Why liberal Zionists cringe at Thrall’s byline

Liberal Zionists wince when they see Nathan Thrall’s byline. So do the professional Peace Processors, those U.S. diplomats who have made long careers by predicting that coddling Israel’s government could produce a comprehensive peace agreement. 

What must especially alarm both liberal Zionists and Peace Processors is that Thrall is not safely quarantined in the alternative media world, but he breaks into more mainstream outlets from time to time, even including the New York Times. Just last month, he appeared in the London Review of Books, characterizing Israel as an “apartheid state” just before the B’Tselem report came out with the same conclusion. That piece made liberal Zionists squirm by attacking their claim that Israel and the West Bank are “separate regimes,” and “Israel” is still a democracy.

“[T]he notion that only formal annexation can turn Israel into an apartheid state has become intrinsic to left-wing Zionist ideology,” he wrote, and exploded that claim.

Nathan Thrall’s emergence is inspiring. In a long, valuable 2017 interview in occupied Jerusalem, he explained that he “knew next to nothing about Israel” when he got there in 2006, but he started reporting on the ground and then Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group — now the Biden envoy on Iran — hired him. He’s mostly remained in Israel/Palestine with his family ever since. 

Thrall faced a considerable challenge as he launched his career. Mainstream press coverage of Israel/Palestine, especially in the U.S., has long been biased, predictable, and boring, but he’s been able to break through and publish work that grabs your interest, even if you already have some background. The core of his approach is encapsulated in the title of his 2017 book: “The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine.” Thrall showed calmly and persuasively that the liberal Zionists and the Peace Processors have been running a long con game for decades, insisting that Israel will agree to a 2-state solution only if you don’t criticize and give them whatever they want. He dismisses this view as “Peace Industry Illusions.” 

Thrall’s book included some surprising but convincing arguments. He says that Jimmy Carter showed more courage on the Israel/Palestine question than any other American president because he was not afraid to apply real force:

. . . Carter displayed an unprecedented willingness to confront Israel and withstand pressure from its supporters in the American Jewish community and Congress. . . Carter squeezed Israel harder on the Palestinian issue than any American president before or since. He believed Israel would make peace only if forced to by the United States. . . 

By contrast, Thrall finds that the Barack Obama/John Kerry policy toward Israel was weak — which doomed it to failure. He notes that Palestinians had high hopes after Obama won the 2008 election, only to end with “profound disappointment.” And:

Obama finished his presidency much as he had started it: bold in words, timid in deeds. . . Obama achieved less than any of his recent predecessors because, when it came to Israel, force was a language he could not — or would not — understand.

Thrall also hasn’t been hesitant to report on the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and to look fairly at the campaign for Boycott Divestment Sanctions (B.D.S.). In March 2019, he somehow even placed an article in the New York Times magazine. His long report was a masterpiece. He scrupulously avoided the slightest hint of emotion, but instead steadily piled up one fact after another to slip important truths past the mainstream media gatekeepers. He explained B.D.S. in a calm tone that undermined the wild charges that it is anti-Semitic, and he noted without comment that “the Israelis have allocated more than $100 million to combatting B.D.S., for fear that it represents the beginning of a fundamental shift” in American public opinion.

That magazine article then moved on to the pro-Israel lobby’s influence in American politics, highlighting the power of campaign contributions. The coverage was astonishing to read in the New York Times. He reported the normally unsayable, that the “Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class.” And: 

Another former member of the Obama White House, who asked not to be named, fearing professional retaliation, said that concerns about donors among Democrats dominated not just “what was done but what was not done, and what was not even contemplated.” 

Thrall also reported that charging U.S. politicians with “anti-Semitism” actually works:

Few charges are as politically toxic as anti-Semitism. . . ‘The concern that politicians have is being labeled anti-Semitic or labeled opposed to the cultural values of the U.S.-Israel relationship,’ says representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. . . ‘That’s a far bigger concern than “Will AIPAC do a fund-raiser for me?”‘

Nathan Thrall has not entirely evaded the mainstream media sentries. The New York Times Book Review did not ignore his 2017 book, as they have other works critical of Israel, but it did dump him into an omnibus review with 5 other books, instead of giving him the individual treatment that he deserved.

These days, liberal Zionists will cringe even more at Thrall’s byline because the end to the Trump/Netanyahu partnership will leave their hypocrisy exposed. During the Trump era, liberal Zionist groups like J Street, Peace Now and the New Israel Fund settled into a tacit alliance with more progressive forces to block Israel’s “annexation” of more of the occupied West Bank and other extreme Trumpian proposals.

Now Trump is gone. Liberal Zionists can no longer comfortably argue that injustice in Israel/Palestine is mainly caused by Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish settlers. In the London Review, Thrall writes, with his characteristic understatement:

Apartheid couldn’t have been sustained for many decades without many outside funders, protectors and co-conspirators. Foremost among them is the US, which has granted more than $100 billion to the occupying military force and spent hundreds of millions on upgrading the infrastructure of apartheid, refurbishing checkpoints and paving West Bank roads.

Thrall’s closing statement in that article is worth repeating:

European and American policymakers, together with the liberal Zionist groups that lobby them, can thus maintain that the two-state solution isn’t dead but merely embattled — and, therefore, permanently ‘alive.’ In the meantime, millions of Palestinians continue to be deprived of basic civil rights and subjected to military rule. . .  this has been the reality for the majority of Palestinians living under Israeli control for the entire history of the state.

Finally:

South Africa’s apartheid lasted 46 years. Israel’s is at 72, and counting.