WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF “PROGRESSIVE”? PALESTINIANISM
Palestinianism is a cult built on misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, violence and tyranny. There could hardly be a cause more antithetical to progressive values.
Soon after she exploded into celebrity as one of the heads of the emergent Women’s March, Linda Sarsour declared Zionism to be incompatible with feminism.
Sarsour told The Nation: “It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to say, ‘Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?’ There can’t be in feminism. You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it. … Anyone who wants to call themselves an activist cannot be selective.”
Typical of the exceptionalism the left has created around Israel, to be a feminist and an activist, you need to advocate statelessness for Israeli women while siding with the most misogynistic forces on the planet.
Even leaving aside the chutzpah of this one woman rather selectively defining for her own purposes the parameters of rights for half the world’s population, it betrays a spectacular irony and lack of self-awareness that this leading opponent of Donald Trump so precisely mirrors his strategic approach. She states as fact an opinion that is impossible to back up with reasoning, and proclaims it with such assuredness that impressionable people swallow it as truth.
While Sarsour’s comments were widely reported, they did not reflect anything particularly innovative. Feminists, liberals, socialists and others who fall under the big umbrella of the left have largely adopted a consensus position that Zionism is incompatible not only with feminism but with broader progressive activism.
A Muslim Australian activist writes: “If solidarity is a moral imperative, and not performative selective posturing, it must be uncompromising, reflexive and honest. In a time of social media, where Israeli war crimes and human rights violations are exposed online, there can no longer be blind spots, pleas of ignorance or declarations that ‘it is complex.’”
The glaring hypocrisy here is secondary only to the comedic lack of self-awareness. There could hardly be a more unadulterated example of “performative selective posturing” than feminists for Palestine. Women in Palestine are, at best, second-class citizens. (One survey places Palestine 160th out of 170 countries on the Women Peace and Security Index.)
This tragic statistic would be irrelevant to my argument if overseas Palestinian activists were dedicated to fixing that atrocity. They’re not. Advancing social and legal equality for Palestinian women, who are among the least free women in the world, is nowhere on the activist agenda. Nowhere.
Zionism, a democratic movement for Jewish self-determination, which has created a society that is by orders of magnitude the freest in the Middle East and among the freest in the world, a place of legal equality and liberty for women, LGBTQ+ people, religious and ethnic minorities, exemplifying free speech and the other rights we associate with the most progressive elements of a society, is decried as incompatible with feminism and progressivism. And Palestine, a human rights hellhole for women, queers and, well, everyone really, is the new avocado toast.
The Orwellian inversion is total.
Of course, the plight of Palestinian women (and everyone else) is blamed on Israel. The argument, basically, is that if Palestine were independent all Palestinians would be freer, a sort of weird social version of the economic argument that a rising tide lifts all boats.
But what evidence exists for this ludicrous assertion? There is, effectively, no movement in Palestine or the global Palestinian movement for the equality of Palestinian women, queers, minorities or anyone else.
Overseas progressives, who have made this our #1 priority, put zero pressure on Palestinian leaders or society to advance women’s equality — now or in the amorphous future of a “free Palestine.”
And gay rights?
Bahahahahahaha.
Not only Palestinian leaders, but according to surveys, the Palestinian people, our Great Cause, are among the most homophobic on earth. Various surveys say between 1% and 5% of Palestinians believe it is morally OK to be a homosexual. On the other hand, 8% say “honor killings” (the sick cultural norm where a person who “disgraces” the family by being, you know, gay or raped, needs to be killed to restore family honor) are more acceptable than homosexuality.
Let me clearly crunch those numbers for you: More Palestinians believe it is morally acceptable to kill a homosexual than to be a homosexual.
But, sure. Let’s wave our rainbow flags for Palestine. Again, though, this might be fine if we used what influence we have with Palestinians to alter their almost unanimous homo-hatred. We don’t. Ever.
If Western activists who travel to Palestine actually told their allies there what we believe about women, gay people, multiculturalism, religious freedom, free collective bargaining, democracy and everything else we hold to be sacred progressive values, they would be chased out of Palestine faster than their legs could carry them and have their next solidarity missions summarily cancelled. If they’re lucky.
We can sanctimoniously declare Palestinianism “the beating heart” of the new feminism, as the statement of the 2017 International Women’s Strike asserted. But in that case the beating heart of feminism is inherently misogynistic, violent, antisemitic, intolerant, homophobic and antidemocratic. How do we square this circle?
We can’t.
Contrary to the warped consensus that Zionism is incompatible with feminism and progressive activism, it is Palestinianism that has no place in our movements.
Palestinianism is a cult built on misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, violence and tyranny. That Sarsour and countless others can make shameless assertions that Palestinianism=progressivism and not be laughed out of our cause — that she, in fact, is heralded as a leading voice of feminism — is symptomatic of a putrefaction at the beating heart of our movements.
They are the forces that are incompatible with feminism, progressivism and everything else we claim to support. There is simply no way that Palestinian nationalism — with violence at its heart, gender discrimination in its genes and Jew-hatred as its accelerant — can coexist with the self-image we have of ourselves as multicultural, peaceable supporters of equality.
As I will elaborate in my next post, there is no evidence — none — that Palestinianism belongs in the progressive movement. There could hardly be a cause more antithetical to progressive values. And yet, almost all my friends on the left have somehow come to the opposite conclusion.
I feel a bit like the only guy who sees that the emperor is naked, but I know from your comments I am not alone.
In my next post, I review the book Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, by Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick. If you want to see fauxgressive stupidity bitchslapped into the middle of next week, check me out in the middle of this week. I’ll post it Wednesday. Then I’ll hit send Friday on another snappy smackdown that should (but won’t) serve as a corrective my off-the-rails progressive friends.
By the end of this week, I will have completed a pretty eviscerating series on how Palestinianism betrays progressivism and how this has sent the global left off the cliff.
On Saturday, I’ll explain why, despite all this, I’m still a progressive. (Spoiler alert: Isn’t it obvious? I have stood, do stand and always will stand for human rights and equality. A ton of the people who by their presence in this movement have despoiled the term progressive by supporting Jew-hatred, rape, beheadings and mass murder as a political strategy. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll surrender this word to those monsters.)