Marc Lamont Hill

Mitchell Plitnick

  A bold call for the American Left to extend their politics to the issues of Israel-Palestine In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how one-sided pro-Israel policies reflect the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States. Except for Palestine argues that progressives and liberals who oppose regressive policies on immigration, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and other issues must extend these core principles to the oppression of Palestinians. In doing so, the authors take seriously the political concerns and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians, demonstrating the extent to which U.S. policy has made peace harder to attain. They also unravel the conflation of advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Hill and Plitnick provide a timely and essential intervention by examining multiple dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conversation, including Israel's growing disdain for democracy, the effects of occupation on Palestine, the siege of Gaza, diminishing American funding for Palestinian relief, and the campaign to stigmatize any critique of Israeli occupation. Except for Palestine is a searing polemic and a cri de coeur for elected officials, activists, and everyday citizens alike to align their beliefs and politics with their values.

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

Rebecca Lum

President Obama's $38 billion aid package to Israel, finalized in 2016 as he was leaving office, marked the "largest military aid package from one country to another in the annals of human history." Such resources, which were offered without any concrete policy demands regarding Palestinian human rights or self-determination, provided Israeli the financial security and “qualitative military edge” necessary to resist compliance with international law or earnest engagement with the peace process.

Fundamentally, Zionism is the nationalist ideology of the Jewish people, which constructs Judaism as not only a religion but a nationality. Zionism advances the idea that Jews of all sorts--irrespective of race, ethnicity, cultural identity, or geographic location; regardless of whether they are secular, religious, or atheist—constitute a singular modern nation.

“Had Jews merely wanted to live in Palestine, this would not have been a problem. In fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted for centuries throughout the Middle East. But Zionists sought sovereignty over a land where other people lived. Their ambitions required not only the dispossession and removal of Palestinians in 1948 but also their forced exile, juridical erasure and denial that they ever existed. So, during Israel's establishment, some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for a Jewish majority state. .. This is why Palestinians have been resisting for more than seven decades: They are fighting to remain on their lands with dignity. They have valiantly resisted their colonial erasure. ...This resistance is not about returning to the 1947 borders or some notion of the past, but about laying claim to a better future in which Palestinians and their children can live in freedom and equality, rather than being subjugated as second-class citizens or worse"

Adalah, an Israel-based civil rights organization, objections to Israel’s 2018 Basic Law: Israelis the Nation-State of the Jewish People

There is a difference between racism and racist practices and a Basic Law that requires, as a constitutional mandate, racist acts. If the Basic Law is enacted, the practice will be anchored in the constitution, which stands to pass clear messages to all the branches of government and obligates them, by law, to discriminate against the Arab population. In so doing, it transforms discrimination into a constitutional, systematic, and institutional principle, and into a basic element of the foundations of Israeli law. Unlike daily practice, where one can argue against the validity of discrimination because it is committed in violation of the principle of the rule of law, a law clearly articulates its intention for the realization of its objectives, and it turns illegitimate practices in and of themselves into an expression of the rule of law.... The immediate repercussions of the Nakba, which are mainly related to the loss of the homeland and the destruction of the Palestinian society, with all that this entails, were realized mostly through extra-legal governmental policies. Now, the Nation-State Basic Law seeks to anchor them in a clear and explicit manner, first and foremost, by the denial of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination in their own homeland.

Palestinian-American activist Yousef Munayyer raised an obvious parallel: “Can you imagine asking indigenous Americans and indigenous rights activists--fighting for the rights of a population whose languages, societies, culture and possessions were categorically decimated in the process of erecting the United States-whether the United States has a "right to exist"?... It is intellectually dishonest and intended, almost always, to silence critics and criticism of Israeli policies. [And] anyone who doesn’t answer the question about Israel's right to exist with an unequivocal “yes” risks being portrayed as an eliminationist radical worthy of labels like "anti-Semite" and otherwise marginalized. In other words, it's a set-up.”

On the basis of these grievances, this assortment of civil society groups called for BDS "until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by (1) (e]nding its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (2) [recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3) (respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194"

BDS is a call of conscience to supporters in civil society around the world to use economic leverage, including lobbying their governments, in order to bring about specific changes in Israeli policies that violate human rights. The dividing line for government intervention to prevent the two different kinds of boycotts could not be clearer. One can agree with or oppose the Arab League boycott, but it is nonetheless an official act of a governmental body. U.S. measures to counter it thus constitute legitimate political decisions. It is the response of one government to the policy of a conglomeration of others, and that response contravenes no international or constitutional lavw. Conversely, one can agree with or oppose BDS, but its very nature is a civil society dispute. In a society that holds the freedoms of expression and dissent dear, and constitutionally protected, BDS must be held immune trom government intervention.

… it is improper for the U.S. government to try to shut down the effort to boycott, divest from, and press sanctions against Israel […] The U.S. has also imposed legal and diplomatic penalties on the Palestinians for going to the International Criminal Court (ICC), or any other international body, for relief, and even imposed penalties for the Palestinians having joined the United Nations General Assembly. The only route available, then, for Palestinians to seek redress for their situation is the bilateral talks with Israel under U.S. auspices that have failed so dramatically for more than a quarter century. This is an unreasonable demand to place on a people who have been disenfranchised and have lived either in exile or under Israeli occupation for generations. […] It is also inappropriate for the U.S. government to make such a statement, which is a transparent effort to discourage the [BDS] movement among its citizenry, since it is a legal and protected action.

While Israel should never be unfairly isolated or targeted, it also cannot be shielded from principled and organized political pressure through boycotts, divestments, and sanctions. These tactics have always been critical tools for producing peace, freedom, and justice for the vulnerable. Palestine cannot be an exception.

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