Democratic Palestine : 7 (ص 25)
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- Democratic Palestine : 7 (ص 25)
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US Politics and the Struggle
Against Zionism
The following article was submitted to us by Dale Borgeson of the «Line of March» editorial board. «Line
of March» is an anti-imperialist journal published in the USA.
Zionism is one of the most potent instruments of
imperialism in the world today, a dangerous threat to world
peace and the freedom of the Arab peoples. It is also a major
source of opportunism within the U.S. itself that must be con-
fronted in order to build a stable progressive and working class
movement within this country.
However, it is quite evident that a broad pro-Zionist con-
sensus is still a fundamental fact of U.S. political life. Since
1948, every U.S. presidential election campaign has seen
Republican and Democratic nominees vying for the title of
«staunchest friend and defender of Israel.» Liberal Democrats
often outdo conservative Republicans in the bidding, as hap-
pened this year when both Mondale and Hart challenged
Reagan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. And the U.S.
labor movement is also militantly pro-Zionist.
Such a dismal 36 year political history prompts the ques-
tion of how this pro-Zionist consensus will ever be broken.
What are the prospects for cracking, and eventually breaking
down, this Zionist consensus? And why is this such a pressing
task?
Cracks in the Zionist consensus
Since 1982, two major developments have produced ini-
tial cracks in the Zionist consensus. The first was public reac-
tion against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with its sub-
sequent bombardment of Beirut and massacre of Palestinian
refugees. The grisly TV scenes of Israeli planes bombing civi-
lian housing projects and the media accounts of Israeli compli-
city in the Sabra and Shatila massacres dealt a heavy blow to
the vaunted Zionist «moral authority», which had been so
painstakingly built up using the memory of the Holocaust.
Lebanon produced a crisis among U.S. liberal supporters
of Zionism, torn between their desire to defend Israel and their
shock at the brutality of the invasion. Unfortunately, the U.S.
anti-imperialist movement was not able to set an anti-Zionist
political pole within the broad anti-invasion front, due to its own
problems of conciliating liberal Zionism. As a result, most of the
people propelled into political activity by the invasion focused
their anger on Begin and Sharon for having «betrayed the true
democratic traditions of Zionism,» and did not come to a gen-
eral critique of Zionism itself. Still, the fact that many people
stepped forward to criticize Israeli «excesses» was a new and
important development.
The second major development was the presidential cam-
paign of Rev. Jesse Jackson and the emergence of the Rain-
bow Coalition as a potent progressive political force. Jackson
is the first major U.S. presidential candidate ever to put the
issue of peace in the Middle East and Palestinian national
rights squarely on the national political agenda. His trip to Syria
heightened the pressure on the Reagan Administration to with-
draw U.S. troops from Lebanon, and his open support for a
Palestinian homeland challenged the traditional knee jerk sup-
port for Israel by the other Democratic candidates. Jackson's
electoral success proved that millions of Americans, particu-
larly Blacks, would support his Middle East position and
opened up public opinion as a whole to further education on
Middle East politics.
Ruling class reacts to Jackson
For his efforts, Reverend Jackson was declared «Public
Enemy Number One» by U.S. based Zionists as well as by the
U.S. ruling class. Even the liberal wing of the ruling class
accused Jackson, in the words of the New York Times, of «col-
laboration with the enemies of democracy in embarrassments
of the government of the U.S.» And the establishment press as
a whole outdid itself attempting to discredit Jackson, especially
by its unrelenting attacks on his unfortunate Hymietown
remark. As usual, such attacks were made in the guise of
opposition to anti-Semitism but were little more than a
demagogic attempt to stop the Rainbow Coalition and discredit
its position on the Middle East.
Of course, ruling class hostility towards Jesse Jackson
does not stem simply from his Middle East stance. They are
disturbed by what they see as his all-sided role as a spokes-
man for the «dispossessed and dis-enfranchised» of U.S. soc-
iety. His staunch program of peace and justice has brought >
Re-enactment of the Sabra-Shatila massacre in Austin, Texas, staged as part of this year’s commemoration sponsored by the November 29th Coalition.
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