The Palestinian Human Rights Cause Must Mature Beyond the Extreme Left

Guest opinion column from the writer Zaid Jilani argues that the pathologies of the extremist left undercut broad support for Palestinian human rights.

A brief note to readers:

The following is a guest column from the Georgia-based writer Zaid Jilani. While I share many of Zaid’s values, this is his perspective. Zaid and I have worked together on and off for over a decade at various jobs in the past. He’s a close friend. If you don’t know him, I highly recommend his previous writing on the dangers of racial victimhood culture and the need to use moral reframing to engage across the political divide. You can find his most recent writing on Public. His X/Twitter is here.

-Lee

Imagine you’re a middle-class, middle-aged mom in any number of American suburbs outside Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Phoenix – the kind of civic-minded, active voter that both parties chase every election.

Since October, you’ve been paying more and more attention to the conflict in the Middle East. At first, you found yourself deeply sympathetic to the Israeli response to the October 7^th Hamas-led terror attacks.

You’ve heard that Israel has treated the Palestinians unfairly for years, but how could that justify such a gruesome slaughter of civilians? You decide that Israel has a right to defend itself and tell your friends and coworkers that the country should do what they have to do in order to destroy Hamas and other militant groups.

But as the days and weeks go by, you start feeling more and more sympathetic to the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. You see news stories about how many Gazans have been reduced to eating grass or drinking polluted water. You read reports about how the destruction in the territory is unprecedented among 21^st-century conflicts, and you begin to wonder if by starving, injuring, and killing so many people in Gaza, Israel will only be sowing the seeds of future conflict. You ask yourself, isn’t anyone trying to stop all this killing?

You see that thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest for a ceasefire. After learning that one of the largest groups leading the protests is called Students for Justice in Palestine, you navigate your way to their website via a search engine.

But when you get there, it’s hard to understand what you’re looking at.

“Supporting almost 300 Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island, we aim to develop a student movement that is connected, disciplined and equipped with the tools necessary to achieve Palestinian liberation,” it says.

Turtle Island? You were looking for a protest movement based in America. What’s Turtle Island?

After an Internet search, you end up on a Wikipedia page that explains that it’s a name that some Native Americans hundreds of years ago used to describe the land mass they lived on.

Confused, you ask yourself what the activists in the streets really want. Do they just want a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians or do they think even the country they live in is “occupied” territory that should be surrendered to Native Americans? Are they opposed to a war in the Middle East or Western civilization itself?

You shut your laptop and turn on the TV. You see an Israeli official dressed in a three-piece suit being interviewed on CNN. He argues that Israel has a right to defend itself. ‘What would America do if a terrorist group killed thousands of their people?’ He asks, ‘What did America do after 9/11?’

You find yourself nodding along with the official. Maybe Israel’s going a bit too far, you tell yourself, but at least I can relate to them.

The purpose of the thought experiment above is not to mock America’s Palestinian solidarity movement.

Under even the best circumstances, that movement would be fighting an uphill fight against a domestic political lobby that is well-financed and well-organized.

And many people in the movement are politically savvy and thoughtful – from liberal columnist Peter Beinart to Columbia University academic Rashid Khalidi. They make arguments that appeal to people outside the far left and have succeeded in moving America’s discourse in a direction that is more sympathetic to Palestinian rights.

But it must be said that too much of the movement is captured by maximalist sloganeering and fringe ideology that is ultimately undermining the cause of Palestinian freedom. Like many other movements that find their home on the left, it often argues in an echo chamber, as the Turtle Island example shows.

It’s a mistake that the Israeli government and its supporters rarely make. Instead, they persuade supporters across the political spectrum.

To the left, Israel’s government and its supporters argue that it’s a progressive democracy that was born out of resistance to the British Empire.

“Zionism is the most successful anti-colonial movement in the world,” bragged Eylon Levy, a government spokesman, in a video posted on social media last month.

Government spokespeople and their supporters frequently highlight Israel’s relatively progressive record on gay rights.

Here’s a fact sheet from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) touting the Tel Aviv Pride Parade. It even notes that “as of 2014, the Israeli military ensures any enlisted soldier wishing to transition is eligible for army-funded therapy, hormone replacement treatment and gender affirmation surgery.” 

The usual response from the global left to all of this advocacy is that Israel is engaged in “pinkwashing” – using the country’s stances on gay rights and related issues to distract from the occupation of the Palestinians.

But why wouldn’t Israel’s government and its supporters want to court every section of the political spectrum? It’s the way to ensure the greatest level of support.

