By Damon Krane
September 4, 2014
Blog Post
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During “Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s July-August 2014 attack on the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza, Palestinian militants killed 66 Israelis. 61 of the dead were Israeli soldiers. Five others were civilians, including one child.
A precise number of Palestinians killed in the offensive is harder to come by. But according to most sources, Israel killed more than 2,000 Palestinians during Operation Protective Edge. Roughly two thirds of the dead were civilians, and about 30 percent of the total were children.
Shortly after the early August ceasefire, a friend posted on his Facebook wall a report about the U.S. decision to increase financial support of Israel’s missile defense system. The decision came despite the many atrocities committed by Israel during Operation Protective Edge (including bombing multiple hospitals, schools and shelters, as well as children playing soccer) and despite Israel already being the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” my friend asked rhetorically.
After several people responded to my friend’s post with similar disapproval of expanded U.S. aid to Israel a supporter of that aid chimed in, and a debate between the two of us followed.
I have reproduced the text of that debate below. In it, my opponent is designated as “DOI”, an acronym for the popular but arguably inaccurate title “defender of Israel.”
While I don’t assume my opponent is a typical example of someone who takes this position, I am curious to know how much his tactics of choice (attempts at intellectual intimidation, obfuscation and false accusations of racism) coincide with those encountered by other critics of settler colonialism, state terrorism and mass murder who have entered into their own debates with so-called defenders of Israel.
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DOI: Its good to know that all of you are OK de-funding our support of one of the only things stopping the rockets, grenades, and mortars flying into a major democratic ally’s civilian territory.
Be frustrated by the death that is happening there. Weep for the loss of life and of humanity. But before you start acting like you have a glimmer of understanding about how to fix the situation, please, I beg of you, try to educate yourself on the root causes of this conflict. The world has enough under-educated demagogues ranting about every topic under the sun as though they had decades of experiential know-how. Its amazing how much confidence a sourced, alternative news site or one semester studying political science can do for an ego.
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Me: DOI is right. It’s not enough to condemn Israel’s latest terrorism, war crimes and acts of collective punishment. They ought to be seen within the context of their “root causes” — namely 65+ years of Zionists conquering and colonizing places where people (of the wrong ethnicity) already lived — most of which could not have been possible without US tax dollars.
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DOI: I would really love to get into this with you all, but the level of ignorance and bias against Israel (and likely Jews in general) has been made abundantly clear. There appears to be no interest in hearing an alternative perspective. The notion that you might not be educated on this topic well enough to speak intelligently about it drove immediate “oh yea” responses that only proved my point to begin with.
This conflict is more complicated. I never said Israel was perfect. I never made any claims of guilt on either side of this. I did say that there are plenty of under-educated demagogues who feel like their internet searching skills qualify them to inform the public about the “truth.” Those who do would be laughably wrong.
Thanks for the laugh.
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Me: Thanks, DOI. Your predictable attempt to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism, your baseless insults, and your disingenuous claim to not be taking any firm position are all stunning testaments to your opposition to demagoguery and love of honest, informed debate. But if you’re not laughing too hard to provide a counter-argument to my claim that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as well as Israel’s most current crimes) is Israel’s settler colonialism, I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’d like to hear it.
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DOI: Damon, I will keep this simple. I have, for the last 32 years, been deeply in touch with this conflict. I have family and friends on both sides of this, have been exposed to and have tracked all aspects of this conflict for as long as I have been able, not just as some trendy news item to champion ignorantly. I have no freaking clue what the solution is.
I do know that your stance is quite firm and to the point. You almost approach it as a matter of fact. There was a reason that I did not offer my opinion. I do not find myself qualified enough to offer short meaningless explanations of “why” on Facebook that will inevitably not do this very serious issue justice, literally or intellectually.
My comments fixated on the demagoguery because there is no intellectual contribution being made. Hence my baseless insult about a lack of education on the topic in question. It is too complex an issue to be meaningfully addressed in this kind of venue or with talking points from an article or two.
So, am I going join this witch hunt? No. I will instead continue educating myself on the issue and if I do make a contribution to a discussion, it will likely be in the form of asking questions of people who seem to have more knowledge on the topic than I. Educated people, who have enough of an understanding of the conflict and who know that there is more to know. Getting into conversations with people who enter into them firmly touting that they already have the answer is fruitless and tiresome. If you want to engage in an honest, informed debate, do not start it off with a preconceived notion of what is right. Test an idea with the intent of gauging its truth, not to pummel the other participants with your foolish demagoguery.
