December 13, 2023
A specter is haunting U.S. college
campuses, and it is the specter not of anti-Semitism but of opposition to
anti-Semitism.
No one would object to fighting hate,
particularly the ancient form of hate against Jewish people, if the movement
against anti-Semitism were truly about combating anti-Semitism.
But the battle on college campuses is
instead unmistakably a political battle directed against Palestinian activism
and nationalism. This has nothing to do
with anti-Semitism. Instead Zionists hurl charges of anti-Semitism around to
police speech and ban expressions of pro-Palestinian nationalism.
When the the Anti-Defamation League
counts rallies protesting Israeli genocide as examples of anti-Semitism, you
know that it is not about anti-Semitism
anymore. It’s about an attempt by
a pro-Israel group to shield Israeli aggression and occupation from criticism.
The Change on Campus
The shape of student activism on
college campuses has changed; the struggle for Palestine is no longer confined
to Arab and Muslim students. To be sure, the movement historically did attract
progressive Jewish students, but the movement was composed largely of Arabs and
Muslims.
In recent years, American youth have
been moving away from Democratic Party politics, instead embracing
Third-World-style progressiveness.
Furthermore, the Black Lives Matter movement has adopted Palestine as
one of its causes and that supplied the Palestinian movement with a current of
local domestic radicalism.
BLM
was able to identify the racist impulse in Zionism — years after failed
attempts by Palestinians and their Arab supporters to make that case. Zionist founders were never shy about their
contempt for the natives and their belief in the superiority of Israelis vs.
Arabs.
Books
and articles were produced in Israel or in the West by Israelis to show the
genetic inferiority of Arabs. The
notorious book, The Arab Mind, has never been out of print and is still used in
the West and Israel as a manual on Arab political and social behavior.
The
intersectionality of Palestine with American radical movements propelled
Palestine, for the first time in its history, into American progressive causes.
Yet,
Democratic liberals and mainstream feminists — like the National Organization
of Women and Feminist Majority — remain solidly behind Israeli mass
violence. To date, NOW has released only
one statement about Palestine; and it was to condemn Hamas.
Zionism’s
Colonialist Context
Zionism
would not have been launched without the context of Western colonial thought
and practices. The first document of the
Zionist Congress in 1897 did not shy away from using the word colonialism. And you need a thrust of racism to be able to
justify the establishment of a Jewish state on a land with a majority of
non-Jews.
Just
like South Africa, the Zionist project was predicated on the belief in the
inferiority of the subject race. It is this element in Zionism which allowed
progressive minorities in the U.S., and some whites, to identify with
Palestinian outrage at Israeli racism and subjugation.
The
debate that has taken place in Congress and on op-ed pages of U.S. newspapers
is misleading.
Nobody
really believes there’s a threat to Jewish students on campuses or that
pro-Palestinian students are subjecting their Jewish classmates to abuse or
harassment.
And
surely nobody really believes a Palestinian lobby has taken over Congress, the
U.S. media and university administrations.
The
contrived debate revolves around the realization by Zionist organizations that
they’ve lost young people in the U.S.
Public opinion surveys show this demographic is quite clearly on the
side of Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.
Thus
losing American youth has led to a counterattack by supporters of Israel.
Israel
supporters aren’t debating the facts of the conflict and aren’t even providing
justifications for the genocide in Gaza.
Instead, they are branding all manifestation of pro-Palestinian activism
as anti-Semitism.
This
is a backlash that is likely to continue and is also destined to fail. Israel’s
massacres speak for themselves, despite the propaganda attempts to whitewash
them.
No
examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric by pro-Palestinian students have been
produced as evidence, because there are none.
The
slogans being chanted across the country refer to Palestinian national
aspirations of freedom. “Free, free Palestine” is the most oft-chanted phrase
in demonstrations. But Zionist
organizations have suddenly decided the word “intifada” (Arabic for uprising)
implies genocide against Jews.
Intifada
— Against Arab & Muslim Governments
The
word has been applied repeatedly by Arabs since the 20th century to refer to
political movements and revolts against Arab and Muslim governments. The usage
long preceded that of the Palestinian intifada of 1987.
