This article was produced as part of the New York Jewish Week’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around New York City to report on issues that affect their lives.
Every morning on my walk to the F train, I pass bright yellow signs hanging in the windows of houses along the quiet streets of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Each one reads: “Free Palestine.”
Windsor Terrace is a small, mostly residential neighborhood, where the same dogs are walked daily and American flags hang off of the brick row houses. It hasn’t changed much in the 13 years I’ve lived here. So six months ago when the signs popped up with their bright yellow backgrounds and watermelon designs, they stood out.
At first, there were only one or two. Then more appeared, stretching along the streets I walk every day. Nearby neighborhoods like Borough Park and Crown Heights are home to over 96,000 Jews, but Windsor Terrace has a much smaller Jewish population. My family is one of the few Jewish families on our block, but I have a strong Jewish identity from my Brooklyn day school, my camp and my extended Israeli and Israeli-American family. Until recently, my Jewishness had never made me feel out of place.
The signs changed that.
Part of what unsettled me is that I don’t hear “Free Palestine” as a neutral call for peace. I associate it with a broader political movement that sometimes includes not just strong criticism of Israel, but the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, like the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Even if that is not what every person displaying the sign intends, that association is hard for me to separate from the words themselves.
But maybe I was assuming too much. What did my neighbors mean when they put these signs in their windows? Were they thinking about Palestinian civilians, Israeli government policy, or something else entirely? And had they considered how a Jewish neighbor might read their message?
Curiosity eventually pushed me to do something outside of my comfort zone: I decided to knock on doors, and try to have a conversation.
I first wrote polite letters introducing myself as a high school student writing for the New York Jewish Week and placed them in the mailboxes of eight houses with the yellow signs.
I returned a few days later. At one house, a woman cracked the door open slightly, listened, and said, “No thank you, I’m not interested,” before closing it. At another, a man nodded politely, then declined. Most doors remained closed. One day, I noticed a house had taken its sign down. I’ll never know if that was a coincidence, but it highlighted something that I hadn’t fully realized: The signs were meant to be seen, but not necessarily discussed.
Still searching for understanding, I went to the March 28 “No Kings” march in Brooklyn. Because the march was set to end with a rally at the edge of Windsor Terrace, several houses in my neighborhood had displayed “No Kings” signs alongside their “Free Palestine” signs, and I thought I might find some people who were willing to talk. It was less than 10 minutes before I spotted two women carrying the same bright yellow “Free Palestine” signs I had seen displayed near my house.
One of the women was Susan Braverman, a Jewish-American and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The other was a Palestinian-American who asked to be identified as “Hanan” out of concern that publishing her real name could lead to harassment. Braverman and Hanan co-founded the initiative to distribute the signs across Brooklyn.
When I asked them what “Free Palestine” meant to them, Braverman answered simply, “It means freedom and equality for Palestinians.” She described the phrase as a call for coexistence, not a rejection of Israel.
A protester holds a sign at a “march for Palestinians” in New York City, May 11, 2021. (Andrew Ratto/Wikimedia Commons)
When I explained that I understood “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a call for the complete destruction of Israel, Braverman reframed it as “living together with Israelis, having equal rights as Israelis.”
Where I and others hear a slogan that questions Israel’s legitimacy, overlooks Israeli fears and rejects Jewish history, Braverman describes it as a call for equality. That showed me how differently the same words can be understood depending on who is using them.
Hanan described the current situation in Israel as fundamentally unequal. “Right now, there are separate systems. To me, that’s segregation — like the Jim Crow South.” To her, “Free Palestine” means all people living together as equals.
When I asked about antisemitism, she was direct. “Antisemitism is real,” Hanan said. She told me that sometimes, when people hear she is Palestinian, they “say pretty disgusting things to me about Jewish people, and it’s awful, and then I have to correct them.” But she rejected the idea that the phrase “Free Palestine” itself is inherently antisemitic.
“My grandfather lived with Jewish neighbors, and there was no separation or segregation,” she said.
Hearing their perspectives did not fully resolve the tension I feel when I pass the signs each day. I know that some Jewish commentators can’t uncouple “Free Palestine” from the violent attacks carried out by people who have invoked the phrase. But it did show me how differently the same words can be interpreted depending on who is using them, and who is hearing them.
I now know that, at least for some of the people behind the “Free Palestine” signs, their message is intended as a good faith call for equality and coexistence, even if on terms — like the call for a single binational state of Jews and Palestinians — that most Zionists and Jewish Israelis and perhaps even some Palestinians might reject. At the same time, I also understand more clearly how a single phrase can carry very different meanings, and how those meanings can clash in a place as close-knit as a neighborhood block.
What stayed with me most, though, was not just what Hanan and Braverman said, but what most people didn’t say. Hanging a sign in a window is a public act, but it is also an impersonal one. The person who puts it up doesn’t have to stand there and answer questions about what it means or how it might be interpreted by the people walking past.
For me, as a Jewish teenager walking past those signs every day, the message certainly felt personal, like a challenge to my Jewish family and identity. I was grateful to speak with Hanan and Braverman, whose willingness to share their personal views and experiences took some of the edge off of the signs and slogans.
But I can’t forget the many other people in my neighborhood, who were willing to put the signs on their houses, but not to fully explain them.
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