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)
