“a dying identity can be a healing body”

bloodlines is an epic and intimate dive into the israeli apartheid regime from the perspective of an ex-israeli/ex-zionist soldier. Born into a sephardic and ashkenazi lineage of in/famous war heroes and pillars for the state of israel, meital yaniv traces their paternal family narrative from surviving the Holocaust of the second world war to migrating to Palestine and their subsequent indoctrination as zionist colonizers and defenders of the state of israel. yaniv directs our attention to the cycles of history and how genocide not only repeats but grows monstrously in the crevices of state belonging. Through a bold and radical poetics that unsettles language and definition, they foreground vulnerability while traversing the nuance of voice and inner forms of address. yaniv unravels the coordinates of belonging to write in the fissures of israeli identity.

bloodlines is an invitation to contemporary israelis to unstitch the military uniform from their bodies and to reckon with their atrocities against generations of Palestinian lives and livelihoods. It is also a demand that the ongoing catastrophes in Palestine end now. With uncompromising courage and in lucid manifestation, yaniv urges israelis to join them in drowning in the wounds of their ancestors as well as the wounds they’ve inflicted.

Yaniv will be joined by moderator Asher Firestone.

Asher (they/he) is a queer performance artist, academic and activist from Israel/Palestine, organizing in various NYC solidarity movements for a Free Palestine, Jewish healing work, and alternative trans communities of care. They are currently a Pod Organizer at Jewish Voice for Peace, and will begin their doctoral research this fall at CU Boulder’s Critical Ethnic Studies Department interrogating U.S. and Israel homonationalist alliances and abolitionist Jewish diasporas.