The cause of Palestine transnationalization
Israel and Zionism are the so-called bogeymen; the actual goal is the Jews.
A portrait of American writer James Baldwin with the statue of Shakespeare Albert Memorial, 1969. Credit: Allan Warren via Wikimedia Commons.
(July 12, 2024 / JNS)
Many people—too many—in fact, were surprised by the pro-Palestine alliance that we witnessed in the post-Oct. 7 period. What had been building up since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the overt participation of pro-Palestine activists in the riots, and to pinpoint it further, since Durban 2001, should not have come as a surprise. But Jews always seem to be surprised by events and trends. It was quite clear to Jewish students in the summer of 1967 after we read the infamous SNCC declaration and its linkage between world events and the black struggle in America.
Malcolm X was talking about the dangers of Zionism in the 1960s after a 1964 visit to Gaza. James Baldwin used the term “occupied territory,” albeit in relation to Harlem, N.Y., in 1966; and it has resonated and echoed. The Black Panther Party was training briefly with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Algeria. In 1970, a group of prominent black activists took out an ad in The New York Times expressing solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
The ideological constellation of transnational cooperation moved on.
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze expressed his opinion in an interview published in a May 8-9, 1982 issue of Libération under the title Les Indiens de Palestine, that
“Something seems to have ripened on the Palestinian side. A new tone …as if they have attained a region of certainty and serenity, of ‘right,’ which bears witness to a new consciousness. A state which allows them to speak in a new way, neither aggressively nor defensively, but ‘equal to equal’ with everyone.”
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That he was far from the truth concerning how exactly Arabs of former Palestine “speak” was par for the course, following up on the charge of “settler-colonialism” expressed in Paris by Maxime Rodinson in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Temps Modernes.
Deleuze then continued:
“the Palestinians are not in the situation of colonized peoples but of evacuees, of people driven out. … The history of Zionism and Israel, like that of America … [was]: how to make an empty space, how to throw out a people?”
Palestine, then, does not stand alone. Its transnational status was analyzed by Timothy Seidel, writing in 2016, of the possibilities of solidarity for the cause of Palestine. He explained that:
“the Palestinian liberation movement itself embodies a ‘transnational’ movement—and always has since the Nakba, as Palestinians are always both ‘scattered’ and ‘at home,’ both ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’”
Since October, calls for the elimination of Zionism and of “revolution, intifada” have been sounded by so many, using the “river to the sea” slogan to represent the physical disappearance of Israel. The success of Palestinianism’s transnational portrayal results in the Jewish people’s de-nationalism—the negating of the Jewish people’s national identity. Israel and Zionism are the so-called bogeymen, but the actual goal is the Jews.
Malcolm X, after his 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca. Credit: Herman Hiller, World Telegram staff photographer/Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection via Wikimedia Commons.
As we have witnessed recently on the North American continent and in Europe, mostly Arab immigrants together with their followers have beaten up Jews sipping coffee, laid siege to Jews in synagogues and shot at Jewish schools. In league with Jewish anti-Zionists of both the Neturei Karta variety and the IfNotNow kind, they have targeted Jewish politicians as Jews, and AIPAC and the ADL as specifically Jewish institutions. Jews and Jewish, for them, have replaced Israel. In a convoluted but purposeful pattern, Palestine transnationalization has become the vehicle of the 21st century’s retransformed antisemitism, channeling black anti-Jewish feelings with the Marxist negation of Jewish nationalism and Islamist triumphalism.
It was, once again, Baldwin who, in the fall of 1979, published “Open Letter to the Born Again” with pro-Palestine thinking. While denying any antisemitism on his part, writing that “the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that ‘the Jews killed Christ’” did not “reverberate” in him, although he did point out that “it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic.” And he did postulate that Israel was not created for “the salvation of the Jews” but for “the salvation of the Western interests.” In his view, “Palestinians have been paying for … Europe’s guilty Christian conscience” and then he added:
“The Jew, in America, is a white man … he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.”
Six decades later, anyone with eyes and ears open and attentive knows that all this mash and mix of ideology, of a kind of thinking that creates “facts” rather than the facts formulating the paradigms and understandings, of transnationalism and intersectionality, are coming home to roost. “White privilege.” “Holocaust guilt.”
Are Jewish leaders aware? Are they cognizant of what is developing? Have they a strategy and plans prepared? Can they protect Jewish students? Can they hold back the modern-day version of the “barbarians at the gate”?
As we have witnessed recently on the North American continent and in Europe, mostly Arab immigrants together with their followers have beaten up Jews sipping coffee, laid siege to Jews in synagogues and shot at Jewish schools. In league with Jewish anti-Zionists of both the Neturei Karta variety and the IfNotNow kind, they have targeted Jewish politicians as Jews, and AIPAC and the ADL as specifically Jewish institutions. Jews and Jewish, for them, have replaced Israel. In a convoluted but purposeful pattern, Palestine transnationalization has become the vehicle of the 21st century’s retransformed antisemitism, channeling black anti-Jewish feelings with the Marxist negation of Jewish nationalism and Islamist triumphalism.
It was, once again, Baldwin who, in the fall of 1979, published “Open Letter to the Born Again” with pro-Palestine thinking. While denying any antisemitism on his part, writing that “the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that ‘the Jews killed Christ’” did not “reverberate” in him, although he did point out that “it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic.” And he did postulate that Israel was not created for “the salvation of the Jews” but for “the salvation of the Western interests.” In his view, “Palestinians have been paying for … Europe’s guilty Christian conscience” and then he added:
“The Jew, in America, is a white man … he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.”
Six decades later, anyone with eyes and ears open and attentive knows that all this mash and mix of ideology, of a kind of thinking that creates “facts” rather than the facts formulating the paradigms and understandings, of transnationalism and intersectionality, are coming home to roost. “White privilege.” “Holocaust guilt.”
Are Jewish leaders aware? Are they cognizant of what is developing? Have they a strategy and plans prepared? Can they protect Jewish students? Can they hold back the modern-day version of the “barbarians at the gate”?
ZIONIST
YISRAEL MEDAD
Yisrael Medad is a researcher, analyst and opinion commentator on political, cultural and media issues.
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