Where to find hope

A short while back, I got a message from someone on Facebook asking me if I see any hope for the Palestinian people. Over two decades of doing work to support Palestinian rights, I’ve been asked this from time to time by people who are in a moment of despair, seeing the overwhelming power stacked against the Palestinians. 

It’s not an easy question. I confess, there have been times over the past twenty-plus years that I have thought of finding a different area of social justice to work on. Sometimes, I’ve stayed in this struggle just because this is what I know best, while sometimes it’s been because it is just so special to me. But whatever the reason that I’ve kept at this, I couldn’t have done so if I couldn’t answer for myself why I fight this particular fight. 

I am, after all, not Palestinian and, while I am Jewish, I’ve never done anything in support of Zionism or Israel. As an American Jew, there is an obvious connection between my ethnicity and the oppression of Palestinians, but I am also white, cis-male, American, and straight-presenting (although I’m bisexual). There are plenty of ways in which I am connected to a privileged group that is oppressing others. I don’t have to work on Palestine to leverage my privilege. 

Palestine is an issue that is often used as an example of a quixotic battle. I disagree with that characterization, but it’s certainly true that we’re hard pressed to find a people against whom the deck is more stacked than the Palestinians. So am I just going through the motions on this issue or is there real hope for victory?

My focus is mostly on U.S. policy and how that warps and complicates the question of Palestine. For all the talk, theater, and games U.S. policymakers play claiming to respect human life, let alone human rights, the US places little value on lives that are not American. Even at that, the value placed on American lives is highly conditional (on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, etc.). 

Yet, as little value as human life holds in policymaking, Palestinian life holds even less than most to American policymakers, regardless of where those policymakers fall on the political spectrum or which party they belong to. As I have frequently noted, Israel is a key player in significant global markets such as tech and weaponry, and it plays a central role in geo-strategic affairs. While it is also a de-stabilizing force in some respects, Israel offers significant value to the United States. All the Palestinians have going for them is international law, and the injustice of having been dispossessed, made stateless, and held without basic rights by Israel and the Zionist movement. Right and wrong, however, count for very little in geo-strategic calculations, and therefore in U.S. (or anyone else’s) foreign policy. 

So, if the key to Palestinian liberation is the United States, as Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas seem to have believed, then there is no hope. Fortunately for the Palestinians, the U.S. is not the key to Palestinian liberation. The Palestinian people are. 

The Palestinians have been in conflict with first the Zionist movement backed by the United Kingdom and then with Israel backed by the United States for well over a century now. Yet, despite the overwhelming wealth and power — political, diplomatic, military —they are up against, they have persevered.

In fact, never has the Palestinian case been stronger than it is right now. More people around the world back their cause than ever. More people are acting on their behalf than ever. That’s a global trend, and it has exposed the false supporters of the Palestinian people — western liberals, Arab rulers, European businesspeople, and many more — in a way that had not been the case before. 

The struggle is indeed eternal

Unfortunately, the kind of power that supports the Palestinians manifests slowly, but not gradually. It takes a long time to get to a tipping point, and before it does, nothing really changes. Apartheid goes on, settlers continue to rampage, Congress continues to flood Israel with money and the Palestinians with condescending criticism, Gaza continues to be a giant open-air prison. 

But even intractable conflicts change eventually. We can see that in many places: the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, overcoming slavery as a global institution, and many struggles for liberation all over the world. 

Some of those victories didn’t necessarily lead to optimal outcomes. While the apartheid system in South Africa was dismantled, massive inequities along racial lines, much of it due to inherited wealth and insufficient redistribution, still exist. Brexit is endangering the Good Friday Agreement. Peru’s left-wing populism is splintering under right wing attacks and short-sighted and inexperienced leaders. Nicaragua threw off decades of first U.S. occupation and then the brutal U.S.-backed Somoza regime, but has fallen back into authoritarianism under Daniel Ortega. Cuba has struggled in poverty under the weight of a U.S. embargo for decades. Ethiopia and Eritrea joined forces to attack the Tigray region. Tunisia, Egypt, and other “Arab Spring” countries haven’t been able to hold onto their progress under relentless, reactionary attacks. Sudan ousted Omar Bashir only to see the military again seize control. There are too many other examples to list. 

The struggle is indeed eternal. Victories, whether spectacular or pyrrhic, are hard to win. Still, the Nazis lost, as did the Stalinists, and Italian and Spanish fascism. Chile eventually rid itself of the American-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet and grasped democracy. Omar al-Bashir is gone, and the Sudanese people are still fighting for their democracy and forcing the military to compromise. What replaced brutal, dictatorial regimes was not always so much better. But sometimes it was. There is a lot of hope in that.

Despite having the world’s greatest superpowers working against them (first the UK then the US) and supporting Israel, the Palestinians have endured. Those Palestinians who are living elsewhere continue to support the struggle. A global movement, even if loosely connected, is growing and becoming more connected to lobbying and other kinds of pressure on government while still keeping connected to both the people in Palestine and the grassroots activists around the world. 

I can’t say how, and I frankly doubt anyone who says they can say how the Palestinians will eventually obtain their rights and freedom. In my view, all avenues to that goal should be pursued, from moderate to radical. But how could I doubt that this nation, which has endured so much, which has, in fact, been a model of resistance and resilience (sumud) will eventually succeed? 

Among many mistakes the early Zionists made, perhaps the greatest was the belief that so many of them held that the Palestinians would not care to hold on to their land and that, if paid or given the opportunity or motivation — by temptation or, more likely by threats and terror — to move elsewhere in the Arab world, it would make little difference to most of them. Many of them believed that Arabs were the same everywhere and Palestinians would be just as content in Iraq or Lebanon or Transjordan (later called Jordan) as they would in Palestine. Interestingly, it was the Zionist right that did not make this mistake. They understood that the Palestinians were very much attached to their homeland and wouldn’t let it go without a fight. It was the Zionist left (at least those who held to political Zionism — the cultural Zionists saw the reality as well) who thought otherwise and believed the “penniless” Palestinian masses could be “spirited across the borders,” as Theodor Herzl once wrote in his diaries. 

The fact that Palestinian determination and love of their homeland has allowed them to stay united as a people and steadfast in the face of monstrous aggression committed by Israel with the United States and Europe behind it tells me there is not just hope, but a very great likelihood that, if their allies and supporters maintain the same resolve they have, Palestinians and Palestine will be free. I don’t know how long it will take, but I am absolutely convinced it will happen. 

After all this time, Palestinians have not given in to despair, given up and gone away. How could I do less? Even though sometimes it seems hopeless, even though sometimes I think of devoting my energies to one of the many other important and worthy causes that could contribute to a just and equitable world, I continue to fight for freedom for Palestinians. Because I believe they will win, and I believe when they do, it will be an example for struggles against oppression everywhere around the world. That means a better world for Palestinians, for Jews, for everyone.