The South African experience is a good thing to remember with white folks like Joe Slovo and white members of UDC in the liberation cohort. The common enemy then was apartheid, which is one way to describe Israel's zionist politics today. Violence begets violence, and the Israeli electorate appears wedded to it. They are in need of some self-restraint, as Mick Jagger sang back in the stone ages.
In the recent webinar sponsored by Zochrot, which is a joint organization active over two decades, with Angela Davis and Rashid Khalidi, the solidarity position that includes American and israeli Jews was clearly expressed as one including right of return but no expulsion : additive. I would assume most younger people in the encampments and demonstrations follow Davis and Khalidi. Yet seemingly no one dares active reject In Our Lifetime. (Including in DSA which refused to distance from Answer) That is more generally the problem of the Left for the last many decades, the preference for symbolic expressive politics. And given the problem of historical antisemitism, its weaponization by right wing Zionist American organizations etc i agree—enough to make you wonder if the extremists are funded by those they claim to attack.
I agree Jessica that there seems to be a general unwillingness to think critically about these issues. The larger picture is that any real peace movement working for Middle East Peace with justice has collapsed in favor of absolute solidarity with either Israel or with Palestine. I think that J. Street and the progressive Israel network groups have done a good job, trying to prioritize a peaceful diplomatic solution.
Charles makes a good point about the opinions of Israelis of Palestinian descent and their favoring a two state solution.
The BDS national committee is merely one small faction within Palestinian civil society, and I don’t understand why so much of the US left has fallen lock stock and barrel for taking their position, which claims to take no position on the two state solution issue, but tends to tilt towards a rejectionist stance when actually discussed by its key leader.
I just discovered a lengthy analysis that I wrote in 2020 on this and updated in 21 and it includes things I’ve written back in the 2005 to 2010 period. I will probably publish it on my Substack at some point soon.
I’m so glad to see Charles’s voice here on Substack.
I think the more extreme position of Within Our Lifetime (and other groups or individuals) originates in the genuine rage, helplessness and despair that most diaspora Palestinians, especially Palestinian-Americans, experience while watching their people in Gaza slaughtered with US support. You're right that most activists, myself included, are committed to the non-violent BDS struggle, but it's difficult as a (in my case) white Canadian leftist to argue with someone like Nerdeen Kiswani because the BDS approach was not designed to address something as urgent as the Gaza genocide. I imagine that for many diaspora Palestinians, BDS is too slow and too ineffective under the circumstances, and I can't blame them. It's not my community being shelled and starved and bulldozed in real time. Armed resistance and dreams of retribution would probably start to seem quite appealing if it had been my community. I'm not in a position to police the views of Palestinians, even if I vehemently disagree with them. It's hard to overstate how raw that nerve is for most of them right now.
If I thought such militancy would have a positive impact I might agree with you. But if it is highly counter-productive, and you were in a position to reduce such sentiments, would you stand aside and refrain? If so, who would really be served by that? Sincerity and passion can be the building blocks of disaster in the wrong hands.
It's not that I think such militancy is productive. Rather, I was trying to explain why it's virtually impossible to change the minds of diaspora Palestinians who are committed to that kind of militancy. I think that's a major reason why it doesn't get called out openly.
One important point--why are they translating Rooney into Hebrew only AND NOT ARABIC AS WELL? It feeds into the supremacy of Israeli Jews who consider themselves "european" and sophisticated. I believe it preferences them by giving them the opening to the international literary community (Roony is a BIG author) and not an equal opportunity to Arabic readers as well.
The South African experience is a good thing to remember with white folks like Joe Slovo and white members of UDC in the liberation cohort. The common enemy then was apartheid, which is one way to describe Israel's zionist politics today. Violence begets violence, and the Israeli electorate appears wedded to it. They are in need of some self-restraint, as Mick Jagger sang back in the stone ages.
Israel's police state and imperial military likely would not exist without the US -- which I should have said above.
My sign at the local Indivisible demo today said: War Pigs/Putin/Bibi/Trump/Biden.
In the recent webinar sponsored by Zochrot, which is a joint organization active over two decades, with Angela Davis and Rashid Khalidi, the solidarity position that includes American and israeli Jews was clearly expressed as one including right of return but no expulsion : additive. I would assume most younger people in the encampments and demonstrations follow Davis and Khalidi. Yet seemingly no one dares active reject In Our Lifetime. (Including in DSA which refused to distance from Answer) That is more generally the problem of the Left for the last many decades, the preference for symbolic expressive politics. And given the problem of historical antisemitism, its weaponization by right wing Zionist American organizations etc i agree—enough to make you wonder if the extremists are funded by those they claim to attack.
I agree Jessica that there seems to be a general unwillingness to think critically about these issues. The larger picture is that any real peace movement working for Middle East Peace with justice has collapsed in favor of absolute solidarity with either Israel or with Palestine. I think that J. Street and the progressive Israel network groups have done a good job, trying to prioritize a peaceful diplomatic solution.
Charles makes a good point about the opinions of Israelis of Palestinian descent and their favoring a two state solution.
The BDS national committee is merely one small faction within Palestinian civil society, and I don’t understand why so much of the US left has fallen lock stock and barrel for taking their position, which claims to take no position on the two state solution issue, but tends to tilt towards a rejectionist stance when actually discussed by its key leader.
I just discovered a lengthy analysis that I wrote in 2020 on this and updated in 21 and it includes things I’ve written back in the 2005 to 2010 period. I will probably publish it on my Substack at some point soon.
I’m so glad to see Charles’s voice here on Substack.
I've got some fun stories for you! And yes, I worry that the folks we like are scared of actively opposing the nutters.
I think the more extreme position of Within Our Lifetime (and other groups or individuals) originates in the genuine rage, helplessness and despair that most diaspora Palestinians, especially Palestinian-Americans, experience while watching their people in Gaza slaughtered with US support. You're right that most activists, myself included, are committed to the non-violent BDS struggle, but it's difficult as a (in my case) white Canadian leftist to argue with someone like Nerdeen Kiswani because the BDS approach was not designed to address something as urgent as the Gaza genocide. I imagine that for many diaspora Palestinians, BDS is too slow and too ineffective under the circumstances, and I can't blame them. It's not my community being shelled and starved and bulldozed in real time. Armed resistance and dreams of retribution would probably start to seem quite appealing if it had been my community. I'm not in a position to police the views of Palestinians, even if I vehemently disagree with them. It's hard to overstate how raw that nerve is for most of them right now.
If I thought such militancy would have a positive impact I might agree with you. But if it is highly counter-productive, and you were in a position to reduce such sentiments, would you stand aside and refrain? If so, who would really be served by that? Sincerity and passion can be the building blocks of disaster in the wrong hands.
It's not that I think such militancy is productive. Rather, I was trying to explain why it's virtually impossible to change the minds of diaspora Palestinians who are committed to that kind of militancy. I think that's a major reason why it doesn't get called out openly.
One important point--why are they translating Rooney into Hebrew only AND NOT ARABIC AS WELL? It feeds into the supremacy of Israeli Jews who consider themselves "european" and sophisticated. I believe it preferences them by giving them the opening to the international literary community (Roony is a BIG author) and not an equal opportunity to Arabic readers as well.