Zionists for Palestine

Abstract

The 1967 war shed new light onto the Palestinian problem, leading to the creation of a new group in 1973. Called Breira: A Project of Concern in Diaspora-Israel Relations, it became the first national American Jewish organization to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The chapter shows how political currents emanating from Israel brought about Breira’s rise, and later, its fall. Breira’s young American Jewish founders had spent time in Israel, where encounters with occupied Palestinians and inspiration from Israeli peace activists led them to conclude that Palestinian self-determination served Israel’s long-term interests. Once founded, Breira championed the pro-peace Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, led by Israeli General Matti Peled, who in 1976 negotiated with moderate members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Following Peled’s lead, two Breira members met with those same PLO moderates. Israeli officials leaked a report from that meeting, forcing Breira to defend itself and the PLO meeting and eliciting a crisis from which the organization would never recover. American Jewish communal leaders now took a clear stand on even self-identified Zionist support for Palestinian rights, seeing it as counter to Jewish safety and Jewish life in Israel and across the world.