And as I cannot possibly let the “Your predictable attempt to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism” line go unmentioned… Why choose Israel as a focus? What about Israel makes them the prime candidate to level words like “terrorism, war crimes and acts of collective punishment” as descriptors for their behavior over others? Is it because Israel is doing them more frequently and with more intensity than others? Is it because you are directly affected by Israel’s actions that it becomes a personal issue for you? Perhaps it is because of the specific group of people involved… Crimes that dwarf Israeli and Palestinian violence are happening in a neighboring country, no more than 100 miles away. Graves being dug for hundreds of people, filled with people, then executing them. Why dig a grave and move the bodies when you can have the dead walk there before you kill them? Why not talk about that? Not villainous enough for you? Or perhaps its that you object to US dollars going into it. Well, then you should probably object to the military spending of the US in general. If Israel was not there, the US would be blowing lots more than the already inordinate amount that is currently being spent on conflicts with Hamas. Another US occupation, maybe…
Is the issue you have more in line with the “occupation” aspect of this scenario? Is the issue that a state was formed where other indigenous people once lived? Is it that there was a mandate for a country to form by a global authority that hurt a specific group of people? Then up your intellectual critique to all borders and all nations, because the same can be said for every. single. country. to. date. Unless there is a specific issue with the people in this country. In this conflict.
The conflict in Israel/Palestine is devastating and horrendous. The issues that are represented in this conflict are infinitely larger than Israel and Palestine. Fixating on this one conflict makes your critique seem to be chosen out of a pre-existing preference or bias against or for the parties involved. If you want to take the honest, informed debate path, then step it up and debate the issues. Otherwise, it comes off as something else…
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Me: DOI, I decided not to accept your invitation to argue semantics on the vitally important matter of debate etiquette. Instead, I’ve responded to what little you’ve managed to write about the issue at hand – i.e. the questions and claims you begin posting in your fourth paragraph.
Q — “Why choose Israel as a focus?”
A — Because it’s what we’re talking about.
Q — “What about Israel makes them the prime candidate to level words like ‘terrorism, war crimes and acts of collective punishment’ as descriptors for their behavior over others? Is it because Israel is doing them more frequently and with more intensity than others?”
A — Yes. In “Operation Protective Edge,” as in “Operation Brother’s Keeper,” as in “Operation Cast Lead”, as in the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel has been and continues to be the disproportionately belligerent, disproportionately criminal, disproportionately civilian-murdering party. Would you like to debate that, or would you rather stick to accusing me of anti-semitism?
Q — “Is it because you are directly affected by Israel’s actions that it becomes a personal issue for you?”
A — A “personal” issue? Geez. You make it sound like the feminine hygiene aisle at the supermarket. Is it a “personal” issue for me because I’m talking about it? Because I have an opinion? And is that suspect and likely racist because… why again?
Anyway, in direct response to your question rather than your beloved vague insinuations: No, it is more a matter of cause than effect. As an American, I am a citizen and taxpayer of the only country in the world that, while masquerading as some neutral mediator, in reality enables Israel’s rejection of a political settlement with the Palestinians and the ongoing destruction of Palestinian society. Consequently, I have a responsibility for Israeli atrocities and a potential to stop them that I do not have when it comes to many other atrocities around the world, such as the Syrian situation to which you presumably alluded. For those astoundingly obvious reasons I believe I should prioritize this situation over those in which I am less involved and have less ability to affect positively. The key factor is not the scale of the atrocities (which is bad enough in this case), but the personal culpability and personal opportunity I have vis-à-vis these atrocities. That’s what makes it a “personal” issue for me, and for every other American.
So, do you agree that we should be more concerned with those things in which we are more involved and have greater opportunity to affect than with those things in which we are less involved and have less opportunity to affect?
If so, do you agree that Americans play a greater role in and have more ability to affect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than they do the Syrian civil war?
You can answer if you like, or you can keep charging me with anti-semitism.
Claim — “Or perhaps its that you object to US dollars going into it. Well, then you should probably object to the military spending of the US in general.”
