(1/2) Regarding the "it is good that Israel exists thing." Besides the people who found shelter in Israel, there are also people (like me) who live in Israel, for most of whom Israel is their only home and most of whom were *born* in Israel. When someone says the statement "it is good that Israel exists" is offensive, what I hear is that they want me and my family to be dead or at the very least homeless refugees.
(2/2) If their goal is helping the Palestinias then they’re shooting themselves in the foot by antagonizing very important potential allies, namely all the Israelis that care about the Palestinians and want to work towards a two states solution (which is roughly half of all the Israelis!)
Yeah, one thing that has always struck me as alarming and counterproductive about BDS and associated recent Palestinian advocacy movements is that…it’s like if a lot of Israeli activists decided to make the United States withdraw from Afghanistan, and they tried to achieve this while not talking to any American anti-war activists, not describing any actions American sympathizers could take to collaborate with them, and generally coming up with plans to pressure the American government which do not involve convincing any Americans of their ideas or rallying Americans who agreed with them to do anything.
Like, the people in Israel who want a free and safe Palestine are an enormously important asset! They can vote, they can pressure their representatives, they can protest, they can donate, they are already doing all of those things and will keep doing all of those things!
So …why would you try to influence a democracy without recruiting any of its, you know, voters? Why would you try to sway a parliament without persuading any of its, uh, members? It’s counterproductive and it’s harmful and it’s just kind of deeply weird. I really hope there’s space on the American left for a productive approach to Israel, which would involve identifying the politicians with good ideas and supporting them, identifying the activist groups doing good work and supporting them, identifying the voters who want peace and funding get-out-the-vote efforts - you know, treating Israel like a democracy whose policy can be changed at the ballot box, instead of like a mysterious black box whose inner workings can’t be fathomed.
This is a dead-on central example of the dynamic I was trying to talk about in this post.
I think that certain American activists have a bone-deep instinctive understanding that, if they make enough noise and get enough of the Right People chanting along with them, eventually the Dean will feel compelled to step in and create a free independent Palestine.
…there are downsides to training your activists in tiny sealed-off worlds that are run by friendly omnipotent local authorities.