It’s basically impossible for Palestinians or those sympathetic to their cause to have a voice in the Western media. Even those rare occasions when the NYT has condescended to do so, the comments section is flooded with the usual “But have you condemned Hamas?!” nonsense. Palestinians simply aren’t considered people, but a “problem” to be “solved.” The way they have been portrayed in the media since October is honestly far worse than the way Blacks were described in the Jim Crow era press (I do Al off archival research for my job). I suppose this is because Blacks had a “place” in the Jim Crow South, albeit as a perpetual serf caste, whereas the ultimate fate for the Palestinians was always genocide.
The NYT had a couple of impressive pieces last month, one of which was an opinion column and the other a fantastically long and rich telling of how extremist settlers have become fanatical due to a lack of impunity. The comment sections, from what I could observe (the latter piece had more than 3000 comments), was remarkably lacking in these demands for loyalty. (That’s what those are: loyalty oaths.) There were a few of those hardliners there, but the vast majority of commenters were grateful to be informed about such critical elements of Israeli culture. Some suggested the lengthy piece may be worthy of a Pulitzer. So, perhaps some solace can be taken from that. But I agree with your overall point about the overall atmosphere and double standards.
As for the similarities between how Palestinians are treated by Israelis and how Black Americans have been treated by White Americans historically, indeed I have noticed the parallels. I wrote a DKos diary about some of those parallels, noting the similarities between the segregated road system and blockades in the occupied territories with the demolition and closing off of Black neighborhoods here in the States when the interstate system was being built in the ‘50s. There are many more parallels, but that one, when I learned about these “sterile” roads, really stood out to me and really started putting things into place.
(As it stands, it was in the comment section there that someone brought up the controversy with Alice Walker, who was the narrator of a film that I highlighted, stating that she’d been accused of anti-semitism. It was clear from the stance and tone of people engaged in this line of argument that I was supposed to distance myself from her, much in the way that you raise the point that pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israel folks are expected to denounce Hamas. It was the exact same dynamic. People honestly got angry when I noted that I didn’t know enough about the controversy to weigh in one way or the other.)
There’s a clear reason why there is a cross-cultural activism movement between Palestinian and Black American circles. There’s a natural affinity and nexus of understanding.
I saw the pieces you mentioned from the NYT. The one on the out of control settler movement was good, but about fifty years too late. The time for such an article should have been in the 1970s, when the settlement movement was in its infancy. Now there are about half a million people living in these settlements and the argument is going to be that it would be “unfair” to make the settlers abandon them. There’s also the fact that the first impression is the last impression. That is, the average NYT reader has gotten their ideas about Israel/Palestine from the previous 50+ years of pro-Israel reporting. Several articles about settler violence won’t change that, especially if the blame can be placed on a supposedly small extremist segment. The NYT has yet to publicly address the fact that many of the “facts” in their article on sexual violence on Oct 7 have been called into question or flat out debunked, even by Israelis who lost family members on that day. The fact is that even the more “progressive” Labor Zionists had the same eliminationist views as the Revisionist Zionists. One could argue that the former were worse than the latter, since Zeev Zabotinsky thought that Arabs could potentially be integrated into a Jewish state, whereas David Ben-Gurion was basically like, “I get why Arabs are angry, but we’re just going to have to genocide them if we want a state. Sucks to be you, I guess.” The rot goes far beyond Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, et al and their supporters in Likud and the Haredim. Even if they could be excised from the Israel body politic, the rot would still be there in trendy, Western-style Tel Aviv.
These are just a couple of books off the top of my head:
1. Frontiersmen of Israel by Eliezer Smoley - This is actually a fiction book, but if you want to see how Israelis imagine themselves to be, it’s fascinating. The book itself takes place in Mandatory Palestine, so before the State of Israel was formed. It’s basically a Western, with Eastern European Jews as cowboys and Palestinians as Indians. Except the Palestinians are portrayed in a much more racist manner than Native Americans in a Western. It’s out of print, but I saw two copies on AbeBooks for quite reasonable prices.
2. Goliath by Max Blumenthal - This is a journalist account of how intense and non-controversial anti-Palestinian racism is in Israel. This was the book that really took the scale off my eyes with regard to this issue.
3. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe- You may have heard of Dr. Pappe recently because he’s run afoul of various alphabet agencies who don’t like him questioning the narrative. This book is a scholarly, but accessible account of the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinians throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
4. You can also read translations of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism on the Project Gutenberg site. When you read his work, it’s obvious that he conceived of Zionism as an extension of Western colonialism and imperialism and had no qualms about admitting it.
You are very right about the damage being done. 50 years of one-sided coverage is a long time for such bias to accumulate.
