In a 2000 interview for the Israeli daily Haaretz, journalist Ari Shavit asks Palestinian great scholar and author Edward Said whether he thinks “the idea of a Jewish state is flawed”.
In response, Said asks his own questions about the notions of “Jewishness”
and “who is a Jew” in this state. Shavit abruptly stops that line of thinking,
stating “But that’s an internal Jewish question. The question for you is
whether the Jews are a people who have a right to a state of their own?”
Shavit’s argument asserts that the very foundation of the Jewish state as a
state for Jews is a matter only for Jews to debate and critically discuss. The
only point of entry into this discussion for non-Jews, like Edward Said, is to
accept the non-negotiability of that foundation: namely, that Jews have the
right to their own Jewish state. What this argument omits is that this state
was established on a land that was already a Nation, Palestine, inhabited by a People, the Palestinians. This
argument, and the omission of Palestine and Palestinian life from it, precedes
Shavit by decades, and 21 years later, it persists.
Today, we are in the midst of a wave of definitions of antisemitism that
are determined to protect the validity of the idea of the Jewish state from any
serious critique coming from anti-Zionist Jews (whose Jewishness is
increasingly questioned) and non-Jews, foremost among the latter being
Palestinians like Said.
The infamous Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) illustrates this point.
This document situates itself as the «liberal» replacement to the
conservative International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working
Definition of Antisemitism. Like the IHRA definition, the JDA sets for itself
the task of determining which kinds of anti-Zionist critiques and views
constitute antisemitism and which do not. As one of its signatories, Yair
Wallach, recently put it, “The JDA pays special attention to antisemitism in
anti-Zionist veneer.”
As a «liberal» document, the JDA shows tolerance for the diversity of views
and perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian question. But like all liberal
documents that have been produced in the thick of a colonial or settler
colonial moment, this document keeps intact the colonial contract whereby the
colonial masters retain the position of privilege and supremacy in voice and
status over the colonised.
The JDA is a text that fails to produce true opposition to the core problem
of the IHRA definition: the silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.
Part A of the document is the only segment that is worthy of praise, though
the anti-racist and anti-colonial intersectional framework could have been
employed in much more depth in its formation. Putting that aside, let us focus
on the Preamble and sections B and C.
Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, did not become a classic only
because it critiqued avowedly imperial and explicitly racist texts and authors.
It gained widespread acclaim because it showed how imperialist and racist world
views can also remain intact in texts that profess liberal and even
anti-colonial positions.
Whereas the IHRA definition is an overtly conservative, settler colonial
and racist text, the JDA casts itself as a liberal, tolerant and anti-racist
document. I need not repeat the critiques of the IHRA definition here, which
are plentiful. But the relatively covert orientalism of the JDA requires
further explanation and critique.
Two main features of the JDA text clearly illustrate its Orientalism as viewed by Edward Said..
The first feature concerns the positionality of the Palestinians in the
document. Palestinians and the Palestinian critique of Israel appear in two
main ways in the JDA.
First, near the end of the Preamble, the JDA states: “[H]ostility to Israel
could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a
human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian
person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State [emphases
added].”
In supposed opposition to the IHRA definition’s blanket claim that
“anti-Zionism is antisemitism”, the JDA tells its intended audience, the
Euro-American world, that even though hostile, reactionary, and emotional, the
anti-Zionism of the Palestinian can be, in some cases, tolerable. Thus, what is
going to save Palestinians from the charge of antisemitism is not a fair hearing
of the substance of their claims, statements, and campaigns which have always
emphasised that their opposition is not to Jews but to a state that has
committed acts of violence against them. Rather, what will save Palestinians is
the idea that gentle hearts in the “civilised West” can appreciate that the
Orient is an emotional subject whose irrational exaggerations are based on
experiences of brutal eliminatory violence and therefore should be tolerated.
Pardon me, I meant based on experiences “at the hands of the State.”
Second, precisely because they are so reactionary, emotional, and hostile,
the document claims, the Palestinians are a source of statements and campaigns
that Euro-Americans should tolerate but also remain vigilant against. This
position is clear in the Preamble where it is stated, “Determining that a
controversial view or action is not antisemitic implies neither that we endorse
it nor that we do not.” Already Palestinian critique of the state of Israel is
marred in “controversy”, whereas debates about the Jewish nature of the Jewish
state are not. The JDA continues along this path.
