I was at the occupation at the UC Berkeley campus today. Overall, this is opening the space for serious, in depth discussions. Here is a leaflet I handed out. Below that are a few photos I took. Also take a look below the photos at the full text of the article from Haaretz that the leaflet quotes.
by Efrat Rayten, head of the Israeli Labor Party delegation in the Israel Knesset
We republish it because it’s important for the movement to know what Israeli government officials are saying.
On October 7, we were taken by surprise militarily. On October 8, we discovered we were a wonderful nation with a nonfunctioning government.
Now the third great failure is unfolding before us in all its glory: the failure of Israeli public relations. It’s clear the country will have a hard time surviving a term under the far-right government.
What began as a camp of pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University, where the New York police have made dozens of arrests, has quickly spread to universities across the United States and elsewhere. We’ve seen a nasty wave of calls such as “Blow up Tel Aviv and Israel,” “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground” and “Al-Qasam’s next targets” – referring to pro-Israel protesters and Hamas’ military wing.
The peak event was at Columbia, which has blocked the entry of Israeli business school professor Shai Davidai on the grounds that his safety can’t be guaranteed. These are shocking images that we find hard to believe are happening in the America of 2024.
True, the United States proved its strong support for Israel this week when the Senate approved an aid package by a large majority. But the images from the campuses, along with long-term trends in the administration, media and overall society, are jeopardizing that support.
Israel has lost the universities. This happened in a sociopolitical struggle lasting many years in American society, a struggle largely rooted in the progressive concepts and culture that have swept up young Americans. These concepts are widely espoused at academic institutions and ultimately changed the framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new narrative identifies Zionism with oppression and imperialism, to the point of denying Israel’s right to exist and the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel.
All this, along with the multiyear failure of Israeli PR, which didn’t seriously address the issue, has produced today’s situation: a monstrous and funded call for the destruction of Israel.
The decline in support for Israel can be seen in polls conducted since October 7 among Americans between 18 and 24: Half express support for Hamas and most object to U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel. These are the same young people who at elite universities now wave “From the river to the sea” signs and call for an intifada.
In the future, we may see these young people in the Senate, the courts, the economic leadership and even the White House. It’s obvious that the anti-Israel/antisemitic position is affecting the Americans’ policy, especially in an election year when the candidates can’t ignore potential voters.
We saw the trailer for the possible loss of support a month ago when the United States dramatically didn’t veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and a release of the hostages without condemning Hamas. That was a rift in U.S.-Israel relations that caused the Prime Minister’s Office to cancel an Israeli delegation to Washington.
Israel is now at a crossroads in its relations with the United States. The U.S. administration is providing extraordinary military support, but it’s also applying sanctions on far-right activists and leaders of illegal outposts, with sanctions on the way against the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda Battalion.
The undermining of American support and the chances that it might slow the flow of aid are a clear and present danger for Israel. The past few months have demonstrated the degree of our dependency on U.S. diplomatic, economic and military support, and in Israel’s current delicate situation, a weakening of the U.S. efforts is enough to seriously harm our defense.
The Israeli government and defense establishment must act immediately to correct the situation; actually it should have acted long ago. Resources should be channeled to hire the best people – experts in foreign relations, especially relations with Washington – and task them with identifying sources of influence. Even if it’s very late, these experts would redirect the American dialogue.
Meanwhile, instead of correcting things, learning lessons and taking responsibility like a leader, the Diaspora minister attacked the U.S. president. And the prime minister, “Mr. Different League” who for years has claimed he’s a foreign relations genius, is busy – in the international arena too – lobbying for himself, not the country.
Netanyahu must immediately work with U.S. legislators and governors to promote appropriate legislation, establish relations with donors, launch a plan in cooperation with the U.S. administration, creatively fight on social media and strengthen U.S. Jewish organizations, communities and friends of Israel.
Ultimately, the world wants a militarily strong – but democratic – Israel that doesn’t work with far-rightists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The damage of the “full right-wing government” is therefore immense also from a PR perspective. If the leadership isn’t changed soon, Biden’s team may be the last Democratic administration to support Israel.
MK Efrat Rayten heads the Labor Party caucus in the Knesset.
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Categories: Middle East, socialist movement, United States
I first came across the name of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib in an article by Jonathan Freedland (itself well worth reading) in last Friday’s UK newspaper the Guardian.
Freedland notes that there is a large constituency of US Jews “with the potential to be a new and crucial ally in the struggle for Palestinian independence”, but that they are being alienated by the pro-Hamas sentiment and antisemitic rhetoric of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on US campuses and elsewhere. He writes:
“But when those people see activists praising Hamas – the men who killed, tortured and raped so many on 7 October and still hold dozens hostage – or carrying the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that does the bidding of the theocrats in Tehran; or saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live”; or chanting in sinister unison for the expulsion of a “Zionist” who has been detected in the camp; or lamenting the Jewish role in American feminism, they want nothing to do with such a movement. Because they know that movement wants nothing to do with them. And that feeling is not reduced when they hear a big-name speaker suggest to a New York crowd that any Jew who believes, after two millennia of persecution, that Jews need a home of their own is a worshipper of “a false idol”, a “profane” god.
“Though, to be clear, the most striking condemnation of this hardening of supposedly pro-Palestinian rhetoric has come not from Jews, but from Palestinians. The protesters have taken “an extremist, maximalist, inflammatory, unreasonable, and totally illogical approach which is harmful to the pro-Palestinian cause,” wrote Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born Palestinian analyst who has lost a staggering 31 members of his own family in recent months. Via social media, Alkhatib urges the demonstrators to stop “wasting time with slogan-driven and maximalist activism that does nothing”, and instead to “use your western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people and promote a pragmatic path forward by engaging Israeli and Jewish audiences”.
Here’s the Tweet to which Freedland refered. I have changed the layout, but not of the words.
@afalkhatib
If you support the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and self-determination, please stop talking about “globalizing the Intifada” – I lived through the Second Intifada in Gaza, and I swear it was deadly, violent, painful, scary and I, along with many others, almost lost our lives because of it many times.
Please don’t praise Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades; please don’t advocate for violence against Israelis or Jews, including those with whom you strongly disagree; please never tolerate antisemitism and be aware of how anti-Zionism can easily slide into antisemitism, though they’re not the same and I, of course, don’t believe any criticism of Israeli actions and policies is automatically antisemitic.
Please remember that Palestinians want a state of their own, and as such, you should promote the Two State Solution regardless of how seemingly impossible it is with the settlements in the West Bank – calls for the ending of Israel and the creation of a single state are impractical, wrong, unhelpful and won’t get us anywhere.
Please seek alliances with mainstream Israeli and Jewish audiences, and don’t be deluded into thinking that by exclusively working with anti-Zionist Jews, you’ll be able to accomplish anything.
Please encourage and permit for a healthy diversity within the pro-Palestine movement to allow for a whole variety of opinions, views, takes, positions, beliefs, and strategies – forced conformity never ends well.
Please adopt pragmatism as a necessary approach/ethos for actually getting things done instead of wasting time with slogan-driven and maximalist activism that does nothing.
Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going anywhere. I’m under no illusion that figuring out how the two coexist will be easy; still, I beg all pro-Palestine activists and young people who are getting involved with this issue to please not be driven by pure emotion or ignorance.
Use your Western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people and promote a pragmatic path forward by engaging Israeli and Jewish audiences.
6:59 AM · Apr 21, 2024