I’m going to make this post and kick off this reading group to get it moving. If I try to plan it perfectly, it will never get done, so let’s just start and see how it goes, adjusting if needed.
The first book for this reading group will be Perfect Victims, by Mohammed El-Kurd. I’ve pasted the summary below.
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
This book touches a lot on how Palestinians are constantly expected (especially by Europeans, who invented anti-semitism) to apologize for being Palestinians, and for being victimized by Jewish people.
We’ll start this week by reading and discussing the following article by the same author, which introduces some of his perspective on anti-zionism as a Palestinian.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/jewish-settlers-stole-my-house-its-not-my-fault-theyre-jewish/
This article is just over 2000 words. Let’s discuss in the comments. I’ll keep this post up until next weekend, then we can move on to Perfect Victims. Please let me know in the comments if you think any changes are needed to this plan.
Anti-zionism reading group started!
Tagging everyone who I had marked down as potentially interested as well as anyone who participated in my proposal thread for this reading group or in this thread so far. Let me know if you want to be added to or removed from this ping list.
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Thank you for starting this, excellent article as well as the additional context included in SickSemper’s comment.
The detrimental effect of the “preciseness of language” civility trap and incorrect centering of non-Palestinians can be seen in the recent site struggle regarding the
emoji as well as subsequent actions and metaposts.I highly encourage everyone on the mod/admin team to read the article.
What’s really damming about all this is that the zionists themselves don’t give a fuck about anti-semetic tropes or hateful language.
They want their benefits, and all they need to do to get their material benefits (military and economic aid, trade, training, intelligence, etc) is to play the game of fooling the white American and white European. And it’s really easy to fool a people who want to be fooled.
All three of those examples deal with aesthetics. Ben-Gvir’s statements were factual and true: Jewish life is worth more than ours under Israeli rule, but it was his explicit oration that triggered outrage rather than the institutionalized policies that have made his racist remarks the material reality on the ground. Even the physical deformation of a Palestinian’s face was only of note because of what the etching symbolized, not the etching itself—had the soldiers cut inconspicuous lines on his cheek, I doubt it would have garnered any attention at all.
What makes these examples stand out is that they make the whole game that westerners play visible, and look completely absurd. “Liberal zionists” want the game to be played according to rules, it’s bad for their business if people make a mockery of it.
Extremely true. Thanks for participating! Do you want to be added to the ping list for future threads of this reading group?
No, I already have much studying I need to do.
Yooooo you did it! Perfect day to log back on! Will reread this article tomorrow
I decided to stop worrying about getting the format “right” and just go for it. I think we can just throw in other things to read as needed, change the schedule, etc. based on discussions.
I have read this article maybe a half dozen times since it came out, and I never peeped it was based on a Baldwin essay. If anyone’s interested, I highly suggest reading the source material, as it’s exceedingly relevant
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-antisem.html
As for the piece by El-Kurd, I find it to be the ultimate refutation of a mindset that, at least for me, was inculcated from a young age as a white westerner.
To be Jewish was to be special and unique, “The Holocaust” as a proper noun was a revered event, a monument we returned to annually to remember the sins of the Germans against the Jews (while the other victims of German extermination like Slavs, Roma, gender and sexual minorities, etc went essentially unaddressed, as well as the near extermination of the Sioux, the Lakota, the Herero and all others historically under the colonial boot ).
I learned that the identifier of Jew was essentially akin to a slur, that antisemitism was the crime of crimes, that never again could we repeat such dangerous bigotry, while Black Lives Matter erupted as a desperate cry to stop the institutionalized murder of black amerikans happening in the present day. The view was also shifted from learning 20th century American history, the crimes in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea. Even as I expanded my horizons, I never found any discussion of the state of israel or its unending crimes, nothing that could shake the perpetual victim status of its designated in-group.