The heading of section C states, “Israel and Palestine: examples that, on
the face of it, are not antisemitic [whether or not one approves of the view or
action]”. The brackets here are key. They are the warning label that appears in
the document only when it is about to identify Palestinian critiques and
campaigns (such as the BDS movement). No
vigilance is required from Euro-Americans when Jews debate what they claim to
be an internal Jewish question. But when it comes to
Palestinians and their critiques, the message is to stay on guard, because
these pesky Palestinians will make unsubstantiated statements as they are so
emotional on account of their experiences “at the hands of the State”.
And just in case there was any remaining doubt about the out of control,
emotional, and disproportionate responses of the Palestinians, guideline #15
under section C eradicates it: “Political speech does not have to be measured,
proportional, tempered, or reasonable … Criticism that some may see as
excessive or contentious … is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. In general,
the line between antisemitic and non-antisemitic speech is different from the
line between unreasonable and reasonable speech.”
The coup de grâce: the JDA gets that questioning the reasonableness and
lack thereof of Palestinians is appropriate, especially when they oppose
“Zionism as a form of nationalism”, demand justice, ask for full equality in
one state, compare Israel with other settler colonial and apartheid states, or
when they advance and promote BDS, but that does not mean they are antisemitic.
So, bear with and tolerate their emotional outbursts, despite their
unreasonableness.
The second feature that illustrates the text’s orientalism is the framing
as essentially antisemitic a core feature of the Palestinian critique of
Zionism and Israel.
The JDA provides two sets of guidelines to determine what constitutes
antisemitism. Section B lists five guidelines on Israel and Palestine where we
find “examples that, on the face of it, are antisemitic” and section C lists
five guidelines where the examples are not, on the face of it, antisemitic. And
in guideline number 10 under section B, the JDA declares the following as
antisemitic: “Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and
flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the
principle of equality.”
What are the boundaries of the State of Israel when it is a state that is
engaged in an ongoing project of annexation that has no end in sight? At whose
expense is this “flourishing” taking place? The Zionist project advances a
zero-sum worldview: either Jews or non-Jews will be sovereign in the land of
historic Palestine, there is no compromise. So how is this “principle of
equality” to be secured in a context where the Israeli state must maintain
Jewish sovereignty for a Jewish majority at all costs? Are Palestinians
supposed to accept that the right of Jews in the State of Israel ought to take
precedence over their own sovereign rights? According to the JDA, Palestinians
are not allowed to answer these questions or any other questions about the
Jewish right to a Jewish state by saying “not at my expense”.
Rhetorical sophistication aside, there is very little substantive
difference between this guideline and the IHRA definition’s claim that arguing
that Israel is a racist endeavour constitutes antisemitism. This probably
explains why the JDA is so timid in its declared opposition to the IHRA
definition, where instead of unequivocally opposing its adoption, it states,
“Institutions that have already adopted the IHRA Definition can use our text as
a tool for interpreting it.” And based on guideline number 10, I have full
faith that such an interpretation is not only possible but also acceptable to
the authors and promoters of the IHRA definition.
The colonial contract is merely repackaged in the JDA: should any Palestinian question the validity of the idea of a Jewish State for a Jewish majority [on the land of historic Palestine and at the expense of Palestinians], then they are at best unreasonable and at worst antisemitic. And the omission of the section in brackets seals and secures the contract, all under the rubric of liberal tolerance. Orientalism at its best.
The JDA’s preamble states, “There is a widely-felt need for clarity on the
limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel,
and Palestine.”
The issue here is not that there are not any cases of antisemitism
appearing in the veneer of anti-Zionism. These incidents are rare, but certainly
exist. But not only do similar deplorable and racist incidents often exist
against Palestinians, but Palestinians also have to contend with systemic
anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism in diplomatic and allegedly peace-oriented
discourses and processes, which dehumanise Palestinians and deny them their
right to sovereignty.