Response — Yes, DOI, that would be an excellent way for us to stop talking about Israel, wouldn’t it? For the record, I DO object to both the specific scale and, more importantly, the specific applications of U.S. military spending. For the record, I also like Annie Hall much more than Woody Allen’s other movies and Life of Brian way more than anything else Monty Python ever did. But I’m going to stick to talking about Israel here.
Claim — “If Israel was not there, the US would be blowing lots more than the already inordinate amount that is currently being spent on conflicts with Hamas. Another US occupation, maybe…”
Response — So is your implication here that I’m unrealistically frugal when it comes to pursuing imperialistic American objectives in the Middle East? Because resisting those objectives is my intention, not pursuing them. So it’s not a matter of fiscal conservatism for me, just basic morality. But in all fairness to you, I may be attributing far more substance to your comment above than it actually contained.
{Editor’s note, 9/4/14 – Something I failed to add at the time but should have: Israel is not at war with Hamas. Israel’s beef is with Palestinians in general. That is why this conflict pre-dates Hamas. That is why this conflict exists in the Fatah-controlled West Bank as well as Hamas-controlled Gaza. That is why this conflict exists within Israel itself with regard to the “Jewish State’s” minority of non-Jewish citizens. And finally, that is why Israel is currently massacring a civilian population of Palestinians in Gaza much more than it is targeting Hamas.
Israel is not at war with Hamas. Israeli propagandists and their U.S. counterparts, including President Obama and most of Congress, are merely using Hamas as a convenient scapegoat to justify longstanding U.S.-Israeli policies of Israeli expansion at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. Your attempt to portray the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, or U.S. support for Israel in general, as “conflicts with Hamas” shows that you belong to this camp of propagandists, whether knowingly or unwittingly.]
Q & claim — “Is the issue you have more in line with the ‘occupation’ aspect of this scenario? Is the issue that a state was formed where other indigenous people once lived? Is it that there was a mandate for a country to form by a global authority that hurt a specific group of people? Then up your intellectual critique to all borders and all nations, because the same can be said for every. single. country. to. date. Unless there is a specific issue with the people in this country. In this conflict.”
Response — Human history is repulsively violent, and there’s a lot that’s wrong (in both theory and practice) with all modern nation-states. But not every modern nation-state was formed as a settler colony that required the removal of most of the region’s indigenous population. Nor does every nation-state that was formed in such a way continue to confine the remnants of the indigenous population to impoverished cantons. Nor does every nation-state subject millions of indigenous non-citizens to military occupation. Nor is every nation-state currently pursuing, as we speak, Manifest Destiny-style expansion of its territory. Israel is a country ¼ the size of Ohio. Israel is not the world. I didn’t realize erasing meaningful distinctions and trying to mystify fairly straightforward matters is what it means to “up” one’s “intellectual critique.”
Also, I don’t own a time machine. My opposition to settler colonialism is across the board. But it has the potential to do more good for the Palestinians than, say, for the millions of Native Americans that were conquered, displaced, and/or exterminated before my birth. But perhaps the idea that temporal distinctions also matter merely speaks to my level of ignorance.
DOI’s Conclusion — “Fixating on this one conflict makes your critique seem to be chosen out of a pre-existing preference or bias against or for the parties involved. If you want to take the honest, informed debate path, then step it up and debate the issues. Otherwise it comes off as something else…”
Response — My goodness, you make a sleazy argument, DOI. And here’s why I say that…
Since you’ve brought up racism, repeatedly, I want to share a personal story with you.
I grew up in a very backwards, white supremacist area. Shortly after I began developing an anti-racist consciousness, I discovered something odd. Whenever I’d try to talk to other white folks about the marginalization and oppression of African Americans, they’d always say “Well, what about the Native Americans? They’ve had it so much worse, haven’t they?”
Since this was the only time I ever heard these people express concern for Native Americans, it soon became clear they weren’t at all concerned with Native Americans; they were concerned with diverting the discussion from ongoing institutionalized and cultural racism against African Americans.
Now, note that “ultra conservatives” (i.e. American white nationalists / white supremacists) take this one step further and accuse the person trying to talk about anti-Black racism of “reverse racism.” That is, of hating whites.
Then fringe white racist groups take it further still. When the person criticizing white supremacist racism is themselves white, they have a name for that. I learned it at the first political rally I ever participated in – an NAACP march in response to a cross burning intended to scare a dark-skinned southwest Asian man out of an otherwise all-white Pennsylvania town where I lived in 1997. The Confederate Flag-waving Klansmen and masked, swastika-sporting neo-Nazis who protested from the march’s sidelines taught me that name when they applied it to me. It’s “race traitor.”
