[Peace-discuss] Wise words from Steven Salaita

[David Green]

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<https://www.counterpunch.org> -*Renouncing Israel on PrinciplePosted By Steven
Salaita On December 12, 2019 @ 1:58 am In articles 2015,Leading
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When anti-Zionists discuss the Middle East, the topic of Israel’s existence
rarely arises.  It’s almost exclusively a pro-Israel talking point. We’re
focused on national liberation, on surviving repression, on strategies of
resistance, on recovering subjugated histories, on the complex (and
sometimes touchy) relationships among an Indigenous population
disaggregated by decades of aggression.  That a colonial state—or any
state, really—possesses no ontological rights is an unspoken assumption.

“Do you recognize Israel’s right to exist?” pretends to honor the
downtrodden, but it is an altogether different proposition, transforming
sophisticated ideas of liberation into a crude test of political
respectability. Prioritizing the state as worthy of relief, as something to
which we automatically owe deference, subsumes life to the imperatives of
capital.

The fundamental goal of the question is to attribute a sinister position to
dissidents.  It accomplishes that goal even when the dissidents haven’t
promoted destruction.  Mere defense of
<https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1608465772/counterpunchmaga>Palestinian
life is enough to evoke the settler’s existential fear.  For people
socialized into orthodoxy, Israel is synonymous with progress, technology,
and production.  Affirming its existence is an endorsement of the status
quo; no matter how ludicrous as a moral premise, in capitalist spaces it is
a perfectly sensible demand.

There are plenty of reasons to eschew the demand.  The first reason is
practical:  we don’t advocate for the destruction of human communities, but
of ideologies conducive to racism and inequality.  It’s both insidious and
unethical to conflate Jewish people (of any national origin) with the
existence of a violent, rapacious polity.  That sort of conflation is a
grave disservice to activists and intellectuals devoted to a better
world—and to the communities for whom a better world is a necessity of
survival.  Nobody has ever asked me to affirm another nation-state’s
existence, a demand I would likewise decline. Zionists constantly single
out Israel for special treatment.

Moreover, it is remarkably impudent for champions of a state founded on the
destruction of Palestine and now in its eighth decade of ethnic cleansing
to ask the victims of its malevolence for recognition.  Even worse,
recognition is only the tip of the demand.  We’re also being asked to
legitimize apartheid and ignore the routine commission of war crimes.  The
upshot is to validate Israel as a militarized object of Western
imperialism—in other words, to affirm the existence of a deeply antihuman
entity.

Let’s consider the demand in context of North America, where it’s most
frequently issued.  Those of us operating in this geography haven’t the
authority to abdicate nearly 80 (and arguably 100) percent of historical
Palestine.  It’s not any Westerner’s prerogative to relinquish Palestine
under the pressure of a spuriously humanistic insistence by Zionists that
their perfidy be excused because it will somehow make us more responsible
citizens.

I am happy, eager even, to affirm the right of Jewish people to live in
peace and security, wherever that may be, a right all humans deserve in no
particular order of worthiness.  But I won’t ratify Israel’s bloody
founding or its devotion to racial supremacy.  Ultimately, when Zionists
demand that you affirm Israel’s right to exist, what they really seek is
affirmation of Palestinian nonexistence.

Beyond these philosophical, political, and practical factors, there’s a
worthy psychological reason to refuse the demand.  Zionists are the bully
in this supposed conflict and enjoy nearly universal support in centers of
political and economic power.  They have more funds, access to corporate
media, and the backing of the US military. Palestinians, however, hold one
form of power that doesn’t require money, platforms, or weaponry:  the
ability to withhold legitimacy from Israel.  It is a small power, without a
material apparatus, but it is power, nevertheless, one that only a fool or
opportunist would relinquish.  When an oppressor makes submission the basis
of civic responsibility, insolence is the only dignified response.

*This essay first appeared on Steven Salaita’s website: No Flags, No
Slogans <https://stevesalaita.com/>.*

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