It’s been a busy time for Palestine solidarity folks in Albuquerque. Five and half years ago after Israel’s 08-09 massacre in Gaza, the Coalition to Stop$30Billion to Israel, a grassroots group of ordinary citizens, launched a campaign erecting 10 billboards in their city that inspired campaigns in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Portland, Washington DC, Boston, Arizona, and Seattle, just to name just a few.

They’re at it again. Last Monday September 8th the coalition put up their first digital billboard in response to the recent carnage in Gaza. The same day an Op-Ed, Judaism, nationalism or an insurance plan? by Iris Keltz, a founding member of Jewish Voice for Peace-ABQ, appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. Keltz’s op-ed made quite a splash by challenging what being pro-Israel really means.

The pro-Israeli position usually refers to uncritical support based on religion or ethnicity. My family never questioned God gave Israel to the Jews, or that an empty land waited thousands of years for us to return. Beliefs are not always based on facts, but they are powerful and hard to change, especially when they’re reinforced at the pulpit. At the onset of Israel’s attack on Gaza, our family was celebrating my mother’s 99th birthday in a synagogue festooned with Israeli flags. The rabbi prayed for the Jewish state in a time of war, for the safe return of soldiers and for planes to land safely at Ben Gurion International. The horrors happening to a civilian population in Gaza were never mentioned. Most of us in the synagogue were Americans. We were not in Sederot facing incoming rockets, or in Tel Aviv waiting for sirens to stop. We had no adult children in the Israeli army and the idea of moving there was a worst-case scenario. If Jewish life in America unraveled, we could always go to Israel, our second-choice country, but, thank God, for now, the U.S. welcomed us. Is this Judaism, nationalism or an insurance plan?

Today JVP-ABQ is holding a grief circle at the Jewish Community Center (office of the Jewish Federation of NM) for the first time in years such an event has been held in front of the JCC “challenging knee jerk support for Israel” and reading the names of the dead.

Here’s another peek at the digital billboard, this time lighting up the night sky.