Now, I believe this personal story is relevant with regard to two things I find very troubling about your last post. The first is that your modus operandi is very much like those white folks who used the plight of Native Americans as a ploy for evading a discussion of anti-Black racism – yours is just a more sophisticated variety of bullshit, and it goes like this:
Damon, if you’re not simultaneously talking about every atrocity/human rights abuse/etc. as well as certain other mysterious issues I’ve referred to but haven’t named, then you don’t have any right to talk about this issue. So you can either attempt the former, which is impossible and therefore proof of the utter incomprehensibility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even for a mind as brilliant and well-informed as my own, or you can just shut up. Either way, one thing is for sure – you won’t be talking about Israel, and I will have succeeded.
Thus all you offer is evasion, obfuscation and a feeble attempt at intellectual bullying – those fallacious appeals to authority which aren’t exactly made more persuasive by the fact that the authority to which you’re appealing is none other than the authority you yourself claim to possess. There is absolutely nothing of substance in either the short or long versions of the exceedingly pretentious and otherwise vacuous comments you’ve seen fit to offer here as Israel continues to kill a disproportionate amount of disproportionately civilian Palestinians and lay waste to Gaza. That’s an epic fail. At life.
The second troubling parallel I see is that Zionists defend Israel in exactly the same way white supremacists defend their ideology. Just as white supremacists accuse their opponents of “reverse racism” (as though opposing white supremacy is the same thing as hating whites), Zionists accuse critics of Israel of anti-semitism (as though being opposed to Israel’s settler colonialism, human rights violations, war crimes, and apartheid policies is the same thing as hating Jews). Further still, whereas white supremacists deem their white opponents “race traitors,” Zionists have a name for Jews that step out of line, too: “self-hating Jews.”
Of course, this is just a broader right wing tendency. It’s why U.S. “conservatives” call their domestic political opponents “anti-American.” It’s the fascistic concept that the state and its policies embody the essence of a people, so you can’t criticize the former without condemning the latter.
Thus it’s not surprising that the most recent Gallup poll found that while 55 percent of Americans 65 and older support Israel’s current massacre of Palestinians, the same is true of just 25 percent of Americans ages 18-29. In other words, the classic Zionist defense that you’ve employed here – i.e. that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-semitic – doesn’t really fly these days with many Americans outside of the Fox News demographic. And the reason it DOES fly with that demographic is that its part of their political playbook, too.
Now, since we’re talking about right wing ideology and racism, let’s talk about your support for Israel.
I’m not opposed to Jewish nationalism per se. Particularly in the years shortly after the Holocaust, when Israel was founded, I think the desire among Jews for a national homeland was exceedingly justified. Had Israel been carved out of Germany, then I’d most likely be a Zionist.
But there is no moral justification for Palestinians paying such a steep price for a sense of… I would call it “Jewish security,” except that the so-called “Jewish State” is no more synonymous with the global Jewish population than Israel is pursuing security. Much like the U.S. in its so-called “War on Terror” (and in conjunction with the U.S. in that war) what Israel is pursuing is expanded geographical dominance at the EXPENSE of its population’s security. And that’s not worth the confiscation of Palestinian life and land.
Since Palestinians don’t owe Jews Holocaust reparations (although others certainly have and do), Jews have no entitlement to Palestinians’ land and resources – unless, of course, you feel that Jews are more deserving on racial or religiously chauvinistic grounds. But what has Zionism become by now, if not a fundamentally chauvinistic, right wing ideology employed to rationalize a kind of gradual genocide?
That’s not where I want to see my tax dollars go. That’s not something I’m comfortable seeing done in my name.
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DOI: Disappointing. You had so many ways to respond, so many opportunities to take the moral high ground. I am genuinely disappointed. At least you didn’t make vague claims at having Jewish friends to justify your stance… The only thing that would be more wrongfully placed than the balance of your second “response.”
Why is my desire to talk about the root cause of this problem construed as pro-Israel? Because I am the only person in this lynch mob questioning the reasoning behind it? A cute notion, but not true.
So, am I pro Israel? Lets get your base-line assumption about me addressed up front, since you clearly lack a capacity to understand why anyone would want to focus on solving the conflict and not fixating on talking points and haphazard and flawed moral arguments. Yes. I am pro-Israel. You are failing miserably in not seeing that I am pro-Palestine just as strongly.
