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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-groups-hatch-plan-divide-left">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-groups-hatch-plan-divide-left</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel lobby groups hatch plan to
divide the left</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2019-07-15T18:43:31+00:00">15 July 2019</span></span>
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<p>Influential Israel lobby groups are offering “rules”
for how Jewish communal organizations can divide the
left and break up emerging intersectional coalitions.</p>
<p>They also advocate for “delegitimizing” Jews deemed
too supportive of Palestinian rights.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Indeed, last year, Al Jazeera’s leaked undercover
documentary <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-film-israel-lobby-didnt-want-you-see/25876"><em>The
Lobby–</em>USA</a> revealed how the Israeli
government and its lobby <a
href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/09/05/censored-documentary-exposes-the-israeli-governments-attack-on-black-lives-matter/">worked
to disrupt</a> the Black Lives Matter movement in
retaliation for Black solidarity with Palestine.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But in a <a
href="https://www.reutgroup.org/Publications/Navigating-Intersectional-Landscapes">new
report</a>, Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/reut-institute">Reut
Institute</a> and the US-based <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jewish-council-public-affairs">Jewish
Council for Public Affairs</a> warn that
intersectionality “undermines Jewish communities’
agendas, including support for the State of Israel.”</p>
<p>The report points with dismay at how Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes">2014
assault on Gaza</a> that killed more than 2,200
Palestinians, including 550 children, coincided with
the uprising in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ferguson">Ferguson</a>,
Missouri, after the police killing of Black teenager
Michael Brown.</p>
<p>This generated strong expressions of solidarity
symbolized by the hashtag #Palestine2Ferguson.</p>
<p>It also brought renewed attention to parallels,
including <a href="https://deadlyexchange.org/">concrete
connections</a> such as <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-cops-trained-use-lethal-israeli-tactics">joint
training</a>, between Israeli forces that routinely
kill Palestinians and US <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/police">police</a>
that perpetrate killings of Black people.</p>
<p>Activist coalitions have won <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/how-campaigners-convinced-police-chiefs-dump-israel-junket">notable</a>
victories, including the decision by the North
Carolina city of Durham to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/listen-how-durham-activists-led-city-ban-police-training-israel">ban
the training</a> of its police by foreign
militaries.</p>
<p>The 2014 Ferguson uprising was, according to the
report, “a strategic benchmark in the evolution of
anti-Israel agendas within intersectional spaces.”</p>
<h2>Blaming “Corbynization”</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This “new anti-Semitism” is explicitly equated by the
report’s authors with anti-Zionism.</p>
<p>Zionism, Israel’s state ideology, is <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/france-criminalize-anti-zionism">racist</a>
because it <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-passes-law-entrenching-apartheid">grants
superior rights to Jews</a> enshrined in <a
href="https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771">dozens
of Israeli laws</a> and holds that Palestinians
expelled and exiled from their homeland should not be
allowed to return to it solely and exclusively <a
href="https://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine/">because
they are not Jews</a>.</p>
<p>Anti-Zionism, therefore, is not prejudice against
Jews as Israel and its lobby groups claim.</p>
<p>Anti-Zionism, based in universal human rights
principles, is anti-racism.</p>
<p>However, muddying the waters with false equivalencies
is a central strategy of the Israel lobby, including
the years-long <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/bbcs-anti-corbyn-hatchet-job-fails-land-blow">campaign
of fabrications</a> that Labour, led by lifelong
Palestine solidarity campaigner Jeremy Corbyn, is
institutionally anti-Semitic.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>This underlines why Israel and its lobby view <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-running-campaign-against-jeremy-corbyn">discrediting
and removing Corbyn</a> as a paramount priority.</p>
<p>“Corbynization” apparently affects the US <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/democratic-party">Democratic
Party</a>, where the report’s authors lament the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-support-israel-eroding-not-among-trump-voters-poll-finds">long-observed</a>
“great decline” of support for Israel.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/democratic-hopefuls-seek-safe-way-criticize-israel">debate</a>
over the Democratic Party’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/kamala-harris-supports-segregation-supporting-israel">stance
on Israel</a>, pushed by progressives, constitutes a
“threat to the future of the traditional US bipartisan
support for Israel,” the report notes.</p>
<h2>Israel and the far-right</h2>
<p>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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionist-white-supremacist-alliance-trumps-white-house">white
supremacist</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/netanyahu-advisers-hatched-anti-semitic-conspiracy-against-george-soros">anti-Semitic</a>
leaders such as US President Donald Trump and
Hungarian Prime Minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/viktor-orban">Viktor
Orban</a>.</p>
<p>These alliances “have driven liberals and young
millennials to question whether traditional ties to
Israel are deserved or beneficial,” the report
concedes.</p>
<p>These affinities were highlighted over the weekend by
Trump’s racist attacks on four members of Congress – <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/alexandria-ocasio-cortez">Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ilhan-omar">Ilhan
Omar</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rashida-tlaib">Rashida
Tlaib</a> and Ayanna S. Pressley.</p>
<p>Trump <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/politics/trump-democratic-congresswomen-racism.html">demanded</a>
that the elected women of color “go back” to their own
countries, casting them as foreigners, rather than
Americans.</p>
<p>He <a
href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150556162393300992">claimed</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<div id="file-81251">
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<blockquote data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">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. <a
href="https://t.co/1IuNECrAb4">https://t.co/1IuNECrAb4</a></p>
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) <a
href="https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1150738355610669056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July
15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">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. <a
href="https://t.co/8sV0G2tzZS">https://t.co/8sV0G2tzZS</a></p>
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) <a
href="https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1150584215546847233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July
15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
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<h2>“Delegitimize” Jews</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>The report acknowledges another long-term trend:
younger Jews espousing universalist and liberal
politics <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-trump-accelerating-israels-loss-support">identify
with Israel less and less</a>. It concedes that many
young Jews “feel deceived because Jewish organizations
provided them only a simplistic view of the conflict”
with Palestinians.</p>
<p>The report is realistic about the difficulty of
winning young Jews back, and aims at mere damage
control.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>“The goal of the Jewish community should be to
delegitimize Jewish Radicals anti-Zionists [sic] in
mainstream progressive circles,” the report asserts.</p>
<h2>Doubling down on failed strategies</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It recommends so-called “niche organizations” like
the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing">pinkwashing</a>
group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/podcast-ep-5-how-gay-rights-group-uses-right-wing-funding-promote-israel">A
Wider Bridge</a> as tools that can be used in
co-optation strategies.</p>
<p>Israel advocates are also told to try to “Drive a
wedge between ideological adversaries and their
solidarity supporters.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Indeed there’s nothing in the report that suggests
Israel lobby groups have any fundamentally new
approaches.</p>
<p>A decade ago, the Reut Institute <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-new-strategy-sabotage-and-attack-global-justice-movement/8683">recommended
similar strategies</a> to try to sabotage
“delegitimizers” of Israel, including efforts to
divide the solidarity movement and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/how-israel-lobby-using-owen-jones">co-opt
progressives and soft critics of Israel</a>.</p>
<p>Yet a <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/leaked-report-highlights-israel-lobbys-failures">secret
report</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-massacre-price-jewish-state">just
because they are not Jewish</a>, nothing they do is
likely to stem the loss of support.</p>
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