It was only in the last 5 years that the hypocrisy has truly been unmasked for me, that the widespread concern for human dignity was to be reserved for Jews alone as Gaza was torn apart. The great march of return was paradigm shifting, when I was getting involved with antizionist student organizations, I had to quickly realize that lived experience and liberal identity politics were weaponized against me and my comrades in bad faith, that we would be smeared as bigots for identifying that the source of the sniper bullets and tear gas canisters professed itself to be acting for Jewish safety. Simultaneously, we were accused of singling out the Jewish state, why weren’t we protesting the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, it must be because of antisemitism. This took work, having to double check my words in case I was stepping on those mines.
All of that is to say, I could have come to the correct position much earlier with this article. He so concisely lays out how israel revels in its Jewishness (Hanukkah, Purim, Yom Kippur celebrations among the ruins of Gaza) while weaponizing that identity against its critics, that it’s hard to come away without the conclusions he’s trying to impress on the reader. It finally helped me realize that Jews are people just like Christians are people and Muslims are people; that the weird philosemitism was not only putting one religion above the others, but actively covering for mass killing of Palestinians. Hopefully some comrades who haven’t read this piece can get some value out of my ramblings
Thank you for posting the Baldwin excerpt. I should have read the comments before posting, it really helped crytalise the core issue explained in the essay for me.
I’m glad it/the discussion could help! It can be difficult to explore these concepts, especially if one grew up essentially putting one form of oppression above all others, but the perspectives of people under the boot, whether in israel or in America, really help in clarification
Simultaneously, we were accused of singling out the Jewish state, why weren’t we protesting the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, it must be because of antisemitism.
Fuck, just reading this sentence spiked my blood pressure.
All of that is to say, I could have come to the correct position much earlier with this article.
This is exactly why I wanted to have this reading group. He really gets to the core of the issue.
I’ll come back later and make a more detailed reply to you when I get a chance. Thanks for participating.
It was super disconnected so I hope it made sense. I really appreciate this and I’ll join in when we read the book as well!
It was super disconnected so I hope it made sense.
I honestly thought it was a really incisive comment.
I really appreciate this and I’ll join in when we read the book as well!
Looking forward to it!
I learned that the identifier of Jew was essentially akin to a slur, that antisemitism was the crime of crimes
This is absolutely something I’ve also noticed. To say someone is a Jew often seems like a slur in and of itself, even when it’s relevant, correct, and simply used as a neutral descriptor. Of course, there are people who use it to imply Jews secretly control everything (or other such nonsense), but I feel that often it can be very easy to tell that that’s not the case with a particular situation, yet the situation will still be treated as though it is.
I tend to say and write “Jewish people” in place of “Jews” because otherwise it feels like I sound like a Nazi. I suppose I do this with most ethnic groups though, on reflection. Eg referring to black people as “blacks” parses as racist and reminds me of how white south Africans spoke about their indigenous populations.
Reminds me of “transwomen” vs “trans women” discourse in a lot of ways vis-à-vis othering or in the case of ethnicity, dehumanization.
I tend to say and write “Jewish people” in place of “Jews” because otherwise it feels like I sound like a Nazi. I suppose I do this with most ethnic groups though, on reflection. Eg referring to black people as “blacks” parses as racist and reminds me of how white south Africans spoke about their indigenous populations.
That’s a good point. I actually do this as well (for the same reasons), but I will point out that it isn’t universal. I think people commonly say “Kurds”, “Arabs”, “Iranians”, “Afghans”, and “Turks” for example. Maybe it’s just a linguistic historical context issue, or maybe it’s because these are West and Central Asian people who are generally otherized in the west and that bleeds into the language used in general.
Regardless, I think people still do usually get treated the same for describing someone as Jewish using the word “Jewish”, they’re often assumed to be or treated as antisemitic even when it’s used as a neutral descriptor and the actual things they are saying are not antisemitic at all.
Beyond that, I find there’s a focus (even in this comment I’m making myself about this exact issue) on antisemitism as the primary issue when the actual issue is zionist genocide, which is perverse in and of itself.
Let me know your thoughts!
Sorry for the delayed reply. Been struggling to find the right way to respond to this, but I agree with your perspective.
