An important argument has broken out between the Electronic Intifada and The Nation over the issue of the left privileging Jewish voices on the conflict and not being hospitable to Palestinians.
Three days back, Electronic Intifada published Rania Khalek’s piece, “Does The Nation have a problem with Palestinians?”, saying that the magazine gives Jews and Zionists assignments in disproportion to others and that it is pulling up the rear on Palestinian solidarity, which should be front and center for progressives.
The Nation then responded with a piece by its executive editor, Richard Kim, titled “On The Nation and Palestinians,” saying that The Nation has published many Palestinian voices and that if it performs a balancing act, it is only reflecting the American liberal scene, which includes people who oppose the boycott movement, BDS.
Khalek began her piece by noting that the American Studies Association vote in favor of academic boycott of Israel is forcing the left to get its act together at last on the Israel/Palestine issue.
progressive media outlets are being forced to acknowledge Israeli apartheid like never before.
While it’s certainly an improvement from just five years ago, when pro-Palestine views were relegated to the most marginal corners of the left, the coverage has still been problematic, most notably for its near-blanket exclusion of Palestinian and Arab voices.
Khalek cites The Nation‘s imbalance in its forum on BDS (which we noted last week) and levels this charge:
The Nation habitually reinforces Israeli apartheid by privileging Jewish voices over Palestinian ones.
Kim responds that if Khalek had asked him, he
would have directed her to at least fourteen articles on Palestine by ten different Palestinian or Palestinian-American writers that we have published since the beginning of 2008 alone.
our archive in this regard is a rich and varied one. It includes contributions by some of the most prominent Palestinian activists, scholars and journalists in the world, including the founders of ISM and BDS.
Kim points out that The Nation has done a lot to expose the occupation (including a piece we often link, by a liberal Zionist describing the West Bank as “apartheid on steroids”).
Of course, the lib-left media broadly suffer from the racism that Khalek identifies. How many Palestinians appear on MSNBC? The Nation is a lightning rod for Khalek’s criticism because of the presence there of an ardent Zionist, Eric Alterman, who obviously has a constituency inside The Nation‘s liberal Jewish New York community. Khalek is withering on this point:
Worse still is the continued employment of The Nation columnist Eric Alterman, whose well-documented racist hostility toward Palestinians is regularly praised by right-wing outlets like Commentary and the Washington Free Beacon.
Kim never refers to Alterman, but he acknowledges the presence of Zionists inside the left. American liberals now need “to wrestle” with the Palestinian call for solidarity, he says diplomatically, and points out that the Park Slope coop voted against boycott. The Nation‘s forums
were weighted towards an American audience—because those were the moral agents being asked to make a choice. Should they have included more Palestinian voices? That is a perfectly fair—and quite interesting—subject for discussion.
Khalek is particularly biting when she compares the Nation’s support for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to its dithering re the BDS movement.
There is no shortage of Jewish American writers at The Nation lecturing Palestinians about what constitutes acceptable resistance to Israeli apartheid. The Nation justifies publishing these opinions in the name of diversity. But that certainly wasn’t the case at in the days of South African apartheid.
A search through The Nation’s archives reveals unflinching condemnation of South Africa’s apartheid regime and editorial support for the divestment movement in its earliest days.
In the 16 August 1965 issue, Stanley Meisler (who would later become an LA Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent) refers to South Africa as an “evil” and “neo-Fascist state” (“Our Stake in Apartheid”). Fast forward to 2013, and the magazine is printing Eric Alterman’s tantrum-induced smears of Max Blumenthal for having the audacity to write a book about Israel’s descent into fascism….
An article in the 24 January 1987 issue opens with: “The appalling intransigence of the South African government in the face of worldwide pressure to abandon its apartheid laws, its brutality and violence, its censorship of the press, have combined to elicit a dramatic resurgence of corporate-action campaigns in mainstream America” (“Corporate Accounting: Give Your Dollars a Political Spin”).
That The Nation feels compelled to continue hosting debates on the merits of BDS is troubling given that no such debate existed at the magazine during South Africa’s apartheid regime. The existence of apartheid was not subject to debate then, and it shouldn’t be now.
This is an important battle. That Khalek drew Kim’s response is a positive reflection on The Nation‘s sense of responsibility on this urgent question, a sign that The Nation understands it can’t be AWOL on Palestine. (Phil thinks Alterman is going the way of Chris Hitchens, out of the left community over a central issue).
It is bracing it is to read Khalek counting the Jewish writers. Any reader of this site knows we think this is difficult but necessary work, scrutinizing Jewish privilege. This tweet from Ali Abunimah tells the story:
.@Ali_Gharib @thenation has published 14 articles by all Palestinians in 6 years. It’s published 25 just by Neve Gordon and Bernard Avishai
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) December 22, 2013
At times we have done the same sort of counting vis-a-vis the Council on Foreign Relations, the State Department, NPR and so on. This issue isn’t unique to The Nation, if anything the numbers reflect the broader cultural bias against Palestinians and Arabs more generally. Pointing this out doesn’t make us anti-Semites; it means we believe in diversity, and broadening the perspectives through which this issue and the region is understood. More and more media seem to understand the need for diversity here, including Huffington Post.
