*“The establishment is pushing Palestine off the front pages,” Eman Abdelhadi says. “We have to counter that.”* by Ashley Smith, Truthout, July 30, 2024 https://truthout.org/articles/whoever-wins-in-november-our-movement-must-make-palestine-nonnegotiable/ . . .
*In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Eman Abdelhadi — an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics — discusses the ceasefire negotiations, Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, the Palestinian resistance, the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the tasks of the Palestine solidarity movement.Abdelhadi is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072.* *[AS] Much has been made about the current negotiations for a ceasefire. What is actually going on? Is Israel just posturing? What does Hamas hope to achieve in the negotiations? What are the aims of the U.S. in these talks?* *Eman Abdelhadi*: We have limited information about the negotiations. But it’s clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want this war to end and has done everything in his power to keep it going. His political career rests on it. Once it ends, he has to face his opponents, criminal corruption charges and the fallout for the war crimes he’s committed over the last 10 months. . . . Israel has continued to rain terror down on Gaza and is expanding settlements in the West Bank. Is it trying to complete the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine? How are the various forces in the Palestinian resistance responding? Israel’s ruling coalition has repeatedly declared in statements and in their charter that it intends to conquer and colonize all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea. So, its aim in this war is to destroy Gaza, create an enormous humanitarian crisis and drive people into Washington’s two client states, Jordan and Egypt. . . . It’s inhumane and unethical to ask Palestinians to simply just lie down and die. But that is the official position of the U.S. government, its two main parties, intellectual elites, leaders of major institutions, and the news media. Everyone should just pause and ask themselves, what would you do if you were in the position of Palestinians? Anyone who’s honest would answer that they would resist and fight for their liberation. ... history will recognize that a people were set aside for extermination by a nuclear armed settler colonial apartheid state supported by the world’s largest empire and several ex-empires. But they stood up for themselves and resisted. . . . *[AS] The Biden administration’s lockstep collaboration with Israel has precipitated a crisis for U.S. imperialism. Having lost consent from a large minority for its support of Israel, the U.S. establishment has turned to McCarthyite repression of the solidarity movement. How should the movement respond?* *Eman Abdelhadi*: There’s nothing we can do except persevere, soldier on in the struggle and keep spreading our message. We have to remember that even in the face of a vicious backlash, we are scoring important victories. We have opened huge cracks in Zionism, galvanized support among young people, and importantly, won over a large number of Jews to opposing Israel. The government, institutions and companies have turned to coercion because they are losing consent for their support of Israel. But there’s only so many people you can fire, so many people you can deny promotion to, and so many students you can expel before such McCarthyism backfires and triggers even more opposition. People always ask: Why do people care about Palestine so much? They say there’s so much oppression around the world, why single out Palestine for special support? The Zionists of course answer that by claiming that those who support Palestine are antisemitic. But that argument is no longer working, especially as growing numbers of Jews participate in the struggle against Zionism. In reality, we single out Israel because the U.S. singles out Israel. The U.S. government calls Israel its most important ally in the Middle East and spends billions each year funding and arming the Israeli state. The U.S. government is thus complicit in Israel’s settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide. That is the reason why people in the U.S. organize to oppose Israel, support Palestinian liberation and see it as part of the long struggle against settler colonialism. . . . The establishment, like a cornered beast, has responded by running roughshod over our democratic right to dissent, organize and protest. They have cancelled public speeches, violated academic freedom, unleashed cops on peaceful encampments and arrested students for defending themselves against fascist thugs. For an enormous number of people, this repression has shattered the myth of the U.S. as a beacon of freedom and liberty. This ideological awakening is irreversible, and while I welcome it and think that it opens up new horizons of solidarity, it has come at an enormous price in Palestinian life. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#31378): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/31378 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/107638098/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
