I can't get enough of watching the Hampshire video shown below, in which one student after another comes up to explain why they support divestment.The emotional and political power in these statements is incredible. "I spent my last semester in Israel and I'm very happy to call my friends, Army refuseniks and Palestinians" to give them the news, says a smiling woman. A young man says he has spent "seven months in Israel and the West Bank in Gaza" and goes on to speak of the lands stolen since '48. The diversity is incredible. A woman with what I take to be an Anglo-Indian accent woman says apartheid, colonialism, and racism are "unacceptable." Another woman with dark skin and a lip-piercing celebrates her college's forwardthinking: "Please, let us embrace this movement!" A woman who identifies herself as Hannah Margalit says that she is supporting divestment "because of my identity as a Jew."
I believe that this movement will have political consequences, and I want to talk about that. First off, it is clear that Israel/Palestine is Absolutely Central to all these students' worldview. It is a litmus test. Now that the Iraq war and the cultural wars have lost their divisive force--which the Democratic Party under Obama was able to capitalize on--this issue is rising on the horizon. If we embrace this movement, and I hope that the left will, I would argue that this will have dire consequences for the Democratic Party.
Consider a few facts. Alan Dershowitz, who has threatened the Hampshire divesters because he understands exactly what I'm saying here, identifies himself as a liberal Democrat. Mark Green, who in this sorrowful performance refuses to say a word against the slaughter in Gaza, is the president of "leftwing" Air America. The Democratic Party is a stronghold of support for Israel, including of course Obama's warchest, and Hillary's warchest. When Joe Lieberman was defeated by Ned Lamont in August '06, many leading Jewish financial supporters of Lieberman said they would stick with him because of Israel.
All these Democrats have the same litmus test as the Hampshire students. But they want the paper to turn red not blue!
And that's the political problem. If two constituent parts of a political party have opposite litmus tests on the same issue, the party's over. This is what happened to the Whig Party in 1854. The Whigs had struck a compromise between its northern and southern components by maintaining support for slavery in the South. When the Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, and Congress allowed slavery to go into the territories, that compromise broke. The party dissolved. And the Republican Party specifically arose around the slavery issue, drawing forces from both the Democratic and Whig Parties. The Democrats then tried to imitate the Whigs in doing a balancing act of southern and northern forces. But slavery was simply too divisive an issue. And Lincoln declined all offers to be lukewarm on the slavery question, with the result that the Republican Party rose and divided the Democrats, and defeated them in 1860.
What I'm getting at here is that if the pro-Palestinian movement grows, as it must and will-- to question the Israel-fed rationale for the War on Terror, as having involved the US in war/occupation in the Arab world so as to legitimize Israel's permanent occupation/war with its neighbors-- the existing Democratic Party will no longer be able to contain these forces, which have long been in tension. The Hampshire students with their Palestinian litmus test don't want to share candidates with Alan Dershowitz. Obama and Gary Ackerman recognize these tensions. They have both signalled a new anti-settlements direction in American policy, but that is likely to be too lukewarm for the pro-Palestinian movement. People like me will insist on an anti-occupation policy, and recognition of Palestinian dispossession. We will be far more comfortable with Ron Paul, who has been halfway enlightened on this question, and the American Conservative, which has been a leader.
No doubt there are important political differences between the American Conservative and those leftwing students (say on immigration). But I was willing to put aside those differences because I had a complete understanding with that crowd about human rights in Palestine and what it was doing to the American interest. So long as the Democrats fail to do anything substantive for the Palestinian right to self-determination, other leftwingers are likely to follow me. Back in the late 1850s, "fusion" Whigs and Democrats had to put aside long differences on federal government's role and tariffs in order to join up on the slavery question. There was a lot of mistrust, but they soon overcame it out of mutual hatred of slavery.
Slavery is a good model. Just last week Rashid Khaldi called Palestinians "helots," which is a form of slave. And at Columbia, Mustafa Barghouti said, "We will not accept to be slaves of occupation or slaves of an apartheid system." Hampshire students who have been to Palestine will tell their friends that this is no exaggeration.