My intuition is that there’s an important distinction between labels that primarily denote nationality vs labels that denote ethnicity (and another distinction again for religious labels like Muslim.) Identifying somebody by their nationality (eg Afghani, Iraqi, etc) shouldn’t necessarily imply ethnicity - except often it does, at least rhetorically, to the exclusion of diverse ethnic groups that exist within a nation. But none of this is actually useful except to try and untangle why a subset of these group identity labels “feel icky” or something. A racist does not care about precision and there are many people who, to take my country as an example, intend to imply “white” when they say “australian.”
(edit to add:) Jewishness is a tricky thing since it does not fit neatly into a single category. But Zionist and Jewish Israeli are both terms which mean exactly what I intend them to when I use them. If an argument I make using those terms is attacked as anti-semetic at least I have a fighting chance at defending myself.
The conclusion I’m circling around, I think, is that there’s an ambiguity and imprecision in language that is easily exploited and zionists take full cynical advantage of it. Where this becomes hard to combat is that these arbitrary rules / conventions that benefit zionists are (in the appropriate context) necessary to distinguish anti-zionist speech from anti-semetic speech. The game is rigged, either you play by the rules, which benefit of zionism, or you ignore them and create space for bigotry.
I can only settle on the idea that I (we) have to continue to be precise with our speech and essentially meet Zionists on their terms when speaking from a place of relative privilege compared to the people being oppressed, but we shouldn’t let other privileged people take advantage of the ambiguity to ignore and/or co-opt the voices of people oppressed by Jewish supremacists.
By staying precise (israeli rather than jew, jewish person rather than jew, etc) we hold ground against bigotry and make our arguments a little bit harder to ignore. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to say that the people directly oppressed by Israel should not be expected to tread as carefully, since the context of their speech is very different to our own.
It’s fucking maddening though. Propagandists for Israel willfully (gleefully, imo, tbh) play semantic games and misinterpret critical speech in the most bad faith way possible.
Identifying somebody by their nationality (eg Afghani, Iraqi, etc) shouldn’t necessarily imply ethnicity - except often it does, at least rhetorically, to the exclusion of diverse ethnic groups that exist within a nation.
Good point. “Afghan” being on the list was my mistake, I was adding names of groups as they popped into my head and that one slipped through despite being a national demonym and not an ethnic group. “Iranian” is a national demonym too, but I’ve commonly seen it used to refer to ethnic Persians.
All excellent points. The only thing I would say is that when a comrade is imprecise with language in a clearly non-malicious way and zionists (including gentile zionists) try to exploit that to shift the focus from genocide of Palestinians to feelings of Jewish people, it’s important to reject that reframing wholly. Minor imprecision of language, even when it sounds bad and even when it’s not coming from a Palestinian, is no excuse to pivot away from the actual issue at hand, though zionists love doing so.
Of course, as you say, we should still always make efforts to be as precise as possible in our own speech.
I can only settle on the idea that I (we) have to continue to be precise with our speech and essentially meet Zionists on their terms when speaking from a place of relative privilege compared to the people being oppressed, but we shouldn’t let other privileged people take advantage of the ambiguity to ignore and/or co-opt the voices of people oppressed by Jewish supremacists.
This is true too, and something we should guard against. However, I feel that it’s often fairly easy to spot actual antisemitism fairly quickly. There’s a common idea I see people state that antisemites are very sneaky, but I think that’s not the case in the overwhelming majority of cases.
It’s fucking maddening though. Propagandists for Israel willfully (gleefully, imo, tbh) play semantic games and misinterpret critical speech in the most bad faith way possible.
Good point. “Afghan” being on the list was my mistake, I was adding names of groups as they popped into my head and that one slipped through despite being a national demonym and not an ethnic group. “Iranian” is a national demonym too, but I’ve commonly seen it used to refer to ethnic Persians.
