On Saturday, Steven Salaita published an article
on Salon arguing that Bernie Sanders’ record of support and/or acquiescence to
Israeli policy is a sufficient enough reason to not vote for Sanders. However,
on social media, Salaita clarified that he isn’t aiming to change anyone's
decision about voting for Sanders. But if his goal isn’t to convince people to
change their minds, then what’s the point of writing?
Salaita assures us that he is not a single-issue
fundamentalist, but merely wishes to see Sanders’ position on Israel move
towards a progressive, moral and critical discussion of Israel’s occupation.
No such conversation will happen.
Hypothetically, a critical discussion of Israel
could very much happen if Sanders decides it should. However, Salaita doesn’t
chart how that would come about. For starters, it fails to recognise that
Sanders’ campaign has been vilified by every establishment institution
to an extent with no precedent.
Try imagining for a second a new benchmark of
cynicism the liberal journalism establishment will set the moment the slightest
expression of anti-semitism from a Sanders supporter emerges. The
"Berniebro" has been damaging enough as Sanders himself acknowledged,
think of what the "Bernienazi" will do.
In this respect, Salaita's piece comes off as an
odd exercise in apolitical critique when you consider the fact that he presents no empirical
and analytically sound argument indicating that if Sanders begins to be
critical of Israel, his campaign will continue to enjoy its momentum.
Given what’s at stake, it’s not too much to ask of Salaita to acknowledge the political dynamics of the moment. And, if one
insists it is “wrong” to place such a demand, perhaps one would be well-advised
to join a church where moral absolutism reigns above all practical
considerations.
Rania Khalek’s recent article attempts to fulfil such a pressing demand. In making
the case that Sanders has been the most critical politician of Israeli crimes
and U.S. complicity, Khalek argues that he’s the ideal candidate to bring up
Palestinians’ rights on a national platform. As Khalek points out, Democrats
have been growing critical of Israel and this could be Bernie’s shot. What’s
not to disagree with, right?
Well, there is one analytical error with that
ties such presumptions. The polls she cites do point out that Democrats
have grown more critical of Israel. But of what aspects exactly of Israeli
policy? Well, 75% of Democrats believe that Israel’s settlements in the West
Bank are counterproductive and 76% of Democrats believe that Israel has “too
much influence” on U.S. politics. These are increasingly standard Democratic
Party positions, largely a result of Netanyahu’s well-known dirty tactics in
Washington and the Democratic establishment’s cold response.
There’s a good case to be made that
partisanship—American as apple pie—has played the leading role in forming those
views when one considers that, in the same poll, 51% of Democrats said they’ll
stand with Israel over Palestinians if they had to choose a side, 31% chose to
be neutral, and a mere 18% said they're supportive of Palestinians. A Gallup poll from the same year indicates Democrat
support for Israel has fallen from 74% to 60% from 2014, 10 points lower than
the national average of support for Israel.
Americans, especially Democrats, are nonetheless
tired of having to defend and arm Israel with so many problems at home. But,
the elective affinities of the two nations overwhelm those frustrations in any
potential event where one has to choose a side.
Unless someone could suggest a way to get a firm
majority of Democrats (and indeed Americans in the general election) to begin
supporting Palestinians’ rights, there’s little apparent reason to think that
if Sanders, and his movement, could pull it off and survive.
Such a reading of course may sound defeatist,
perhaps even cynical. But it is a liberating, though difficult, fact that would
propel those concerned to work on fixing the systematic
problem animating those attitudes: the poverty of the American internationalist
imagination and the looming tradition of American isolationism that ails the
Left, and Sanders, to this day.
This obstacle is both parallel to Salaita's
critique but also indicative of his problematic scope. In correctly identifying
Palestinians as “dispensable abstractions American election drama.” he merely
inverts the logic of his object of critique by offering nothing short of an
abstract protest.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich understood the
paradoxes of this abstraction much more acutely.
"Do you know why we
Palestinians are famous?", Darwich explained to Israel journalist Judith
Lerner, "Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the
interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me.”
Darwich would feel his words
vindicated today to learn that a segment of Pro-Palestine and Left writers
recycled Israel’s ethnic cleansing logic to argue that it was justifiable for
an Arab dictator to starve a city where Palestinian refugees resided for the simple reason that anti-government
rebels were embedded there and were indeed welcomed. Why? Because
Syrian-Palestinians (and Syrians indeed) under Assad’s yoke aren’t the perfect
victims.
Dispensable abstractions,
indeed!
Darwich, a Communist
himself, had no illusions about how fickle Left sympathies were in regards to
non-Westerners. Salaita, on the other hand, maintains these illusions when he
demands Bernie Sanders come out in support of Palestinian rights at a point
when it would be disastrous for his election campaign. Contrary to what Salaita
and others thinks, this issue cannot be solved merely by demanding
Politicians to declare their support for the oppressed against the oppressor. Just as the problem of the lack of solidarity from the
Pro-Palestinian movement with revolting Syrians can't be solved by demanding
figures like Salaita express condemnation of Bashar al-Assad's bombing and
starvation campaign against the Palestinian refugee camp on the
outskirts of Damascus, Al-Yarmouk. As far as the author is aware, Salaita hasn't been
forthcoming on this issue.
What ails Salaita is what ails Sanders and the American progressive movement at large.