There are all manner of left-coded activist groups supporting the Israeli government. Here’s the YouTube page for the “Indigenous Coalition for Israel,” a New Zealand-based group that works to build Maori support for the Israeli government’s positions.

To the right, Israel’s government and its supporters portray it as a civilized bulwark against terrorism and barbarism.

“We are in a battle of civilization against barbarism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Dutch counterpart in October. 

“This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas. It’s a war that is intended, really, truly, to save Western civilization,” intoned Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in December. He warned that if Israel doesn’t succeed in its military campaign, “Europe would be next, and the United States follows.”

Anyone who was alive during the Bush presidency in the United States can recall this tactic. It’s a variation on Bush’s claim that the United States had to fight a slew of enemies in Iraq “over there” so that we wouldn’t have to fight them over here.  

And it is to the credit of Israeli strategy that they can reach both those aging one-time Bush voters who watch Fox News and the same voters who cast ballots for Al Gore or John Kerry with their media strategy. You’re likely to see Israeli spokespeople on both MSNBC and Fox News making arguments that appeal to either subset of voters.

Many supporters of the Palestinian cause, on the other hand, have no idea how to appeal to middle America, in some cases even choosing to reinforce the rhetorical framework of the other side.

For instance, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman – who has gone out of his way to show his support for the Israeli war effort – recently said during a CNN segment that Israel and America share values, a common argument from supporters of the status quo.

Nathan Robinson, who founded and edits the popular left-wing journal Current Affairs, took to social media to respond to Fetterman by arguing that his claim was “true, just not in the way” the senator thinks.

“The most American of all values is subjugation through extreme violence,” Robinson concluded.

I can recall few political campaigns that have ever succeeded by embracing the opposition’s framework.  

The reason AIPAC and other elements of the pro-Israeli government lobby argue so fiercely that America and Israel have “shared values” is because most Americans, well, like the country they live in.

They want Americans to think that Israel is basically the 51^st state, an outpost of Americanism in a region that is rife with dictatorships and terrorism.

The worst thing for Israel’s government would be for Americans to start to see it as more analogous to the region it lives in than a North American democracy. Then they might start asking why we hand such a government billions of dollars in military aid every year with few strings attached.

Yet Robinson and so much of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the United States seem to want to ask Americans not just to question the Israeli government but to oppose everything that your average American believes in.

One of the first rules of political persuasion is that you don’t want to ask the person being persuaded to do too much. You want them to feel comfortable and at ease with what you’re asking – like it’s common sense.

Yet, at recent ceasefire protests in New York City, protesters have been chanting that the NYPD, Ku Klux Klan, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are “all the same.”  

If you’re a middle-of-the-road voter, why would you want to attend a rally where you’re being asked to see your neighborhood cop as a Klansman?

Is it any surprise that nearly half the Senate Democratic caucus is supporting an effort to attach new human rights oversight over aid to Israel — a move that would’ve been unthinkable a year ago — but that none of these Senators would ever dare show up at rallies where such esoteric and fringe rhetoric is common?

To put it simply, the Palestinian freedom movement in the United States must mature.

 The easiest thing to do in the world is to criticize someone else. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”

But I’ve been in the arena, too. Earlier in my career, I worked at the Center for American Progress, an officially nonpartisan think tank that informally aligns itself with the Democrats. Much of Obama’s first-term staff was drawn from the organization.

During a heated debate on social media, I happened to use the phrase “Israel Firster” to describe people who I felt were supporting the Israeli government’s positions to the detriment of the United States. After an internal uproar, I ended up leaving the organization.

After years of reflection, I came to understand that while I didn’t intend to refer to Jewish Americans, the term had antisemitic connotations for many.

These days, when I write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I still get blowback from people who falsely accuse me of supporting Hamas terrorism or of harboring hatred against Jews. But I also reach a far larger group of people than I used to, across the political spectrum, because I’m careful about my language and have learned to put myself in the shoes of those who disagree with me.

The Palestinian solidarity movement in the U.S. needs to learn the same lesson.

Rallies supporting ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians should discard ambiguous and contentious sloganeering. Yes, the word intifada does not literally mean violence – in fact, most of the First Intifada or uprising against the Israeli occupation was nonviolent. But because Americans often associate the word with the Second Intifada – which featured a wave of suicide bombings and other violence against Israeli civilians – there is little point to American protesters chanting in favor of intifada in the streets.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the smartest things activists who support the Israeli government have done is craft their messaging in a way that appeals to every segment of the population. When I’d attend Israel-related events as a college student at the University of Georgia, the “Dawgs for Israel,” as they were called, would frequently put up posters of American icons like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking fondly about Israel.

