May 23, 2024
The many Jewish
students in the campus encampments, along with other Jews protesting the Gaza
phase of the Palestinian Genocide, deserve the highest praise for many
reasons. One reason is that by their
deeds they are countering what might otherwise turn into a wave of
antisemitism.
The portrait of
the encampments in much of the mass media and at Congressional hearings is a
seething cauldron of anti-Jewish hatred and bigotry. Joe Biden has joined the chorus, labelling
the students’ actions to oppose Israel’s genocide as “antisemitic protests”!
This charge is false amounting to a smear of the protests and an easy way to
dismiss the them. And it is dangerous
because it de-legitimizes a movement that may help to stop a genocide. But it is dangerous in another respect, for
it increases the possibility of a real wave of antisemitic backlash.
Let’s begin with
the slaughter of Gazans which is simply the latest phase of a long slow
genocide of the Palestinian people which began with the Nakba of 1948, the
forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes accompanied by a
campaign of terror and atrocities. The
Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians from historic Palestine, aka Greater Israel, over the following 76
years, have largely been hidden from view.
In contrast, as has been widely remarked, the present massacre in Gaza
is highly visible over alternative media on the internet. The more than 35, 000 deaths, the majority of
them women and children, and the bombed-out, smoking rubble that once was
cities, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and homes and even cemeteries are
there for all the world to see.
The Biden
administration has provided the weaponry for this genocide. And since US taxpayers are footing the bill
for the bombs, US citizens have the right and responsibility to raise their
voices in opposition. And the students
have led the way in doing just that.
Those who oppose
the protests, whether Congresspersons, pundits, AIPAC or Joe Biden tell us that
the protests are antisemitic. What is
their justification for this label?
Because, they say, Israel and Jewry are one and the same, and to condemn
Israel’s policies and actions is to condemn all Jews. Declaring that anti-Zionism amounts to
antisemitism is another way of saying the same thing. But this equation of Jews and Israel is not
only false, it will come back to
bite. Why? Because the acceptance of this
false equation can easily lead to blaming all Jews for the atrocities committed
by the state of Israel. And this in turn
can generate a great deal of hatred of Jews in the world. Have those who equate Jewry and Israel
understood this? Do they care that their
view can lead to a wave of antisemitism?
Do those in Congress who spout this view in public hearings know the
consequences of what they are doing?
Does Genocide Joe have a clue about it?
Jewish
organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and others are participants
in the protests and are often among the leaders. Senior US government officials from the
Interior Department and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency who are
Jewish have resigned in protest over the Biden administration’s support of
Israel’s genocide. And both cited their
Jewish heritage as reasons for so doing.
And there are certainly many more who feel the same way but, for any
number of reasons, do not resign. In the face of this, how is it possible to
say that opposition to the Biden administration’s policies is antisemitic?
When we see the
Zionist government of Israel carry out genocide in full view of the entire
world, we must conclude that the government of Israel cares less about Jews
than it does about the Zionist project.
And that may well be the most decisive refutation of the equation
between Israel and Jewry.
Finally, those
who cry antisemitism when there is none
and use the charge for their immediate political purposes, cheapen the
suffering caused by real antisemitism.
And like the boy that cries wolf, they render warnings of the real thing
impotent when it comes along.
Andrew
Moss
As
Israeli troops continue their assault in Rafah, increasing the death toll and
displacing – yet again – hundreds of thousands of Gazans, there’s much to be
learned from recalling Dr. Martin Luther King’s visionary words on Vietnam 57
years ago. Breaking his silence on a war that by then had claimed over 20,000
American and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives, King declared that the
war in Vietnam was swallowing “men and skills and money like some demonic,
destructive suction tube.” It was blocking, he said, whatever progress the
nation had been making toward economic and racial justice.
Moreover,
any hopes for a genuine multiracial democracy were being cruelly undercut by a
war that drew disproportionately on poor American youth. Noting how the
conflict brought young black and white men together in a “brutal solidarity” to
burn villages, King remarked on the “cruel irony” that those same young men
would, in a segregated America, “hardly live on the same block in Chicago.”
With a precise historical analysis showing how America supported French efforts
to recolonize Vietnam, then backed South Vietnamese puppet regimes that “were
singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support,” King made clear the
impossibility of compartmentalizing the fundamental values informing domestic
and foreign policies.
In
a word, King demonstrated that you can’t advance democracy at home when you
suppress it abroad. That vision rings as true today for Gaza as it did for
Vietnam in 1967.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently opposed a two-state solution
for Israel and Palestine, blocking a path to self-determination for the
Palestinian people that would also help establish a durable foundation for
peace. Since Hamas’ brutal, horrific attack against Israel last October 7,
Netanyahu has doubled down on opposing such a settlement, while at the same
time failing to lay out a post-conflict plan for governance in Gaza. His
failure in this regard has prompted senior Israeli military and political
leaders to rail openly about the costs of such inaction: continued casualties
on both sides from a seemingly endless war.
Over
a number of years, Netanyahu’s government encouraged the funding by Qatar of
millions of dollars monthly to Hamas, despite the latter’s unmitigated
hostility to Israel’s very existence. Though Netanyahu claimed that the support
was intended for humanitarian purposes, both critics and right-wing allies
indicate that the support was intended to help maintain divisions between the
Palestinian Authority and Hamas, weakening Palestinian leadership and
bolstering the claim that Israel had no viable negotiating partner for a
two-state settlement. The policy was premised on the flawed assumption that
Hamas had neither the capacity nor the intent to launch a major assault like
that of October 7.
Add
to these facts the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied
West Bank and East Jerusalem (700,000 settlers living there today, contrary to
international law), a fuller picture emerges of policies that continue to
exacerbate tensions and undermine possibilities for any kind of peaceful
settlement.
Once
Israel began its counteroffensive in the wake of October 7, the Biden
administration found increasing tension between its unwavering support for the
state of Israel and growing apprehensions about the Netanyahu government’s
conduct of the war. Early on, Biden administration officials became aware that
Israel was bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were military
targets. And despite U.S. admonitions in the ensuing weeks about insufficiently
protecting civilians, the Biden administration continued to provide arms,
approving and delivering 100 foreign military sales to Israel (“thousands of
precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms
and other lethal aid”).
To
compound matters, the State Department released a report earlier this month
acknowledging that U.S. weapons supplied to Israel have been used by “Israeli
security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its
[International Law] obligations.” Nevertheless, the report asserts that the
U.S. will continue to provide military aid as it sees fit.
In
taking such positions, the Biden administration has, over the course of the
past seven months, failed to confront and pressure the right-wing Netanyahu
government in ways that could point to profoundly different alternatives for
the Middle East.
As
recent polling suggests, this failure may pose critical challenges to Mr.
Biden’s candidacy in the coming 2024 presidential election. But more than any
poll or punditry, it’s Dr. King’s words, and the implications of those words,
that loom over the events of this troubled year. The suppression of human
rights might be ignored, euphemized, or wished away – but only at our greatest
peril.
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