This Couple Boycotted Israel’s Occupation by Leaving
![A Palestinian demonstrator stands in front of Israeli troops during a protest against Jewish settlements [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f21dbb91adde3260d4ba1ef/1604061210070-OBQBMA9I7FNQ04T8GABU/palestinian-protester)
A Palestinian demonstrator stands in front of Israeli troops during a protest against Jewish settlements [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]
When Eléonore Merza Bronstein went to pick up her child from school, she noticed four military tanks decorated with the Israeli flag in the school’s lobby. They had been crafted out of toilet paper cartons painted in green and brown.
That was her breaking point.
Bronstein and her husband, Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, made the decision to leave Israel in December 2019. It was an act of despair for the two activists against Israel's colonization and oppression of Palestinians, born of a fear that they couldn't protect their child from the toxic effects of being raised in a militarized nationalist culture.
“I went home that evening and I told Eitan ‘For me this is a red line. I’m leaving,’” Eléonore said in an interview with AJ+ Français. “I really felt, as a Jew, dispossessed, raped of my story, to oppress another population. And this, I can no longer accept.”
Military service is mandatory in Israel for most citizens over the age of 18, although ultra-Orthodox Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempt. Conscription meant that the couple’s young child would have to serve one day, just as Eitan had served in the Israeli army.
“To not raise my son in a system that is macho, under a military, racist system that is an occupier was the real issue, because yes, in fact they raise children to become soldiers,” Eléonore said.
The family, like many other Israeli leftists over the last decade, left Israel with no plans to return. Activists, academics and cultural figures who have gone abroad — some pushed out of their jobs, others silenced for their views on Israel — told Haaretz that if change does occur, it won’t come from within Israel.
“I remember years when there was a feeling that maybe [the conflict] would be resolved and maybe there would be peace, but that feeling hasn’t existed for a long time. It’s a state of constant despair that keeps growing,” Eitan told Haaretz.
Eléonore, a political anthropologist and researcher, was born and raised in France to a Jewish mother and a Muslim father who had been displaced by the Israeli army. She spent time in Israel while conducting research, but refused to take the citizenship Israel guarantees to Jews from all over the world (though not to most of the Indigenous inhabitants of its territory). She has focused much of her work on social protests and political mobilizations. Her doctoral research analyzed non-Jewish citizenship in Israel and the power relations between Palestinians and the state.
Eléonore and Eitan have dedicated their adult lives to speaking out against Zionism, the nationalist movement that emerged among some European Jews in response to rising anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, and aligned with British colonialism to establish what became an ethnically Jewish nation-state in Palestine at the expense of its Arab majority.
“It’s true that Israel presents Palestinians as the enemy ... the Palestinians are [painted as] the new Nazi,” she told AJ+.
The couple has made the Palestinian right of return a cornerstone of their advocacy and teachings. Their goal was to make Israelis accept responsibility for the Nakba — the expulsion and dispossession of the majority of Palestinians who had lived in what became Israel in 1948 — and for all refugees who fled or were forced out to be given the opportunity to return to Palestine, receive reparations and reclaim their properties or receive money and support for resettlement. Even before it accepted Israel as a member state, the United Nations, in its Resolution 194 of 1948, codified the Palestinian right of return, ruling that refugees wishing to return to their homes should be allowed to do so. Today, there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees, including their descendants. Over a third of them still live in UN-operated refugee camps.
At the age of 5, Eitan moved from Argentina to Israel and was raised on a collective farm. It wasn’t until he was an adult and a father that he pushed away from Zionism. He spent over a decade fostering community between Jews and Arabs at the School of Peace — a cooperative village in Israel dedicated to building justice, peace and equality in the country — before going on to found the NGO Zochrot.
Zochrot means “remembering” in Hebrew, and as the name implies, the organization serves to remember and bring awareness to the Nakba — in which at least 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and displaced during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Zochrot promotes accountability for the “ongoing injustices of the Nakba” and advocates for the Palestinian right of return as a nonnegotiable amend and path forward.
“Peace will come only after the country has been decolonized, enabling all its inhabitants and refugees to live together without the threat of expulsion or denial of return,” according to the Zochrot website.
Together, Eitan and Eléonore wrote a book on the political journey of the term “Nakba” in Hebrew — a word that was once “completely absent” from public discourse but has since become commonplace, a change Eitan has been credited with initiating. The launch of their book drew the attention of Miri Regev, Israel’s former culture minister who had previously served as the chief press and media censor, and then spokesperson of the Israeli military. She attempted to cut off funding to the Barbour Gallery for hosting a discussion about the book in a push to silence what she called the “fairy tales about the Nakba.”
The couple don’t know whether they will return to Israel. They do know they will continue to advocate for the Palestinian right of return, despite being labeled as “traitors,” “self-hating Jews” and even “anti-Semites.” They have continued to lead and participate in demonstrations against the Israeli occupation from their new home in Brussels, Belgium, while raising their son in an environment they call “more normal.”
“It was 10 or 12 years ago that I learned that I could be a Jewish activist,” said Eléonore, “be very proud of being Jewish, with a strong attachment to Judaism and be critical of Israel, and use my privilege in this situation as a political ally.”
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