The dehumanisation, dispossession, and erasure of Palestine and
Palestinians is never properly situated in the JDA’s guidelines on the question
of Palestine, Israel, and Zionism. Much like Israel’s unilateral annexation of
Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Declaration unilaterally determines what constitutes
legitimate political speech and action without the slightest consideration of
the Palestinian experience of Zionism as integral to the framing of the
discussion. That is the epistemic violence of orientalist texts such as the
JDA.
In the interview cited in the beginning, Edward Said stressed the
connections between the Palestinian and Jewish experiences of exile,
dispossession, and statelessness. When Zionism initiated and commenced a
political project to colonise Palestine, it destroyed Palestinian society and
life and created a Jewish state on top of it. The destruction of Jewish life in
Europe was dealt with by destroying Palestinian life in Palestine, and
thereafter, the Jewish question ceased to be an internal Jewish question and
became intertwined with the Palestinian question. To properly name and tackle
antisemitism means properly naming and tackling colonial modernity and the
settler colonisation of Palestine and the following ethnic cleansing of historical
Palestine.
Anything short of that is bound to replicate colonial orientalist discourse,
perpetuate colonial modernity and a crime against humanity.
PALESTINA
In the Civil Rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties in the United
States, a gospel song “I Shall Not Be Moved” became popular as “We Shall Not Be
Moved”. The songs were based on Jeremiah 17:7-8, “…he shall be as a tree
planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall
not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful
in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” The
song signified the steadfastness of African Americans in their struggle to gain
their rights. It was no coincidence that black leaders like Martin Luther King
and Malcom X were among the first Americans to recognize the Palestinian
struggle as akin to theirs.
Since that time the resolve of the indigenous Palestinians to live on the
land that is rightly theirs, despite all the Israeli efforts to dislodge them
and drive them out, has never wavered. Just as the long struggle of African
Americans has persisted since in the face white resistance which has employed
an evolving array of tactics to block their way, ‘voting reform, being only the
last.
For both peoples their simple determination to win their rights remains
their greatest strength.
Since 2010-2011the Palestinian struggle has been overshadowed by the
upheavals in the Middle East that began then, the revolutions, stalled revolutions,
and civil wars. Now, with what seem to be likely the first Palestinian
elections in fifteen years—and the recent still inconclusive Israeli
elections—that conflict is back in the news. Intractable, it is often called.
But recent events, both inside the region and outside it, suggest that
significant changes in that conflict may be coming. A change in the
long-stalled situation may be as significant as those that followed the Ramadan
War of 1973 or the Intifadas of the 1990s.
A number of articles about the upcoming elections have focused on the
political divisions among the Palestinians. Without a doubt, those
divisions—foremost, the Fatah-Hamas divide—have hobbled their cause. Those
divisions are real and complicated. The essay that follows is an attempt to
consider recent events in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza in light of
regional and international events that may be changing the terms of conflict
and working in favor of the Palestinian cause. Recent events show that Israeli
actions show increasing desperation because Israeli politicians recognize that
the tide of history is turning against them. Time is running out for the
Zionist project.
One of these events was the Israeli military obliteratin a nature reserve
that Palestinians created eight years ago. The ninety-eight acre reserve is—or
was located until January 27—in Ainun which is part of Tubas a town in the
northeastern West Bank. The nature reserve was a “Greening of Palestine”
project overseen by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture. Palestinians had
planted the 400 dunams—about 98 acres, that is—with over 10,000 trees. Among
them were several hundred olive trees. Olive oil is the main source of income
in the West Bank, and olive trees have a special significance in Palestinian
society. They take a long time to mature and bear olives, and they live a long
time. Sometimes for hundreds of years.
On January 27 the Israeli military bulldozed and uprooted the trees. The
reason given by the Israeli military was that the reserve was on land classed
as a “military zone.” How that distinguishes that 98 acres from the rest of the
West Bank that has been under military occupation since 1967 is unclear. One
thing that is clear is why the IDF chose that date. The UN has designated
January 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day. (And Nakba’s day ?)