The process of settler colonialism of which you speak has been referred to (by Sharon, possibly) a Pastrami sandwich. You lace the countryside with these settlements and eventually they will be impossible to uproot, they’re so intricately integrated. I think that, if settlers were removed from Gaza in 2006, that could serve as a template for the removal of other settlers elsewhere. It would be an upheaval for Israeli society, no doubt. It may cause schisms that may take decades to mend. But it probably could be done. It’s just it wouldn’t be able to be done without pain.
I’m still reading about the various strands of Zionism, so I’m always on the lookout for good source material. If you have any, I’d love to get any references you might recommend. I will say that Labor Zionism seems so contradictory as to be a paradox unto itself. I happened to take a course on intentional communities, and we studied the kibbutzim as part of the curriculum; my professor held the system in very high esteem. From what I could determine at the time, there was much to admire. But something changed or got co-opted, and the labor side of Labor Zionism didn’t fight to maintain it. Possibly the Six Day War was this turning point, maybe even the establishment of the state itself. There seems to be a point where the communal aspect was kept only as linguistic window dressing while the nation itself became rather ruthlessly capitalistic and militaristic. But I’m still learning; there is much I do not yet know but am only putting pieces together.
Yes, it really is shocking to see this happening. I appreciate your detailed analysis. At the same time, the extreme barbarity of the IDF's actions continues to horrify anyone who's paying attention.
Thanks for reading and leaving feedback. Yes, the savagery and utter triumphalism of the IDF (and, by extension, the rest of Israeli society, which for the most part is conscripted into the armed forces) are shocking to anyone who has seen or heard of any of the atrocities. There was one point in the proceedings at the International Court of Justice by South Africa as it presented evidence against Israel for genocide that SA played a clip of IDF soldiers all jumping up and down in unison, singing about how they would slay Palestinians as Amalek. It was chilling.
On this side of the pond, you have people like Michael Rapaport who justify the flesh-melting airstrike by Israel on the tent encampment in Rafah, complaining that no great person has ever originated from Palestine — the implication being that that makes it permissible to wipe them from the face of the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXc8aWo7pI
The world is in a very dark place. I strongly suspect that if we were allowed to talk about what is happening, Israel’s military offensive would come to a close that much more quickly. Right now, with people being made to stifle themselves, Gaza is left abandoned to be an abattoir.
It’s basically impossible for Palestinians or those sympathetic to their cause to have a voice in the Western media. Even those rare occasions when the NYT has condescended to do so, the comments section is flooded with the usual “But have you condemned Hamas?!” nonsense. Palestinians simply aren’t considered people, but a “problem” to be “solved.” The way they have been portrayed in the media since October is honestly far worse than the way Blacks were described in the Jim Crow era press (I do Al off archival research for my job). I suppose this is because Blacks had a “place” in the Jim Crow South, albeit as a perpetual serf caste, whereas the ultimate fate for the Palestinians was always genocide.
Ack! That should be “a lot of archival research.”
The NYT had a couple of impressive pieces last month, one of which was an opinion column and the other a fantastically long and rich telling of how extremist settlers have become fanatical due to a lack of impunity. The comment sections, from what I could observe (the latter piece had more than 3000 comments), was remarkably lacking in these demands for loyalty. (That’s what those are: loyalty oaths.) There were a few of those hardliners there, but the vast majority of commenters were grateful to be informed about such critical elements of Israeli culture. Some suggested the lengthy piece may be worthy of a Pulitzer. So, perhaps some solace can be taken from that. But I agree with your overall point about the overall atmosphere and double standards.
As for the similarities between how Palestinians are treated by Israelis and how Black Americans have been treated by White Americans historically, indeed I have noticed the parallels. I wrote a DKos diary about some of those parallels, noting the similarities between the segregated road system and blockades in the occupied territories with the demolition and closing off of Black neighborhoods here in the States when the interstate system was being built in the ‘50s. There are many more parallels, but that one, when I learned about these “sterile” roads, really stood out to me and really started putting things into place.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/8/2204520/-Some-say-calling-Israel-s-system-apartheid-is-offensive-but-what-if-it-s-true
(As it stands, it was in the comment section there that someone brought up the controversy with Alice Walker, who was the narrator of a film that I highlighted, stating that she’d been accused of anti-semitism. It was clear from the stance and tone of people engaged in this line of argument that I was supposed to distance myself from her, much in the way that you raise the point that pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israel folks are expected to denounce Hamas. It was the exact same dynamic. People honestly got angry when I noted that I didn’t know enough about the controversy to weigh in one way or the other.)
There’s a clear reason why there is a cross-cultural activism movement between Palestinian and Black American circles. There’s a natural affinity and nexus of understanding.
