PROGRESSIVE EXCEPT PALESTINE?

The idea that Palestinianism is progressive (and we who advance coexistence and peace are not) is a direct projection. It’s madness. And it’s almost unanimous.

You look FABulous! See you on the roof. 

Fellow progressives: can we talk?

Where did this absolutely nonsensical idea come from that to be a leftist means opposing Israel and supporting the most misogynistic, homophobic, violent, oppressive forces on earth?

Let’s cut the shit, bell the cat, call BS.

There is precisely nothing progressive about Palestinianism.

How do I even need to say this?!

It is one of the most flagrant examples of the madness of crowds that vast swaths of people somehow, not just irrationally but fanatically, have concluded that Palestine is somehow a cause that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with women’s equality, gay rights, antiracism, nonviolence and everything else decent people support. There is precisely no evidence to support the outlandish idea that Palestinianism is progressive.

To be clear: It should be. It could be.

A Palestinianism rooted in equality for women and minorities, with human rights for all individuals (not just “national liberation,” which is what Palestinianism is, with no concern for individual rights) would be a progressive cause. A Palestinianism that encourages coexistence and peace (rather than endless war until [A] Israel is destroyed, or [B] the last Palestinian dies trying) would be a progressive cause. That’s not what contemporary Palestinianism is. Coexistence, peace and individual rights are absent in the Palestinian movement (certainly as it is constituted in the overseas “pro-Palestinian” movement). It is the opposite of progressive.

And yet, as I wrote in the first two parts of this three-parter, the equation of Palestinianism with progressivism is both a false assertion and one that is unanimously accepted as truth by gullible activist wannabes.

Linda Sarsour and her admirers state incontrovertibly and without evidence that you simply cannot be a feminist or an activist if you do not uncritically support Palestinianism. Then I reviewed the book that purports to be a sort of progressive manifesto for Palestinianism and found the authors didn’t even bother trying to make such a preposterous case.

Absent any evidence to support the idea that Palestinianism has anything in common with progressivism, activists ironically fall back on Donald Trump’s tactic: Repeat the Big Lie endlessly and bigly until a critical mass of idiots believe it.

These “pro-Palestinian” propagandists even have the chutzpah to use the acronym “PEP” — “Progressive Except for Palestine” — to besmirch those who disagree with them. The premise is that people who are progressive but refuse to support the misogynistic, homophobic, violent, totalitarian Palestinian movement are progressive on everything but this issue.

This is spectacular. It is also a classic antisemitic projection.

You know damn well who they mean by PEP. Who makes up the largest share of progressive supporters of Israel? Jews. (I acknowledge this sadly. All progressives should be Zionists; it’s the only morally and ideologically consistent position. Regrettably, most non-Jewish progressives drink the anti-Zionist Kool-Aid.) And it has always been a tenet of antisemitic bias to project onto Jews whatever it is that we hate in ourselves or to make sense of the nonsensical by accusing Jews of hoodwinking the masses into some irrational opinion.

If anyone is Progressive Except Palestine, it’s the “pro-Palestinians.”

Damning by Association

Every time I accuse “pro-Palestinian” activists of siding with Hamas, Hezbollah, the ayatollahs, Bashar al-Assad, and those who hang gays from scaffoldings and scythe off clitorises, I am met with shocked outrage. Indignant keffiyah-clutching activists shriek How dare you! I am a human rights activist! I only want what’s best for Palestinians, why would you lump me in with those people?

Well, because you lump me in with Republicans and evangelical Christians because I come to the conclusion that Israel has a right to exist.

It’s pretty remarkable, actually, how quickly any conversation with an anti-Zionist activist defaults to anti-Americanism. If not relying on the overtly antisemitic trope of Jewish (erm, I mean “Zionist”) puppet-masters controlling American foreign policy and defense spending, at the very least it almost always comes down to the idea that America (the heart of what in too many progressive minds is the real axis of evil) supports Israel for nefarious reasons.