Accomplices of Israel’x ethnic cleansing, who over the years have heaped
all the blame for conflict on the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from
the truth. What is true is that no Israeli government—Labor or Likud or
whatever—has ever ceased to take every opportunity to frustrate the
Palestinians’ cause and to obfuscate the basic issue of the conflict. Israel
wants the Palestinians’ land. And no matter what treaties, protocols,
agreements, memoranda Israel has signed since 1976, it has continued to steal
their land in the hope that the Palestinians will at some point simply throw up
their hands and abandon their land. The
means Israel has used to do so are various: ideological, judicial, economic,
civil and military. The assault on the Palestinians’
rights is done against them en masse and as individuals—no prick or slight is
too trivial.
The IDF destroys farms to steal land. But it goes further by uprooting and
destroying the trees, especially olive trees. The goal is not merely to destroy
people’s income but to violate their identity. As though by uprooting olive
trees from the earth they can obliterate the very word ‘Palestine’ from
people’s minds and therefore that it is a place where a people live and lived
before there was a state called ‘Israel.’
The world outside takes little notice but small towns and villages are
likewise being destroyed and recently the pace of destruction has quickened. In
November the military destroyed an entire village. Like the nature reserve it
was designated by the IDF as a “military area.” According to B’Tselem, an
Israeli peace group, a total of 74 people were displaced, more than half of
them minors. The bulldozers and diggers also demolished sheds used as livestock
enclosures, portable toilets, water containers and solar panels, on top of
confiscating vehicles and tractors belonging to some of the residents.
On the other hand, the lengths the Israeli military will go to in order to
punish even a single person is worth mentioning. Last May the IDF raided the
West Bank village of Yabed in a routine sweep. The soldiers came—as they
usually do—in armored cars, wearing bulletproof vests, helmets and carrying
guns. And the villagers responded as they usually do by throwing bricks and stones.
According to the IDF a Palestinian named Nazmi Abu Bakr threw a brick which hit
an Israeli soldier Amit Ben-Ygal in the head and he later died in a hospital.
The IDF wanted to demolish Abu Bakr’s house, but an Israeli court refused
permission saying that his wife and eight children should not also be punished.
This is unusual. Collective punishment is a war crime but Israel has employed
it except for a period when they suspended it between 2005 and 2008. So in this
case, being unable to destroy the house, the Israeli military devised a new
punishment. They decided to fill Abu Bakr’s bedroom with concrete.
To understand the current context in which these punishments and thefts
take place, it is necessary to understand something of what is known as the Oslo
II agreement, of chich I’ve been speaking ever since it was imposed on the
Palestinians.
In 1995 the Oslo II agreement between Israel and the PLO divided the West
Bank into three zones, A, B and C. A is under extensive civil and security
control of the Palestinian Authority. As of 2013 it comprised about 18% of the
West Bank. B is under Palestinian civil control and in theory joint
Israeli-Palestinian security control. As of 2013, it comprised about 22% of the
West Bank. C is under full Israeli civil and security control. The difference
between “full” control and “extensive” control will soon become apparent. Abu
Bakr’s house in Yabed is in area B in the northwestern corner of the West Bank.
Whereas the nature reserve in Tubas has since 1995 been in Zone A.
Nevertheless, the IDF can still designate tracts of land as under military
control, although nominally they are under Palestinian security control. In
practical terms this means that under some circumstances when the military
wants to punish people in a certain area it must resort to civil courts,
whereas they can always resort to the possibility of claiming an area for
military use—in which case the Palestinians cannot hope to get a building
permit. What this all boils down to is that the Israeli military can destroy
damn near anything they want in the West Bank.
Despite the fact that Abu Bakr will be sleeping in a prison cell anyway,
and despite the bother for the Israeli military to pour the concrete into his
room, it seems no deed that harms a Palestinian is too gratuitous or bothersome
for the IDF. Possibly their calculation is that very gratuitousness of the act
assures that it will get some attention. Knocking down a house or uprooting
olive trees are things the IDF does every day, but how often do they fill up a
bedroom with cement? Then again it may simply be the boredom of military life
that calls upon their ingenuity.
