When Doves Try: Tracing an Israeli Peace Movement

I met Micah Sifry in 2007 at the Personal Democracy Forum, when I was drawn into the world of new media. It wasn’t until the dawn of the first Trump regime that we reconnected, as part of a group response to the trauma of what felt like an American abyss. At that time, Westchester and the Bronx were one congressional district, and folks had gathered to start an Indivisible group. Our district has since been redrawn, and we now represent both 15 and 16. Full disclosure: Sifry and I are members of the group’s Steering Committee. In the past, we visited Rep. Eliot Engel’s office to discuss issues related to Israel, which, in retrospect, now seem relatively simple.

Knowing Sifry to be on the cutting edge of tech, government, and organizing, I was interested in digging into his book, When Doves Try, which retraces his interviews with Israel’s Peace Now movement from 1978 to 1983. I had also seen his slide presentation from his 2024 trip to Israel on a “study and solidarity tour” organized by Americans for Peace Now.

Sifry gives the backstory of his initial trip to Israel. He was 5 years old, visiting his mother’s family and his “Israeli cousins.” It was 1967, right after the Six-Day War. Sifry relates that it wasn’t until almost a decade later that he noticed inequities in Israeli society, as well as “casual racism” from his cousins, which didn’t sit well with him.

In the 1970s, Sifry joined Hashomer Hatzair, a movement for young Jews steeped in a Socialist-Zionist ethos. His second semester of college was spent living on Kibbutz Shomrat. He found himself seriously considering making aliyah with colleagues from Hashomer Hatzair to a kibbutz on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

During the summer of 1982, Sifry, using Kibbutz Adamit as a base, traveled throughout the country to interview the activists spearheading Israel’s peace movement. His presence coincided with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

When he wasn’t working on the Kibbutz’s farm, Sifry was speaking with those leading the peace movement and journalists covering the action. In real time, during meetings, he observed debates about the incursion into Lebanon and the viability of refusing to serve in the army. The latter concern tapped into Sifry’s internal conflict about military service. While finishing his senior year at university, the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp massacres took place.

Sifry continued writing about the origins of the Peace Now movement and the parallel evolution of Gush Emunim, the settler movement, which was gaining traction in the Occupied Territories. It became his senior thesis, and a well-placed mentor sent it to Victor Navasky, the editor of The Nation magazine. Sifry snagged an internship at the publication. It was one of those examples of how life plans can change in a flash. He continued his work as a journalist in the United States; a move to Israel didn’t transpire.

Explaining to readers why he put together a book on Israel and Palestine, Sifry boils it down to three top motivations. It connected to his work as an organizer; he saw potential connections to the American pro-democracy movement; and it fed his desire to complete his documentation of the Peace Now movement — which was dedicated to achieving social justice in “the land.”

Drawing on his “fascination” with the birth, growth, and tribulations of peace movements, Sifry conveys how, during the 1980s, a group of Israeli Jews launched an initiative to encourage their co-citizens to take a deep look at their entrenched mindsets. They issued a call to let go of the endless reliance on military solutions to solve all problems, and rejected Menachem Begin’s belief in the “Greater Israel” scenario. Sifry doesn’t gloss over the Labor Party’s role, which contributed elements of “Begin-light” through their actions and appropriations of Palestinian lands. Sifry cites Ahad Ha’am, Judah Magnes, and Martin Buber as examples of those offering a different version of Zionism, one grounded in mutual compromise between the two peoples.

In his prologue, Sifry outlines what he characterizes as his “Biases and Assumptions.” He affirms his commitment “to the concept of Zionism as a movement of Jewish national self-determination.” Nevertheless, he adds, “I deplore, however, the racist and militarist forms it has taken from early on.” He underscores, “Self-determination cannot include the oppression of another people.” Sifry qualifies “unquestioning support for Israel” as “deeply corrosive to Jewish values.” In parsing these terms, Sifry, allowing that the term Zionism has become equivalent to the concept of “Jewish supremacy,” states, “then I reject it and would call myself a post-Zionist or a non-Zionist.” He also criticizes the “binary” thinking that too many bring to the situation.

Through taped interviews with the leaders of Shalom Achshav/Peace Now conducted between the summer of 1982 and the winter of 1983, along with material from Israeli publications, Sifry builds the story of Peace Now’s founding and evolution. There are footnotes on almost every page, citing pamphlets and publications, including Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post. Sifry additionally draws on his 2023 article in The New Republic, “What Can Americans Learn from the Israeli Protests? A lot.”

Beginning with the Officers’ Letter of March 7, 1978, signed by 348 Israeli reserve officers and soldiers calling upon Prime Minister Begin to choose “the path of peace” over the goal of “borders of the Greater Israel,” Sifry follows a timeline based on a thread opening with a group named “Movement for a Different
Zionism.”

