[News] Israel lobby groups hatch plan to divide the left

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-groups-hatch-plan-divide-left 



  Israel lobby groups hatch plan to divide the left

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 15 
July 2019

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Influential Israel lobby groups are offering “rules” for how Jewish 
communal organizations can divide the left and break up emerging 
intersectional coalitions.

They also advocate for “delegitimizing” Jews deemed too supportive of 
Palestinian rights.

Israel and its lobby see the strengthening solidarity between 
Palestinians and other oppressed groups, especially Black people in the 
United States, as a major threat and they are determined to fight back.

Indeed, last year, Al Jazeera’s leaked undercover documentary /The 
Lobby–/USA 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-film-israel-lobby-didnt-want-you-see/25876> 
revealed how the Israeli government and its lobby worked to disrupt 
<https://thegrayzone.com/2018/09/05/censored-documentary-exposes-the-israeli-governments-attack-on-black-lives-matter/> 
the Black Lives Matter movement in retaliation for Black solidarity with 
Palestine.

The term intersectionality was coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 
1989 to describe a feminist perspective that explains how individuals or 
communities experience overlapping systems of oppression based on 
gender, race, ethnicity and other socioeconomic factors.

In recent years, intersectionality has become a guiding principle for 
organizers to build more powerful cross-community coalitions to fight 
white supremacy, mass incarceration, police violence, economic 
inequality and anti-immigrant policies.

But in a new report 
<https://www.reutgroup.org/Publications/Navigating-Intersectional-Landscapes>, 
Israel’s Reut Institute 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/reut-institute> and the US-based 
Jewish Council for Public Affairs 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jewish-council-public-affairs> warn 
that intersectionality “undermines Jewish communities’ agendas, 
including support for the State of Israel.”

The report points with dismay at how Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes> 
that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 550 children, 
coincided with the uprising in Ferguson 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ferguson>, Missouri, after the 
police killing of Black teenager Michael Brown.

This generated strong expressions of solidarity symbolized by the 
hashtag #Palestine2Ferguson.

It also brought renewed attention to parallels, including concrete 
connections <https://deadlyexchange.org/> such as joint training 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-cops-trained-use-lethal-israeli-tactics>, 
between Israeli forces that routinely kill Palestinians and US police 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/police> that perpetrate killings of 
Black people.

Activist coalitions have won notable 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/how-campaigners-convinced-police-chiefs-dump-israel-junket> 
victories, including the decision by the North Carolina city of Durham 
to ban the training 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/listen-how-durham-activists-led-city-ban-police-training-israel> 
of its police by foreign militaries.

The 2014 Ferguson uprising was, according to the report, “a strategic 
benchmark in the evolution of anti-Israel agendas within intersectional 
spaces.”


    Blaming “Corbynization”

The “challenge of intersectionality,” the report states, is compounded 
by a number of political developments including what it calls 
“Corbynization” – the mainstreaming of a “new anti-Semitism” as is 
allegedly happening in Britain’s Labour Party.

This “new anti-Semitism” is explicitly equated by the report’s authors 
with anti-Zionism.

Zionism, Israel’s state ideology, is racist 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/france-criminalize-anti-zionism> 
because it grants superior rights to Jews 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-passes-law-entrenching-apartheid> 
enshrined in dozens of Israeli laws 
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771> and holds that 
Palestinians expelled and exiled from their homeland should not be 
allowed to return to it solely and exclusively because they are not Jews 
<https://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine/>.

Anti-Zionism, therefore, is not prejudice against Jews as Israel and its 
lobby groups claim.

Anti-Zionism, based in universal human rights principles, is anti-racism.

However, muddying the waters with false equivalencies is a central 
strategy of the Israel lobby, including the years-long campaign of 
fabrications 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/bbcs-anti-corbyn-hatchet-job-fails-land-blow> 
that Labour, led by lifelong Palestine solidarity campaigner Jeremy 
Corbyn, is institutionally anti-Semitic.

The report claims that “ ‘Corbynization’ is spreading through segments 
of the political left” and that “UK-based anti-Israel groups have been 
inspiring liberal and progressive elite circles worldwide.”

This underlines why Israel and its lobby view discrediting and removing 
Corbyn 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-running-campaign-against-jeremy-corbyn> 
as a paramount priority.

“Corbynization” apparently affects the US Democratic Party 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/democratic-party>, where the 
report’s authors lament the long-observed 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-support-israel-eroding-not-among-trump-voters-poll-finds> 
“great decline” of support for Israel.

The debate 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/democratic-hopefuls-seek-safe-way-criticize-israel> 
over the Democratic Party’s stance on Israel 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/kamala-harris-supports-segregation-supporting-israel>, 
pushed by progressives, constitutes a “threat to the future of the 
traditional US bipartisan support for Israel,” the report notes.


    Israel and the far-right

Other headwinds faced by pro-Israel advocates include, according to the 
report, “the growing identification between Israel and the political 
right” exemplified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 
alliances with white supremacist 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionist-white-supremacist-alliance-trumps-white-house> 
and anti-Semitic 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/netanyahu-advisers-hatched-anti-semitic-conspiracy-against-george-soros> 
leaders such as US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister 
Viktor Orban <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/viktor-orban>.

