Jew World Order

In a recent Zoom meeting sponsored by the Voices from the Holy Land Film Salon to discuss Sut Jhally’s film The Occupation of the American Mind, the two panelists, current and past journalists, were asked by the moderator, Diana Buttu, what term they use to name the struggle for justice in which they are engaged.  Both responded, somewhat diffidently,  that “conflict” is the journalistic shorthand used for this topic. 

Comments from audience members then flooded the chat with many alternative terms used by allies in the Palestinian solidarity struggle:  settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, Occupation, sociocide, Apartheid, and incremental genocide.  Several comments avowed in a confessional tone that the writer had seen the light and would never use the too-mild term “conflict” again. 

Variants of this conversation occur often in circles where Americans are trying to find their place in the struggle for justice in Palestine.  But here are some questions and comments that do not seem to crop up and should do so.

To whom are we speaking and for what purpose? 

If we are engaged in a purely analytic discourse, then settler colonialism – a term first applied to Palestine/Israel by French historian Maxime Rodinson, and elaborated by Patrick Wolfe – is likely the most insightful and inclusive term.  Further analysis within this framework might note that early Zionist settlers first attempted ethnic cleansing by military means, as detailed in the work of Nur Masalha and others on the Nakba (and acknowledged even by Zionist apologists like Benny Morris). Military expulsion was followed, in time, by Occupation, and within the Occupied Territories, by a regimen that one Palestinian political scientist, Saleh Abdel Jawad, has labelled as sociocide. Sociocide proceeds partly through Israel’s use of legal instruments which explicitly and systemically differentiate the rights of Jewish citizens of Israel from inferior rights held by Palestinian citizens of Israel, military rule imposed on stateless Palestinians in the Occupied Territories,  and a permit regime applied to Palestinians in East Jerusalem. These oppressive distinctions satisfy the  legal definition of  Apartheid.  However, sociocide, a broader term, also names other instruments – confiscations of land and financial assets, unchecked settler violence and property damage, harassment at checkpoints, disruption of schools, limited access to health care, and many other forms of psychological warfare –  which, together, constitute a Plan B of ethnic cleansing; in the words of Jawad, an attempt to get Palestinians to leave by other means.  And finally, documentation of successive waves of massacres in Gaza give rise to the possibility of an incremental genocide, a term introduced by Ilan Pappe and Naim Ateek,  especially when coupled with the intense environmental degradation also produced by Occupation and documented in UN reports.

All of these terms thus have analytic merit and can be used to apply to the entirety of the Palestinians’ struggle for their rights  or to specific aspects or phases of it.

However, if our purposes are political, then we cannot forget the first rule of organizing: you have to meet those whom you would persuade “where they are.” For that purpose, insisting on terms like settler colonialism or ethnic cleansing is an overreach for many audiences not already steeped in the discourse. People new to the topic need a term that  leaves more room for exploration and learning.

Nevertheless, we should examine the specific objections to the term “conflict” to see where we can strengthen our case.  Some see the term “conflict” as too weak, easily dismissed either because conflicts are allegedly universal or because this particular one is deemed insoluble.  “Conflict” also can create false parity between a country enjoying unlimited American diplomatic, military, and economic support and a stateless people more than half of whom are refugees.

These are, indeed, pitfalls to be avoided.  And yet, I would argue, use of the term conflict can also open the door to the very conversation we need to have with people new to the issue. Asking “Who are the sides”  allows us to talk about the context and intent of Zionism, and the way it disregarded the rights of Palestinian communities residing in  the lands it craved.

It also allows us to talk about the sadly neglected topic of Palestinian resistance and steadfastness (sumud). 

Almost all of the framings preferred to the term “conflict” exaggerate its greatest flaw: telling the story as one of Zionist agency and Palestinian victimhood. Indeed, in America, nearly every conversation about justice for Palestine depicts a battle between good Jews and bad ones.  If you are a Zionist and AIPAC speaks for you, then the good Jews are the colonizers and the bad Jews are the traitorous supporters of BDS.  If you advocate equal rights for all, then the reverse is true:  the good Jews are those who do witnessing trips to Palestine and support the boycott, while the bad Jews are those who misuse Holocaust memory and who weaponize charges of antisemitism to avoid confronting Israel’s human rights violations.

But in both of those stories, the Palestinians are all too often reduced to being silent victims.  A conflict, especially an asymmetric one, opens the door to incorporating Palestinian resilience and popular resistance into the narrative.

This is not an argument about the exact words we should use in advancing the struggle for justice in Palestine – inevitably those will change with context and with time.  Rather, the argument here is about attitude.  Radical purity is of no use to the movement; showing off, condescension, and intimidation never won hearts or minds. Political effectiveness and  intellectual integrity, on the other hand,  are both necessary standards. Our work is to tie them together, to make the case that brings newly engaged people from “conflict” to settler colonialism, and onwards to strategic social and political action.

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