For other terminally-online politically-minded people, the past week has been gripping and harrowing. As someone who has closely followed the brutal colonization and subjugation of the Palestinian people for over a decade, the images, notably disparate in affect, from Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza are all terribly familiar to me. A new development in this distressing escalation, observed 10,000 miles away in California, is the markedly improved social media visibility and response from liberals and leftists. Once a decidedly unspeakable topic in American political discourse, criticism of the Israeli state is no longer an anti-Semitic scarlet letter. Nuanced discussion on America’s confidence and support of apartheid is no longer instantly shouldered.
Policing of critical discussion, however, has taken on a new form; the requirement of unwavering support for Israel has shifted to the expectation of a nakedly centrist stance. This stance requires one to note that the oppressor and the oppressed have equal standing, much like the centrist Instagram infographics and Tweets that cropped up during the last year’s George Floyd uprisings to diminish the terrorism committed by American police. Let me not mince words — one cannot accuse “both sides” of being equally bad where scales are tipped, by several degrees of magnitude, in the favor of “one side.” In the case of the current escalation of conflict in Israel and Palestine, shareable centrist content amounts to stories of Jewish and Arab Israelis sharing a good time in Tel-Aviv, giving apologia for IDF bombings of innocent civilians, or discussing the marginal enfranchisement of the few Arab Israeli citizens. These narratives may very well shore up the case for a multi-cultural and empathetic Israeli state in many people’s eyes. But left out are the narratives of African Jews, Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, and Gazans living in the world’s largest open-air prison.
Furthermore, these narratives draw up calls parallel to those issued last summer for the police to, essentially, hug it out with their community. This amounted to dance parties, pickup basketball, and ineffective programs of modest reforms. It did nothing to serve the greater cause of holding unjust power and the state to account. Frankly, it served to allow unjust power and the state monopoly on violence to continue relatively unfettered and without criticism. Anecdotal evidence that typical Israeli citizens (Jewish, Arab or otherwise) may get along does not address nor offer redress to the eviscerating intergenerational trauma visited upon the quasi-stateless Palestinians. A complete restructuring of the Israeli state and political culture is the only path forward for there to be happy times amongst the inhabitants of that Vermont-sized postage stamp.
The political structure designed by the Oslo Accords has proven an abject failure; no longer is a two-state solution possible in the region. At this point in time, without discussing how a single Israeli/Palestinian state may effectively be achieved, we may condemn the acts of those who hold power.
Without even mild criticism of the war crimes sponsored and committed by the Israeli government, police and military, one cannot begin to address and accept the abhorrent conditions, material and mental, of the Palestinian people living under occupation. Without a valid critique in this vein, we might not ever be able to acknowledge Palestinian humanity in a manner that could allow healing to begin. Like with all causes for liberation throughout history and across the world, we must call into question why dehumanization has been allowed to get to this point. We must call into question the motivations of historic and contemporaneous Israeli statecraft.
