What Happened to IfNotNow?
This feature appears in our Spring 2021 issue. Subscribe now to receive a copy in your mailbox.
ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON in June 2019, the anti-Israeli-occupation group IfNotNow sent its roughly 2,000 members an unusually candid email. “First and foremost: we owe you all, the leaders and members of IfNotNow, an apology,” it began. Part strategy document, part confessional, the email signed by IfNotNow’s full-time staff responded to discontent that had been brewing for months. IfNotNow had become too hierarchical, many members said, leaving local chapters unsupported while paid national staff pursued projects in which the rank-and-file had little say. The staff email committed the group to a process of teshuva, or repentance, borrowing a Jewish religious concept that requires an offending party to repair, to the degree possible, the damage they have done. But for many disgruntled IfNotNow members, it was too late to fix an organization that had veere