Ali Abunimah / Electronic Intifada
What is the best way to smear
Palestinians and Palestine
solidarity activists and get away with it?
That is the question David
Bernstein, Executive Director of the pro-Israel propaganda group, The David
Project, asks in a surprisingly frank article titled “How to ‘Name-And-Shame’ Without Looking Like a Jerk” posted
on Israel Campus
Beat, a website sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations.
Bernstein writes: One
of the more controversial tactics in a growing effort to counter the delegitimization
of Israel is to
“name-and-shame” – to go after those who actively delegitimize Israel and seek
to delegitimize them.
There are even those, such as
British journalist Melanie Phillips, who argue that our entire strategy should
be to relentlessly attack the other side and to cease “defending” Israel.
While name-and-shame tactics can
be put to positive effect, they can also easily backfire and do more harm than
good. We need to learn the art of being disagreeable in the most
agreeable possible fashion.
Hiding
vilification behind a veneer of “civility”
Bernstein offers advice on how to
be as insincere as possible in order to undermine Palestine solidarity work,
especially on college campuses:
Start every critique with
supportive words for peace or free discourse or both.
Don’t accuse anti-Israel forces of
anti-Semitism unless they openly vilify Jews; accuse them of being anti-peace
for opposing Israel’s
right to exist.
On campuses and other places where
anti-Israel groups act in a disruptive manner, write and promulgate civility
petitions calling on all parties to engage in a respectful discussion. If the
anti-Israel groups sign it, then they constrain their future actions; if they
don’t, they can be accused of being uncivil.
In taking on an anti-Israel
professor on campus, don’t focus on the substantive arguments they make. That
will make you look like you’re trying to stifle discourse. Instead, accuse
them, in the words of Professor Gil Troy, of “academic malpractice” for
propagandizing the classroom.
When someone on campus justifies
Hamas or Hezbollah, call them out by asking a question: Do you really support
the Hamas charter’s call for killing Jews? Can that ever be justified?
Avoid indictments against all
Muslims or Islam; preface any criticism of a Muslim radical group with an
acknowledgement of peaceful Muslims.
No one should be fooled by the
mask of civility – Bernstein makes clear that the goal is to “delegitimize” and
marginalize, not to actually engage in “civil” debate.
The
David Project’s dirty tricks
The David Project has a long
history of dirty tricks. Indeed, the group was a key actor in the slander and
fabrication campaign against Columbia University Professor Joseph
Massad, part of the unsuccessful effort to deny him tenure (Massad explains
the background in a statement on his website after his list of publications).
More broadly, the effort to “name
and shame” Palestine solidarity activists is part of the broad
“anti-delegitimization” efforts underway by American Zionist organizations at
the suggestion of The Reut Institute, an Israeli think-tank which in 2010
called for a campaign of “sabotage and attack” on activists and organizations.
In October 2010, the Jewish
Federations of North America – an umbrella for 157 major pro-Israel
organisations – and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs launched a $6 million
initiative called the “Israel
Action Network” to fight “delegitimization” – a strategy that will undoubtedly
include “name and shame.”
As I wrote for Aljazeera.net last
December in “Defending Palestinian solidarity”: I got a foretaste of what
the Israel Action Network’s tactics will likely be when Sam Sokolove, the head
of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, launched a failed effort to get
academic departments at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to withdraw
their support for a lecture I gave in November. Sokolove’s campaign involved
publicly vilifying me in the media, likening me to a member of the Ku Klux
Klan. It is probably because of the publicity the Jewish Federation gave me
that hundreds of people attended my talk.
We can thank Bernstein for his
honesty in explaining to us what Israel lobby tactics amount to:
personal vilification hiding behind a thin veneer of calls for “civility.” It’s
a further sign of the bankruptcy of so much “pro-Israel activism.” It is not so
much “pro-Israel” as anti-Palestinian. It has no positive message to offer
whatsoever, certainly not one of peace.
Melanie
Phillips named and shamed
One final note of irony. In his
piece, Bernstein cites Melanie Phillips, a very prominent pro-Israel advocate
in the UK who has routinely attacked and vilified many people who have spoken
up for Palestinian rights.
Last week, Phillips left her
position at The Spectator
under a cloud: the publication was forced to make several high profile
apologies for Phillips’ totally false attacks against several people and
organizations for alleged anti-Semitism or criticism of Israel.
Phillips has been particularly virulent in her Islamophobic attacks on British
Muslims, as Mehdi Hasan of The
New Statesman reports.
_________________________
Ali Abunimah is
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, and author of One Country: A
Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
By Dr. Alan
Sabrosky*
I’ve had a more diffuse and
sometimes different reaction to the original article on this topic (http://www.intifada-
Disbelief and Denial
One thing that appears in a number
of comments and private emails to me is a pattern of disbelief and denial. That
is, if someone read through to the last section (“Doing Better”), they
understood generally where I was going and why I started the way I did. But
many didn’t get past the introduction, and did not like it at all — although if
they decided to take another look, based on what I had written before, they
generally read through to the end. Responses to the next two pieces may well be
better, because they won’t be a critique of the anti-Zionist movement and
people in America
and elsewhere, and defensiveness won’t generally be a problem. But if people
don’t accept the premises and the critique in the first installment, that won’t
matter in a practical way.
Look at it this way. To Israel and its supporters, there are three
essential benchmarks of their status and success: (1) their military power, (2)
the number of settlements and settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and
(3) the extent and durability of their control (or leverage) over the US Government.
All else is detail.
