Meet Matthew Weisberg, FoST NYC

For the second in our series of member interviews, we spoke with Matthew Weisberg, a member of Friends of Standing Together NYC who sits on the chapter's actions committee. Matthew grew up in South Florida and has been organizing for over a decade, first with J Street and IfNotNow, and since October 7 with FoST NYC, where he helped organize the group's action behind the hosts of the Today Show, live on television. He recently returned from a ten-day delegation to Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank, where he stayed in the village of Susya. We sat down with him to talk about how he found his way to the movement, what keeps him grounded during deep unrest, what he saw in Susya, and what comes next for FoST NYC.

Yonatan: Where are you from, what got you into activism, and how did you get to Friends of Standing Together?

Matthew: I'm from South Florida. I was raised in a pretty secular, interfaith Jewish home, but I went to a Jewish day school and was very active in the Reform community there, including on a youth group board. I went to Israel four times, three of them before I turned 18: for a second bar mitzvah with my day school, on a Jewish Federation teen exchange, where I stayed [with] a family who we later hosted in Florida, and for a community service follow-up at a school.

In 2011 or 2012, under Obama, there was a potential for a Palestinian state. I'd been in Israel the summer before with the exchange group, and some people there said that if it happened, we'd be letting the terrorists win. I said, what do you mean? Our bus driver's Palestinian, he's not a terrorist. That was confusing to me. So when I left Florida for college, I set out to educate myself. I found J Street, the only active group where I went, and then got involved in other Jewish left groups, like IfNotNow.

Yonatan: Your dad is Jewish and your mom was raised Catholic. Did growing up in an interfaith home influence you?

Matthew: Maybe. My mom grew up Catholic, she's not now. Maybe that's why I didn't feel a super religious connection to the land: we didn't keep kosher, and my parents don't celebrate the holidays. But I do. As soon as I got a car, I drove myself to synagogue. For them, the bar mitzvah was about checking the box my grandmother wanted, and letting me be part of the Jewish people.But they let me form my own opinions and choose my religion.That sense of choice definitely helped me figure out my political views.

Yonatan: How did you get from there to Friends of Standing Together, and what felt meaningful to you about it?

Matthew: After October 7th, New York became a hotbed of "there's only two sides," and I knew that wasn't true. I knew of Standing Together from my synagogue and went to one of their talks, and from there I joined the Friends of Standing Together WhatsApp group. I had organizing experience with IfNotNow, so I talked to Tamara [Tamara Geyer, Strategic Director, FOST USA], and somehow I was showing up every week and joined the actions committee. It felt like a place that made sense.

The best part is the connection to Standing Together, Omdim Beyachad. A grassroots movement of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in the land, working from within the system, is an impactful message and a model people need to know about. After October 7th, it was either you're pro-Israel or you're pro-Palestinian. Even people who said they cared still picked a side, putting one life over the other. FoST became a home where that nuance was allowed.

I also believe in Standing Together's Theory of Change, and I saw the people in it: people who were confused about where to go and wanted to feel there is humanity, or people with the same drive who want to engage their communities and move the needle away from this false binary the media and our culture are creating.

Yonatan: It's one thing to hold that knowledge on the inside, and a whole other thing when you're out facing society and a lot of animosity. I know it's true in Israel, but also very much so abroad. What helps you hold on to that message and stay grounded?

Matthew: That's a great question; I haven't thought about it. Even yesterday, I was with Israelis for Peace supporting a screening of NAZA [the documentary film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor] in New York, and a woman tried to interrupt us. She said she understood the importance of freedom of speech, but blah, blah, blah, what about this, what about that? It's what-about-ism: there are other victims, too. Thinking back to that moment, what gets me through is the founding principle that human life is sacred no matter what.

You can mourn a victim of a system while understanding that the system is against multiple innocent people. The victims of October 7th in one of the kibbutzim or at the Nova festival, and the children, the women, and the innocent people in Gaza are both victims of the same system. And the system isn't Israel or Gaza, it's this far-right government and Hamas; they're all one system.

The way Standing Together's leadership talks about it on social media, and the way FoST leaders like Tamara and leaders in DC talk on our Zoom calls, kept me grounded in understanding that it's a systemic issue: the victims are separate in some ways, but it's all tied together.