I saw the pieces you mentioned from the NYT. The one on the out of control settler movement was good, but about fifty years too late. The time for such an article should have been in the 1970s, when the settlement movement was in its infancy. Now there are about half a million people living in these settlements and the argument is going to be that it would be “unfair” to make the settlers abandon them. There’s also the fact that the first impression is the last impression. That is, the average NYT reader has gotten their ideas about Israel/Palestine from the previous 50+ years of pro-Israel reporting. Several articles about settler violence won’t change that, especially if the blame can be placed on a supposedly small extremist segment. The NYT has yet to publicly address the fact that many of the “facts” in their article on sexual violence on Oct 7 have been called into question or flat out debunked, even by Israelis who lost family members on that day. The fact is that even the more “progressive” Labor Zionists had the same eliminationist views as the Revisionist Zionists. One could argue that the former were worse than the latter, since Zeev Zabotinsky thought that Arabs could potentially be integrated into a Jewish state, whereas David Ben-Gurion was basically like, “I get why Arabs are angry, but we’re just going to have to genocide them if we want a state. Sucks to be you, I guess.” The rot goes far beyond Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, et al and their supporters in Likud and the Haredim. Even if they could be excised from the Israel body politic, the rot would still be there in trendy, Western-style Tel Aviv.
These are just a couple of books off the top of my head:
1. Frontiersmen of Israel by Eliezer Smoley - This is actually a fiction book, but if you want to see how Israelis imagine themselves to be, it’s fascinating. The book itself takes place in Mandatory Palestine, so before the State of Israel was formed. It’s basically a Western, with Eastern European Jews as cowboys and Palestinians as Indians. Except the Palestinians are portrayed in a much more racist manner than Native Americans in a Western. It’s out of print, but I saw two copies on AbeBooks for quite reasonable prices.
2. Goliath by Max Blumenthal - This is a journalist account of how intense and non-controversial anti-Palestinian racism is in Israel. This was the book that really took the scale off my eyes with regard to this issue.
3. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe- You may have heard of Dr. Pappe recently because he’s run afoul of various alphabet agencies who don’t like him questioning the narrative. This book is a scholarly, but accessible account of the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinians throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
4. You can also read translations of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism on the Project Gutenberg site. When you read his work, it’s obvious that he conceived of Zionism as an extension of Western colonialism and imperialism and had no qualms about admitting it.
You are very right about the damage being done. 50 years of one-sided coverage is a long time for such bias to accumulate.
The process of settler colonialism of which you speak has been referred to (by Sharon, possibly) a Pastrami sandwich. You lace the countryside with these settlements and eventually they will be impossible to uproot, they’re so intricately integrated. I think that, if settlers were removed from Gaza in 2006, that could serve as a template for the removal of other settlers elsewhere. It would be an upheaval for Israeli society, no doubt. It may cause schisms that may take decades to mend. But it probably could be done. It’s just it wouldn’t be able to be done without pain.
I’m still reading about the various strands of Zionism, so I’m always on the lookout for good source material. If you have any, I’d love to get any references you might recommend. I will say that Labor Zionism seems so contradictory as to be a paradox unto itself. I happened to take a course on intentional communities, and we studied the kibbutzim as part of the curriculum; my professor held the system in very high esteem. From what I could determine at the time, there was much to admire. But something changed or got co-opted, and the labor side of Labor Zionism didn’t fight to maintain it. Possibly the Six Day War was this turning point, maybe even the establishment of the state itself. There seems to be a point where the communal aspect was kept only as linguistic window dressing while the nation itself became rather ruthlessly capitalistic and militaristic. But I’m still learning; there is much I do not yet know but am only putting pieces together.
Excellent points, and shocking how our democracies have been eroded. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for reading, Diana. I appreciate you stopping in!
The erosion of our democracies . . . I think there is still time to reverse this trend.
I sure hope so.
Yes, it really is shocking to see this happening. I appreciate your detailed analysis. At the same time, the extreme barbarity of the IDF's actions continues to horrify anyone who's paying attention.
Thanks for reading and leaving feedback. Yes, the savagery and utter triumphalism of the IDF (and, by extension, the rest of Israeli society, which for the most part is conscripted into the armed forces) are shocking to anyone who has seen or heard of any of the atrocities. There was one point in the proceedings at the International Court of Justice by South Africa as it presented evidence against Israel for genocide that SA played a clip of IDF soldiers all jumping up and down in unison, singing about how they would slay Palestinians as Amalek. It was chilling.
On this side of the pond, you have people like Michael Rapaport who justify the flesh-melting airstrike by Israel on the tent encampment in Rafah, complaining that no great person has ever originated from Palestine — the implication being that that makes it permissible to wipe them from the face of the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXc8aWo7pI
The world is in a very dark place. I strongly suspect that if we were allowed to talk about what is happening, Israel’s military offensive would come to a close that much more quickly. Right now, with people being made to stifle themselves, Gaza is left abandoned to be an abattoir.