how to frame that. It shouldn't be. If I may. frame it vaguely Jewishly. Every person's life is a whole world. Every single person's life and there are a million arguments to be made in personal conversation of why you specific person that I am in relationship with should care. Here are the strategies I'm going to use to make you care and at the end of the day all of them come down to. Every life is important. Your life and comfort is no more nor no less important than the life and comfort of anybody else on this planet and there are minimum 50,000 people dead in Palestine and that is 50,000 minimum because we those numbers haven't moved in months because the ministry of health has collapsed. None of those lives were less important than yours. None of those lives were less important than mine. We all must be for each other. To vaguely quote Rabbi Hillel, what is hateful to you? Do not do unto others and the inverse. What is hateful to you? Keep from happening to others. That's the part that people tend to forget. Yeah and I think that if you are not working against it you are complicit is the other piece. Yeah. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Yeah. Well, Bert and Ernie, I can't thank you enough for sharing this space and this time with me. I really appreciate it and for anybody listening I really encourage you to both check out the encampment and help our fellow, you know, our fellow travelers who are struggling for a free Palestine. People's Park, you Vic is the Instagram page. They post what they're doing. They post what they need. Supplies that are needed. Updates on encampment. Please follow the Instagram page and then Shabbat services 730 Friday nights. Roughly. Roughly. We're a little slow. Yeah. I just want to say for any listeners that are not on the lands of the Hengen speaking peoples. This work is happening at almost every encampment across the Sun in Tafada. If you can't hang out with us, hang out and help and support the students doing this work close to you. All of these struggles are connected. All of these encampments are connected. We are all working for a free Palestine. And this is to everyone regardless of whether you're on this land or another. Come to camp. Yeah. Show up. Your energy, your knowledge, your self is valuable to the space. Palestinian liberation will come. And we will be the people to get it there. We. It's it's it's you know the to put it Jewish way vaguely. The world to come is is is an ongoing project. And we will build that world. And everyone could be a part of that. We. Yeah. Bernie, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Free Palestine. Free Palestine.