Destroying a house is not always a one and done matter. On March 1, Israeli
authorities destroyed the home of Hatem Hussein Abu Rayaleh in occupied East
Jerusalem. It was the fourth time since 1999. Abu Rayaleh was partially
paralyzed during the third demolition of his home in 2009, when he fell and
broke his spine. That he rebuilt his house a fourth time says something about
the Palestinian determination to stay—come what may.
The reason given in each instance was that Abu Rayaleh did not have a
building permit. The chances of a Palestinian being granted a building permit
in Area C are nil, needless to say. But I’m tired of dealing with the rigmarole
of these ABCs—they hardly matter. The only person or agency acting illegally in
this case is the Israeli government. It has no more authority to issue building
permits in East Jerusalem than it does in East Orange, New Jersey. No country in
the world—not even the ever-indulgent US—recognizes East Jerusalem as part of
Israel.
Israeli harassment of Palestinians goes to lengths that must seem even to
the perpetrators ludicrous and embarrassing. On March 10, Israeli soldiers
arrested five Palestinian children near Hebron for picking a wild vegetable
akoub. The children ranged from seven to eleven in age. A photo accompanied
this article in the Palestine Chronicle on March 10. An Israeli soldier in full
combat gear—and wearing a covid mask—hauls away a tiny terrorist who threatens
the security of Israel for weaponizing an herb. It is difficult to believe the
Palestinians who have shown their resilience and resourcefulness through
decades of occupation will be defeated by such stupidity.
So much for crimes against Palestinian property. Or mostly against property
since, as the case of Abu Rayaleh shows, sometimes people get hurt when the IDF
knocks their homes down. Crimes against individuals should be considered,
though here I’ll only take up detention and imprisonment for two reasons.
Episodes of violence in any conflict can always be contested. But the fact that
Israel imprisons people for years without charges or trials cannot be
contested. What’s more, a recent flurry of detentions seems connected with the
coming elections.
Stated Israeli policy concerning detentions is that detention without
charge or trial is allowed for renewable periods of three to six months. The
usual reason given to the press by Israeli authorities is the person is a threat
to the security of Israel. Detainees cannot appeal or know what if any specific
accusations are being levelled against them. So much for statutes. In fact the
supposedly statutory renewal periods are usually ignored and the brute reality
is that Palestinians can be imprisoned for the rest of their lives without
charges or trials. Imprisonment is meted out in piecemeal extensions. The lives
of the detainees are stolen from them in weeks and months even as their country
is being stolen from them in parcels of homes, shops, farms and towns.
This is seen in case of Khalida Jarrar. Jarrar is a prominent Palestinian
activist and politician. She is a member of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, which was founded George Habash in 1967. The
PFLP is a Marxist group that has all along rejected the so-called ‘two-state
solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in favor of a single secular
socialist state for all the inhabitants of The West Bank, Gaza and Israel. In
the 1970s it carried out terrorist acts—notably a series of hijackings. Though
it has not carried out any attacks that killed civilians since 2004, it is
still listed as a terrorist group by a number of countries, Israel and the US
among them of course. Here I will only note that both of those countries have
carried many attacks that are terrorist according to international conventions.
Khalida Jarrar is a ‘recidivist’ even by the generous standards of
Israel—she has been arrested fourteen times. She was first arrested in 1989 when
she was twenty-six for participating in a demonstration of International
Women’s Day. I’ll only mention in passing the irony of this. A constant piece
of Israeli propaganda is its progressive attitude about women’s rights as
opposed to that of Arab societies. Since that day in 1989 Jarrar has spent at least
ten or eleven years in prison.
Her last arrest was in October 2019 and she has been in detention since
then. On March 1, a military court extended her imprisonment for two more years
for “inciting violence” and “belonging to a terrorist organization.” For good
measure she was also ordered to pay a fine of $1300—presumably as a down
payment towards the costs of her further detention. She has often been fined
even when her appeal to a civilian court has been upheld.
Jarrar’s sentencing this month comes as the Palestinians prepare for their
elections, and it seems to be linked to that prospect since she is also a
member of the Palestinian parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council
(PLC), which has been suspended for fifteen years. Presumably the Israeli
calculation is that her detention will limit her influence on the elections.
But it’s unlikely to prevent her from winning a seat on the Council. But so
many Palestinian leaders are in prison that it plays no role in whether people
will vote for them or not.
