On Aug. 24, 69-year-old retired Jewish journalist Bob Sanders set off on a 16-day, 650-mile bike ride from his home in Concord, New Hampshire to Washington, D.C. The goal of his ride is to build opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and to meet with his U.S. senator to urge her to suspend unrestricted aid to Israel and free all hostages.
Sanders founded a group for fellow Jews called Not in My Name New Hampshire. He’s collecting signatures on two petitions, one specifically for Jews to sign as he makes his way down the East Coast. He’s also raising funds for humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza and anti-war organizing work in New Hampshire.
Sanders is no stranger to activism. In high school, he protested the war in Vietnam and published an alternative newspaper. When the school tried to stop publication of his paper, he asked the ACLU to take them to court and won. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Sanders about his bike ride to end Israel’s war in Gaza as he passed through New Haven, Connecticut.
BOB SANDERS: Not in My Name – the point is to publicize the names of the people signing. These are people who want to speak out and go public against Israel because there’s been a shame, a reluctance, for Jews to speak out against this and we’re trying to overcome that by having people publicly come out so that other people will come out – it’s kind of like the gay community, or back when women were talking about abortions and stuff like that – for a Jew to come out against Israel is a tough thing. And we want to try to reach more traditional Jews.
The petition is just a petition. We’re not publishing names or anything. We’re just saying we got so many signatures.
MELINDA TUHUS: And what does the petition say?
BOB SANDERS: One is suspending unrestricted aid to Israel. I would say that’s the most important demand now. It’s not the first because in the beginning the first was ceasefire and free the hostages. By “hostages,” we say “all hostages” and what I mean by that is including the people being held in indefinite detention by Israel.
The second is we want humanitarian aid that will go through UNRWA, the UN agency on the ground that’s been distributing this aid for years and because we’ve been cutting off aid to that, we’re contributing to the famine which will kill much more than the 40,000 Israel has already killed in this war, and that we are funding.
We’re saying that we want an investigation of war crimes, with both Hamas and Israel, similar to what the World Court is doing. Obviously we are against any kind of anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, we don’t want false charges of anti-Semitism to be used to suppress free speech.
And freeze the settlements. Stop building settlements on the West Bank.
MELINDA TUHUS: This is very interesting. It seems like you, in a small state with a small Jewish population that is more conservative than the Jewish population as a whole, that you’ve done an amazing job of getting Jews to go on the record.
And the other thing that’s different is that so many young Jews are so appalled by what Israel is doing, and have come out and demonstrated and set up camps on campuses and stuff like that, but for an older demographic – that you’re part of – it is more unusual. So, what kinds of conversations do you have with people who end up signing? Do you have to convince them, or do you just find people like you, older people who are appalled?
BOB SANDERS: It’s been difficult. There’s a big gap even among people who are opposed between the young generation, which is much more enthusiastic. I started this group because I was trying to get a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace in New Hampshire. Now, there is a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace for Vermont and New Hampshire, but there’s nobody in New Hampshire in it except for one person. And so I thought, we should build that up.
I know a lot of Jews – I’m not very religious or into the organized Jewish community – but I know a lot of Jews who are political who are doing good things and fighting the fight. So I reached out to them. They really were against what Israel was doing, but they were not into joining Jewish Voice for Peace, because of the rhetoric and the enthusiasm, which can be good, but it basically turned off a lot of Jews.
Either it turned off them, or they felt that they couldn’t reach out to other Jews, like their peers who are older, with that kind of rhetoric. They couldn’t get people to join Jewish Voice for Peace. So that’s why we decided to do Not In My Name, which became an independent group. We had more success reaching out with that. So Not in My Name doesn’t use words like genocide, or anti-Zionist.
We still don’t want funding to go to slaughter people in the West Bank. I think people are okay with words like apartheid, but genocide to Jews is a very touchy subject.
I’d say that I’ve gotten a surprising amount of support and surprisingly little flak. But I had a couple of discussions and people disagreed, but they were civil. But most people are giving me thumbs up.
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