Yonatan: I found a video of the Today Show action, and I heard from Tamara that you helped organize it. I thought it was very well executed and very bold. Where did the idea come from, and did you get any inspiration from Standing Together? And what was the energy like on the scene, and what kind of reaction did you get?

Matthew: I got the idea when Standing Together jumped on stage during the live Big Brother broadcast, with the shirts and everything. There was a big push for disruptions at that time. It wasn't just one thing: there was that, then the die-in, then they glued themselves to the ground at Ben-Gurion. It all happened within a short period, and at least as an outside observer, it felt planned: they wanted to get the message across that children are starving, that this is the breaking point, and they were going to do a series of disruptions to get it across.

In America, there was a big push to do things like that too. People got arrested outside the Israeli consulate, and people tried die-ins that didn't get any media attention. So Tamara, a few others, including this amazing person, Nadav Cas, who's also on our actions committee, and I asked, what can we do? I said, there are a lot of live tapings in New York, we can do it. I looked it up, and the Today Show seemed the easiest: I watched a few episodes, and they just pan to the people outside. That looked easy.

So we went once without an action just to check it out, and it was so easy to get in. One of our fellow actions committee members had a duffel bag with him because he was traveling that day, and they let him in. I had my computer and a bunch of papers in my bag, so I figured we could get signs in; they weren't going to stop us. Weather and scheduling held us up for a while, but we finally did it. We brought our typical Friends of Standing Together messages, like "fund peace," and "end the war."

We knew they come out at 8 a.m., so we had to wait from 6 to 8 and act like fans of the show, which we're not. The Odyssey was coming out that Friday, so they gave us free tickets to it, t-shirts, and little pins, and we had to act excited, because we had two hours to wait. Finally the hosts came out, and they film everyone, then stand and talk, and I thought, this is it. We all went over behind the hosts and put up our signs.

Personally, my adrenaline got really high, and I started to forget what was happening. A security guy said, “Hey, guys, you can't put signs up like that, you have to leave.” We didn't move; we just didn't hear him. Then one of the people in our group put her sign down, so they realized we were peaceful people who weren't going to go crazy. We still didn't move, and then the big security guards came and tried to push us out.

This is where I wish I, or we, had been more disruptive, but a lot of us were thinking, whoa, this is happening. It happened really fast, and only one of us, Nadav, started screaming all the messages, like "let Gaza live," "end the war," and "fund peace," and it was amazing. If more of us had done it at that exact moment, maybe we could have gotten a little more reaction on live television. But I blacked out. I was getting pushed out, and before I knew it, I was outside the gates. But my parents did watch it!

Yonatan: You don't always know how you're going to react in the moment until it happens. When it happened here at the Big Brother filming, I heard some of the security guards came out afterwards to apologize and asked if they wanted to come back in, so it's funny to hear how in New York they were tougher. Let's pivot to a different direction. You recently came back from the West Bank. Can you give me a little context about that trip, and what was it like for you to be there? Is there an encounter, an image, or a realization that stayed with you?

Matthew: I've been to Israel multiple times, most recently in 2022, and each time I was just a tourist. So I felt that if the opportunity presented itself, I should really engage. The Center for Jewish Nonviolence partnered with IfNotNow on a 10-day delegation for American Jews to speak with activists, community leaders, and other organizers, mostly in Masafer Yatta, and learn about their work, which I joined.

Many of the people who go to the West Bank stay for a long period, and they lose their jobs and their connections with their Jewish communities back in America.So the idea behind this trip was for people to learn from the Palestinians and bring their stories back to inform other people. It's easy to see an Instagram story, or even an email, think, “oh, that's so cool they're doing this,” and then forget about it. Having a conversation with people is much more impactful: it gets more information out, or even brings people into the movement, to understanding the struggle and the idea of co-resistance or peace between Jews and Palestinians, whatever their vision for the solution is. We spent most of the 10 days in Masafer Yatta, went up to Burin, by Nablus, for a night, and spent a day or two in the Negev learning about Bedouin villages and the unrecognized Bedouin villages.

Two things really stood out. First, in Masafer Yatta, I stayed in the village of Susya. There's been so much violence there over the last 10 years between the extremist settlers and the Palestinian villagers, and on top of that the military declared a “closed military zone” around the village. These areas are often arbitrary areas that the military decides on without letting the Palestinians know - there's no sign, either. You don't know you're in it. This sometimes prevents settlers from coming in, but it also prevents solidarity activists from coming and isolates the villagers, choking them off. In the past, the military might have been coerced into acting against settlers, but since October 7th, with the increased violence and the war, the government cares even less about stopping the settlers. 