Iraqi
contemporary history is replete with intifadas against the British and later
against the ruling governments. Nobody ever charged Arab rebels with genocidal
intent when they revolted against Arab governments.
Similarly,
Egyptians referred to their January 1977 revolt against the cruel economic
policies of President Anwar Sadat (the West’s favorite despot, despite his
anti-Semitism) as the “January Intifada” while Sadat later dubbed it “the
Intifada of thieves.”
The
other slogan under fire is “from the river to the sea,” which simply denotes
the geographical area from which all Palestinians originally hail.
Would
Israel and the U.S. prefer Palestinians to say: “From Area A to Area B, under
Oslo,” or limit the historical imagination to fit the narrow parameters of a
Palestinian entity within less than 20 percent of historic Palestine?
That’s
impossible. Palestinians can’t deform their own history to allay the fears of
Israelis; they also can’t tailor their slogans to satisfy the concerns of
Zionist groups in the U.S.
It
is not true that this slogan about historic Palestine entails the expulsion or
murder of Jews. No such demand has ever been voiced by any Palestinian
political group since 1948.
The
Palestinian Liberation Organization’s charter was very clear in demanding a
state in all of Palestine, but it never proposed to murder Jews; similarly the
Hamas charter of 2017 makes no such reference and even talks about confining
its enmity toward Zionism and not toward Jews as Jews. (Hizbullah made a
similar clarification in its political document from 2009).
It’s
understandable that Zionist groups in the U.S. are desperate; they are quickly
losing support among young people in general, and college campuses in
particular.
The
Israeli cause that was once “cool” among Western youths, has become the most
“uncool” of causes, while Palestine has captured the imagination of young
people worldwide.
Social
media has become the driving force transforming world public opinion. Before
it, Israel committed its crimes quietly away from the cameras.
In
1987, the late U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised the Israeli
government to expel media from the West Bank before using use force to quell
the uprising there.
The
ability of Zionist groups to control the narrative in the leading media has
been undermined by virtue of the proliferation of social and independent media.
It can’t be muzzled.
Pressure
can no longer impose the narrative Israel has insisted upon since 1948. Young people today share graphic proof of
Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In
a futile attempt to return to the pre-social media era, Israel has come up with
the idea that anti-Semitism needs to be redefined to include all expressions of
protest for Palestine and any manifestation of opposition to Israel and its
crimes.
Western
governments are going along with Israel’s new definition. But they failing to
impose it on society, especially when Jewish groups (like Jewish Voices for
Peace) and Jewish individuals (such as U.S social scientist Norman Finkelstein,
journalist Max Blumenthal, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, among many others) are
in the forefront of pro-Palestinian campaigns.
Young
Palestinian Women’s Fierce Leadership
Activism
for Palestine in the U.S. has changed markedly from my days as a student in the
1980s. Arab groups back then were very
cautious and their male leaders were easily intimidated by Zionist groups. Many
would get flustered when asked if they recognized the state of Israel.
Today,
the leadership of the movement is spearheaded by young Palestinian-American
women who can’t be intimidated. They are fierce in their rejection of Zionist
pressure tactics. Israel has a major
problem with these brave women and doxing and other methods of defamation and
vilification are being wielded to stigmatize and marginalize them.
But
Israel’s problem is much bigger than a PR matter. It’s problem is that it is a colonial, racist
state resorting to tactics of 19th century colonial powers in an age of 21st
century new media.
Israel
has become an anachronistic entity which does not fit within the modern norm of
expected decency, humanity and international law: and all those ideals are
blatantly violated and trampled upon by Western powers who continue to support
Israel.
Ultimately
Israel can’t win militarily against the Palestinians and it has already lost
the media war. This has been made clear by a U.S. president, who never fails to
remind us that he is an unabashed Zionist (which makes sense given his
checkered history when it comes to race).
The
notion that pro-Israel groups can bully and muzzle American students, led by
young Palestinian women, reveals a deep ignorance of how far they have gone to
lose the youth of America.
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