MAKE PALESTINIANISM PROGRESSIVE

SUPPORTING PALESTINIANS COULD BE A PROGRESSIVE CAUSE. BUT THE WAY PROGRESSIVES ARE DOING IT COULD HARDLY BE MORE REGRESSIVE.

Get her.

Let’s set the record straight. You can’t call yourself “pro-Palestinian” — at least not in the context of Palestinianism today — and call yourself a feminist, a gay-rights advocate, a progressive.

The “debate” over Zionism and Palestinianism in the progressive movement arguably reached its zenith when the American activist Linda Sarsour took it upon herself in 2017 to speak for more than half the world’s population and declare that you can’t be a feminist and a Zionist.

“Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?” Sarsour mooted to The Nation. “There can’t be in feminism. You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it.”

Fascinating. To be a feminist, you need to stand up for all women — except Israeli women, who should be made stateless people. Got it.

If you have read anything I’ve written, you know that probably the core premise of all these posts is that the progressive movement in Canada, the rest of the Americas, Europe and elsewhere has betrayed its principles.

You might be able to argue that Israeli policies are not “progressive.” (I don’t need to make the case. It’s everywhere.) But it is simply impossible to make the reverse case: That Palestinianism is progressive.

Telling people — in this case, progressive, clear-headed people who pride ourselves on evidence-based opinions — that our cherished certitudes about Palestine, Israel and our larger worldview are contaminated with lies and prejudices is predictably not going to go over well. As Mark Twain said: “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” So we cling to the demonstrably ridiculous idea that standing with the Palestinian movement is the right thing for progressives to do.

Palestinianism is utterly incompatible with progressivism. The truths we have to reject and the lies we have to believe to behave otherwise should be proof enough.

The argument against Zionism is basically that Israel (the state that is the tangible manifestation of the Zionist idea) is governed by people who aren’t progressive.

Using this very same standard, we would have to conclude that Palestinianism is even more unprogressive. Those who govern Palestinians — whether the Hamas terror regime in Gaza or the “moderate” Fatah government in the West Bank — are among the most misogynistic, homophobic, repressive, violent, autocratic forces on the planet.

Progressives square this circle by arguing that we don’t support Hamas, we just stand with the Palestinian people.

But we don’t.

If we did stand with the Palestinian people — if we were actually pro-Palestinian, rather than anti-Israel; if we were actually progressive — we would condemn Hamas and Fatah with every ounce of our energies.

We would demand the elimination of the terrorist regime of Hamas and the repressive kleptocratic regime of Fatah. We would insist that Palestinians be granted the freedoms that citizens of Israel enjoy. We would demand equality for Palestinian women. We would stop blaming Israel for domestic violence by Palestinian men against Palestinian women. We would insist that the dystopic hatred that passes for education in Palestine be erased from the curriculum. We would insist that our allies in Palestine begin the slow crawl from being among the world’s most homophobic societies to one where queer people are not thrown off roofs and dragged behind motorcycles. We would, in short, advance progressive values.

We don’t.

We condemn Israel in the most hateful terms imaginable and excuse every act of Palestinian violence and misbehavior as an understandable reaction to their situation — a racism of low expectations that views Palestinians as, basically, single-cell entities capable only of reacting to external stimuli.

And we accuse Zionists of dehumanizing the other!

Palestinians are governed by autocratic, repressive dictators who tyrannize their own people while stealing and misallocating billions of dollars. We don’t condemn subjugated peoples because they are oppressed by dictators. The problem with our approach to Palestine is that we withhold any or all criticism of the kleptocrats who terrorize Palestinians, ostensibly to support the very people these forces oppress.

Meanwhile, we cling to a ridiculous make-believe storyline in which a “free” Palestine would actually be free, when there is precisely no evidence that there is a democratic or pluralist bone in the body of any individual in government in the Fatah-run West Bank or the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. We remain absolutely silent on the subject of Palestinian despotism. The only way to assimilate this without stumbling over cognitive dissonance is to accept that, as I keep insisting, this movement is not “pro-Palestinian” in any substantive way.

All evidence is that an independent Palestine would be the embodiment of everything Western progressives stand against.

Palestinianism is the love child of radical Islam and Arab violence. Even if the best-intentioned adherents should not be tarred with this genesis, they cannot be forgiven for glossing over the panoramic inequality experienced in Palestine. There are problems faced by Palestinians that are Israel’s fault, but the strains of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and violence are pure Made-in-Palestine products.

Facing this charge, activists respond with deflections, from the idea that Westerners have no right to tell Palestinians how they should be governed to bald-faced denial of the fact that our activism by and large endorses, or at least steadfastly refuses to criticize, the worst strains in Palestinian society and governance.

Let’s say we did go so far as criticize the governments of Palestine while standing with ordinary Palestinians. (In the billions of words spilled on this subject, I’m sure someone can dig up progressive criticism of Palestinian autocrats, though this would inevitably be the exception that proves the rule.) Who are these ordinary Palestinians? And where do they stand on the issues that Western progressives claim to endorse? What, for instance, do they think about the place of women or gay people in society? Do “ordinary” Palestinians share our values?

We should perhaps be suspect about public opinion polling in non-democratic societies. People might be inclined to assume that their answers are being given not to legitimate pollsters but to informants of the government or other forces. Nevertheless, all we have to go on is the record as it exists. And, the record does not bode well for those who suggest that the Palestinians are our natural allies. For example, according to an opinion poll, more Palestinians believe it is morally acceptable to kill a homosexual than to be a homosexual.

Overseas activists blame all the problems facing Palestinian women on “the occupation.” Even a United Nations expert endorsed this idea. Dubravka Simonovic, UN special rapporteur on violence against women, visited Israel and the West Bank and issued a statement “recognizing the clear linkage between the prolonged occupation and violence against women.”

In a rationalization that feminists would accept in no other context: If it weren’t for the damn Zionists, Palestinian men wouldn’t have to beat their wives and daughters. (I paraphrase.)

This is on par with a depraved perspective in the Palestinian movement that, in at least one instance, contended that Israeli soldiers are so racist they refuse to rape Palestinian women.

I could go on (and on) about the inherently unprogressive nature of Palestinianism, but one of my resolutions for 2025 is to be more positive. (How’m’I doin?)

So let me positively set the record straight...

You can’t be progressive and accept the situation Palestinians experience under their respective governments in Gaza and the West Bank — yet progressives have effectively made this our core foreign affairs issue.

You can’t be progressive and oppose the existence of the only country in the Middle East where women, LGBTQ+ people, ethnic and religious minorities and everyone else are legally equal and free.

You can’t claim to be a peace activist and slap a “COEXIST” bumper sticker on your car when you oppose the only thing that will bring peace, coexistence and Palestinian self-determination. And the only thing that will advance peace, coexistence and Palestinian self-determination is the acceptance of Israel’s right to exist alongside an independent Palestine.

You can’t advance a position that is fundamentally unprogressive and call yourself a progressive. Yet that is what many — probably most — self-defined progressives do when it comes to Israel and Palestine.

If you are supporting Palestinian self-determination but not Jewish self-determination, you are not a progressive.

You are a racist.

So you need to start with yourself, fix yourself, then fix the damage you have done to our progressive movement.

Until then, you have no right to declare anyone in or out of the progressive circle. Because that’s my job — and you don’t belong there.