That's the tremendous potential I see in the Hampshire students movement. Will this issue destroy the Democratic Party as black slavery destroyed the Whigs? I think not. Our two-party structure is almost structurally permanent at this point. But it could rock that structure, and send more older Jewish Democrats into the Republican ranks. Great moral questions do these things to party alignments; and this question gets ever closer to entering the American discourse, with convulsive effect.
(Phil Weiss)
Personally, I think the Hampshire movement (as a symbol of the pro-divestment hysteria) marks the Dems moving center and breaking ranks with the Left.
About time they got rid of that albatross.
btw—I think Dershowitz says he is a civil libertarian
Weiss: "if the pro-Palestinian movement grows, as it must and will– to question the Israel-fed rationale for the War on Terror, as having involved the US in war/occupation in the Arab world so as to legitimize Israel's permanent occupation/war with its neighbors– the existing Democratic Party will no longer be able to contain these forces, which have long been in tension. The Hampshire students with their Palestinian litmus test don't want to share candidates with Alan Dershowitz…People like me will insist on an anti-occupation policy, and recognition of Palestinian disposession. We will be far more comfortable with Ron Paul, who has been halfway enlightened on this question, and the American Conservative, which has been a leader."
The Left is going to have to give up its internationalist pretensions, at least in the hard power Communist sense, and admit that international finance (ie imperialism) and internationalist Zionism, like Communism, are all united by their lack of affinity for Western civilization, and by their general misanthropy, which flows from a refusal to get attached to local customs and culture in part due to self-righteous pretensions of superiority and in part due to hyper ambition.
Those who believe themselves supreme can't get bogged down by "provincial" localism, even by "localism" on the scale of Western civilization. This kind of megalomaniacal thinking has got to come to an end, and jettisoning the Zionists and their Washington two-party imperialist partners is a good beginning.
'Israel/Palestine is Absolutely Central … It is a litmus test. All these [establishment] Democrats have the same litmus test as the Hampshire students. But they want the paper to turn red not blue!'
Great observation. To continue the 19th century analogy, the Democratic Party went back to 'imitating the Whigs in doing a balancing act of southern and northern forces' for a hundred years, until the civil rights movement made clear that urban workers and southern segregationists could not coexist in the same party. Richard Nixon with his Southern Strategy was happy to take advantage of the internecine conflict, locking the Democrats out of the presidency for all but four years between 1968 and 1992.
Will another civil rights struggle, this one in a distant U.S. proxy state, bust up the party again? One reaction is that it would be no great loss. However, it would be even better if the divisive litmus test blew up both entrenched dinosaur parties. One hundred fifty years of professional courtesy [or Mutual Assured Destruction, if you prefer] in not prosecuting each other's crimes has given us today's appalling looting spree, in which plutocrats are emptying the Treasury to the tune of trillions, while both parties stand by as accomplices.
A true populist movement would RICO the entire leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties, seize their assets, and defund their primaries. These Whiggish anachronisms have got to go. Obama don't get it, so he's likely to get chucked as well. Again, no great loss.
Since the defeat of Democratic Party presidential candidate McGovern in 1972, my impression is that the Democratic Party has pretty much been Trilateral Commission/centrist, not leftist, in its politics. What might be more realistic would be for U.S. Palestiniann solidarity activists to form some kind of left anti-war electoral tendency that would not be financially bankrolled by the pro-Israeli government lobby as is the centrist Democratic Party.
Speaking of the boycott/divestment campaign, Al-Jazeera aired a video about it which was posted on the following link:
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/02/al-jazeera-on-leviev-campaign-growth-of.html
"This kind of megalomaniacal thinking has got to come to an end, and jettisoning the Zionists and their Washington two-party imperialist partners is a good beginning."
The term "imperialism" is used so liberally these days that it could mean anything from the export of Victoria's Secret to lending money to Indian women and teaching them to be entreprenurs.
It really has no meaning anymore.
For once, just for once…I'd love to see a critic of the free market (which you call imperialism)–produce a blueprint for a turn key economic structure that has some real time value.
So far you strike me as people who want to destroy and not build.
