Bernie Sanders, Steven Salaita and the poverty of American internationalism

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.