Free Palestine!
On the Sunday before MLK Day, New York Times columnist Michelle Alexander decided to dedicate her piece on the legacy of Martin Luther King to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Alexander is a well-known writer and thinker whose primary work is focused on incarceration and drug laws in America, particularly how these policies harm the African American community. Her piece effectively analyzed the links between the fight for justice in America and the struggle for equality in Palestine. I won’t attempt to address the Israel-Palestine conflict in this article but, I would encourage anyone interested to know more about Zionist oppression to take a look at her piece.
All over the Western world, and in particular in America, there is a group of extreme institutions which have dedicated themselves to defending Zionism.
The more interesting part of Alexander’s article was not the point she made, but rather the extreme responses to her article by the Zionist establishment. I believe Alexander expressed her argument well, and made it relatable on a factual and emotional level. However, her position that the Zionist government is oppressing the people of Palestine both in the occupied territories—Tel Aviv, the “State of Israel”—and in the “free regions” (West Bank), is not new. She must delve further into the assumptions she bases her argument upon.
Alexander’s article was too moderate for me because it operated on the assumption that the formation of the Zionist regime and the confiscation of Arab inhabitants’ homes without compensation was entirely legitimate. Abraham Foxman, former head of the Anti-Defamation League B’nai Brith, called her “biasedly obsessed” with Zionism. Yet for some Zionist and Jewish organizations, this was already too offensive: many accused Alexander of anti-Semitism and attempted to smear her. The American Jewish Committee called her piece “shameful.” This reaction was only the most recent example of how a network of Zionist political and financial organizations are crushing free debate around Palestine.
All over the Western world, and in particular in America, there is a group of extreme institutions which have dedicated themselves to defending Zionism. That network was best documented by professor John Mearsheimer in his book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” They analyzed the disproportional defense of Zionism by the U.S. Government. One example of this is the U.S.’s repeated vetoes of U.N. resolutions condemning certain actions of the Zionist regime, even when an overwhelming majority of world nations, including our own allies like France or Britain, supported them. Using significant and detailed research, Mearsheimer and his co-writer Stephen Walt explained how groups like The Zionist Organization of America, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Hadassah influence politicians with money and mass mobilization with the goal of protecting the Zionist regime even when that goal is not in line with American interests.
In recent years, that network has both waned in power and become much more visible in their attempt to suppress opponents who are growing in number. Mearsheimer and Walt’s experience is a great example of the clampdown on free speech. Despite both writers’ reputations and resumés (Mearsheimer is a University of Chicago professor, while Walt teaches at Harvard), they weren’t able to find a publisher for the long form article, which later became the foundation for their book. The Atlantic, the magazine which commissioned their piece, refused to publish their final result. Eventually, the foreign London Review of Books published it. Immediately following publication, magazines and organizations—from the “New Republic,” then owned by pro-Zionist writer Martin Peretz and billionaire capitalists Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt, to the Anti-Defamation League—began a campaign against Mearsheimer and Walt.
More examples of this piled up over the years. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, activist Noam Chomsky and the Black Lives Matter Movement have all been singled out over their perspectives on Israel and Palestine. One of the most egregious targets of the Zionist lobby was former CNN political commentator, Temple University professor and Black Lives Matter activist Marc Lamont-Hill, whose comments on the need for a “free Palestine” led to his dismissal from CNN.
These cases seem to get more and more frequent, most likely because of the waning support for Zionist violence in America. Groups including religious organizations and political parties are beginning to question the actions of the Zionist regime. The movement to boycott banks and companies that operate in the Zionist occupied territories (the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is growing. All of this indicates incredible progress toward the ultimate goal: a free and peaceful Palestine stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, and one government to protect the holy places and peoples who reside in this ancient land.
We must be vigilant about the attacks on the defenders of free Palestine to ensure that this goal is not thwarted.