Yeah I was just trying to list nationality labels rather than ethnicities without putting much thought into it, thinking of examples we’re used to using and hearing that don’t raise the “is this some nazi shit?” eyebrow. Didn’t intend to make a point about your use of Afghan, I just got to thinking about it in the context of my country and how there shouldn’t be an ethnic implication when referring to a fully colonial nationality.
when a comrade is imprecise with language in a clearly non-malicious way and zionists (including gentile zionists) try to exploit that to shift the focus from genocide of Palestinians to feelings of Jewish people, it’s important to reject that reframing wholly. Minor imprecision of language, even when it sounds bad and even when it’s not coming from a Palestinian, is no excuse to pivot away from the actual issue at hand, though zionists love doing so.
Good point, we’re carrying water for Israel when we police the speech of well meaning comrades. There’s a deeper thing here with taking things in good faith that goes well beyond the scope of this discussion, but I’m glad you made this point because it’s such a waste of time and good will when leftists start spiraling with each other over semantics.
I feel that it’s often fairly easy to spot actual antisemitism fairly quickly. There’s a common idea I see people state that antisemites are very sneaky, but I think that’s not the case in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Agreed again. They aren’t clever or sneaky, as a rule, just disingenuous and all that shit Sartre pointed out about reveling in ridiculousness and rhetorical game playing.
It’s difficult, while being jacketed as an antisemite is so risky in society, to just shrug off those accusations and stick to the points, but perhaps that’s in flux too. Maybe simply refusing to play defense and ignoring those accusations is appropriate more often than we’re conditioned to think.
Great reply, thanks!
It’s difficult, while being jacketed as an antisemite is so risky in society, to just shrug off those accusations and stick to the points, but perhaps that’s in flux too. Maybe simply refusing to play defense and ignoring those accusations is appropriate more often than we’re conditioned to think.
Yes, I agree. I think it’s tough in practice when the stakes can be quite high. It definitely depends on the situation. However, I think many “average” people are being worn out on the constant accusations of antisemitism towards people saying things that are as incredibly controversial as “all children deserve to live”.
While it’s certainly still a huge risk to be labeled an antisemite in many cases, I think refusing to play defense is the best defense more often than we expect, because (IMO) the zionist strategy of centering (fake) antisemitism partially depends on being able to keep the focus on it as long as possible, which is made harder when the target refuses to entertain the accusation and stays on message.
Of course, in many cases they have the zionist media empires to turn to where they can focus on whatever they like for as long as they like, but as I said, I think people in general are getting tired of that kind of thing.
Especially in israel, they chose to divide their society along religious lines! I may not like the term “judaization,” but that’s what they named the ethnic cleansing policy! The “Jewish state” prioritizes Jews over Arabs, so yes, I will be specifying Israeli Jews when I talk about the colonial oppressor just as I would say white Americans when discussing America
An excellently written polemic that drives at the core of “Israeli” consent manufacturing and dehumanization of Palestinians. Must read.
I’m really glad I read that essay.
Even though it makes sense now that I know, I had no idea there was such a focus on teaching Holocaust and antisemitism history and theory to the Palestinian people.
I’ve been aware of Palestinian academic contribution to that area of study, which I have found to be an interesting phenomenon but I suppose I assumed was a product of organic curiosity/interest (or, frankly pragmatic “tactical” motivation in a diplomatic sense) in understanding the psychology and mythos of Israelis and of Zionism.
How the author describes the complex and distracting (political) necessity of communicating the atrocities and indignities committed against the Palestinian people in politically correct and precise language is something I think we can all relate to.
It has always felt like “first world problems” to be frustrated by this, which it generally is for me, I live in such comparative luxury that the burden of precise speech isn’t much of a burden at all in practice. But often we do have to blunten a lot of emotion and passionate rhetoric in order to communicate around social justice and human rights issues in a way that preemptively heads off bad faith misinterpretation and derailment of our messaging.
That regular Palestinians have to jump through the same hoops and police their own speech while talking about (and actively, continually, experiencing) such brutal mistreatment and exploitation is just… Words fail me, tbh. I can’t imagine how frustrating and disempowering it must be.
What a cruel mindfuck.