A similar case concerns the administrative detention of Khaled Abu Arafa,
the former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs. Israeli security arrested
Abu Arafa in November last year after summoning him for interrogation at the
Ofer detention center near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. Now, on March 4
an Israeli court extended his detention for four more months.
As for the elections, much of the coverage so far focuses, as I’ve said, on
the divisions among the Palestinians, not only between Hamas and Fatah, but
more importantly within Fatah also. Yet the elections may well prove to be the
way that those divisions are overcome. And on this subject one Palestinian
leader above all must be mentioned, Marwan Barghouti.
Marwan Barghouti has languished in an Israeli prison since the Second
Intifada in 2002 when he was convicted of murder by Israel—Marwan presented no
defense since he said the trial itself was illegal. Even in prison Marwan has
exercised his influence on Palestinian politics, and indeed prison has probably
increased his credibility and popularity. The reasons for his popularity are
several, but the main one may be the way that his career reflects the entire
trajectory of Palestinians under the occupation since 1967. For years Marwan Barghouti
backed the so-called peace process based on the two-state solution. He
supported the Oslo II talks but when the “final status” Camp David talks in
2000 failed, he decided—as many if not most Palestinians did—that negotiation
with Israel was pointless. Israeli would never agree to a Palestinian state and
had merely used negotiations since the 1970s to stall while it stole piece by
piece more Palestinian land. At that point Marwan backed the Intifadas and
resistance to the occupation as the only possible way forward. In his initial
hope for a negotiated solution and his turn in 2000 to uprisings and resistance
he seems to reflect the changing attitudes over time of many if not most
Palestinians. Hence the respect he still has. Polls in recent years show him
easily defeating Abbas and there are rumors that should he run in the coming
presidential election, Hamas would not field a candidate. In that case his
victory would be assured. For Palestinians, should he remain in prison, he
could appoint a deputy. And what’s more, it would increase pressure on Israel
to release him. The EU and Israeli peace groups have already called for his
release.
In February, another development rattled the Israeli government. The
International Criminal Court in The Hague ruled its jurisdiction extended to
war crimes committed in the Occupied Territories. Now on March 3, the chief
prosecutor Fatmou Bensouda opened a formal investigation into war crimes in the
Occupied Territories and Gaza. The Zionist Kamala Harris called Netanyahu that
same day to reassure Israel of it “unwavering commitment” to its security. That
was probably wasn’t much comfort to Netanyahu. His address to Congress in
2015—without an invitation from Obama—in which he tried to torpedo the Iran
nuclear deal still sticks in the craw of Democrats, and now Biden is attempting
to rescue the Iran deal.
The ICC’s actions disturb to Israeli politicians
and for good reason. The government has already warned a number of officials
high and low against traveling outside of the country lest they be arrested and
brought before the ICC. Like Israel, the US is not a
member state of the ICC and for the same reasons. That it has obviously
committed war crimes. Here again there are recent developments that suggest
changes are in the offing. As Ramzy Baroud noted in an article here January 29,
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization has for the first time
declared that on the basis of those violations of human rights Israel can no
longer be considered a democracy.[1] More
surprising is the about-face of Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet. In a
new book Friendly Fire Ayalon writes: “The more we employed our vast
military superiority to pound the Palestinian population,” he writes, “the more
Hamas grew in strength. It was a variation on the old dilemma of winning every
battle and losing the war. We Israelis had become like the ancient Egyptians
facing our own biblical ancestors in the Book of Exodus: ‘The more they
afflicted them, the more they multiplied.’ … The irony … overwhelmed me.”
This sounds like what a number of American military leaders said of the
Vietnam War, and of course Ayalon is now retired. But better late than never.
The recent Israeli election also put further distance between Israel and
mainstream views in the US. Netanyahu’s push for a deal with the racist Otzma
Yehudit which is labeled a terrorist group by the US makes it harder for its
American advocates to keep peddling the democracy line. One US rabbi, Rabbi
Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism said, “I don’t
think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s the equivalent in the United States of
the KKK being welcomed into the corridors of power. It’s not a close
call…” Even Israel’s Zionist lobby in the USA, AIPAC, has denounced Netanyahu’s
new ally. AIPAC said it would refuse to meet with “members of this racist and
reprehensible” party.
