Asking the wrong questions on Bernie Sanders and Palestine
JVL Introduction
Tony Karon takes his starting point from a recent interview with Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian-American Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and longtime editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Khalidi begins in this vein:
“Change doesn’t happen because we are very angry and we want it today. Change happens over years, sometime decades because of dedicated, long-term sustained work. If you want to change anything and don’t just want to be pure and self-satisfied and know that you’ve done the right thing, if you’re willing to actually decide this is the objective and to achieve it we’re going to have to get our hands dirty and talk to people we don’t really like…”
It provides the start for a strategic look at possibilities for the Palestinian struggle today, drawing fruitfully on comparisons with the movement against apartheid (in which Karon was involved).
Karon argues that:
“The lessons of successful liberation movements suggest that strategy is not an expression of feelings or identity, and while it is guided by morality, that morality is expansive and inclusive. It is willing to make new allies even if those alliances are limited to narrow but urgent shared objectives whose achievement would positively affect the balance of power, rather than making a shared blueprint for the long-term future the prerequisite for working together.”
Activists need to think strategically about how the most useful site-specific contribution they can make where they are, in the real world struggle for power
So, for instance, those in the US movement who criticise Bernie Sanders as a Zionist are barking up the wrong tree. Sanders is not part of a Palestinian liberation movement, but a social democrat campaigning against American injustice. Any success in that campaign will help – has already helped – Palestine by weakening the coalition which has to date enabled the genocide to continue..
This article was originally published by Rootless Cosmopolitan on Sat 6 Jun 2026. Read the original here.
Asking the wrong questions on Bernie Sanders and Palestine
A twitter squall over Sanders’ attachment to Israel in a “two-state” fantasy calls to mind Rashid Khalidi urging Palestine activists in the U.S. to remember where they are and the strategic priorities
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We must all support Bernie publicly. His colleagues need to see what the people want. And it ISN’T GENOCIDE!
The problem with America is the ideology of America is being slowly eroded and changed by AIPAC that now have a firm hold on the senate and push Israeli interests via US policies. And that is the issue. The Nationalism America has created is being eroded.
Many on the left and right are pushing back on this and as far as I am aware Bernie has not been funded by AIPAC. I think his stance on keeping money out of politics is a noble one. Politicians should not be accepting funds from lobby groups.Haaretz reported in 1963 a young Sanders volunteered at Sh’ar Ha’amakim which was run by Hashomer Hatzair. Sh’ar Ha’amakim was built in 1935 over the destroyed village of El-Harthiyeh. Hashiner Hatzair was active in the zionist project in Palestine and its members served in jewish militias like Palmach and Haganah. Mr Sanders hasn’t been vocal about his time there. In 2001 he refused to support a House Resolution blaming the Palestinians for the violence. 2011 failed to support a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood.
In 2014 he did not support a bill endorsing Israeli war crimes in Gaza. August 2014 in a town hall meeting he was asked if ‘Palestinians have a right to resist’ and why he did not condemn Israel’s actions. His response was ‘Excuse me. Shut up. You don’t have the microphone’.
Sanders is not about Palestine but since America is a product of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, the question is what sort of America is Sanders for? Is it a continued imagined nationalism that forgets history. It is not the first country to do this- Australia, Canada etc.
On the flip side the people in Flint ….how long did it take to get clean water? if you’re about America….
This overlong and repetitive article is tilting at windmills, addressing unseen enemies and making false comparisons.
Firstly there is very little comparison between the different national liberation struggles – Africa, South Africa, Rhodesia, Algeria, Vietnam etc. If there is any commonality it is how the leaderships of national liberation struggles have so quickly turned into the oppressors of their own people once they gained power. How even ‘communist’ Vietnam became little more than an American surrogate. How the ANC presided over a neo-liberal economy that increased the wealth disparities in South Africa.
Rashid Khalidi is a brilliant historian but not so brilliant at mapping a strategy for liberation. He was a supporter of 2 states himself and a supporter of the Oslo Accords which meant he never really understood Zionism or its internal dynamics.
We can agree that Bernie Sanders has, despite his traditional social democratic political weaknesses, been a force for good and still is with his pressure for an end to American arms supply to Israel.
But writing off ‘performative radicalism’ as Tony Karon does is a major mistake. It is only by building a solid anti-Zionist Palestine solidarity movement that the support base for Israel in the United States can be weakened.
In other words there is room for both the radical anti-Zionists and the more cautious Bernie Sanders type figures.
Israel occupies a special position in terms of US imperialism. It is the projection of US power in the Middle East but it also has its own Zionist interests. Hence Trump is having difficulty reigning in Israel in Lebanon, hence the expletive laden conversation between him and Netanyahu yet Trump does not threaten to cut off Israel’s arms supply.
It is that special relationship all that it implies that needs destroying and it will take all forces to achieve that task
The problem with the South African example is that the state remains in a neo-colonial position and the black working class remain exploited by capitalism and oppressed by the state. The deal to end apartheid was made within the limits of imperialist capitalism.