Opinion

The case for liberal anti-Zionism

Steven Salaita wrote recently that we must exclude Zionists from left-oriented protests. I don’t agree with him. I think any movement that has no room for Noam Chomsky, Uri Avnery, Lisa Goldman and IfNotNow because they are or have been Zionists is not a broad one nor one that will be successful.

I came to the movement for Palestinian solidarity as a liberal. I’d been blacklisted by my former elite media employers for my anti-Zionist convictions in the wake of the Iraq war, and gained support from two communities, the conservative national interest crowd and the radical left crowd. I developed respect and affection for members of both those communities, though neither completely reflected my views. And let me emphasize that I speak here as one writer; this site reflects a diversity of opinion.

Over time the left community became dominant at this website and in the Palestinian solidarity movement, while the national interest group moved on to other questions and is today split by Trumpism. That’s just how things fell out. As someone whose goals were primarily to extricate American foreign policy and Jewish politics from the Zionist agenda, I joined the radical left community because its human rights values are so compelling and because it leads the anti-Zionist movement.

And yet the ultimate political question remains, how we convince other Americans, most of whom are sympathetic to Zionism if not Zionists themselves, of the rightness of our stance.

Salaita worries that the presence of Zionists will be a hindrance to creating a “sense of community,” and more must be said about that word, Community. Today it is a truism in the mainstream media that U.S. politics are “tribal,” and certainly that holds for political communities, right, left and center too. Everyone agrees. They have shibboleths that they repeat to make sure that no one who isn’t of like mind doesn’t join up—if you don’t believe the Russia story or you support BDS, you can’t be in the mainstream tribe, for instance. The internet has accelerated this trend, because birds of a feather can now find one another across huge distances. These new communities have wielded power. They helped to elect Trump. They are driving the Metoo movement and BLM and the immigrant rights movement and Palestinian solidarity too: such is the intersectional spirit of progressive politics today.

These communities differ from traditional geographical groupings, religious-communal ones, and intellectual and political ones too. Intellectual life was neither as hived nor as democratic when I was young as it is now. There used to be liberal generalist magazines. They reflected privilege and the barriers that a guild erected to preserve an elite, but they told people what to think, and helped create consensus in the Democratic establishment. That liberal consensus gave us the Iraq war and the Israel lobby.

Today the center cannot hold, and I don’t want it back; but it’s not as if the communities that we have on the left are all that broad. They’re grassroot communities, which thrive through social media and radical intensity. They are not very interested in convincing people who disagree; that’s not the “conversation” they’re having. They rally their forces and aim to win by sweeping mainstream media opinion along with them. This has been the pattern of the Metoo movement. It has succeeded by a wave of cultural and generational intensity aided by the shock of a groper being in the White House instead of the woman who won a majority of the votes.

Palestinian solidarity will not sweep to victory in this fashion. There are too many stops on it inside mainstream culture. Maybe the Ahed Tamimi case is what Ferguson was for Black Lives Matter, vaulting the movement to a wider following inside the Democratic left. I hope so. But we are not going to win the battle over Israel and Palestine in the U.S. without Zionists shedding their Zionism. As Sarah Schulman advised the BDS conference at Penn a few years ago: You’re a vanguard movement, like queer rights once was; and you will have to put aside ideological purity tests to grow your following.

However much Zionism is a settler colonial project, as leftwing intellectuals contend, it is not a traditional colonial project. It arose after the colonial era was declared finished, it battled a colonial power for a time with terrorism, and its root is not a colonial power’s interests but the religious nationalism of a formerly-persecuted people, Jews, who have great prestige in the west and huge influence inside the Democratic Party. Most American Jews are supportive of Zionism, older Jews often vehemently. Many have sincere reason to be Zionists, as black people had good reason to be black nationalists: Their experience taught them that they were not safe in the west. I reject this understanding and spend my working hours trying to discredit these views for the next generation because they strike me as selfish and racist. But there it is:  Many Zionists genuinely regard Zionism as a liberation movement.