Over seven chapters, Sifry examines the genesis of Peace Now, concluding with an epilogue that addresses October 7 and the “Intensification of the Israel-Palestine Binary.” He offers a list of new-generation entities in his appendix, “Peace and Human Rights Organizations.”

I reached out to Sifry to gain a deeper understanding of how he views the current situation in Israel-Palestine and its relationship to the American grassroots fight for democracy. Our conversation covered global challenges confronting the world today, and the enmeshed links between the United States and Israel-Palestine.

Regarding his origin story, Sifry told me, “I’ve always had family connections to Israel.” He described it as an “entanglement rooted in refugee status and an attraction to Socialist Zionism.” His mother’s family, from Belgium, spent the war years in hiding. His father was American, and his parents married in Jerusalem.

I asked Sifry who he saw as the book’s audience. He believes it will attract people questioning the established Israel-Palestine narrative and those who study social movements. Sifry used the phrase “elasticity of public opinion” to demonstrate how people engaged in shifting on-the-ground conditions for Israeli-Palestinian co-existence can draw on the “history of the Peace Now movement” to inform their path. “It will create a future that is not yet written,” he said. As an example, Sifry mentioned Anwar Sadat’s overtures to discuss “land for peace.” He stressed, “When Sadat spoke to the Knesset, Israeli public opinion changed overnight. In that moment, Peace Now flourished.”

The challenge remains how to create the conditions that are currently needed. Sifry acknowledged, “Public opinion in Israel now is very right-wing. Think hypernationalist vs. globalist.” Yet Sifry emphasized the “10 to 15 percent of forces inside Israel that want to take the country in a different direction and end the occupation.” As Sifry sees it, the challenge is, “How can we help that number?” He remarked, “A state of permanent war doesn’t work.”

Needless to say, the phrase “Zionism” came up. Sifry articulated, “The term Zionism yields intensely contested terrain. It’s getting in the way of practical reality. It’s a luxury for people to focus on that. Activists are self-labeling without advancing [the struggle].” He continued, “Identities are more complex and nuanced than a single label, and the conversation is pretty fraught.” He observed that the outraged responses from various parties in a round-robin of reactions to every news cycle are a “side benefit” for what he termed “the advocacy industry.” His final comment was conclusive: “The debate over Zionism is exhausting and largely exhausted.”

Despite all the arguments over terminology, Sifry posited, “Something is shifting. Something else is happening.” He saw the younger generation as a key catalyst. He also pointed to “American Jewish institutions in flux” and the cracks from the “schism underway.” Sifry said, “Benjamin Netanyahu has completely redefined Israel.” Comparing Netanyahu’s hold on Israel to Viktor Orbán’s in Hungary, Sifry pronounced the importance of progressive Israelis not letting Netanyahu capture the narrative of “who is the true [Israeli] patriot.” Underscoring that the fissures within Israel are not new, he pointed out, “People have been warning about it for fifty years.”

The conversation shifted to national politics and how American Jews work within that system. AIPAC and J Street came up, as well as Sifry’s take on the Democratic Party. He said dryly, “They’re consistently behind the curve.” With American public opinion on Israel changing rapidly, “More questioning,” as Sifry put it, “is rising to the surface. This can allow for more people to build an effective voice for Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.” Sifry accentuated, “That is where the work is.”

Sifry also remarked on the speed with which individual activists could work, compared with institutions and organizations. In the age of social media and a proliferation of platforms, he framed the differences between established bodies (Congress, synagogue leaders, etc.) and individual influencers as “strategic vs. expressive.”

“There are two different understandings about what is in our [American Jews] self-interest,” Sifry noted. “The American Jewish community is running away due to trauma.” He pointed to a “core identity” of intergenerational pain in conflict with the Jewish biblical ethos of “standing with the stranger.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Our conversation transitioned to the American and Israeli foray into Iran, and how that would influence American public opinion on Israel. In addition to defining it as a “historic, strategic mistake which history will see as unbelievable hubris,” Sifry discussed Congressional action to stop the funding of weapons to Israel (which numerous Israeli activists have called for). “America doesn’t have to sell weapons to Israel,” Sifry remarked. “It’s being used for military dominance, not self-defense. It should be used as leverage.”

Returning to movement building, Sifry reiterated, “The job we have as the opposition is to provide an alternative path. Periodically, people do get together, like the Nuclear Freeze movement.”

Ending the discourse on an upbeat note, Sifry said, “We still have a lot of leverage here,” adding the caveat, “We have our work cut out for us.” Acknowledging the “very turbulent times we are living through,” Sifry spoke about the approach of “trying a multiplicity of strategies to figure out a path.”

In a concluding analysis of the message of When Doves Try, Sifry stressed that a “study of the Peace Now movement still has historical relevance as a template for moving ideas and movements forward.”

Note: Americans for Peace Now joined Ameinu in December 2024 to become the New Jewish  Narrative.