The only thing that cutting off funding to Israel will do is increase Israeli casualties. The Iron Dome that Austin wants us to cut funding to is defensive. The ONLY thing it does is intercept attacks made on Israeli soil. Wanting to even out loss of life to both sides of a conflict is not taking the moral high ground. It is blood-lust. Guess you did pick up some habits from growing up in a white supremacist area after all.
Or, do we want to actually address HOW to stop the violence? (I am sure that was a frequent conversation with your white supremacist childhood friends) Does that even matter? When we stop funding Israel, will anyone give one damn about Palestine? Jesus, how can so many be so painfully narrow-minded?
Now to get to my “classic” Zionist defense of Israel… I am so amazed that this is still a thing. Why not just reference the “problem of the Jew?” I did not defend Israel’s actions. Once. I hate what is happening. I actually want it to stop. Lowering the budget for their defense system will make them more desperate for severe action. To expect anything else is kinda silly and naive. Unless it is only a desire to remove your personal culpability… Then hurrah head-in-sand!
The people of Palestine deserve better champions than you…
And if you want to go tit for tat with personal stories of discrimination, we can have that conversation elsewhere. I am very happy you are championing civil rights issues. It is a tragedy that they still need to be addressed. I guess too many people are fixating on the people exhibiting racism and not trying to change the ideas behind racism…
I do, however, really hope you approach it from a slightly higher moral standard than you have shown here… Telling a Jewish nation not to defend itself in a post-Holocaust world, or to cut funding to its defense tool… Why not just tell them to move to the US, there are plenty of spaces at the back of the bus…. Jesus…
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Me: I’ll make you a deal, DOI. If anyone else reading this comment thread wants to point out anything in your previous two comments that they found persuasive or in any way meriting a response from me, then I’ll address it. Otherwise, I don’t think your attempt to double down on your favorite absurdity is anything I haven’t already refuted.
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DOI: Or you could explain how cutting funding will actually address the problem. And you could back up your claims of Israel’s intent behind its actions. Or…
[At this point, DOI attached a link to Sacha Baron Cohen as “Borat” performing the song “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”
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Me: As I said, “anyone else.”
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DOI: Zzzzzzzzzz
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20 days pass (August 3 – 23) without anyone commenting.
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Me: OK. Looks like nobody took me up on that offer…
But since I don’t like loose ends, I’ll respond to that bit about the missile defense system you brought in at the end, DOI. Why shouldn’t U.S. taxpayers pay for it? Here’s why.
I.) VIOLENCE REDUCTION / PEACE
Because I believe all human life has equal value, I’m interested in acting to achieve a net reduction in violence and oppression. While there is violence and death on both sides of this conflict, the vast majority of violence is coming from the Israeli side while the vast majority of deaths are happening on the Palestinian side – and that’s even more the case if we’re talking about the deaths of civilians, and even more still if we’re talking about the deaths of children. Therefore, anyone concerned with a net reduction of violence is going to prioritize reducing violence against the people who are suffering the bulk of it – and in this case that’s the Palestinians.
This begs the question: Why is the U.S. funding a missile defense system for Israel instead of one for Gaza? Israel already has one and needs it less. Gaza has none and needs it more.
At the very least, we might wonder why the U.S. isn’t funding missile defense systems for both sides, seeing as how the U.S. is such a neutral mediator and all.
Sadly, reducing the violence of this conflict is not the driving goal of President Obama or virtually any member of Congress – Republican or Democrat. And that says something very chilling (but hardly surprising) about the U.S. socio-political system.
But in contrast to the garbage of debased humanity that rises to the top of our political system, people with fundamentally decent moral values should want a net reduction in violence. And there’s no way to argue that such decent people should prioritize funding Israel’s missile defense system over providing aid to Palestinians.
II.) PEACE & JUSTICE
Of course, decent people aren’t just concerned with violence reduction or “peace.” They’re also concerned with justice. “Peace and justice” get lumped together because they’re inseparably linked, but they’re two words because they are nonetheless distinct. This situation illustrates all of that quite well. So let’s bring justice into the picture, too.
Israel isn’t only the belligerent party because it is disproportionately violent at present and over all. Israel is also the belligerent party because its longstanding policies of settler colonialism (and more specifically, ethnic cleansing) are the root of the conflict.