They need to be unpersuaded of their Zionism through argument/discussion. As Lisa Goldman said of the Ahed Tamimi case, brutalized Nabi Saleh was where her Zionism died. What a brave statement, by a thoughtful progressive. We need more Lisa Goldman’s to have that revelation. I see my work as pointing out Palestinian conditions to Jews and liberal Zionists and American Zionists in an earnest and angry but also respectful way. These people bar the gate to the Democratic Party. I want them to agonize about stuff we write here; but I never wish to exclude them; because the battle happens in the United States. Steven Salaita himself recently wrote for a Zionist publication, the Forward, surely out of the same impulse; that is where the power is. (As it was at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2014, when the board and chancellor held secret discussions to fire him). I batten on to Roger Cohen of The New York Times because I am hopeful he will be on our side one day, as I am hopeful of the New Israel Fund (which will host the non-Zionist Avraham Burg’s tour). And look: Tablet is now running Yakov Hirsch.

Salaita rightly deplores all the energy that goes to catering to Zionist anxieties—“to assuage Zionist fragility,” as he puts it so well. He’s right, it is maddening. But that is the game board in the U.S. This is a country devoted to Zionism. Throwing the Zionists out of the Chicago dyke march struck me as a mistake. It armed the Bari Weisses of the world to state that the left is rigidly orthodox. Such approaches allow middle-of-the-roaders to write the movement off as intolerant and doctrinaire. And they leave me as someone who prizes open-mindedness, who is not entirely sure how things will end over there, and who is duly apprehensive about the many proposed paths, uncomfortable with the righteousness. I have enormous respect for the radical left as the leaders on this question, the ones who drive the train; but I often think of the early feminist Margaret Fuller’s critique of the abolitionists, they were dedicated to a high cause, but as company, they were tedious, narrow and rabid.

Today Palestinian solidarity is as righteous a cause as abolition, and engaged in similar work: bringing  freedom to a group of people far away. But abolition succeeded in the end because of a terrible bloodletting and because a great number of people in the middle came over to its point of view. (Abraham Lincoln was a colonizer at one point: his answer was to ship blacks back to Africa. He wanted nothing to do with abolitionists.) It is my fear of a massive bloodletting in Israel and Palestine that leads me to support BDS and to try and build a broad coalition to pressure Israel toward democracy. I have no doubt that many Palestinians would prefer the peaceful path. As Salaita says, Arab “sensibilities” have been left out of the American discussion of  this issue. But there are also conservative Arabs; as the support for dictators in Egypt and Syria (and the Saudi flirtation with Israel) reminds us.  For us to write off all Zionists is like the Democratic Party ignoring Obama-turned-Trump voters in Michigan and Wisconsin.

The biggest reason for inviting anyone into our rooms is that our side has the winning hand, and we should have great confidence in our beliefs. Conditions in Palestine are awful, but almost every event of the last year has increased Palestinian prestige in the eyes of the world. The 50th anniversary of the occupation with more settlements, the identification of Trump and Netanyahu, the medic-turned-killer case and its revelations about Israeli intolerance; the Jerusalem embassy decision and the Ahed Tamimi case that flowed from it; the savagely-stupid responses of Zionist leaders from Shaked to Oren– all these events show reasonable people that the Palestinians have been screwed again and again, and Israel is a Goliath. The crashing favorability numbers in the Democratic Party are a demonstration of the fact that we are winning; and if South Africa is a model, the battle ultimately is for liberal Democrats who are committed to equal rights and separation of church and state. Like my Congressman who has a safe seat but says he is with Israel till the death, and BDS is anti-semitic.

For years the Zionists have maintained their control by shutting out our views. I have been blacklisted, Steven Salaita lost his tenure-track job. The 92d Street Y can’t have a Palestinian alone on its stage, our leading outlets fall over one another to promote Israeli propaganda about its wonderful assassins; the New Yorker publishes a provincial Zionist’s account of the Lydda expulsion— and ignores a masterpiece account by Raja-e Busailah who lived through it. Some day this racist exclusion will be the subject of museum exhibits and scholarly conferences. Why when we have the moral high ground should we imitate that censorship?

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I agree with you but Salaita isn’t saying anything that would exclude Chomsky or Goldman. He is talking about groups that come to left protests as Zionists, to cloak Zionism in progressivism. (“Redwashing,” maybe.) Groups that “frequently wave Israeli flags (or pinkwashed facsimiles).” When Chomsky or Goldman or Avneri or If Not Now come into these progressive spaces, they come not waving their Zionism, as trolls or for redwashing, but as critics of what Israel is doing.

