The news is that Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American elected to Congress from Michigan, is refusing an AIPAC trip to Israel and instead is seeking to organize a Congressional delegation to Palestine, to see the occupied territory where her own grandmother lives without any political rights. The Intercept’s Alex Kane and Lee Fang say that Tlaib likens the occupation to the Jim Crow south.
Tlaib is clear about one thing: She wants her delegation to humanize Palestinians, provide an alternative perspective to the one AIPAC pushes, and highlight the inherent inequality of Israel’s system of military occupation in Palestinian territories, which Tlaib likens to what African-Americans in the United States endured in the Jim Crow era.
Tlaib is in a very strong tradition in that understanding. At least two other mainstream political figures have made the analogy– and surely suffered politically for doing so.
In “President Carter: The White House Years,” the new book by Stuart Eizenstat, the power-aide relates from interviews with the former president that Jimmy Carter “increasingly took up” the Palestinians’ cause while in office and “even more so since leaving office.”
He has told me that in his visits to the West Bank, he sees the Palestinians living in conditions like the blacks in the South in which he grew up, but that the Israeli military treats them worse than the white police treat blacks; he finds them not militant or violent, but “just like your mama and daddy were when you were growing up: They want their kids to go to school and maybe get a college education; of course, the college has now been closed.”
Carter lost the presidency in some measure because of the defection of the Jewish community. “From the [1980] New York primary onward, I believe Carter was left with the view that New York Jews had not only defeated him in the primary but were also a factor in his loss in November,” Eizenstat says.
Then there’s Condi Rice. In his memoir of the Bush years, “Tested by Zion,” former national security aide Elliott Abrams recalls a meeting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2006 prior to Annapolis negotiations.
“The need for permits to travel on certain roads is the kind of thing that just made me angry as a child in segregated Alabama,” Rice said to Barak.
Elliott Abrams was angered by her assertion.
This comparison was new. Never before had I heard Condi cast the Israelis as Bull Connor and the Palestinians as the civil rights movement. It was a dreadful sign of just how far she had moved away from sympathy with the Israeli position and of just how much antagonism was developing. Condi’s 2010 memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, describes in searing fashion the insults and the harm inflicted on her own family and their community in the years before and during the civil rights struggle, making it even clearer how her emotions about Israel were changing profoundly. And on the Israeli side, such comments elicited a sense that she simply did not understand the world of the Middle East.
Abrams vigorously opposed Rice inside the Bush administration. He described her plans as “completely unrealistic — and also now becoming dangerous” and said that President George W. Bush “no longer believed what he was hearing from her.”
So: The Jim Crow analogy has been around for a long time in American politics, at least since Carter in the late 70s, and always created pushback.
Tlaib will face such pressure. She “needs to be educated” on these issues, Eliot Engel, the likely new chairman of House Foreign Affairs, assured a private AIPAC audience in New York this fall.
And the likely Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, the other day assured a pro-Israel group that Engel and other pro-Israel pols would be running committees, so you can just ignore Rashida Tlaib and other new congresspeople. “Pelosi urged those attending not to pay ‘attention to a few people who may want to go their own way,’ apparently referring to newly elected Congress members such as Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota who have been sharply critical of Israel,” Ron Kampeas reported. “[Chuck] Schumer chimed in: “You couldn’t have two stronger supporters of Israel than Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel.”
P.S. The conference that Pelosi and Schumer spoke to was sponsored by Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban. Adelson is the megadonor of the Republicans, and Saban is a megadonor to Democrats. You’d think they would be at odds. Not on Israel. That’s the nature of the Israel lobby: the issue transcends politics, and support must remain bipartisan.
The Zionists have claimed credit for:
1. Bringing America into WWI for the Brits;
2. Defeating GHW Bush in 1992;
3. Ditto Carter in 1980.
Who knows if they were the deciding factor in any or all of these results.
I do know that, while they have claimed credit for each of these results, it is forbidden to talk about these claims.
Very wise of Congresswoman Tlaib to stay out of Israel.
As we see in the suppressed Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, the Zionists say the main battle is in the realm of ideas. And they see themselves as losing ground. Despite all the money behind their PR efforts, and all the secretive personal smears of political opponents, despite avoiding actual debates at every turn, and substituting loud indignation based on manufactured news, they can’t spin away their crimes to college students over BDS. They’re starting to look silly. I’m expecting some comedy soon.
