In a strange turn, literary theorists and cultural critics — often vocal supporters of BDS — follow the likes of Linda Sarsour no pluralist herself fetishizing the land and the kind of non-refutable claim it is meant to give to Palestinians.
But in the conflict between Arabs and Jews, Palestinian claims are determined to be, without any self-consciousness, as objectively real and true, while the Jewish claims, textual as they are, are merely fictional. Like Anderson, the Palestinian nationalist Edward Said cited the importance of literary and cultural representations of nationhood — "national identity does not exist independent of the narratives that speak of it.
In the terms of the critical theorist Judith Butler — a vocal advocate of BDS — nationality, like any form of identity, is a "performance. More than ancient coins with Hebrew insignias, it has been the books Jews read, the stories Jews tell, the volumes on which Jews have provided commentary for years, as well as the prayers they have recited, that testify to the validity of their claim to the land.
Of the 19 blessings that constitute the center of the three daily traditional Jewish prayer services, six of them are directly concerned with the land of Israel: the prayer for rain; the prayer for the return of justice; the prayer for the ingathering of the exiles; the prayer for the rebuilding of Jerusalem; the prayer for the return of the Davidic dynasty; the prayer for return of worship to the Temple in Jerusalem. The patriarchs are promised the land in Genesis; in Exodus, Moses and the People of Israel inherit it.
Whether my ancestors in Europe had suitcases packed under their beds awaiting the Messiah to travel to Israel as my Polish great-uncle actually did is not as significant as the mythography itself. Jews for millennia have written about the land, longed for the land, and some indeed lived in the land. I am not rehearsing these features of Jewish liturgy and sacred texts to convince Palestinians or anyone else to acquiesce to Jewish claims.
Nor am I citing the Jewish library — there is no independent Zionist Library despite those who claim it's possible to divorce Judaism from its nationalist aspirations or from Jewish nationhood — because I imagine that such claims are irrefutable. I do not want to convince others that my claims are valid for them, but that they are valid for Jews , valid for me. But remarkably today, progressives, like Omar and Rashida Tlaib, do not consider Jews to have any valid claim to the land of Israel.
Both novels presented a highly sanitized version of history—both, in their own way, racist and reactionary—and dramatically downplayed those on the suffering end of these stories. The fact that, in both cases, the history is now understood as far more complex and problematic is something to be applauded, not lamented.
M uravchik spends considerable effort trying to draw connections between the Palestinian cause and the Nazis, as if to remind us who the real bad guys are. This is unsurprising, as it flies in the face of most scholarship on the Arab revolt. It is true, as Muravchik recounts, that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, sought an alliance with the Nazis in hopes of gaining advantage against British and Zionist forces in Palestine. He further argues that the Arab states then manipulated international organizations like the UN to use this invented identity as a weapon against Israel.
Congress empowering Israeli rejectionists, Benjamin Netanyahu being chief among them. Muravchik attributes a great deal of messaging skill and organization to a coalition of regimes that have proven time and again to lack both. At no point does Muravchik consider that the Palestinian Arabs might have had a good reason to object to the demand that they give up half of Palestine to its Jewish minority there is, of course, no example in history of any people ever having agreed to any similar deal , or that Arabs in general might have a reason to be bothered by it.
M uravchik makes no effort to confront the reality of Palestinian life under occupation. In his view, simply by virtue of Israel being a democracy, its leaders should be taken at their word that all the policies they enact which include, presumably, the ban on the importation of cumin and pasta into Gaza are entirely justifiable.
And now, Biden finds his administration buffeted by conflicting forces within his coalition. Of course they can. But is that where the debate is in the party? In some ways, the shift in the Democratic Party began under the Obama administration, when Democratic officials, including Biden, pressed for the Iran nuclear deal.
But many Jewish progressives say their criticism comes from a place of love and idealism. They argue that the Israeli and U. Traffic Alert. By Jennifer Medina. Lisa Lerer. The changing dynamics among Democrats have come into sharp focus amid the escalating crisis in the region, sparked by proposed forced evictions of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.
The Israeli eviction policy, as well as a number of other factors, has fed violence that, on Monday, was reported to have claimed the lives of 20 people, including 9 children, in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip.
Secondly, the administration has every lever at its disposal to explicitly restrict U. Over the weekend, the three biggest voices on the American left — Sens. The Biden administration has responded to the current crisis with the kind of statements that seem unlikely to satisfy Van Hollen. On Monday, Sen. Progressive voices within the U. Jewish community argue those kinds of attacks are ineffective.
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