He says explicitly: “‘No Zionists’ isn’t necessarily an individual litmus test. Protest leaders cannot vet the opinions of each participant, nor should they desire that kind of power, but they do influence messaging and sense of community. And in these areas Zionism is a hindrance.”

And he continues: “Plenty of people are opposed to the Israeli occupation but still consider themselves Zionist. Views change all the time, often when we engage new communities. Protest doesn’t exist simply to make a point. It creates an environment in which people can search, debate, and, ideally, grow. I have no problem sharing a picket line with folks whose views on Palestine differ from mine. [Emphasis mine] The problem arises when those with a messianic attachment to the fantasy that Israel and justice are compatible perform displays of Zionism in order to aggravate or proselytize. Lest we forget, Zionism is an expansionist ideology that endeavors to dominate its opponents, so it is difficult to accept the presence of its advocates in good faith.”

Unless I’m very wrong (?) it seems pretty clear from that this last statement is not meant to exile Noam Chomsky from the progressive movement. He means astroturf trolls like Zioness.

… It is my fear of a massive bloodletting in Israel and Palestine causes me to support BDS and to try and build a broad coalition to pressure Israel toward democracy. …

I get how “liberal Zionists” may help pressure Israel toward ending its on-going occupation and colonization of not-Israel, but I don’t get how they’re going to help pressure Israel…
– to become a state of and for all of its citizens, immigrants, expats and refugees, equally; or
– to honour its obligations under international law,
…when – like all Zionists – they:
– advocate and defend Jewish supremacism in/and a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of Palestine;
– reject the right of return of “threatening demographic” refugees from Israel to their homes and lands; and
– reject accountability for their / state’s past and on-going (war) crimes.

Scott Horton has a great podcast on following link with regard to upcoming conference and numerous speakers talking about and discussing Israel Lobby and obstruction of Al Jazeera Israel Lobby in America Expose……….. https://scotthorton.org/?powerpress_pinw=24455-podcast

“Broad” means the general population. Your greengrocer. Not Chomsky or goddam JVP.

Today it is a truism in the mainstream media that U.S. politics are “tribal,” and certainly that holds for political communities, right, left and center too. Everyone agrees. They have shibboleths that they repeat to make sure that no one who isn’t of like mind doesn’t join up—if you don’t believe the Russia story or you support BDS, you can’t be in the mainstream tribe, for instance.

i am reminded of reut’s misnomer “big tent” with deep broad “red lines” determining who was and was not allowed in the tent. they blacklisted the most successful progressive palestinian initiative ever –bds — as beyond the pale. they stamped down hard accusing it as being anti semitic as they did with the very notion of anti zionism, it being the “new” anti semitism.

They are not very interested in convincing people who disagree; that’s not the “conversation” they’re having. They rally their forces and aim to win by sweeping mainstream media opinion along with them……

Palestinian solidarity will not sweep to victory in this fashion. There are too many stops on it inside mainstream culture.

i think right now, normalization of atrocities is not popular. i agree it doesn’t look pretty or generous kicking the zionists out of the parade, but hey, the parade wasn’t about them. and had they come clearly as well as simply to support the chicago dyke march representing jewish americans but they didn’t. they used a politicized flag. and no, i don’t think the current time or era allows for the symbol of a militarized state to be considered separate from that state. there’s a lot of ways to say “jewish solidarity” without flying an israeli flag, or one that symbolizes it, especially given israel’s reputation for pinkwashing its state violence. they knew it was controversial and that’s exactly why they tried to impose themselves into this march — already having a history of the community rejecting zionism.

so yeah, the optics are perhaps harsh, as well as the lying ” No Jews Allowed” headlines http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/faithbased/2017/07/the_chicago_dyke_march_and_chicago_slutwalk_aren_t_anti_zionist_they_re.html but that’s why the zionists did it.

and given the reut red lines, i respect the palestinian call not to normalize. the older folks are going to be left out. but i think the youth get it. and i do tend to think Palestinian solidarity will sweep to victory in this fashion.

of course, i could be wrong!

anyway, stellar masterful article phil. just amazing imho.