These alliances “have driven liberals and young millennials to question 
whether traditional ties to Israel are deserved or beneficial,” the 
report concedes.

These affinities were highlighted over the weekend by Trump’s racist 
attacks on four members of Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/alexandria-ocasio-cortez>, Ilhan 
Omar <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ilhan-omar>, Rashida Tlaib 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rashida-tlaib> and Ayanna S. Pressley.

Trump demanded 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/politics/trump-democratic-congresswomen-racism.html> 
that the elected women of color “go back” to their own countries, 
casting them as foreigners, rather than Americans.

He claimed 
<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150556162393300992> that 
the four progressive newcomers in Congress “hate Israel with a true and 
unbridled passion,” an accusation that will do little to endear Israel 
to the vast numbers of people expressing disgust at his attacks and 
solidarity with the women he is targeting.

The Israel lobby groups’ report, like Trump, accuses “freshly elected 
‘social Democratic progressives’ ” of promoting “anti-Israel agendas,” 
and doing so “as a fashionable mode of breaking taboos.”

    As far as I’m concerned, the more Trump identifies his disgusting
    racist attacks on left-wing Black, Latina and Muslim women members
    of Congress with Israel, the better. Israel in 2019 is a fountain of
    and inspiration for the vilest and most extreme racial hatred and
    incitement. https://t.co/1IuNECrAb4

    — Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 15, 2019
    <https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1150738355610669056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

    The one foreign country every American is somehow required to love
    more than their own or any other is the racist apartheid state of
    Israel. https://t.co/8sV0G2tzZS

    — Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 15, 2019
    <https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1150584215546847233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>


    “Delegitimize” Jews

The report’s diagnosis includes an intense focus on how political and 
social trends among American Jews are eroding support for Israel, 
Zionism and establishment Jewish communal groups that support Israel.

It includes a “typology” of Jews – dividing them into “four tribes” 
ranging from unquestioning supporters of Israel and “moderate” critics 
of its policies, to “harsh critics” and “radicals.”

The report acknowledges another long-term trend: younger Jews espousing 
universalist and liberal politics identify with Israel less and less 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-trump-accelerating-israels-loss-support>. 
It concedes that many young Jews “feel deceived because Jewish 
organizations provided them only a simplistic view of the conflict” with 
Palestinians.

The report is realistic about the difficulty of winning young Jews back, 
and aims at mere damage control.

For example, it recommends that efforts to engage “harsh critics” should 
“not seek to transform them into Israel advocates, but to make them less 
susceptible to anti-Israel influence.”

But the velvet glove comes off when it comes to dealing with “radicals” 
– Jews who reject the racist ideology of Zionism and support nonviolent 
campaigns for Palestinian rights, especially boycott, divestment and 
sanctions (BDS).

“The goal of the Jewish community should be to delegitimize Jewish 
Radicals anti-Zionists [sic] in mainstream progressive circles,” the 
report asserts.


    Doubling down on failed strategies

The report urges Jewish communal groups to form their own 
“intersectional alliances” in an effort to co-opt progressive Jewish and 
non-Jewish communities to the Israel lobby’s anti-Palestinian cause.

It recommends so-called “niche organizations” like the pinkwashing 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing> group A Wider Bridge 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/podcast-ep-5-how-gay-rights-group-uses-right-wing-funding-promote-israel> 
as tools that can be used in co-optation strategies.

Israel advocates are also told to try to “Drive a wedge between 
ideological adversaries and their solidarity supporters.”

The report urges efforts to “develop a counter-intellectual narrative, 
by partnering with key intersectional theorists to break the focus on 
Israel and restore the concept to its original meaning.”

Apparently this “original meaning” does not involve supporting human 
rights for Palestinians and there is no hint at what a persuasive 
“counter-intellectual narrative” to opposing the oppression of 
Palestinians might look like.

Indeed there’s nothing in the report that suggests Israel lobby groups 
have any fundamentally new approaches.

A decade ago, the Reut Institute recommended similar strategies 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-new-strategy-sabotage-and-attack-global-justice-movement/8683> 
to try to sabotage “delegitimizers” of Israel, including efforts to 
divide the solidarity movement and co-opt progressives and soft critics 
of Israel 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/how-israel-lobby-using-owen-jones>.

Yet a secret report 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/leaked-report-highlights-israel-lobbys-failures> 
by Reut and the Anti-Defamation League leaked to The Electronic Intifada 
in 2017 acknowledged that the Israel lobby’s intensive efforts and 
massive spending had failed to counter the “impressive growth” of the 
Palestine solidarity movement.

And like the previous Reut reports, the latest one views opposition to 
Israel merely as a problem of perception that can be changed with clever 
enough “engagement” strategies.

But as long as Israel and its lobby refuse to address the real problem: 
Israel’s violent denial of basic rights to millions of Palestinians 
inside and outside their homeland just because they are not Jewish 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-massacre-price-jewish-state>, 
nothing they do is likely to stem the loss of support.


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