The American Left and The Palestinians
While the Lebanon Daily Star is reporting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s upcoming summit with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, Drudge is headlining a story from the UK Times Online ”No dancing and no gays if Hamas gets its way.”
Abbas is claiming ”he would bombard Ariel Sharon with demands” but Hamas is competing for control of Gaza. Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas in Gaza is espousing a ”a vision of an Islamic society that bans mixed dancing and sternly disapproves of homosexuality”.
As Hamas and the Palestinian Authority square off, it isn’t clear who will end up ruling Gaza, either by ballot or gun, and what form of government will eventually take hold. One can’t help wonder if Sharon is negotiating prematurely.
What is perplexing is the American left, who has taken on the Palestinian cause as another splinter of their coalition of the unwilling.
At a recent DC Peace March, a Salon article by Jeff Horwitz mentions that Palestinian supporters were a component in the march. ”…the Palestinian boosters took over Farragut Square with their own signs and chants…”.
ANSWER, one of the organizers of the event proclaims the Sept. 24th March in DC, along with marches in San Francisco and Los Angeles huge successes, and includes the Palestinian issue in its discourse ”…end Colonial Occupation: Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, Afghanistan and Everywhere”.
Andrei S. Markovits a Professor at the University of Michigan, in a lengthy piece in Dissent Magazine Online defines the American and European Left since 1990 as including anti-Zionist (pro-Palestinian) causes:
A new European (and American) commonality for all lefts-a new litmus test of progressive politics-seems to have developed: anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism (though not anti-Semitism, or at least not yet). I cannot think of two more potent wedge issues that define inclusion and exclusion on the left today. In a hierarchy of key items defining what it means to be left in contemporary Europe and the United States-pro-choice, abolition of the death penalty, equality in marital arrangements and official recognition of gay and lesbian couples by the state; progressive income tax; economic and social justice; support for third world claims against the rich first world; multilateralism as opposed to unilateralism; legalization of marijuana; and on and on-opposition to Israel and America figure at the very top…..There are virtually no divisions over the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and over the essence of the United States.
With Hamas competing for control of Gaza, to impose their version of a Taliban on the Palestinians who live there, the American Left in its zeal for anything anti-Bush, anti-war, or anti-American ends up supporting what may turn out to be a draconian totalitarian society where many of the causes they claim to represent are prohibited.
Contrast that with their opposition to the war in Iraq, where the US is trying to instill a representative democracy with rights and protections for religious freedom, women and minorities.
Cross posted at the SactoDan BLOG