Congresswoman Tlaib’s focus on bringing Americans a greater understanding of the Palestinian reality is spot on. More understanding is what we need all around. Best wishes!
It was a historic day when George the father Bush went into the press room and declared his battle against the Israel lobbyists, the one against the many. Did it contribute to his defeat in 1992? Possibly. but i would blame historical trends. 12 years of republicans was enough and the democrats won the next three popular votes in reaction to it, so the vote in 92 was part of a trend and probably not influenced by the pro Israel reaction against him. Reagan won a few epic electoral victories and Bush’s first election was a Reagan III election and Bush on his own lost the presidency, lacked the political skills to connect with enough people to win the presidency on his own. (I think the 1988 Dan Quayle decision was the thing that did him in. It might have been a symptom of his political un sure footed, but it certainly seemed to reveal a hollow center to the man. why not Jack kemp? dan quayle? did him in, in the long range.)
Jimmy Carter was a fluke getting elected and lost in a landslide the second time he ran. to propose that the lobby did him in is a type of political naivete. Jimmy Carter with his malaise speech did himself in. If he had rolled over ted kennedy in the state of new york, would that have returned the hostages. feckless jimmy carter and the hostages, but no, to blame his loss on ted kennedy’s strength in going to the convention, that is political naivete again. jimmy carter and history defeated jimmy carter, not ted kennedy. jimmy carter and his daughter amy at the debate against reagan did him in. he was feckless and the country really did not like him at the end. they wanted him out.
but all that is besides the point. the point is that even the next democratic candidate, even if they have a clear vision of what they want to happen in terms of resolving the palestine israel conflict, will be up against the republicans who will oppose it and up against a substantial portion of the democratic party, just out of sheer inertia.
but it’s worse than that, because with the comatose two state solution, the most logical direction for that clear vision has disappeared and in its place is something that smacks of political naivete, the beautiful one man one vote future.
If i could see into the future I might tell you how this works out, but I only know that more practical people than me have looked at the situation and declared the one man one vote future very bleak for the jewish future and i have no reason to attribute their opinions to racism, but anything other than sincerity. there is no way for me to measure their opinions or to counter their opinions with miko peled’s optimism.
Yet, Daniel Solomon says to remove the Zionist from my name. And in a way, like Gideon Levy says, there are only two sides, free rights for all and the status quo. (Gideon Levy who by the way chastises Nasrallah for being a trouble maker and no help to the cause.)
So then it comes down to what is the easiest thing to chant. I have spent time in Union Square Park and sometimes it comes down to what words come out of my mouth and what phrase passes my lips and causes my heart to leap because i have caught some essence of my deep belief.
And in this case, the voice says, give them the vote. let palestinians vote. let them have representatives in the knesset. and if not, then you are an occupier and it’s not a PR problem it’s a real problem.
I myself am not offended when someone says of zionism that it is an army in seek of a country. there was nowhere else where such an army could have been built and the logic of this land above all other lands to the movement of jewish self reliance is self evident. so i am still a zionist. to me the line between mila 18 (leon uris) and exodus (leon uris) from primo levi’s tale of jewish partisans in the european forest, “If Not Now, When?” to the songs around the campfire in palestine fighting for a state, is the shortest distance between two points.
but the occupation is a major f***up and these likudniks and levi eshkol and hanan porat have dragged Israel into an eternal struggle of such epic ugliness and stupidity that it is a major mess.
if i were starting from scratch in 2018, i don’t know that i would want the current situation, not so much for the damage done to the palestinians in ’48, because that was before my time and too close to the “fire” for someone this far from the fire to judge.
zionism saved my cousins. they are not dead because of this movement. so i really cannot dismiss it.
the body slam that zionism did to the palestinians is unbelievably horrible when faced head on, so to somehow undo it and move forward would be the idea.
the jewish people needed an army in reaction to the european experience. it was a natural response. and the place for that army was palestine. simple. and that caused grievous damage to the palestinians. undeniable.
and then i look forward.
when i look forward, i get discouraged on many fronts, nonetheless i do not label zionism, other than as a life saver of my cousins’ lives. and i would want to move forward with cognizance of this history, but move forward. but the zeitgeist in israel is not to move forward. so despite my cognizance of the history, i am not on the same page as the zeitgeist.