Mouood Mouood English Edition
It is most telling that, for decades, the leading Palestinian resistance forces and the leading resistance forces in much of the Arab and Muslim world were secular and socialist. The marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, of which it is a part, was the primary vehicle of resistance against Israeli oppression—and against the attempts of Western imperialist powers to support this oppression.
So, back to my original point, I would not say that leftist movements in the occupied territories are growing, but this is because of Israel’s policies. And, beyond that, it is because the PLO, dominated by Fatah, has proved itself to be complicit with Israeli oppression. Abu Mazen has actively worked with Israeli security forces in order to suppress Palestinian resistance. In 2010, the PFLP voluntarily suspended its participation in the PLO, protesting chairman Abbas’ collusion with the government that is waging a “war against the Palestinian people.” The PFLP explained the PLO “does not meet the needs or aspirations of the Palestinian people” and has “accepted the logic of the slave master and do[es] not seek to change the reality.” By betraying the Palestinian people it purports to represent, the PLO has given its secular, nominally left-leaning ideology a bad reputation.
In response to the other half of your question, I, unfortunately, do not think that a “growing number of Israeli citizens are waking up to the atrocities committed by Israel.” In fact, the facts show that the opposite is true. 95 percent of Israelis supported their government’s most recent slaughter in Gaza, euphemistically dubbed Operation “Protective” Edge. 95 percent—this is about as close to a national consensus as you ever get.
Israeli leftists are at a point where many simply want to leave their country. Most have given up on trying to change a society that lurches further and further to the far-right. Esteemed Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is now openly describing Israel as “fascist,” in his Haaretz articles and in news interviews. Israeli fascist mobs brutally beat not just Arabs and African refugees, but also leftist and anti-Zionist Jewish protesters. Police just stand by watching them—sometimes even giving the fascists a hand. All the signs show that Israel is a fascist society, and there appear to be no indicators demonstrating that it is going to get any better. It looks as though things are going to continue getting worse. And that is beyond terrifying.
Q: For a long time, the Israeli politicians have been using the cover of “anti-Semitism” to obstruct any criticism of their actions and discriminatory policies against the Palestinians. They automatically brand as anti-Semite and Jew-hater anyone who condemns their brutalities, regardless of the essence and content of the criticism that has been leveled. Is the excuse of anti-Semitism going to work for a long time and help the Israeli leaders evade accountability and facing justice?
A: Zionists use many obscene and vile tactics to defend their racist, settler colonialist ideology, yet the ubiquitous anti-Semitic slur may very well be the most repugnant of them all.
The unfortunate reality is that many people do not know the difference between Judaism or Jewishness and Zionism. Zionism is an explicitly racist and explicitly settler colonialist ideology. The “Father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, openly spoke of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” calling it “something colonial.” Zionists exploit this ignorance of the definition of Zionism in order to whitewash Israeli crimes.
In many ways, it can in fact be argued that Zionism is itself an anti-Semitic movement. Many Zionists have gotten to the point where they are so extreme in their jingoist hyper-nationalism that they try to argue that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic, because it opposes a movement that fights for “Jewish self-determination,” they claim. This position is grotesquely anti-Semitic, as it suggests that all Jews have the same conception of “Jewish self-determination,” let alone that all Jews believe a homogenous, apartheid, ethnocratic Jewish state is the expression of “Jewish self-determination.” In short, when Zionists claim anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, what they are actually saying is that all Jews have the same political ideas and believe the same things. Now that is anti-Semitism.
What is worst of all about this abominable practice is that it is often directed at Jews themselves. According to many Zionists, Jews who oppose Zionism – read: a racist, colonialist movement – are “self-hating,” or even “not” Jewish. This is anti-Semitism in its most blatant form. Zionists construct an essentialist view of Jewishness that says that “this is what it means to be a Jew.” This is already a racist act. Then, Zionists call Jews who do not conform to their essentialist conception of Jewishness “self-hating” or “not Jewish.” Sometimes, the Zionists who are calling anti-Zionist Jews “self-hating” or “not Jewish” are not even Jewish themselves! This is racism in its rawest form.
This problem is not limited exclusively to Zionism. This is a problem with nationalism itself. A quick caveat here: Nationalism is not necessarily always a reactionary ideology. There are certainly historical examples in which nationalism was an important way of united members of oppressed groups in order to resist oppressor groups. Most of the time, however—and all of the time when it is nationalism practiced by an oppressor group, as in the case of Israel—nationalism is a fundamentally reactionary ideology.
Leading anti-imperialist scholar Eqbal Ahmad constantly warned of its dangers, explaining “Nationalism is an ideology which always has the Other. And therefore, it’s a double distortion. You distort by glorifying your own, and you distort by darkening the other’s history.” Zionism, like any form of nationalism, constructs a false binary of the world, seeing the Palestinian as the “Other.” This binary is predicated on racism.
In a discussion about nationalism with Mubashir Hasan, Ahmad’s colleague and comrade, the former cautioned nationalism “unites the exploiters and exploited to fight united exploiters and exploited of other nations. And thus it prevents social change.”
Accordingly, Zionists often use anti-Semitism as an excuse to disguise the real reasons why Palestinians engage in resistance against the state that is ethnically cleansing and colonizing them. Zionists reiterate ad nauseam the preposterous notion that “all Palestinians are anti-Semitic.” For starters, this ignores the fact that Palestinians are Semitic themselves. The term “anti-Semitic” was created by racist 19th-century German pseudo-scientists. Like most racists, they were asinine, and used “Semite” as synonymous with “Jews,” without realizing that both Jews and Arabs are Semites.
Beyond that, this cheap tactic also explicitly silences what the Palestinian resistance itself has to say. In her autobiography, Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled writes “The supreme objective of the Palestinian liberation movement is the total liberation of Palestine, the dismantlement of the Zionist state apparatus, and the construction of a socialist society in which both Arabs and Jews can live in peace and harmony.” Creating a state “in which both Arabs and Jews can live in peace and harmony” is the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it is one that many Palestinians have been calling for for decades.
It is rarely mentioned, but it must be said. The fact of the matter is that Zionism is one of the primary instigators of anti-Semitism in the world. Zionism, by constantly claiming that Israel represents the Jewish people, and by constantly silencing and persecuting Jewish voices who oppose this racist narrative and challenge Israel’s crimes against humanity, is one of the principal reasons anti-Semitism continues to be a problem. This is just one of the many ways in which the Palestinian solidarity movement is a fundamentally anti-racist movement.
