About this Blog

Unruly is an intersectional blog created and operated by members of the Jews of Color and Sephardi/Mizrahi (JOCSM) Caucus organized in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace. Our focus is on racial justice issues in the United States, Palestine, Israel, and beyond. We feature news items, political analysis, essays, poetry, art, and video work that highlights the way oppressed people resist their dispossession.

We pay special attention the issues affecting Palestinians and JOCSM communities, because we see a direct link between these struggles. We seek to confront our role in US and Israeli settler-colonialism, as well as the way our histories have been buried and cut off from each other as a form of divide and conquer rule. We offer this platform as a space for building community and co-resistance.

The name Unruly is a play on the historical treatment of JOCSM as a “savage,” unpredictable, and unmanageable force in Israeli and white-dominated Jewish society. This was exemplified in Golda Meir’s notorious words after hearing the demands of the Israeli Black Panthers: “They’re not nice!”

This stigma is not unique to our struggle, and is an experience we share with many other oppressed people. Unruly is about rejecting the logics of control wielded against people of color around the world, and providing a space where we can connect our struggles.

 

Unruly Editorial Board

Co-Editor, Politics – Rebecca Pierce

Co-Editor, Arts – Danny Bryck

 

 

HOPE HURTS: A CONVERSATION OR TWO WITH DAN FISHBACK

By Danny Bryck In 2018, playwright and activist Dan Fishback and I sat down and talked about identity, organizing, wellness, and the arts in Trump’s America. In the relentless two years that followed, we never got around to publishing it. So in October of 2020, just...

Mizrahi Jews Speak in Support of the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum

JIMENA’s response to the California Ethnic Studies model curriculum brings up much-needed criticism of the essentialism and orientalism that plagues the discourse on the Middle East. However, the response also perpetuates Islamophobia and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Upcoming Online Event: Zoom Call with Jews of Color Running for Office

From Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/202854174332023/?notif_t=plan_user_invited¬if_id=1585160398718148 While the world swirls with news of our health and the presidential elections take a back seat, Jews of Color are stepping into leadership roles in...

15 Palestinian Responses to Trump’s “Deal of the Century”

The following media roundup details a small sample of the numerous Palestinian voices that have spoken up despite the continual silencing of their perspectives by Trump, Israel, and the international community.