I have more sympathy than ever for the people who decide to pick up a gun instead.
As an aside, I think it speaks to the Israeli delusion that their “enemies” are entirely motivated by ignorant and religiously motivated hatred, that they expend such effort on this avenue of propaganda in the Palestinian regions / populations.
Thanks for participating!Agreed, it’s absolutely perverse that Palestinians are expected to always be mindful of the feelings of their aggressors.
It has always felt like “first world problems” to be frustrated by this, which it generally is for me, I live in such comparative luxury that the burden of precise speech isn’t much of a burden at all in practice. But often we do have to blunten a lot of emotion and passionate rhetoric in order to communicate around social justice and human rights issues in a way that preemptively heads off bad faith misinterpretation and derailment of our messaging.
I think the problem is that, not only does the preemptive action against misinterpretation often not work, but it takes a conversation about a genocide committed by Jewish people, with the stated reason by them being their Jewishness (which is wrong, but it’s what they say), and makes the discourse about Jewish feelings instead of the genocide of Palestinians, including (usually especially) the feelings of those actively committing the genocide. Even if it isn’t too much of a burden for westerners to be precise in their speech on this issue, the focus on that shifts focus away from the actual issues at hand, which is absolutely a deliberate strategy employed by “Israelis”.
Someone can make a correct point which is not antisemitic at all, be accused of antisemitism, and their whole professional life and career are over, whereas a zionist can say whatever monstrous shit comes to mind and suffer no consequences. This is partly enabled by some “well-meaning” people in the liberal establishment continuously making every single thing that involves a Jewish person, regardless of if that person is the victim of the aggressor, and making it primarily about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
I realise that I’ve focused in on this without also acknowledging/exploring the complicity of the rest of the world in requiring Palestinian messaging to be so precise and stripped back in order for us to digest it without disregarding it off-hand or interpreting it in bad faith.
I’m not sure what to say further on that specifically, except that the scale of opposition Palestinians face even in telling their stories is so massive. We have an important duty to push back had against lazy or willful misinterpretation of Palestinian voices whenever and wherever we encounter it. To help people properly contextualise these voices and their messages.
I’m not sure what to say further on that specifically, except that the scale of opposition Palestinians face even in telling their stories is so massive. We have an important duty to push back had against lazy or willful misinterpretation of Palestinian voices whenever and wherever we encounter it. To help people properly contextualise these voices and their messages.
100%, absolutely agreed. It’s everyone’s job to push back against zionist framing whenever possible. I think El-Kurd’s work gives a lot of useful tools for doing that, which is why I want to study it here.
I forgot to ask in my previous reply: do you want to be added to the ping list for this reading group?
in other conflicts, it wouldn’t be exceptional to use terms like “catholics and protestants”, “Bosnians and serbs” and “christians and muslims” as shorthands, but dishonest actors would like to paint any description that refers to “jews” instead of “israelis” as being antisemitic. as an atheist Jew, I wouldn’t even bat an eye if the anti-zionist movement began using the K-word, it’s what I feel the urge to shout at zionists now, but I understand it’s a losing battle, so I’ve settled for “Nazi” as the appropriate slur. not zionazi, or neonazi, just Nazi. it’s certainly the most effective insult in terms of zionist outrage.
as an atheist Jew, I wouldn’t even bat an eye if the anti-zionist movement began using the K-word
I personally wouldn’t, just as I wouldn’t apply historical slurs to the other groups you mention, but I agree that there’s a ridiculous reluctance to refer to the perpetrators of zionist genocide as “Israeli Jews”, despite this being the actual description - including by themselves when discussing demographics - of the group.
