On the significance of the US campus protests
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart has that rare ability of being able to address more than one audience at the same time.
Generally he is reaching out to those in the US Jewish community who are willing to reflect and perhaps be persuaded. And he is appealing to the Palestine solidarity movement, with which he is so identified, to reflect on what it demands and how those demands are heard.
He so clearly hears the fears of American Jews but is not afraid to tell them that things are changing. The US Jewish community can no longer have such control over the terms of the debate on Israel that it became used to for so long.
And he urges them not to fixate on those who might overstep the mark in their criticism of Israel or support for the Palestinians in order to miss the essence of what is happening.
“The core of this [campus] movement,” he says “is the demand to end university and American governmental complicity with Israel’s system of oppression, which is now culminated in this horrifying slaughter of people in Gaza.”
This complicity must end. It must end because it is wrong; and it must end because it cannot secure the safety of Jews.
Only equality can keep all peoples between the river and the sea safe.
RK
This article was originally published by the Beinart Notebook on Sun 28 Apr 2024. Read the original here.
The campus protests aren’t perfect. And we need them desperately.
Loading article text…
I am less than impressed with this article. Apart from the fact that he thinks US support and the narrative around Israel is a product of the American Jewish community, which it isn’t.
Peter Beinart is a liberal and it shows when he says of the Vietnam war that ‘you could have seen in the anti-war movement, people carrying North Vietnamese flags, people who were chanting for the victory of the North Vietnamese over American soldiers and a Marxist triumph.’
Well yes, wasn’t that the correct position to take? A defeat of US imperialism.
And then Peter doesn’t like it when he hears people say that ” ‘all resistance is legitimate’ in the wake of the horrifying attack of October 7th.”
He believes that resistance to oppression has to follow international law, and recognise that ‘it is wrong to take civilian life, and what we saw on October 7th’.
Well in that case Peter wouldn’t have supported any slave rebellion. International law applies to the oppressor not the oppressed but the Palestinian resistance behaved far more in accord with international law than Israel has done. It took captives to exchange them for their own captives. Wrong? Why?
It was Israel that bombed its own people to prevent them being taken captive. Even now it is clear that the Israeli government prefers shedding Palestinian blood than saving Israeli hostages. That is Zionism with its Hannibal Doctrine.
It is welcome that Peter has broken with Zionism but he is still an ever green liberal
Peter also doesn’t like the chant of ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ because ‘ it doesn’t t acknowledge a place for Israeli Jews in that vision.
Not true. That is exactly what it does. It will be free for all. As for there being 2 nations we have to agree to disagree on that.
@Tony Greenstein – how are innocent civilian hostages, taken when theres already a ceasefire, similar to Palestinian terror suspects, and how is October 7th similar to a slave rebellion ?
I would add one point to the general critique Tony Greenstein makes above, though perhaps in a slightly more forgiving tone, because Peter Beinart’s considerable positive influence is due to the fact that he has shown a degree of personal honesty and courage in criticising his own previously entrenched beliefs which is very rare, which should be admired by all of us regardless of our own beliefs.
Challenging abuse of language is an absolutely vital component of freeing ourselves from the corrupt ideology of the ruling class. I had thought there was a tacit understanding that JVL would not use the singular phrase “Jewish community”, but unfortunately the JVL introduction does so, apparently copying the phrase from Beinart’s piece without comment. Beinart uses the term twice, but at least the first time he does so he refers to the ‘organized’ American Jewish community. It is impossible to use this term without surreptitiously importing reactionary ideology because it only makes sense by legitimising the identification of the entire (national minority) Jewish population with the dominant Zionist lobby groups which claim to represent them. The fact that people find it so difficult to wean themselves of this habit is testament to the entrenchment of the Zionist cult which only now is beginning to disintegrate. No one on the left would talk about the ‘Chinese community’ or the ‘Pakistani community’ in the same way.
The establishment of modern capitalism was marked by the increasing power and influence of democratic institutions such as trade unions and elected parliaments and parties, which were able to legislate a liveable compromise between opposing classes and interests and enable each to organise and to frame the law. Each side had its means of organising but the ongoing bedrock of framing law and power was the vote. When apartheid was ended in S Africa it did not banish blacks and whites to different parts of the country any more than the democratisation of Britain in the 19th century physically divided up the means of production. So it seems abundantly clear that power in Palestine can only be shared in one democratic country with equal votes for all. Palestinians would no longer be powerless, and Israelis should no longer feel threatened with expulsion or massacre.
Why on earth would students protesting against the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza etc and calling for a permanent cease-fire provoke tremendous fear. I don’t buy it. Not one little bit. What, if anything, ‘provokes’ fear, is the malevolent and totally fraudulent way the student protesters are depicted, and depicted in the way they are by nasty evil inhuman beings, who are given a platform by a MSM run and controlled by nasty evil inhuman beings.
In their quest to demonise the student protesters – as with Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader and the left-wing membership – they have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about causing – provoking – worry and concern and consternation amongst many American Jews. And that tells you all you need to know about them. Only evil people are capable of doing such a thing.