While some columnists and MSNBC liberals wring their hands over “polarization” as such, politics is about policies and ideas. But politics is carried about by people (even when assisted by AI). And that means that emotions in the form of identifications, hopes, fears, trust, and enthusiasm are very much a part of politics of all kinds. As Armin Thurnher recently noted, “a politics of ideas or also of realities without a politics of feelings is conceivable, but senseless.” (1)
And how anyone can have competitive democratic elections without some polarization around the choices is beyond me.
The Israeli government and the Americans and Europeans who support Bibi Netanyahu’s war policies have certainly not been shy about raising the emotional level by accusing any campus antiwar demonstrations of being antisemitic.
Although what people mean the controversial slogan "from the river to the sea" may vary, it certainly can be a dubious phrase. It even appears as the express goal for Israeli rule in the original charter of the Likud Party, founded by the former Irgun terrorist leader Menachem Begin. That's definitely a shady background.
Most of the reporting I've seen on campus demonstrations this year in the US doesn't sound like the organizers are promoting themes like Kill The Jews or We Love Hamas. In fact, in the demos at Brown and Columbia and UCLA, it seems to have been Jewish activists including groups like Jewish Voices for Peace who were playing the lead role.
Tricky alliances: Israel and Hamas
And one of the most bitter criticisms that Netanyahu's Israeli critics make of him is that he actively promoted Hamas to draw support away from the Palestine Authority, including authorizing Qatari payments to Hamas. The Hamas support goes back for well over a decade. I don’t know if even Netanyahu has tried to dispute the facts of that.
Robert Dreyfuss wrote about the long history of US and Israeli support for Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005). This was case of pragmatic if risky political calculation. Islamist groups tended to be anti-Communist and anti-socialist more generally. So to the US, Israel and the monarchy of Jordan, they looked like a useful alternative to Communist groups and especially to Arab brands of socialism, like those of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and of the Baathist parties in Syria and Iraq. As Dreyfuss writes, “It is during [the 1960s] that Ahmed Yassin first emerged as the fundamentalist firebrand who would win Israeli backing in the 1970s and 1980s and who would found Hamas in 1987.” (my emphasis) (2)
As the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), whose official goal was a single secular, democratic state in all of what had been Mandate Palestine, began to establish a functioning political organization among Israeli Arabs, “Israel would begin to see Yassin, and the Muslim Brotherhood [from which Hamas stemmed], as valuable allies against the PLO.” That’s not to say that Israel or the Likud Party controlled Hamas, but rather they used it the-enemy-of-my-enemy who is useful in undermining a more dangerous enemy. As Dreyfuss notes, “Yassin, and several other tops Hamas officials, were assassinated by the Israeli military and secret services in 2004.” Being a friend of Israel even on a limited pragmatic basis can be a very tricky business.
But it’s worth being critical of accusations against peace antiwar protesters that they are “pro-Hamas” or “Hamas sympathizers.”
Some basics about protest
Now, some protests are better organized than others. And the principle of Don’t Do Stupid Stuff is always a good one to keep in mind.
But the larger and more public a protest is, the more heterogenous the participants and onlookers may be. And the temptation of opponents of the protest to shout obnoxious things to discredit the actual protesters is always there. And anyone who knows what a public protest is has some idea of all that. One thing that has stood out in some of the most prominent campus protests is that organizers took a lesson from media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests over a decade ago and established actual press liaisons and encouraged protest participants to refer reporters to them. This is basic message management. It reduces the possibility of reporters highlighting some weird or malicious participant as being representative of the whole protest. With college-age adults who have been online since they were born, they have more direct experience in dealing with the media than protesters of 50 years ago.
Speaking of adults, even some sympathetic coverage of the protests refers to the students as “kids.” But almost all college students are considered adults in every sense of word, legal access to alcohol sometimes excepted.
Certainly, in the case of the UCLA antiwar protest, the reporting and the footage from the scene has been pretty clear that most of the violence at the protests came from a supposedly "pro-Israel" mob that that was literally violently attacking peaceful protesters. The LAPD stood and watched them without interfering. And then later moved in and violently dispersed the protesters who had been attacked. If the rule of law were more secure in the US, police would be expected to do their jobs and not to collaborate with violent thugs attacking peaceful demonstrators. (But that’s not exactly new, either!)
Noah Smith, who often makes political analyses I find good, seems to be kind of Unclear On The Concept when it comes to protest, at least protest against the US supporting the Netanyahu government of Israel in committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. So he disses the whole protest movement: “I’m pretty tired of writing about the Palestine protests. I said pretty much all that I wanted to say in my post two weeks ago, and my central point was that the whole movement is kind of boring.” (3)
Oh, this antiwar protesting is just soo-ooo boring. I need to go watch a couple of Morning Joe episodes to pick myself up ...
Smith then goes on to cite a poll of “college kids” showing that most of them don’t consider aid to Netanyahu’s war a high priority. Uh, Noah – maybe that’s why Jewish college activists are organizing the antiwar protests, you know, to get their fellow students as well as the larger public to pay more attention to it. And he even reduces his credibility among anyone who remembers who Richard Nixon was by using, with no apparent since of irony, the iconic Nixon-Agnew phrase, the Silent Majority: “The protesters’ general bad behavior and failure to suppress antisemitism, along with the fact that many are explicitly pro-war, has probably alienated the silent majority, even among the young generation of Americans.” (my emphasis)
Does he mean that protesters are “explicitly pro-war”? Or other “college kids”? Or the Silent Majority?
