✌🏾Quote of the week:
"Hamas is the excuse. Genocide is the tool. Ethnic cleansing is the goal."~
🤔 What I’m thinking about:
With the passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House, the debate around Zionism versus anti-Semitism versus racism is in a dangerous new place where we are now asked to choose between “isms.” If you’re a Zionist, then you’re a racist. If you oppose Zionism, then you’re an anti-Semite by the new definition that conflates Judaism with Zionism.
After years of watching the anti-racism movement grow in ideological power, we are now watching its demise, as our language could be limited by law. The right wing movement to legitimize white nationalism is doing everything to support the genocide in Gaza and everything to delegitimize support for Palestinian liberation. They have found easy partners on the left - in spite of the left’s professed support for pluralistic democracy.
AIPAC aside, one of the other keys to understanding why the Democrats are so committed to Israel remaining an ethnonationalist state is the Biden administration’s response to the existential threat of fascism. Alleged research has shown that in the few countries that narrowly avoid a rise of fascism, the left has moved closer to the center right, giving those who might otherwise align with fascism a real alternative. Of course, what this means is that the Democrats will expect Blacks to vote “blue no matter who,” while they throw us under the bus, since center right politics are fully in support of white democracy and elides any policy solutions to rising Black inequality.
The irony is that the fascism is coming fast under the left wing Biden administration that is attempting to force the choice between the label of antisemite or racist via laws that restrict speech. This is because fascism actually develops out of a cyclical process with multiple forces producing authoritarianism as a political dynamic to manage the social problem of a divided populous. In our system each side’s response is bringing about a response from the other side that deepens our hole.
They understand that by taking away the only word that accurately describes the dynamics of Israel, we will no longer be able to accurately describe what is happening. Further they understand that the word “racism” links struggles across the Global South and diaspora and, boy, they really don’t want that. Further, this authoritarian repression continues the classic white supremacist ideology of playing the victim by treating the word “racist” as a kind of curse or assault, rather than an accurate description of white supremacist acts.
The battle over language is important and we will need to sustain our resistance long term. In We Hear You, an article in the Columbia Spectator, the authors falsely state as fact that Israel is the ancestral homeland of Jews. But in spite of Nazis referring to Jews as a “race,” Jews are not a race and do not descend from any one particular area. It’s problematic to claim that a person is indigenous to the Middle East because they follow a Jewish religious tradition. The dangerous Zionist extension of this is that Palestinians are not really indigenous to Palestine, because Jews are. Oddly, we can all see that the European Jews are not Arab, and this is the power of race as a visualized class/caste system.
The article further states that because Israel is essential to Jewish identity that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. The obvious problem is that Israel must be criticized as a racist apartheid state, and it’s essential to criticize the foundation of Israel as an ethnonationalist, settler colonialist project.
As we in the west continue to debate a one state or two state solution, we blind ourselves to the reality that Israel sees: a two state solution would leave them with only part of the area they claim a god granted right to, which would force them to kick the settlers out along with shutting down the illegal settlements. And that a one state solution would mean that the Israelis would have to live side by side with Palestinians as equals, and a Jewish only state could no longer exist. The last 75 years and especially the 30 years post Oslo Accords show us that Israel has embarked on a third option: ethnic cleansing and the use of genocide to achieve it. Anyone who looks clearly can see that the Zionist ideology is the root cause of this genocide. Making it impossible to criticize, means continuing the ongoing genocide. This is actually what our leaders are committed to. This is why they are so afraid of dissent.
More about this topic:
Jewish Alternatives to Zionism: A Partial History
We hear you - Columbia Spectator
Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process
📺 What I’m watching…
Uphill on the Hill from Belly of the Beast
I was fortunate to travel to Cuba just at the end of the brief period where you could hop on a Jetblue flight and go on your own. I’ve often wondered what it’s like today. The answer is not good. As part of advocating for an end to U.S. imperialism, we need to demand that we take our boots off the neck of Cuba. The first step is to get Cuba off of the list of state terrorists. Watch the film to learn more.
📚 What I’m reading…
Scared about America losing democracy? Texas is already gone
“Everything that's happening in Abbott's Texas — the relentless war against liberalism and education itself, the influence of a corporate oligarchy, the surge of Christian nationalism, the war on feminism that features its strict abortion ban, and its own state military and militarized cops now deployed against its own people — is textbook fascism. The crackdown on dissent is the flame that keeps this downward spiral going. Knowing that attending a protest can expose you to legalized vigilante murder is just pouring more Texas crude on the fire.”
h/t The Present Age
“Collective Punishment”: Israel Raids Jenin Camp in West Bank, Killing 8, “Shooting Everything”
Especially at The Freedom Theatre, our theater, we work stems — or, our work stems from the deep belief in the importance of cultural and art. This belief, it’s rooted from the statement of the founder of The Freedom Theatre, Juliano Mer-Khamis, when he said that the Third Intifada will be a cultural intifada. And we believe really this statement. And war, from it, and especially in this genocide war against all Palestinians in Gaza, in West Bank, we fully understand our significant responsible to instill hope and to instill the culture and to instill life for the people, to work hard to reveal, you know, to reveal the truth about the Israeli occupation.
The new right-wing repression playbook.
The movement for Palestinian liberation has always been clear in our goals. We are fighting for an end to genocide, an end to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and freedom and a dignified life for all people. Our opposition can’t beat us on these moral terms — so they relentlessly smear and lie about our movement, manufacturing an uproar over protest slogans like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
This obsession with language serves two purposes. The first is to distract from Israel’s constant, brutal, and indefensible violence against Palestinians by equating words protesting this violence with the violence itself. The second is to create a pretext for increasingly intense repression of pro-Palestine protest.
The Slow-Motion Execution of Julian Assange Continues
Julian committed the empire’s greatest sin — he exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, routine violation of human rights, wanton killing of innocent civilians, rampant corruption and war crimes. Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Trump or Biden — it does not matter. Those who manage the empire use the same dirty playbook.
The publication of classified documents is not a crime in the United States, but if Julian is extradited and convicted, it will become one.
Julian is in precarious physical and psychological health. His physical and psychological deterioration has resulted in a minor stroke, hallucinations and depression.
🔔 Other Articles of interest:
How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war
New bill seeks to extend U.S. military benefits to Americans serving in the Israeli army
ICC warrants both historic and cynical
This Undisclosed WhatsApp Vulnerability Lets Government See Who You Message