“Just experiencing a little bit, a little taste of what people in Gaza are having to live with. It really stretches the mind.” - Seph Mozes
Yesterday marked the first day of an indefinite hunger strike for Seph Mozes and five activists in Chicago with Jewish Voice for Peace. Nearly 36 hours into the strike that aims to bring attention to the manmade humanitarian crisis in Gaza while calling for the United States to stop arming Israel, Mozes joined a Zeteo town hall with paid subscribers to discuss his protest.
“This is my first time taking on this tactic… I'm in a comfortable house. Not having eaten for 36 hours, what would it be like if I were living in a tent and sitting in the hot sun and not knowing when snipers were gonna come for me or my children?” says Mozes, who follows in the footsteps of his mother, award-winning actor and Zeteo contributor Cynthia Nixon, as she participated in a hunger strike for Gaza only one month after the October 7 attack in 2023.
“One of the things that I think he [Mozes] did so beautifully as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, he spoke so well about the weaponizing of Jewish trauma, and I think that that is something we must keep uppermost in our mind,” said Nixon proudly.
Joining Nixon and her son is Rabbi Brant Rosen, co-founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council and Jewish Fast for Gaza. For Rosen, the label of anti-Semitism being used to target Palestinian solidarity is a “horrible and tragic misdirection.”
“Frustrating doesn't even begin to describe it, but antisemitism is absolutely real. The problem is the political forces are using Israel as a wedge issue to cause us to look away from where it really exists, as they fomented,” says Rosen.
Watch the full conversation above to hear how police brutality in the US led Mozes down a path of activism for Palestine, and hear Cynthia discuss how, during her campaign for governor of New York, she was asked to sidestep issues concerning Palestinian rights, and more.
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