We are somewhat enmeshed in this controversy. We have been privileged as Jewish voices at The Nation–and also casualties of the organization’s timidity on the issue. We were invited to write cover articles for the magazine on the BDS movement and shifting American Jewish views on the conflict and we were also shown the door at the Nation Institute (our past fiscal sponsor) because our stance against Israeli apartheid made some uncomfortable. Still we maintain active friendships with the magazine, and our publisher Scott Roth is a Nation partner. As an institution, The Nation still struggles over these issues and Electronic Intifada is right to force the question. As Naomi Klein, another Nation friend, points out:
Love u @RichardKimNYC and @thenation but @RaniaKhalek is right: the double standards r glaring. We can and should do much better.
— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) December 22, 2013
The Nation should view Khalek’s critique as an opportunity to lead by introducing the left-liberal community to the Palestinians who are charting the way towards freedom, equality and justice in Israel/Palestine. Rather than reflecting American cultural bias against Palestinians, The Nation should challenge it. This is their chance.
Rania Khalek is more or less right about the central issue which is why Kim was defensive about the subject, he knows like most liberals that there is a huge bias towards Zionism. And for Alterman, a man she rightly notes is famous for racist hostility towards Palestinians, to be employed on a left-wing magazine is increasingly bizarre. Would the Nation have employed a writer progressive on social issues inside America and on economic matters but who had a profound hostility towards those who opposed the Boers in Apartheid South Africa? Of course not.
Still, I have some criticism.
This quote is just weird. How is the Nation reinforcing Israeli Apartheid by employing Jewish writers in America? Many of whom are for BDS, too, if we’re looking at those who were active in the BDS debate.
So the Nation was reinforcing Israeli apartheid when it published articles by American Jews advocating for BDS and by definition against Israeli Apartheid, too?
I believe Rania was nervous at the obvious Jew-counting that you had to make, which both of you say is needed to be done on these issues, because the privilege is glaring. Just like people are not afraid of counting men on instances where there are lack of women on women’s issues(esp in GOP settings) or whites in most elite settings, not least in the media.
And a way out was to somehow bring in Israel into the picture. True, the nation are reinforcing Israeli Apartheid(although much less than other publications) by being timid on this debate and even on the left there is a Zionist, although weakening, concensus among Jews. Especially for older Jews on the left, where that concensus is strong.
So again, I agree with much of what she had to say. It’s an inevitable discussion, but some of that phrasing was weird and I believe that nervousness centered around Jew-counting was behind it.
Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that if most voices were Jewish, as they are, but most of them were pro-BDS she still would have written it. Not because she would have disagreed with the content but more around the identity of the messengers. And that’s okay too, but I think she should be more upfront about it, rather than trying to say merely employing Jewish writer is somehow “enforcing Israeli Apartheid”.
Once you start looking at the details between South Africa and Israel you start seeing huge deep fundamental differences. And this article demonstrates just one of those. Israel has a two domestic constituencies (Jews and Christian Zionists) which are loyal to it, while South Africa had 0.
It is very easy to say “who cares what Zio-Nazis think”. But in reality:
Jews are 2% of the population
Jews are 4% of the electorate
Jews are 10% of Liberals
Jews are about 50% of political Liberalisms most active donors / and volunteers
None of that was true for Afrikaners.
The question for liberal American institutions is “will Jews walk if we become openly pro-Palestinian i.e. show solidarity”. And every-time we look at the evidence the answer seems to be “yes”. The peace movement’s anti-Zionism prior and just after the start of the Iraq war resulted in a peace movement being divided and weak. This is a a really good example of what an anti-Zionist liberalism in America looks like.
The Nation cannot alienate its Jewish readership at reasonable cost. Without Jews there may not even be a Nation magazine. Even if the Nation survived it certainly would be less influential. The Nation can only go as far on Palestine as liberal Jews are willing to go. The Nation cannot take a united stand, it cannot unequivocally condemn.
Khalek has ever reason to consider that unfair, it is unfair but life isn’t always fair.
I should also comment that nuance is much more part of Liberal discourse in 2013 than it was in 1973. Conversely Conservative discourse was very nuanced and intellectual in 1973 while today it is emotional. These things cycle with which group has influence.
Rania Khalek’s article is dead on accurate about the differences And it shows how facile the comparison is between South Africa and Israel is. Israel fifty years ago was more like support for the IRA/PIRA where America’s leadership may have been pro-British, the majority of the population may have been pro-British, but the population who cared mostly backed the Catholics. Today that support for Israel is even more institutional.
Israel is not South Africa. It is just an analogy and not a great one at that.
I read the Nation cover to cover in the 1990s until the internet was invented, at which time I started to read only feature articles for specific research. I can tell you that in that phase, anything the Nation published about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was utter fluff – non-content concluded with an assurance that the editors long for an amicable solution. Alterman’s column is a relic from that era. Like other publications that vie for the ‘liberal’ market, they have had to keep up with internet content and coverage has improved slightly, and of course they published Blumenthal’s book.
The Nation may be facing a fracture and are trying to navigate it. But pretty soon people are just going to have to quit straddling and choose a side on this issue. It’s coming.
Occupy had this problem as well. Despite all the collective broad-front protestations, if too much of a point was made of Palestinian Solidarity and/or Israeli Apartheid, it was deemed anti-semitic and many Jews threatened to bolt. Palestinian issues were dropped.
Mr. Kim, the Nation editor said:
I am confused. Zogby is an influential American, due to his polls and surveys. Why equate American voices with non-Palestinian or non-Arab ones?
Mr. Kim points to how there are different opinions on the left on IP. But aren’t there really different opinions on homosexuality as well? Hispanics and Blacks make up a major portion of the US left voting base. Perhaps their anti-homosexual views need to be aired?