I just realized I’m doing what early bloggers called “fisking,” but why stop now?
“They [the protesters] continue to direct all their hatred at Joe Biden, despite the fact that Biden is actively exerting pressure on Israel to restrain itself, even as Trump urges unconditional support for Israel’s war effort.” So, they are directing “all their hatred” against the Catholic President Joe Biden, because they are antisemitic? Actually. they are directing their demands to Joe Biden because he is the President of the United States and is the only official at the moment who can stop supplying Netanyahu’s war on Gaza civilians (with side attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran). None of which are in American national interests, by any half-reasonable estimation.
“In any case, the more data comes in, the more it becomes apparent that the Palestine protests have not set the Zoomer generation on fire with activist passion. Instead, most young people are just quietly waiting for the whole thing to go away.” Uh, dude, the point of the protests is that they want to make US support for the war go away.
While Noah Smith entertains himself with Morning Joe videos, it’s worth noting that despite his annoyance at “kids” protesting, the protests, along with the Uncommitted votes in the Democratic primaries and polls showing a majority of Democrats thinking Netanyahu’s war that Biden is supporting amounts to genocide, have clearly put real political pressure on Biden to back off his previously unconditional support for Netanyahu’s actions. (4)
Despite the Israeli government’s refusal to agree to a hostage deal earlier this week, our survey reveals that 70% of voters support a permanent ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza - the highest percentage since Data for Progress began tracking this in October. Among Democrats, that number reaches a whopping 83%, while for independents it is 65%. Even among Republicans, a clear majority, 56%, say they back a permanent ceasefire.Thomas Vieregge also reports:
There is little support among likely voters for Israel’s military strategy – or for increasing American aid to Israel. A majority of voters, 53%, believe Israel’s military actions in Gaza have been ineffective in freeing the Israeli hostages.
More than one in three voters (37%) support decreasing U.S. funding for military aid and weapons for Israel, compared to less than one in five (18%) who back increasing that funding. A plurality of voters also oppose the recent decision by Congress to provide $4 billion to replenish Israel’s missile defense systems, 46% to 40%.
A majority, 54%, even support suspending all U.S. arms sales to Israel for as long as Israel blocks U.S. humanitarian aid going into Gaza. [my emphasis]
Biden's decision [to pause arms deliveries] is also explained by criticism of his Middle East policy the by Democrats in the form of open letters and petitions and the displeasure of young voters, which has recently manifested itself in protest camps at numerous universities. Donald Trump and the Republicans, on the other hand, are waging a campaign against [what they take to be] the disloyal attitude towards Israel. The Middle East is likely to become a hot election campaign topic even in the Midwest in the fall. It could cost Biden re-election, and so domestic policy also plays a role in his foreign policy. (5)Comment on American antisemitism
There are certainly antisemites who hate Israel. But I believe the biggest campaign contributor in the "Israel lobby" in the US now is John Hagee's Christians United For Israel. The Jewish Forward calls it “most-funded and most powerful ‘pro-Israel’ organization in America — dwarfing AIPAC, J Street, and others.” (6)
Jewish commentators have been explaining for decades that the End Times ideology people like Hagee and Pat Robertson have promoted is about as antisemitic as it gets. But how many Republican politicians who cheerfully accuse antiwar demonstrators of antisemitism are going to denounce Hagee as a Jew-hater, or turn down campaign donations from the crassly antisemitic CUFI? I'm guessing the number is infinitely close to zero.
Yes, there is such a thing as “left antisemitism” in the US. But it’s a whole lot easier to find among Christian Zionists, Trumpistas, and militia-type radical groups. Those are by no means mutually exclusive groups, of course.
It's also the case that counter-protesters like the violent goon squad in LA are defending *Joe Biden's* Gaza policy. We could say that the dumb fool at the UMiss counter-protest in Oxford last week who was making monkey hoots at a black woman antiwar protester is a sign that all supporters of Biden's Gaza policy are blithering white racists. But that would be silly. Not least because the monkey-hoot guy likely has no clue what Biden's policy actually is. And almost certainly could not find Israel on a map, even one with country names included.
Notes:
(1) Thurnher, Armin (2024): Nachdenken über Politik und Gefühle. Falter 19:2024, 5. <https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20240507/nachdenken-ueber-politik-und-gefuehle> My translation from German.
(2) Dreyfuss, Robert (2005): “Israel’s Islamists” chapter in: Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, 190-213. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
(3) Smith, Noah (2024): At least five interesting things for your weekend. Noahpinion 05/10/2024. <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-a59> (Accessed: 2024-10-05).
(4) Hasan, Mehdi (2024): EXCLUSIVE POLL: A Majority of Democratic Voters Believe Israel Is Committing Genocide. Zeteo Substack 05/08/2024.<https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-poll-ceasefire-us-voters> (Accessed: 2024-10-05).
(5) Vieregge, Thomas (2024): Netanjahu: „Wenn es sein muss, kämpfen wir mit unseren Fingernägeln“. Die Presse 09.05.2024. <https://www.diepresse.com/18448989/netanjahu-wenn-es-sein-muss-kaempfen-wir-mit-unseren-fingernaegeln> (Accessed: 2024-10-05). My translation from German.
(6) Michaelson, Jay (2024): The head of the largest Christian Zionist organization is no friend to Israel - he wants an apocalypse there. Forward 04/16/2024. <https://forward.com/opinion/603310/john-hagee-christian-zionist-iran-israel/> (Accessed: 2024-06-05).
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