Now, no matter what anyone thinks
of justice for the Palestinians or the efforts to date to help them, or actions
to counter Zionist activity in Palestine and Washington, or anything else along
these lines, just look hard at those benchmarks and ask yourselves if any
single one has been weakened even slightly by our efforts over the years. The
answer is no, without any qualification whatsoever. Compared to even five years
ago, Israeli military power is significantly greater, there are significantly
more settlements and settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the
29-ovation response of the US Congress to Netanyahu’s diatribe coupled with
Obama’s reaffirmation of eternal US support for Israel speak for themselves.
Since what we have been doing is
manifestly inadequate and unsuccessful, even if it makes some people feel good
as they give press conferences and jet around the world organizing things, we
need to wipe the slate clean and start over with something different that might
do better. I tell you this: absent some incidental successes with the BDS
(Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign, it is hard to see how we could
do worse by trying a different approach.
I think it might help people
reading my work to understand that I am a pragmatist and not an ideologue in a
political, philosophical or theological sense. I want to win and I want to do
things that work, whatever their origins – monarchist, Marxist, or whatever.
This is not an affirmation
of “the end justifies the means,” because that can all too often be used to
excuse the inexcusable. For instance (to upset a lot of Americans and British),
had I been in some “Supreme Command” during WWII and been approached by Air
Marshal Harris (RAF Bomber Command) and General LeMay (his US counterpart) with
a plan to break the morale of the German Army by killing their families in
burning cities behind them, I would have had both of them put against a wall
and shot. The concept was unbelievably savage – and if one wants a pragmatic
reason for rejecting such things, they also don’t (and in this case, didn’t)
work. So I guess while I am a pragmatist, it is within definite ethical limits.
Diverse Localities
Further, several people pointed
out that I was way too cavalier in pointing people to focus on local areas,
because Zionist influence was significant there, too. And I concede that I did
not carefully define my terms, so I will make an extra effort to do so in the
future.
But this is one of those areas
where both I and the others were and are correct. Within the US, in many large metropolitan areas (e.g., Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles) and many prominent university towns (e.g., Berkeley, CA and Ann Arbor, MI)
the Jewish population is several times the national average and the Zionist
influence correspondingly more significant. But in many smaller cities (e.g., Lansing, MI and Jackson, MS
– both state capitals) and almost all smaller towns everywhere, that is not the
case. So I’d modify my initial suggestion to recommend side-stepping the former
category – why do an uphill fight if it isn’t necessary? – and concentrating on
places in the second category.
Israel and Palestine
Finally, it should be understood
that I am not and have never been in the camp of those who say “I am not
anti-Israel, I am pro-Palestinian.” I am the opposite: I am not
pro-Palestinian, I am anti-Israel. I am not pro-Palestinian, because while
their suffering is and has been very real, that of many others out there was or
is much worse (one need think for openers of Somalia
and Darfur and Chechnya and Zimbabwe and
Rawanda, for instance, in different ways). More importantly, their “leadership”
<sic.> with or without reconciliation is an incompetent, self-serving,
corrupt, autocratic mess, and always has been. But principally it is because
most of them have shuffled off without a fight — hell, if the Palestinians had
fought half as hard and as well against Israeli occupation as the Iraqi resistance
or the Afghans did and do against the US and its allies, there would likely be
no settlements anywhere and Israel would have been beleaguered and embattled
from within as well as from without long ago.
“The Lord helps those who helps
themselves,” a saying in Protestant Christianity goes, and I am more than
willing to fight with and for people who fight as well as they can with what
they have (which is why, not discounting the above, I do incline slightly
toward Hamas and not Fatah), but I am NOT willing to pick up a load for those
who mostly throw their hands in the air and cry “pity me, help me.” The fact
that the Arab states, one and all, have squandered many opportunities to use
their wealth to leverage their own international positions (and that of the
Palestinians), preferring to spend it on luxuries and infrastructure while the
Israelis took a more pragmatic view of their priorities, just underscores that
point. That the Arab states are largely a collection of quasi-medieval
monarchies (albeit with a modernizing element) and secular dictatorships
doesn’t help.
And I am anti-Israel, but not
because it is or wants to be a Jewish state, or because of what it does to the
Palestinians and its neighbors. Race, ethnicity and religion are utterly irrelevant
to me, in both personal and professional terms. Moreover, show me a country
that never in its history oppressed an internal minority (ethnic, religious,
whatever) or beat up on a weaker neighbor, and I’ll show you a country without
an internal minority or any weaker neighbors — maybe Fiji
and Monaco?
I am anti-Israel because of what it has done to the US
in the furtherance of its own goals (the USS
Liberty incident and 9/11 obviously stand out), and because of the
leverage it has acquired over the US Government and its policies
through the machinations of the domestic Jewish community here.
But I tell you this: if Ireland or
Italy or India had done similar things to the US, and leveraged the US
Government through the indigenous Irish or Italian or Indian communities here,
and Israel had not done the same thing, then I would be anti-Ireland or
anti-Italy or anti-India as I am now anti-Israel. None of them have done that,
but you understand that the only thing I am “pro-” is “pro-American,” and I
oppose those who harm — or try to harm — me and my people and my country. And
if that includes lifetime politicians who have sold out to a foreign lobby,
then I’d put them on the political chopping-block just as I would the country
that did the bribing and blackmailing.
And so it stands. If you have
reached this point, watch for the second and third parts of the trilogy, due
out on June 27 (Demystifying 9/11:
Israel and the Tactics of Mistake) and July 4 (tentatively Riposte Against Zionism: A Plan of Action),
the latter focusing on the US but easily adaptable to other countries and
cultures. Just stay tuned and keep an open mind.
____________________________________________________
*Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University
of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army
War College.
He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net
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