This week, I hope you read Mohammed El-Kurd’s essay on his obligations as a Palestinian artist. He considers the tension between the interests of the collective and the choices available to a privileged individual, in the context of a liberation struggle that has engaged his people for generations. El-Kurd resolves that he must serve that struggle, as a poet.
His essay reminds us that Palestinians don’t need proxies. They can speak fine for themselves. And they are the ones suffering persecution. Not Tony Blinken. Not AIPAC.
Today we learn of another Palestinian youth killed, 16-year-old Milad Munther AlRaee, cut down by Israeli soldiers before he had a chance to commence on his adult journey, in Al-Arroub refugee camp. It’s simply horrifying.
Of course, the American context is very different from the Palestinian/Israeli one. Here our left-leaning party, the Democratic Party, is dedicated to Israel, with only a few progressives challenging the script. Everyone knows Israel’s an apartheid state, but you’re not allowed to say so. Even when Israelis urge us to do so.
The U.S. discourse of Palestine is primitive. And it is governed by crude censorship of those who dare to speak out in mainstream spaces.
The organized Jewish community is enforcing this order, and enforcing apartheid in Israel (as even Israeli academics inform us). So my obligation as an American Jew is pretty clear: to bring attention to the struggle of a persecuted people, to wrench Jews out of the nightmare of Zionism.
This week, we had a great piece on that subject: Mitchell Plitnick’s essay on Israel’s demand that the world recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state. Truman opposed that definition. And refused to recognize it. He said that religion caused worse arguments than money.
But now even progressive Democrats insist on Israel’s existence as a “Jewish state,” a religious constitution that we would all find objectionable in the U.S., no matter what religion was on top.
Our obligation as Americans is pretty clear. End American support for a state constituted on Jewish supremacy. Show what a Jewish state meant for young Milad Munther AlRaee.
Thanks for reading,
Phil Weiss
Every Arab state in the Middle East states in their constitution that Islam is the established religion of that state. The only exception is Lebanon. Islam is also the established religion of the Palestinian Authority, according to its Charter, which states that the other Monotheistic religions will be tolerated – presumably excluding the Hindus and Buddhists, etc.. Strange, is it not, that you think that this is just great, fine and dandy, but Israel is evil for being the one and only Jewish state in modern history?