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HOW ISRAEL IS BEING FRAMED
that they were killed because they tried, and often succeeded, in killing Jews
conveys the impression that innocent Palestinian youths are being senselessly
and ruthlessly shot down, randomly, by trigger-happy Israeli cops and soldiers.
It is no coincidence that this plot sounds familiar to American ears. Its meant
to. Framing the escalating violence in Israel in such a way consciously seeks to
create an analogy between the recurring shooting and killing of unarmed black
men in the United States and the deaths of Palestinians in order to promote
solidarity and link the two struggles in the American public imagination. A recent
media campaign featuring iconic African-American activists like Lauryn Hill and
Angela Davis along Palestinian activists aims to solidify the notion of a shared
destiny by employing the catchy slogan: When I see them I see us.
Yet something is very wrong with the vision that links Palestine to Ferguson. It
is one thing to convey sympathy for oppressed peopleand yes, in many ways
Palestinians are oppressed. But comparing Gaza to Baltimore or Jerusalem to
Ferguson isnt just inaccurate or unfairits insulting. African-American
teenagers arent being shot in American cities by policemen because they are
randomly attacking innocent civilians in the streets with knives, or shooting
parents in front of their children. The entire point of the Black Lives Matter
movement is that the victims are innocent.
And despite the ongoing occupation and subsequent injustices that Israel
propagates, Palestinians do share in the responsibility for their own travails and
suffering. Trying to obfuscate this inconvenient truth by incorporating their
cause into the heroic struggle against racism in America threatens to invest
Palestinian terror with a moral legitimacy that does violence to the facts, and
will only inflame rather than help end the conflict.
***
During a public gathering to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the
Million Man March that was held on Capitol Hill in October, the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright, the outspoken and controversial pastor whose church President Obama
once attended, declared that The youth in Ferguson and the youth in Palestine
have united together to remind us that the dots need to be connected. He went
on to blame racism, militarism and capitalism for their historical agonies and
implied that Israel was reproducing the European colonial scheme: Apartheid is
going on in Palestine. As we sit here, there is an apartheid wall being built
twice the size of the Berlin Wall in height, keeping Palestinians off of illegally
occupied territories, where the Europeans have claimed that land as their own.
Such rhetoric, which has become widespread among Israels critics (especially on
the academic left), aims to reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a formulaic
anti-colonial David vs. Goliath standoff. In doing so, it threatens to transform
intervene not simply because they won the moral high-ground and exposed the
raw bigotry and hatred undergirding southern racismbut because theirs was a
genuine message of peace, justice and universal brotherhood.
As King famously declared in his speech at the March on Washington in 1963: In
the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful
deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the
cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high
plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Passionately committed to the benevolence
and amity preached in the gospels, King understood that the very nature of the
struggle would shape its eventual outcome. He therefore emphasized: It is
wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.
Israelis would be very glad if Palestinians wished to align themselves with the
African American cause that King, maybe more than anyone else, embodies. So,
it is curious and revealing that they have time and again rejected non-violent
protest as a strategy to end to their own oppression. Despite efforts at
promoting such alternative forms of resistance, many Palestinians have instead
continuously opted for violence: in recent weeks they have celebrated the
slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians and incited for more bloodshed while
echoing the infamous Hamas founding charter that avows to obliterate Israel
and reclaim every inch of Palestine. Its worth remembering that even the
most militant African American organizations such as the Black Panthers
primarily challenged only those perceived to be the instruments of their
oppressionthe police; whereas Palestinians have chosen to indiscriminately
attack unarmed women, children, and the elderly. To ignore both the bloodcurdling eliminationist rhetoric and the repeated rejectionist actions and violent
terror attacks of their interlocutors in favor of the idea that all the
Palestinians want is a peaceful two-state solution might indeed be the essence of
wise, far-sighted state-craft. However, the fact that many Israelis have come
to believe otherwise and mistrust Palestinians is not simply evidence that
Israelis are colonialist racists.
Even though there were competing voices within the Civil Rights movement, it
was Kings inspirational message of peace and coexistence that ultimately
prevailed. While there are similar dissenting voices among Palestiniansit is only
the violent fanatics on their side whose voice is being heard. And we must
seriously contemplate why this is so before comparing Palestine to Selma. When
Palestinian knife-wielding attackers admit that they set out to stab Jews and
are soldiers in a holy war we need to consider the grim fact that their tactics
are so different because their goals may be so far apart: most African
Americans sought emancipation from their enemies; too many Palestinians seek
the destruction of theirs.
The attempt to perpetuate an inherently flawed and purposely misleading
analogy between Palestinians and African Americans is symptomatic of the
increasingly distorted manner in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come
to be viewed in the West. The politicization of knowledge among some of Israels
critics has led to the irresponsible simplification of what is at heart, an
incredibly complex affair in which both sides have legitimate grievances. But
understanding the real origins of the conflicta prerequisite to ever
engendering a viable solution to end itdemands nuance, sophistication and a
moral ambiguity that too many are unwilling to employ. Yes, the occupation is
unjust; but, what are the reasons for perpetuating it? How can a sovereign
nation, entrusted with the common security of its citizens, justify signing peace
treaties with the same people whose founding charter is explicitly committed to
their destruction? These are not excuses, but fundamental questions.
Attempting to conveniently sweep them under the rug of ignorance by hurling
hollow accusations of settler-colonialism and systems of repression towards
Israel that attempt to falsely compartmentalize the conflict into a distorted
historical model to which it doesnt apply, is a betrayal of intellectual life and a
mockery of common sense.
Calls for African American solidarity with the Palestinians could be more
compelling if their experiences were actually similar. But they arent, at least
not yet. Israeli police officers who shoot knife-wielding Palestinians trying to
stab innocent civilians to death are not similar to police officers in the United
States who kill unarmed black men. The former were shot because they tried to
kill someone. The latter were shot because of the color of their skin.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragedy with no heroes and far too many
victims. Let us therefore remember that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives
matter. Israeli lives also matter.
***
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