I think it's important to ask why students are not and have never sat in or occupied in response to our occupation of Iraq and the war in Aghanistan. Obviously, these actions in response to Gaza are important. I'd like to see them spark a larger movement. It's American policy in Southwest Asia that drives its support for Israel. And that support is now centered in the Democratic Party, obviously.
Seems to me that the Democratic Party is on its last legs.
Not only is the party split between Zionist funders and its anti-war base, but between Wall Street Democrats and those more sensitive to the needs of average folks.
I am sure lots of folks are noticing that most of the key players in the financial crisis are wealthy and extremely wealthy Jews. The Federal Reserve Board, for example is 100% kosher As are most of Obama's key economic advisors and many of the hugely overpaid Wall Street bankers that stand to benefit from the bailout.
As Lincoln said many years ago "a house divided against itself cannot stand".
First off, it is clear that Israel/Palestine is Absolutely Central to all these students' worldview. It is a litmus test.
Just like the Dershmeister. Acid or base, litmus tests abound.
I've long felt that the U.S. politics are re-aligning.
A liberal concern for human rights, including Palestinian Self-determination–uniting liberals, libertarians, and conservatives who care about civil liberties and a truly moral foreign and domestic policy–against Neo-Conservative Israel-Firsters and corporate empire-builders.
I see a parallel new opposition forming between the tax-cuts-for-the-rich, trickle-down pushers and those who favour the [more phallic] "gush-up" economics that will help the workers and repair the infrastructure–including stopping global warming and halting the destruction of irreplaceable mountains and streams in Appalachia.
Unfortunately the big-money, "mainstream" Dems are all on the wrong side of the new divide, both politically and environmentally: both Clintons, Kerry, Edwards, and perhaps Obama.
I support Dennis Kucinich as a model of the liberalism that can unite with people on the old right and left like Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader, to forge a new unified political movement that works for the good of all.
I agree with Jim Haygood: "A true populist movement would RICO the entire leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties, seize their assets, and defund their primaries."
I also like Susie Kneedler's POV. Would be great to have a regime with Ron Paul, Dennis K, Pat B, and Ralph N in the highest slots. RICO
would have teeth. The USA would actually be operating in its own and the world's best interest, rather than being a casino for bankers and
cannon fodder and slaves for Israel.
Phil,
Your "observation" is really exageration.
ANY litmus is anti-democratic. This is NOT Vietnam. In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were dying, and American youth (including YOURSELF) were primarily dissenting from the draft, from YOUR personal exposure to violence or military culture.
The scale and relation of Israel to the US is relatively insignificant compared to that obvious corruption.
Those at Hampshire that are so assertive about what side they are on (and it is now Hamas vs) are selectively ignorant. If they read of Israelis' condition, history and actual consciousness, they would NOT describe them as oppressors but as in conflict.
ONLY from the very remote and privileged perspective is it possible to regard Hamas as anything but brutal. If they change, wonderful. They haven't yet, and their history is of ruthless murder of civilians.
It is NOT a good thing to encourage youth to inadvertently support fascism, in the name of justice.
It takes much more thought than your bias here.
@Suzanne: "I'd love to see a critic of the free market (which you call imperialism)–produce a blueprint for a turn key economic structure that has some real time value."
War profiteering is not free market, particularly when it comes out of the pockets of US taxpayers and the hides of those attacked. No massive government social engineering project is "free market". That should be self-evident to a teenager. Also, there is no such formulation as a "turn key economic structure that has real time value," except in the fantastical minds of Neocons and Neolibs, who have dollar signs and totalitarian ambitions where their consciences should be.
That's the problem with Zionist minds: just like the Communists and Imperialists, they believe they can pull a few strings, push a few levers, drop a few thousand bombs, murder a few million people, set up "a turn key economic structure that has real time value" — and rule the world. Absolutely psychotic. The ambition itself is absolutely psychotic.
Wow, Ed, you sound like Ted. Ted Kaczynski.
He loves everybody too. haha!
I dunno…I get the feeling there are some seriously wounded souls here crying out for help. I should probably restrain myself and cool out on the acerbic-ness. At some level it's like kicking a wounded animal.
