If you go to the Hampshire College students for justice in Palestine website, you will find a frankly anti-Zionist statement by Omar Barghouti in which Barghouti denounces the Zionist lobby in the U.S., saying that it intimidates intellectuals, and the media and Hollywood parrot its line. The other day on Third Avenue, I heard frankly anti-Zionist statements by Hannah Mermelstein. She was discussing the issue with a man who had stopped and said he was somewhat sympathetic, and Mermelstein said, "Does Israel have a right to exist? I say No, not as a Jewish state." And she went on to explain how religious and ethnic discrimination destroys the bonds between Jews and Palestinians in historical Palestine.
These statements are important for a few reasons. Such statements used to be regarded even on the left as wildeyed. No longer. The pro-Palestine movement in this country is comfortable with such expressions. People understand that these statements are not murderous, and inasmuch as they are conspiratorial, they are honest efforts to describe unspoken power. Never forget, that the heart of Lincoln's attack on the Democratic Party in 1858 was a strong theory that the party was conspiring with the slave power to propagate slavery in the territories. Many of these statements make Walt and Mearsheimer's critique look mild; and make the opposition to Walt and Mearsheimer seem dishonest and tactical.
Further, these statement are evidence that the idealism of Zionism has curdled and is being replaced among the young by an idealistic anti-Zionism of equal rights for all (as I have long asserted on this site).
Finally, the statements are a sign that the Palestinian discourse is at last entering the American leftwing discourse. Palestinians have always spoken in these terms. It's about time these voices were heard here.
(Phil Weiss)
