Solidarity from "Pro-Palestinian" Jews Revisited Ibrahim Alloush No Palestinian Arab would ever argue whether international solidarity with our cause is welcome or not. In fact, it's our obligation to garner such support wherever we may. Moreover, we can never neglect our obligation to confront Zionist propaganda internationally and to debunk Zionist myths in any language, shape, or form. So at least as far as this goes, ALL Palestinian activists would NOT disagree. The question remains, however, what actually constitutes support for the Palestinian cause: sympathy with the victimization of Palestinians, like one would sympathize with road kills for example, conscious political support for a platform for liberation, or something in between? There are plenty of people out there who claim to be 'pro-Palestinian' , or to support 'Palestinian rights'. And many of us are taken in by such people, especially that some of us have a soft spot for Westerners and therefore feel flabbergasted when they see one of them leaning a tad our way... (Some call it an inferiority complex but I will not get into that here). Nevertheless, not everyone who claims to support us is actually a supporter. Many such supporters actually oppose some of the most crucial things we stand for, except they dislike some of the human rights violations that the Zionists are visiting upon us. That is, they: 1) recognize the right of "Israel" to exist and the alleged right of Jews to settle in Palestine, 2) they oppose our strategy to liberate Palestine, and 3) they especially oppose the armed struggle of Palestinian organizations. Such 'supporters' are not actually supporting us, but simply trying to make themselves feel better... In some cases, you find Jews claiming to support the Palestinian cause. But when you scrutinize carefully what they stand for, you'll find they simply want what amounts to a 'nice occupation', as opposed to a brutal one. In reality they just wish there could be an occupation without administrative detentions, targeted assassinations, land confiscations, house demolitions, and all the rest. Otherwise, those same 'supporters' try as hard as they could to convince Palestinians to present their case 'in a civilized manner' without resorting human bombs and military operations, especially against what they call "Israeli civilians". One such Jewish 'supporter' is Noam Chomsky who says that it would be immoral for Palestinians to target even an off-duty "Israeli" soldier! This makes one wonder whether these Jewish "supporters" are just trying to whitewash the occupation with their own professed guilt, as Jews, or whether they're simply out to present another 'positive' side of Zionism! Some of us are so happy to see a Jew or a Westerner criticize Zionist oppression that they trip all over themselves to the point of becoming oblivious to the essence of the POLITICAL MESSAGE such 'criticism' of Zionism is concealing. There are Zionists criticizing each other all the time for goodness sakes. That doesn't make them anymore pro-Palestinian than Arabs criticizing each other are pro-Zionist. Let's put the issue in a nutshell: Palestine is occupied. Palestine is not only occupied by an army of soldiers, but by an army of colonists. In any country, when there is occuption, the natural anecdote is liberation. No one in their right mind would have asked Europeans to tolerate or to coexist with the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe of France. Yet that is exactly what is being asked of Palestinians today by 'our supporters'. These supporters are basically asking us to either cede most of Palestine to colonists under a two-state solution, or to embrace the right of colonists to live in Palestine under a one-state solution. The latter 'solution', in fact, amounts to embracing the fruits of Zionism in retrospect, since Zionism is nothing but the project of building a Jewish colony in Palestine. So, we don't need 'supporters' who try to dictate to us what our political strategy should be. Our cause is crystal clear, and the only thing that can possibly make us lose our true supporters is allowing fake supporters of the Palestinian cause to mystify it. When there is occupation, the anecdote is liberation. Period. If you are an anti-Zionist, that must mean by definition that you are against Jewish settlement in Palestine that came on the heels of a Zionist project. It also means you support our platform to liberate Palestine, our way, not some other platform to make Palestinians more tolerant of Jews by parading a handful of "pro-Palestinian" Jews! Mind you, thoroughout the centuries, we never ever opposed Jews coming into Palestine as individuals, BEFORE THE ONSET OF THE ZIONIST PROJECT. If you check the annals of history, you'd find that Palestinians opposed Jewish immigration into Palestine only AFTER the onset of the Zionist project. But let's not wallow on that too much. Palestine is ours, and as such, it's our prerogative to decide whom we want to let into our country just like any other normal people on earth. Hence, each and every Jew in Palestine today is objectively part and parcel of the Zionist project. S/he is forcibly occupying space whence a Palestinian was dislodged. For such a Jew to even claim, on top of my land and from within my home, that s/he is an anti-Zionist, means that he either thinks we must be complete idiots or... that we are complete idiots. In fact, we would be if we accepted such preposterous claims. It would be exactly like believing George Bush lecturing about 'world peace' for example. FOR STARTERS, anti-Zionism necessarily implies that a Jew is practicing it OUTSIDE Palestine. Any Jew in Palestine today cannot possibly be anti-Zionist by definition. Furthermore, if you take revisionist historians in the Zionist entity for example, you'll find that even those among them who have meticulously documented Zionist atrocities against Palestinians do not think it amounts much compared to the alleged "Holocaust". Take Ilan Pappe for example. He has said repeatedly in articles and interviews that the Nakba is ethnic cleansing, but that the "Holocaust" is mass genocide, and therefore as abhorant as the Nakba may be, it cannot possibly be compared to the "Holocaust"; and that only the Jews could have gotten away with something like the Nakba because of the sympathy they harnessed in the West due to the "Holocaust". In essence, Jewish colonists like Ilan Pappe justify the Zionist colonization of Palestine in retrospect as a natural response to Nazi persecution. Indeed, if you check out his website, you'll find he explains his parents coming into Palestine in that manner. In the end, he's calling for Palestinians to accept Zionism in retrospect under the thin veneer of a 'one-state solution'. There is a real danger when our political vision becomes so hazy we cannot distinguish colonist usurping our land and identity from true supporters of our cause. Such political myopia, however, remains rampant amongst some Arab intellectuals, officials of Arab regimes and the Palestinian Authority, and Arabs bending over backwards to get themselves accepted by Westerners or by Jews. But rarely would one see such pathetic overtures towards the enemy amongst average Arabs on the Arab street, that is, among the overwhelming majority of Arabs. Arabs on the street, by and large, still regard ANY DEALINGS with the invader, under any pretext, as an act of normalization. Normalization of course is the act of dealing with the enemy as if they were not the oppressor, the invader, the murderers of our people, and the usurpers of our Haifa, Akka, and Jalil. Frequently Palestinians are set up in a guilt trip. They have to prove that they do not hate Jews. The proving really never ends until you eventually embrace the doctrine of "Israel's" security. But, really, Palestinians have NOTHING to prove to the invader. It is exactly the other way around. A Jew who claims to be anti-Zionist is the one who has something to prove (to himself first of all), not a Palestinian who is fighting a Jewish occupation.
If someone supports you, that means they support your cause to liberate your land from an occupation. It doesn't mean that you have to change your strategic objective away from liberation so they can start supporting you. Otherwise, you have already lost your cause before even beginning. 'Support' which comes with attached strings is no support at all, but an impediment.