There’s no reason that the Palestinian solidarity movement couldn’t do more to show that its cause isn’t just one of the far left. Even conservative American presidents have spoken about how the indefinite occupation of the Palestinians is unjust.

Just as Israel’s government courts global left-of-center public opinion, allies of the Palestinians should be courting the global right-of-center public opinion. There’s no reason they couldn’t print out posters and billboards of George W. Bush alongside his words: “There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. An agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people” or British Conservative former Prime Minister (and current Foreign Secretary) David Cameron referring to the long-blockaded Gaza Strip as a “prison camp.”

The Palestinian solidarity movement also needs to come to terms with a political reality: most Americans like Israel as a country. A Gallup poll from 2023 found that 68% of Americans have a very or mostly favorable view of Israel.

It’s not hard to imagine why: out of all the countries in the Middle East, Israel is the one that has the closest cultural ties to America. But the fact that Americans may like Israeli culture or Israeli people doesn’t mean that they support the decades-long military occupation and denial of voting rights or sovereignty to the Palestinians.

One way to thread the needle would be for the Palestinian solidarity movement to become a Palestinian and Israeli solidarity movement. Rallies could feature a sea of Israeli and Palestinian flags, and speakers could insist that they abhor both the bombing and starvation of Gaza and the cruel acts of violence against Israeli civilians committed by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

Then your average American might learn to see AIPAC and its allies as what they really are: pro-occupation, not pro-Israel. AIPAC has long ignored those in the Israeli body public – including former heads of intelligence and security agencies – who’ve warned that an endless occupation only endangers Israel in the long term because Palestinians are unlikely to quietly and peacefully acquiesce to the status quo.

There’s no reason why critics of Israeli policy should ignore them as well; anti-occupation Israelis can be powerful allies. A movement that seeks to speak for both Israelis and Palestinians who want peace is much more powerful than a movement that courts only one side or another.

One reason the current Palestinian solidarity movement in the West has likely demurred from going this route is their growing skepticism toward a two-state solution. Increasingly, they see Israel’s network of hundreds of thousands of settlers as making a Palestinian state impossible; instead, they may now argue that Palestinians should seek a one-state solution where they gain full voting rights and citizenship within a future binational state.

But part of growing up is accepting political reality. Few Israelis or Palestinians themselves want to live in the same country. Almost every government in the world supports a two-state solution. Even if a two-state solution is unlikely because of facts on the ground, the world needs to be aware that it’s Israel’s government that is preventing one, not unrealistic demands from protesters abroad.

Finally, a more effective Palestinian solidarity movement here in the United States would argue that its demands are fundamentally based on American values.

America itself was founded on the premise of self-government. Our Declaration of Independence inspired independence movements across the globe. And yet independence is a right that’s been denied to the Palestinians for more than half a century.

America prides itself on being a multicultural society that judges people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We could never imagine making a Klansman a cabinet secretary – but that’s exactly how Tamir Pardo, a former head of Israeli Mossad, described the extremist ministers that Netanyahu has elevated into his government. The analogy fits if you know anything about Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

America’s police aren’t perfect, but when they commit abuses, we want to hold them accountable. That’s because we’re a liberal democracy that believes in the rule of law. The same can’t be said for an Israeli government that has allowed mob violence by extremist settlers in the Palestinian West Bank, eventually forcing America to authorize rare sanctions against certain settlers.

America’s military operations overseas have often hurt innocent people, but we do take pains to preserve civilian lives. We shouldn’t accept Israeli claims that their military and ours are identical; we don’t drop 2,000 pound bombs on crowded urban populations. There’s a reason American intelligence is leaking about how Israel is commonly using unguided munitions in its war in Gaza. They’re angry, and all Americans should be angry at supporting such a military campaign.

A Palestinian solidarity movement rooted in patriotic American values would be more likely to move the critical mass of people needed to end the current war in Gaza and then bring about the pressure needed to force Israel to accept that the Palestinians have the same right to freedom that they do.

Maximalist sloganeering might be fun. It can get you likes and shares on social media and thumbs up from your like-minded friends and colleagues. But when millions of lives are in the balance, it’s no longer a time for fun and games. It’s time for the movement to grow up.

Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images

Related:

— Congressman Who Defied the Foreign Policy Blob Calls for New Approach to Israel-Palestine (10/12/23)
— Inside the Pro-Israel Information War (12/7/23)