By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, April 19, 2024
Some political lessons, it seems, are not learned once and for all.
Our right to free speech, save for the relativity high bar of 'fire in a crowded theater,' is apparently one of them. What's more, its connection with academic freedom and tenure is also at issue.
We find it utterly bizarre, for example, that the president of Columbia University is called on the Congressional carpet to undergo an absurd series of questions about whether she had cracked down hard enough on any students or faculty who held pro-Palestine views. At the same time, Congress was listening to rants from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green urging the use of 'Jewish space lasers' to drive immigrants from our southern borders. The 'space lasers,' she argued, were invented by the Rothschilds to start forest fires in California. Couldn't they be put to better use, zapping immigrants? We kid you not.
We'll give you only one guess about who gets called on the carpet for anti-Semitism here and who does not. According to the ancient Chinese curse, we live in interesting times.
Those old enough to remember the Army-McCarthy hearings, headed up by the drunken Senator from Wisconsin and his sinister sidekick, Roy Cohn, will immediately recognize what's happening in Congress. Our misnamed 'Freedom Caucus' has found a new path to red-baiting. First, you put Palestine in the dock as the immediate source of evil. Then you burrow down to find 'communism,' 'socialism,' 'feminist witches,' Black brutes' and whatever other demons might be summoned to get everyone to shut up, with the exception, naturally, of our Taylor-Greens.
Our left and its wider progressive allies would do well to stand up to this reactionary nonsense and knock it down for another 50 years, if not entirely. But to be at all effective, we need to assert two propositions. First, it is not anti-Semitic to favor Palestine and its right to self-determination, especially in the middle of the current genocidal onslaught against Gaza. We would be standing with most of the world if we did so, and we should do it anyway, even if it's unpopular. There's also nothing wrong with adding the slogan, 'from the river to the sea.' There's nothing there stating Palestinians need be the only people between those two natural borders. Of course, some may have a guilty conscience about the Likud slogan, 'from the sea to the river,' where they do mean pushing out the Palestinians.
The second point is that it's also not anti-Semitic to demand an end to apartheid in Israel. This does not call into question 'Israel's right to exist' any more than calling for an end to apartheid in the American South or South Africa. The South African state, where apartheid has been largely dismantled, continues to exist and move forward. Some may object that this means Jews wouldn't have special rights, over and above others. Indeed, it would, but in that case, Israel could still exist side-by-side with a sovereign Palestinian state in the same wider territory. Either might by difficult, but no solution in Israel will be easy.
It is precisely these issues, however, that are being used against those who favor Palestine, as our cartoon above suggests. What's worse is these false claims of anti-Semitism are not only used by GOP Joe McCarthy wannabees in Congress. You'll also find them on the editorial boards of our top newspapers and TV shows. You can get an earful nearly any day of the week on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,' not to mention Fox News.
This doesn't mean we can't find an idiotic soul somewhere who wants to paint a swastika on an Israeli flag. There are real anti-Semites in our country, and we should call them out and oppose them as they appear. Ms. Green’s ‘Jewish space laser’ conspiracies are a case in point.
But we must firmly reject the antiSemite frame some would like to impose on us, even if they might be allies in other matters. We don't expect a majority of Americans to be pro-Palestine at this point, but we have a rather large militant minority that is. What that militant minority needs to work on is developing a wider progressive majority demanding a cease-fire and aid to Gaza, and an end to money and arms to Israel to make it so. In our local districts, we will also find it worthwhile to survey where our neighbors stand and then work on educational and action campaigns to move the needle in our direction: Freedom for Palestine, peace, and security of all concerned.
I'll never ever forever vote in any of the members of the duopoly. The Dems are in the party I was party too. They have lost their way.