America supports Israel because supporting Jewish national self-determination is the morally right thing to do and because supporting the only democracy in the region, which is on the frontlines of the battle against anti-democratic, anti-Western forces, is the strategically right thing to do.

The ubiquitous idea that American support for Israel is part of a nefarious plot to subvert diplomatic morality is a manifestation of antisemitism. But never mind that for now.

If you are accusing me of being a pro-American imperialist lapdog of the capitalist oppressor because I am a Zionist, well, make room on the lap cause I’m a St. Bernard-sized zio.

More to the point, if damning by association is good for the Zionist its good for the anti-Zionist. And if you accuse me — an agnostic, gay, feminist, leftist — of being, basically, a born-again Republican, then you will excuse me for accusing you of being exactly what you are: an enabler of the most extreme anti-modern, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-democratic entities on the planet.

If you are in cahoots with the decapitators and human immolators, with the Islamic enforcers in Tehran, and with the chemical weapons aficionados in Syria, then wrap me in the stars and stripes and call me Bubba.

Like most progressives, I’ve got plenty of problems with American (and Canadian, and European, and pretty much every) foreign policy. But if you’re going to ask me to choose the side of Israel and America, on the one hand, or Hamas, Hezbollah, the murderous mullahs and the apocalyptic ayatollahs, on the other, then the choice is obvious. For me, at least.

To be clear: you could support Palestinians while at the same time condemning their oppressors (the extremists of Hamas and the “moderates” of Fatah, as well as the basket of the world’s most deplorable evildoers who make this their #1 issue). But you don’t.

It is an almost universal fact that those who claim to stand with Palestinians are utterly mute on so many of the other things happening in the world, including any oppression of Palestinians that isn’t perpetrated by Israel. 

While anti-Israel activists prattle on about “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” actual genocides and ethnic cleansings are taking place, largely ignored amid the din of hysteria around Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!

If we were to balance our support for the Palestinian nationalist movement with efforts to acclimate Palestinian people and their leaders to values of human dignity, women’s equality, queer rights, democracy, pluralism and the other things we claim to support at home, we might be able to make a weak case that our Palestinianism is progressive.

But we don’t even bother doing that. Every now and then, when a Palestinian activist is backed into a corner, they will make some disclaimer about how they don’t support Hamas. But we saw, on and after October 7, that plenty do. That’s enough of a problem.

The bigger problem is that the (presumed) majority of Palestinian activists have precisely no qualms about marching alongside members of the pro-rape community, with decapitation advocates, human immolation proponents, kidnapping enthusiasts, and mass-murder supporters.

How could a movement so completely at odds with every one of our other values have become not just an important progressive foreign policy priority but the progressive foreign policy priority?

There is only one way this could happen. There is only one overstrike key that would allow millions of the world’s most devoted enthusiasts of social justice to make the social injustice that is at the heart of Palestinianism the heart of our own movements.

It is utterly irrational. It’s just plain bigotry.

It is why you see at rallies and constantly read on social media “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

Like the canard that Palestinianism is progressive, rote repetition of the ludicrous idea that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” does not become truth just because we scream at the top of our lungs.

Indeed, much of the world doth protest too much.

They have to. Because to do anything else — to engage rationally on how Palestinianism fits in any way with progressivism — would lead inescapably into ruinous intellectual dark alleys.

There is simply no progressive case to be made for Palestinianism. And only some sketchy reasoning — or lack of reasoning — could possibly convince millions of people that it is. 

And that sketchy reasoning is itself the least progressive thing you can imagine.

*

So why am I still here?

People ask me: If progressives are so irrationally and fanatically anti-Israel, why are you still marching?

This question baffles me.

If you have devoted your life to building a movement for tolerance and human equality and then a bunch of bigots arrives to take it over and subvert the core values into intolerance, hatred and violence, you’d have a choice, for sure.

But what kind of person would just say, OK, take over everything I’ve given my life to build and piss all over it with your chauvinism and hatred?

Tomorrow: my full response.