Challenging the New Apartheid: Reflections on Palestine Solidarity

[Wordie]

Challenging the New Apartheid
Reflections on Palestine Solidarity
by Rafeef Ziadah
and Adam Hanieh and Hazem Jamjoum

March 04, 2006
Left Turn

The Palestinian solidarity movement has made significant gains since the onset of the Second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000. Over the last five years, a new generation of Palestinian solidarity activists has mobilized in the streets, campuses, and schools across North America. Among the left and progressive movements, there is broad acceptance of the proposition that US foreign policy in the Middle East is based on support for Israel as a “colonial-settler” state, to draw upon the title of Maxime Rodinson’s classic work. Every major mobilization against the war in Iraq has seen the Palestinian struggle placed up front in opposing the US war machine, and most activists new to the movement are introduced to the Palestinian struggle and history through an anti-Zionist perspective.

This is an unprecedented achievement. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, radical and progressive movements in the advanced capitalist countries generally refused to take an unequivocal stance in support of Palestinian liberation. Zionist organizations were active in the movements against the Vietnam War, South African apartheid, and other progressive causes. Palestinian solidarity was marginal to the large mass struggles that took place in the latter half of the 20th century, and the left commonly countenanced a supposedly “progressive Zionist” stance.

While the Zionist movement remains extremely well-funded and dominates the mainstream press there has also been an important shift in this regard. Zionism has shown itself as a political current completely aligned with the pro-imperial policies of the US administration in an openly racist and anti-emancipatory fashion. There are many indications of this beyond the policies of the Israeli government. Throughout North America, Zionist student groups openly invite representatives of the CIA, US Department of Defense, and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services to speak at meetings they sponsor. The witch hunt against progressive academics and activists is led by an alliance of neo-conservative journalists, academics, and think tanks with Zionist groups such as the David Project and Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch. Pipes explicitly advocates that US academics should work to serve US foreign policy interests; first and foremost, the defense of Israel.

The pro-imperialist character of the Zionist movement has impacted their ability to mobilize students on university campuses. While their paid organizers are active they are unable to win a significant hearing amongst students and lack the ability to do effective outreach on the ground. Each day brings news of initiatives around the world to isolate the Israeli state through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Zionist propaganda is increasingly responsive to the campaigns of the Palestinian solidarity movement, and a quick read of the Zionist press indicates a widespread fear that they are losing the ideological battle in an unprecedented fashion.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=9848