Great book. Ill jump into discussion when you start it
This was a very good article, thank you for posting it. The chapos tend to emphasize similar in twitter posts, the opportunistic conflation of the israeli flag with the star of david and vice-versa. Jewish (specifically) supremacy is a force in contemporary politics. It is an interesting question whether it is meaningfully distinct from white supremacy. Early in 2024 I think the general line/understanding was that Zionism is a white supremacist ideology, but as time went on I saw some people separating them. Certainly not all israelis would pass as white in an American context, although white-passing israelis are apparently afforded more privileges in the ethnostate. Saying you oppose white supremacy will get you nods in left-wing spaces, as will saying you oppose Hindu supremacy. Saying you oppose Jewish supremacy will definitely get you asked some follow-up questions. This is basically fine in Western left spaces I think, given the history of fascism and neo-nazis’ obsession with “naming the Jew” as their enemy. But as the article illustrates, Palestinian people should not be checked & policed in the same way.
Yes, I agree with your points. I think this also applies (in ways we’ve seen during recent discussions) on this website. Not everyone here is an
westerner, but sometimes people still assume that the comment they’re replying to is a cracker-Amerikkkan and interpret it accordingly. That was part of why I wanted to have this reading group.I think these concepts are important to understand when discussing Palestine, especially in spaces on the left, especially in spaces where there might be non-European people participating, even more especially where there are Arabs, and most especially when there are Palestinians.
I think it was Ilan Pappe (amongst others, I’m sure) that said that Arabs could not be blamed for European anti-semitism.
Arabs could not be blamed for European anti-semitism.
The crazy thing is that what we have been taught about so-called antisemitism is also largely a lie. Theres an "israeli"historian who wrote about this in the 80’s and 90’s that European ideologies against Jews are less than 200 years old but zionist manufacture this perpetual victimhood narrative meanwhile their main religious texts are all incredibly racist.
I read this a few weeks ago and it blew my mind a little bit. Part 3 in particular.
Avoiding labels based on ignorance or hypocrisy, we thus see that the word ‘Jewry’ and its cognates describe two different and even contrasting social groups, and because of current Israeli politics the continuum between the two is disappearing fast. On the one hand there is the traditional totalitarian meaning discussed above; on the other hand there are Jews by descent who have accepted and internalised the complex of ideas which Karl Popper has called ‘the open society’.
Wow, that’s actually a really interesting point (emphasis added by me). I haven’t finished reading part 1 yet, but that’s a fascinating article and I’m sure the other parts are interesting. Thanks for posting it. Maybe we should add this to the list at some point.
From what I read so far, the article substantiates anti-Jewish discrimination as a historical European problem, but points out the historical developments in Jewish European society which are intertwined with it, such as the fact that Rabbis had massive power over community members unless those members converted and totally severed themselves from all other Jews, and that the European liberalization that put an end to that benefited Jewish people by doing so even though many of the agents of that liberalization were themselves deeply and actively antisemitic.
However, a great many present-day Jews are nostalgic for that world, their lost paradise, the comfortable closed society from which they were not so much liberated as expelled. A large part of the zionist movement always wanted to restore it – and this part has gained the upper hand. Many of the motives behind Israeli politics, which so bewilder the poor confused western ‘friends of Israel’, are perfectly explicable once they are seen simply as reaction, reaction in the political sense which this word has had for the last two hundred years: a forced and in many respects innovative, and therefore illusory, return to the closed society of the Jewish past.
The author goes on in this passage to propose that many zionists are trying to restore a fictionalized version of the old Jewish communities, with religious control and repression. I think this is somewhat substantiated by the massive rise in ultra right-wing religious zionist groups in the past few decades.
Im glad you read it and got something out of it. Interesting in your thoughts on future sections as well.
I have time now to write my thoughts on that red sails article, where should I put that?
I think it would make sense to put it as its own post in /c/theory.
Okay!
Shahak has some strong points paticularly viz a viz settler messianism and the growth of National Religious factions in Israel. He has the tendency to make broad generalization statements based on either smaller examples or the rumsfeldian “absence of evidence.” (For example his statement for a lack of pre-modern Jewish Humor).
Thanks for contributing to the discussion! Are you interested in joining the reading group? I can add you to the tag list.
Yes! Tag me by all means
- Added to the ping list!
@CARCOSA@hexbear.net, can I get this pinned site-wide for a bit to get some visibility?
Thank you to whichever admin pinned this!