The conflict over Palestine began between Zionist colonists and the native
Palestinian population under a British land-grab and became after 1948 a
conflict between a new, expansionist Zionist state and—the native Palestinian
population. For many decades the state of Israel masked its land-grab as “the
only democracy in the Middle East.” The contradiction between Israel’s Zionist
foundation and its pretenses to democracy is increasingly exposed.
A sample of 2,194 American adults taken through Google Survey between March
22-25 asked whether Israel should be a leading US aid recipient. A 38.1 percent
plurality said it should not. A similar plurality of Americans polled in 2020,
37.3%, opposed US recognition of Israeli West Bank annexation. This signals a
significant shift in American attitudes. That change is the result of the
stories about Israeli crimes against Palestinians like the ones I mentioned
earlier in this essay. While the vast number of those events never appear in
the mainstream media, their coverage elsewhere has over the years had a slow
cumulative effect on American attitudes towards Israel. And the attitudes are
changing most among younger Americans, who are now similar to the views Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X voiced seventy years ago.
For this reason the relationship between the US government and Israel is
not what it once was. This is seen in an increasing willingness in Congress to
speak out against Israel’s actions. When Netanyahu denounced Biden’s order to
reinstate Palestinian aid cancelled by Trump, his prime support in the US came
from Ted Cruz, who has not quite come back from Cancun. Then on April 7, Israel
announced plans to build hundreds of more units in two Palestinian districts in
East Jerusalem—the first such announcement since Biden took office. The next
day, 19 Senate Democrats led by Senators Tim Kaine, Chris Murphy and Chris Van
Hollen sent a letter to Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Benn Gantz about the
recent Israeli government agreement to consider further and much larger
annexation of Palestinian territory beginning in July. In their letter the
senators said, “Such an action would mark a dramatic reversal of decades of
shared understandings between the United States, Israel, the Palestinians and the
international community, and would have a clear impact on both Israel’s future
and our vital bilateral and bipartisan relationship.”
In addition to the erosion of once unconditional support for Israel in
Washington, there is the fact that US support, even if it were what it was ten
or twenty years ago, would no longer mean as much. Because the brute reality is
that the US is no longer respected the way it was ten or twenty years ago. Even
by its friends. This has been a long process and Trump’s buffoonery only made
it obvious.
With its major ally weakened, Israel is increasingly being seen by Europe
and China as an arrogant pariah state that mostly causes headaches and
problems. Seven million Israeli Jews live surrounded by three hundred and
thirty million Arabs. Their back-channel contacts with retrogrades like
Mohammed Bin Salman and the Gulf Arab states are trifles in that context. That
the Arab states from Morocco to Iraq are roiled and weakened by unrest does not
help Israel either. The emergence of more democratic governments that really
reflected the popular will would be so much the worse for Israel. The example
of Egypt, the largest Arab state shows this. After forty years of peace with
Israel the mass of Egyptians—whether Muslim or Christian, Islamist or
secular—despise Israel the same way they despise Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
States. All of these things can only help the Palestinian cause. Despite all
the internal divisions and problems among the Palestinians, despite the
unrelenting Israeli campaign of crimes against them, the changes around the
globe have strengthened the Palestinian position.
In August 1973 Moshe Dayan – major general of the Zionist terrorist milicia Haganah in 1949 during the Nakaba, and Israeli « war » hero –, said, “There is no more Palestine. Finished.” Dayan’s words were shown to be folly by the October War of that year. The fools are not the Palestinians, but those Israelis who think that their continued assaults on the Palestinians—uprooting their orchards, razing their villages, humiliating, imprisoning and killing them—will make the Palestinians simply throw up their hands and go away. That will never happen. The Palestinians will win by their simple resolve to stay where they are, in their historical homeland. Like a tree, with deep roots, beside the waters.
INTERACTIVE: Palestinian Remix
Palestinian
Center for Human Rights
International
Solidarity Movement – Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom
Defense for Children
Breaking the Silence
BRASIL
AOS FATOS: As
declarações de Bolsonaro, checadas