We got to stay with one of Susya’s community leaders, Nasser,  for a night. A few of us had dinner with Nasser and his son, and we played on the playground with all the kids Then their phones started ringing: there was a fire in Tuba, 45 minutes away. Susya is lucky enough to have a fire brigade, with a truck, vests, and fire extinguishers. So a lot of the men in the village jumped in the truck and drove to Tuba to help fight the fire, which settlers had set outside Tuba.It was a little hectic.

When they got back, they said, “Okay, let's get chocolate and go watch the stars.” I was like, “You just fought a fire. Don't you want to decompress?”

That moment struck me. As an outside observer for so long, I had this idea that settler violence in the West Bank was infrequent but increasing, and that outside of the violence, their lives were a typical rural life in the West Bank. In that moment I learned that the violence is so constant that their society is being built around responding to it, so there's no processing. They've lost the need to even decompress after such a traumatic incident, because it's so constant that it's their status quo: living under threat, living under fear.

The women stayed back while the men went to fight the fire, and settlers came out of the villages around us and patrolled the area with flashlights and goggles. It was a little scary for me, and they were afraid too, but as soon as everything died down, they went to put their kids to bed, while I was still on edge. It was the first time I'd experienced this, and I'd expect anyone who experiences it infrequently to have a heightened response. But for them it felt like just another part of the day, and now it was time for the next part: going to bed, or, if you don't have kids, socializing and smoking hookah or eating chocolate under the stars. It was very jarring to see how normalized it had become.

Yonatan: That's an experience you don't get from an Instagram post or a newsletter. So now that you're back in the US, do you have any personal plans for activism? Are there any more general FoST plans you're part of, or anything you're particularly excited to see happen?

Matthew: I've been trying to do report-backs about my trip with the groups I'm in. I did one at a Shabbat dinner, and I may do one at my synagogue. There's also a political group here called the Working Families Party, which has a Theory of Change similar to Standing Together's. They're not Palestinian or Israeli, but it's the same idea, and they're going to let me do a report-back there.

With FoST, we take a break in August and come back together in the new Jewish year even though we're not all Jewish. So what should we do now? What's the next big thing? The media is changing, and so is the culture here. There aren't protests against the war from other groups anymore. There aren't protests for the hostages; they're released. There's this “ceasefire.” So what's our next thing? Settler violence is getting more media attention than it ever has. It's slowly dying down, but it's still getting a lot, and it would be great to use messaging around it in our actions, without taking away from anything else, especially the situation in Gaza. And with the election coming up, it'll be interesting to see if anything happens on any of these fronts. 

Yonatan: Settler violence is also something that we are trying to bring attention to in the coming months, so that would be a great thing to organize around.

Matthew: I know. FoST is also sending people to the olive harvest. Sadly, I can't go because of work, but it would be amazing to use those stories somehow.

Yonatan: For sure. Maybe I'll interview someone who went next time.

Yonatan: Let's end on one lightning question: give me a New York City food spot you really love, for any FoST members visiting New York soon.

Matthew: I have a big sweet tooth, and there's an ice cream place that's actually from Portland, Oregon, but now has two or three locations in New York. It's called Salt & Straw. It's a fun shop with five new flavors every month, all these weird mixes. For fall and Halloween, one flavor had fried crickets in it, which is crazy – but it's good, I promise. There's a licorice one, and one with all kinds of candies mixed in. Last month was focused on apple, with apple pie and apple cheddar biscuit flavors. And they have a few New York staples, like chocolate babka and pastrami on rye.

Tthey also have chocolate and vanilla, and vegan flavors for people who can't have milk or who choose to be vegan. It's great. I go once a month, try the new flavors, and get my favorite. It's my go-to activity on the first of the month.

Yonatan: Whoa. That's really funky.I'll have to remember that. You said Salt & Straw?

Matthew: Yeah, Salt & Straw. I don't know where the name comes from, because there are no straws.

You can watch the Today Show action and follow what FoST NYC is up to on Instagram at @standing_together_nyc. Not in New York? Find a Friends of Standing Together group near you, and if you aren't a Friend yet, become a monthly supporter of the grassroots movement of Jews and Palestinians organizing for peace, equality, and social justice, and get all our insider FoST newsletters and articles.