"seriously wounded souls here crying out for help"
Suzanne, as a staunch Zionist who obsessively visits and posts on a staunchly anti-Zionist web site, you've just diagnosed yourself. Poor thing. Isn't your boyfriend giving you the attention you deserve? Well, you've come to the right place to find a real man.
The phrase a turn key economic structure that has some real time value is gibberish.
US Support for Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11:
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=39590
Rowan–of course its gibberish to someone who probably can't even manage to toast their bread. That's the whole point. You are misanthropic whiners, not doers–and you resent people who build infrastructures and run them. Although you parasitically tap off it, don't you?
No one has come up with a viable economic blueprint so far, as requested. I won't hold my breath.
@ Witty
"ANY litmus is anti-democratic. This is NOT Vietnam. In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were dying, and American youth (including YOURSELF) were primarily dissenting from the draft, from YOUR personal exposure to violence or military culture."
Back during the Nam era what was going on in Vietnam was central to many students world view–they had other concerns, but that
war was central to their world view in the way Gaza is to the Hampshire students. You speak for yourself, not all "American youth" or even Phil when you
conclude that the primary motive for dissent was fear of being drafted. This says a lot about you, but I cannot say I am surprised. I was in college back then too. I also dissented–but I also served in the US Army. I was not alone. There were those students who mainly
just didn't want to be drafted, and those who dissented for authentic idealism combined with a knowledge of facts.
"The scale and relation of Israel to the US is relatively insignificant compared to that obvious corruption."
The scale and relation of Israel to US best interests is huge, and affects the whole world at least as much as the Nam war did. Just in sometimes different ways.
"Those at Hampshire that are so assertive about what side they are on (and it is now Hamas vs) are selectively ignorant. If they read of Israelis' condition, history and actual consciousness, they would NOT describe them as oppressors but as in conflict."
One thing for sure, the Hampshire students are not dissenting because of the Draft–as you did, hiding behind idealistic phrases and cherry picking your rationals. The Hampshire students are not selectively ignorant. They have found the core of their world view based
on the pit from which the rest they see emanating. And, as Phil indicates, its not that they are unaware of other important issues, its
that they have realized why the I-P issue has been so long a taboo while nothing else has been treated so. The more they have learned
about Israel's history, the more they have been forced out of moral integrity (and without risking a job, at least presently) to support divestment as the most practical tactic to fight the establishment's status quo. Quit playing hasbara word games like "conflict" rather
than calling it what it is: oppression. Conflict is a neutral term standing by itself in a vacuum–like "disputed." Increasingly, Americans are no longer fooled by such verbiage–least of all the Hampshire students.
"ONLY from the very remote and privileged perspective is it possible to regard Hamas as anything but brutal. If they change, wonderful. They haven't yet, and their history is of ruthless murder of civilians."
Only for your remote and privileged perspective, Richard, is it possible to regard the Israeli occupation as anything but brutal. You look at the video clips & simply wonder how Israel can turn them around, give them "context."
"It is NOT a good thing to encourage youth to inadvertently support fascism, in the name of justice."
Rather, it is NOT a good thing to support state fascism in the name of "self defense."
"It takes much more thought than your bias here."
Witty, Phil has already thought of everything you say. Your own consistent bias is what you have to recognize.
Ed shows up Suzanne for the dummy she is.
Suzanne: "you resent people who build infrastructures and run them. Although you parasitically tap off it, don't you?"
Suzanne, you've again diagnosed yourself and your Zionist bretheren parasitically living off of Western civilization, relying on American aid, largesse, technology and military hardware to build, maintain and secure your Zionist state. Boy, you're just chock full of roundabout confessions these days. The pressure must finally be too much. What other sins and insecurities would you like to confess by projecting them onto anti-Zionists at this site?
Geez, Ed. You don't wear that antisemitism on your sleeve, do you?
Weiss must be tearing his hair out being associated with people like you.
Hey, it's Chris Berel once again! With his star of david armband, striding the street, looking for intelligent gentiles
to kick with his hob nailed boots. Get 'em, Chris!
antisemitism means nothing now days. Anyone whom a jew dislikes is antisemitic. So yeah wear it as a badge of honor because its the ONLY thing that will save America.