Even if Israelis and Palestinians were only fighting with water balloons, the fact would remain that Palestinians are fighting to keep their land and Israelis are fighting to take it. One cause is just, the other is not. So once you add a sense of justice to a desire for peace, the argument for supporting Israel gets even weaker.
Bringing justice into the picture also makes something else clear. That is, if you really want a net reduction in violence, work not only toward protecting the predominant victims and constraining the predominant perpetrators, but also work toward eliminating the structural source of the violence. In this case, the structural source of the violence is Israel’s settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
But all that said, wouldn’t a better Israeli missile defense system still save (Israeli) lives – particularly those of (Israeli) civilians? And isn’t that a good thing?
Of course it would. And of course that’s a good thing. But that doesn’t mean U.S. taxpayers should have to pay for it. In fact, anyone concerned with peace and justice should be opposed to the U.S. or any other country besides Israel paying for it. And here’s why…
III.) THE COSTS OF COLONIALISM
Settler colonialism has its costs for the settlers, too. The resistance of indigenous people is predictable, as is the fact that it will sometimes take very ugly forms. There are cases of Native Americans massacring noncombatant European settlers, including children. There are cases of black Africans doing the same in Europe’s former African colonies. Rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza and suicide bombers are just more of the same. We don’t have to support any of these atrocious acts to recognize their predictability or their root causes. Because oppression isn’t reserved for angels, the resistance it engenders will not always be pretty. Those horrors are a cost of colonialism that settlers have to pay – in terms of defending themselves against it, even if not in terms of actually suffering it.
And that’s why if Israel wants a better missile defense system to protect itself from the costs of its own aggression, then Israel should pay for it. Especially since Israel CAN pay for it. We’re talking about an unusually affluent country, with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, that the U.S. has been pouring billions into annually for decades.
Israel can afford a better missile defense system; it just might need to sacrifice other projects and programs in order to get it. That’s the nature of cost. But so long as American taxpayers are paying the financial costs of Israel’s settler colonial project and Israelis are enjoying so many of the benefits for free, we can expect Israel to stay its present course – a course which is far more likely to result in a net increase in violence than a net reduction in violence.
IV.) REBUTTAL?
Now, DOI… as much as I enjoyed your unintentional self-parody in that Borat clip… (i.e. using the fictional anti-semitism of a Sacha Baron Cohen character to illustrate the fictional anti-semitism you attribute to me) …you are still welcome to break with past practice and enter into a substantive discussion by responding directly to some of the many points I have made in this and previous posts. After all, I think I have responded directly to each and every point you’ve attempted to make up until now.
Editor’s note, 9/4/14 – I posted the entry above on August 23rd. To date I have received no response.
‘Blood Bucket’ makes big mess for supporters of Israel’s ethnic cleansing
By Damon Krane
September 7, 2014
The Ohio University Post (published September 8, 2014)
The Athens News (published September 11, 2014)
Mondoweiss (quoted in articles September 9 and September 16, 2014)
*Updated with afterword, 9/16/14*
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Ohio University Student Senate president Megan Marzec clearly stated her position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It speaks volumes about her opponents that they’d rather silence her than attempt to argue against that position. From the online death threats to that masterpiece of passive aggressive condescension Rabbi Danielle Leshaw authored for last Friday’s Post, those demanding Marzec’s resignation from Student Senate (and/or her head on a platter) don’t seem to want to talk about the issue at hand any more than they want Marzec to talk about it. That’s because Marzec’s detractors aren’t “supporters of Israel.” They are supporters of ethnic cleansing. And ethnic cleansing is a hard thing to advocate openly, especially if you want to keep fooling Americans into paying for it.
Israel was established as an ethnic and religiously Jewish state in 1948 in an area primarily inhabited by Palestinian Muslims and Christians. To make way for a Jewish majority, 700,000 Palestinians were pushed out of Israel – many to the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel then conquered in 1967. Ever since, Palestinians there (now numbering 4 million) have lived under Israeli military occupation. While continuing to expel Palestinians from the West Bank and incorporating more of their land into Israel, Israel has turned the less desirable land of Gaza into an overcrowded, open-air prison where Israel controls the borders, imposes an impoverishing trade embargo, and routinely attacks trapped Gazans with the world’s 4th most powerful military – attacks Israeli military strategists callously refer to as “mowing the lawn.”
