Yehuda Ha Kohen - Political Activism

Political Activism

Am Segula launched a series of non-violent protests and hunger strikes in order to pressure the Israeli government to demand the release of Jonathan Pollard from American imprisonment. In early 2003, Am Segula merged into Magshimey Herut and teamed up with the K’Cholmim group to settle on a hilltop near Kochav HaShachar in Samaria. HaKohen lived there until he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in June 2003. HaKohen served as an infantry soldier in the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a special combat unit for religious soldiers.

During the months leading up to the Gaza Disengagement, HaKohen traveled the country speaking to left-wing youth movements in an attempt to encourage dialogue and build mutual understanding between supporters and opponents of the controversial policy. Following the violent confrontation at Amona between the Israeli police and teenage activists in early 2006, HaKohen and Elie Yossef went on a three week hunger strike vigil protesting violence between Jews. The activists displayed banners and handed out flyers calling on both the Israeli government and settler leadership to seek ways to avoid future bloodshed. As this took place just before national elections, the hunger strike drew criticism from some settlers who had felt victimized by the government and sought to use the tragedy as a means to hurt the ruling Kadima party in the polls. The government had no official response to the vigil.

In 2006, HaKohen founded the Zionist Freedom Alliance to promote Jewish national rights on American college campuses and co-hosted a radio program called Jewish Campus Radio on Israel National Radio (channel seven). The program dealt with all issues facing Jewish college students in the West but focused primarily on Zionist activism on college campuses. In the summer of 2007, INR asked HaKohen to host their new program, The Struggle, which dealt with Zionist history and global issues that concern the State of Israel. In 2007, HaKohen endorsed United States Congressman Ron Paul for the Republican presidential nomination. Although many Jews viewed Paul as an anti-Israel candidate based on his longtime opposition to American foreign aid to Israel and although HaKohen had previously opposed Jews voting in American elections with Israel's interests at heart, he asserted that Israel must become an independent country and that Ron Paul's policies would likely lead to an independent Israel.

In April 2008, HaKohen led a week long program called Israel Liberation Week at Hofstra University. During this week of events, ZFA reached beyond the Jewish community and targeted a wider student public through films, art exhibits and concerts that focused on Jewish rights to the Land of Israel, the Jewish revolt against British rule and the need for the State of Israel to become an independent country.

While mainstream Jewish leaders and pro-Israel organizations on American campuses presented Israel as a democratic Western country with numerous security challenges, HaKohen and the ZFA spoke of Israel as a Middle Eastern nation with legitimate moral and historic rights to the country. In a July 2008 interview, HaKohen told Israel National News that:

"We must make the world understand that the Jewish nation, like any other nation on the planet, has a right to self-determination in our country. Not in half of our country, but in our whole country... No power on earth has the moral authority to rob us of our land."

On November 13 2008, violence erupted between ZFA and the Students for Justice in Palestine at an Israel Liberation Week event taking place at UC Berkeley. The incident, which took place during a concert featuring HaKohen along with hip hop artists from diverse ethnic backgrounds promoting freedom for Israel from Western pressure and foreign influence, began when pro-Palestinian students unfurled Palestinian flags from a balcony overlooking the concert stage. ZFA activists attempted to remove the flags and a fight broke out.

HaKohen told Israel National News that he opposed students attempting to remove the flags but nevertheless saw value in the incident.

"Even though I wanted to avoid the altercation, I recognize the value in anti-Israel activists getting put in their place by the very students they so often try to bully into silence… ZFA might not have started the violence but we definitely finished it. I hope members of Students for Justice in Palestine think twice next time they want to get physical with any of our students."

Following the incident, an opinion piece by HaKohen was published in the Berkeley Daily Planet in which he criticized the local pro-Israel community for placing blame for the violence on ZFA. HaKohen argued that the fight resulted from pre-existing tensions at UC Berkeley caused by a series of mutually offensive speakers and events organized by pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups on campus. The piece contrasted ZFA’s efforts to dialogue with Muslim students on campuses with what he described as “anti-Arab” and “Islamophobic” programs promoted by right-wing Jewish advocacy organizations.

During Israel Liberation Week at the University of Albany in November 2008, HaKohen made an effort to reach out to the Muslim Student Association. In the wake of these contacts, ZFA and MSA agreed that Jews and Arabs are both Middle Eastern peoples with a great deal in common and that peace can only be achieved through grassroots dialogue.

HaKohen used his radio show to speak out against Islamophobia and to place blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict on third parties, particularly the United States and Europe. In December 2008, HaKohen told Israel National News that:

"It was the British who originally turned local Arabs and Jews against one another in order to further their own colonialist agenda for our region. And now Western governments arm both sides and then attempt to impose artificial diplomatic solutions. The Israeli government and PA leaderships today both behave as puppets to foreign regimes and both the local Jewish and Arab populations are suffering. The way to achieve real peace between peoples here is to work from the bottom up and not the top down. The Jewish and Arab peoples are both native to the Middle East. We have a great deal in common. But for efforts at genuine peace to succeed, Western governments and multinational corporations need to leave our region alone and let the indigenous Jews and Arabs settle things between ourselves."