During Israel’s latest attack on Gaza this summer, Palestinian militants killed 66 Israelis, including 61 soldiers, three adult civilians and one child. Israeli soldiers, meanwhile, killed over 2,000 Palestinians, an estimated two thirds of whom were civilians and 30 percent children. ( Note: The most reliable figures to emerge since this article was published place the Israeli death toll at 72 and Palestinian dead at 2,100.) After Israel had finished bombing Palestinian hospitals, schools, shelters – even children playing soccer – the U.S. Congress followed up on the Senate’s unanimous declaration of support for Israel in July with its early August decision to increase funding for improvements to Israel’s missile defense system. No one in Congress suggested giving any missile defense system to Palestinians.
For decades Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. For the past 20 years, the U.S. has given Israel between $2.5 and $4 billion annually – including $8.5 million in military aid each day of fiscal year 2014. The US gives more money to Israel than to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined, even though Israel is a country just one fifth the size of Ohio whose citizens enjoy one of the world’s highest per capita incomes and longest life expectancies.
There are several explanations for the so-called “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel. Political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt focus on the power of the Israeli lobby. I think U.S. elites want a well-armed, non-Arab, oil-free dependency in the world’s most important energy producing region. But there’s also a natural cultural affinity.
Israel and the U.S. are both settler colonial states founded on ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians of today are the Native Americans of 200 years ago. Just as Columbus “discovered” America and our slave-owning, Indian-killing, “religious freedom-loving” forbearers “civilized” this country, Israel was “a land without people” (because Palestinians don’t count) just waiting for “a people without land” to “take the desert and make it bloom.” Or, as an Israeli-funded subway poster campaign in major U.S. cities put it recently: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel.”
Yet as much as our shared national mythology might appeal to the Fox News demographic, young Americans just aren’t buying it anymore. A recent Gallup poll found that while 55 percent of Americans age 65 and older supported Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza, the same was true of just 25 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29, 51 percent of whom opposed the offensive. So when OU’s supporters of ethnic cleansing say Megan Marzec doesn’t speak for most of her fellow students, remember this: Megan Marzec speaks for most of her generation.
And when Leshaw and company have the audacity to attempt to speak for all Jews on campus, remember not only all the members of Jews Against the Occupation and Israel’s own Peace Now, as well as prominent Jewish commentators like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Medea Benjamin, Phyllis Bennis, Max Blumenthal and the late Howard Zinn. Think also of OU film professor Louis-George Schwartz. With regard to Marzec’s detractors, Schwartz has stated, “I’m named after two great Uncles killed in Auschwitz… I say unequivocally that those who threaten anti-racists in the name of ‘THE Jews’ do not speak for me, and they dishonor my ancestors. I say unequivocally that those who support the murderous state dominating the territory of Palestine do not speak for me.”
Think about all of this and recognize that people like Leshaw (so hip because she texts swear words just like a student!) are trying to hijack the horrific history of Jewish persecution in order to use it for their own racist political agenda. Keep that in mind, and you’ll never fall for their attempts to portray long-overdue criticism of Israel as unconscionable hatred of the Jewish people.
And finally, if you’ve ever wished you could undo the horrors of America’s own settler colonial past, remember that you have the power to stop history from repeating itself in Palestine. It is your government that is spending your fellow citizens’ tax dollars on Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing campaign. It is your university and those like it that are invested in Israeli companies. You have the power to change all of that – just like the student activists before you who helped end U.S.-backed apartheid in South Africa. Realize that, and you’ll come to see that the real goal of the effort against Marzec isn’t to silence Marzec, it’s to silence you.
Stand up for Marzec, and you stand up for yourself. Stand up for yourself, and your generation can bring hope – and possibly even justice – to the people of Palestine. Now is your chance.
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[Update: 9/16/14 — In addition to those threatening Marzec’s life, her detractors reportedly also have included people threatening to rape her, others sending astoundingly racist and misogynistic emails, and the student group Bobcats for Israel, four of whose members were arrested September 10th and charged with disrupting a lawful meeting after they tried to shut down a Student Senate meeting in order to force Marzec’s resignation. (For additional accounts of Bobcats for Israel members’ behavior at this meeting, see this letter and this blog post from OU film professor Louis-George Schwartz, whose powerful response to Zionist hardliners attempting to speak for all Jews on OU’s campus I quoted above.)
Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, mentioned above, is heavily affiliated with Bobcats for Israel. Leshaw works for the Ohio University chapter of the group Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. Hillel is an international organization active on college campuses which attempts to re-define “Jewish” as Zionist. Leshaw administrates the Facebook page of Bobcats for Israel and accompanied the group to its action at the September 10 Student Senate meeting. After tweeting live updates in support of the action, Leshaw accompanied members of the group placed under arrest to the police station. However, there are no reports of Leshaw participating directly in Bobcats’ September 10 action, nor was she arrested along with the students she mentors.
As the progressive Jewish American Middle East news blog Mondoweiss pointed out, Bobcats for Israel’s logo features a map of Israel which includes the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, all territories illegally occupied by Israel. Consequently, if these Bobcats are for an Israel that is both Jewish and incorporates these territories, then they are necessarily for massive ethnic cleansing. The demographic consequence of incorporating into Israel all of the non-Jews who inhabit these territories would be a Jewish State with a Jewish minority. Thus if Bobcats are for a Jewish Israel that incorporates these territories, the group should be more forthcoming and change its name to Bobcats for Ethnic Cleansing, or perhaps Bobcats for Genocide. (For her part, Rabbi Leshaw responded to Mondoweiss’s reporting with typical decorum by calling Phillip Weiss a “douchebag” and “asshole” on her Twitter feed.)
With regard to this group’s action at the September 10 student senate meeting, Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut (who was chancellor of OU’s Board of Regents from 2007 to 2011) wrote OU president Roderick McDavis to express his support for Leshaw and his disbelief that members of Bobcats for Israel were “actually booked and charged with criminal conduct.” According to Fingerhut, “These students are owed an apology from the university.”
As if the history of settler colonialism needed any more evidence of the shameless arrogance of the racist colonizers! I remember when I was arrested at OU (and on public property immediately adjacent to the campus of Kent State University) for committing civil disobedience in opposition to a massive crime against humanity (the U.S. invasion of Iraq) instead of in support of one (Isral’s U.S.-backed ethnic cleansing of Palestinians). In the case of my arrests, I don’t recall any present or former chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents demanding that the president of either of these schools apologize to me for their failures to intervene to prevent my arrests, even after I was among the plaintiffs in a successful wrongful arrest lawsuit against the City of Kent. I do remember a letter from the Ohio University Judiciaries expressing the university’s desire that I “act more responsibly” in the future. So cry me a river, Eric Fingerhut.
Yet despite –or perhaps because of— the repugnant audacity of Marzec’s detractors, there are substantial signs of support for Marzec at Ohio University, including a letter now signed by over 50 OU professors; statements by Graduate Student Senate President; a petition to defend Marzec and all OU students’ rights to advocate for Palestinian human rights being promoted by the OU Women’s Center, the student group Fuck Rape Culture, and the OU Student Union (as well as explicitly Palestine solidarity groups on campus); an editorial by the student-run Ohio University Post newspaper; and many letters to Athens media, including this one from OU film professor Tom Hayes, in which Hayes mocked Rabbi Leshaw’s call for Marzec to resign.
Along similar lines, OU history professor Kevin Mattson told the Ohio University Post that while he isn’t in full agreement with Marzec, it was Rabbi Leshaw’s “very condescending and unthoughtful letter” to The Post calling for Marzec’s resignation that led him to join the group of faculty expressing its support for Marzec.
Thus while the backlash to Marzec’s “blood bucket” action has been as repulsive as you might expect of people who do, after all, support a murderous and racist U.S.-Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, the backlash to that backlash continues to inspire hope — hope for a sustained and powerful Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement that might finally bring justice to Palestine.
[Update: 9/30/14 — Electronic Intifada on September 24 published an interview with Megan Marzec accompanied by a good brief summary of this story. Also, the Ohio University Post and Athens News recently reported on a coalition of right wing campus groups, including Bobcats for Israel and the OU College Republicans, organizing a petition drive to recall Marzec from office for her support of Palestinian human rights.]
Editor’s note: Damon Krane lived in Athens, Ohio from 1999 through 2009, during which time he attended Ohio University, edited The InterActivist magazine, contributed to The Athens NEWS, wrote a column for The Post, ran the high school journalism education project Free Student Press, directed the local center for progressive activist development People Might, and was active in numerous social justice groups.