On the Materiality of Solidarity
“Remember the solidarity here and everywhere...” This simple phrase, found in one of the last pieces of writing created by the legendary Palestinian scholar Edward Said, is never far from my mind. I was reminded of it again yesterday as I prepared to join a panel discussion on “The Solidarity Turn: Equal Rights, Justice and Freedom for Palestine” organized by the Grupo Especiál Palestina y América Latina from the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.
Annexation and the “new Nakba”
Moderated by Dr. Moisés Garduño García, the panel also featured contributions from Dr. Saed Abu-Hijleh, Dr. Ilan Pappé, and Dr. Daniel Abundis. It was a privilege to be a part of the discussion, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of my own observations and reflect on how they connect with the important ideas presented by the other panelists.
While the overarching theme of the panel addressed the issue of solidarity with Palestine, the threat of formal Israeli annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank loomed large in the discussion. We all agreed that the dominant media and political discourse surrounding the annexation issue generally serves to perpetuate unhelpful and misleading frameworks about the real situation in Palestine. As Abu-Hijleh put it, the very concept of “annexation” is actually a misnomer as all of historic Palestine is under settler colonial occupation. Here I was reminded of Steve Salaita’s recent piece, in which he argues that “[t]oo much emphasis on the particulars of annexation can suggest that certain options are better for Palestinians when in reality all options are equally bad so long as Zionism continues to exist.”
For their part, Pappé and Abundis emphasized the dangers of the present moment, whether or not formal “annexation” is carried out. Referring to the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 and after, a process of ethnic cleansing which has seen the wholesale dispossession of Palestinians at the hands of the Zionist movement, Pappé described a “new Nakba” through which the state of Israel and its supporters in Washington and elsewhere are seeking to “depoliticize” the question of Palestine by claiming it can be “solved” through purely economic or “humanitarian” steps. Abundis pointed out the misleading nature of the “conflict” frame often used to discuss Palestine/Israel, insisting that the frames of colonization and apartheid are more accurate.
A history of transnational solidarity
As the only panelist currently based in the United States, I tried to speak about how struggles to build networks of solidarity and resistance are playing out here, and where and how Palestine fits into those struggles. I began by noting that the struggle for justice in Palestine has always been a transnational one. This becomes clear when we put the above-mentioned phrase from Edward Said’s 2003 article into its full context. Said argued that solidarity with Palestine
is no longer confined to a small number of intrepid souls here and there, but is recognized the world over. In the past six months I have lectured in four continents to many thousands of people. What brings them together is Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people which is now a byword for emancipation and enlightenment, regardless of all the vilification heaped on them by their enemies...Remember the solidarity here and everywhere in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia, and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding. Why? Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.
In this context, I referenced the recent interview on Democracy Now! with Angela Davis, a global icon of the struggle for social justice and Black liberation:
“Palestinian activists have long supported Black people’s struggle against racism,” Davis pointed out. “When I was in jail, solidarity coming from Palestine was a major source of courage for me. There has been this very important connection between the two struggles for many decades.”
Making settler colonialism visible
What I tried to argue in yesterday’s panel is that the transnationalism of solidarity with (and from) Palestine is entering a new phase. Settler colonialism is increasingly being recognized by activists and scholars alike as a shared structural logic that links Palestine with other places, not least the United States/Turtle Island. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that more people are waking up to what indigenous people in Palestine and elsewhere have known for generations.
Part of what is interesting to me, as someone who does a great deal of critical media analysis, is that for all of this activist and academic talk about settler colonialism, the term itself is almost never used in so-called mainstream/establishment/corporate media. (I discuss this in the chapter I co-authored with three of my Weave News colleagues for Censored 2019: Fighting the Fake News Invasion.) For this reason, I believe that the struggle to make settler colonialism visible in these sorts of media spaces is an urgent part of the larger struggle for decolonization.
Beyond performative solidarity?
Meanwhile, the recent uprisings against police violence and systemic racism in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others reveal something essential about this emergent phrase of transnational solidarity: a convergence of anti-colonial, anti-racist, and abolitionist frameworks. I see two overlapping elements of this dynamic:
At the conceptual level, discussions among grassroots activists increasingly recognize explicitly the organic relationship between settler colonialism and white supremacy - and the transnational nature of both.
The protests have provided further reason to spotlight the material linkages between the state of Israel and projects of settler colonization and white supremacy in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The “Deadly Exchange” identified by Jewish Voice for Peace - in which major U.S. police departments regularly receive training in Israel - is one key manifestation of these material linkages. As Jeff Halper notes in his recent Mondoweiss piece, the “Israelization” of U.S. law enforcement accelerated after 9/11, adding new layers to the settler colonial feedback loop through which Israel and the U.S. have shared knowledge, weapons, tactics, and modes of counterinsurgency.
Many readers will recall that in 2014, when residents of Ferguson, Missouri rose up in anger after the police murder of Michael Brown, chants of “Gaza Strip!” were heard on the streets, and Palestinians were sharing advice with their American comrades on how to deal with tear gas - the same gear gas that is made in places like Pennsylvania and then circulated globally for use by states seeking to prevent outbreaks of real democracy.
Consequently, it is not surprising that calls to #DefundThePolice are now sharing space on social media with calls to #DefundIsrael. Such convergences, which echo the ever-growing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, reveal that the material connections linking settler colonial projects are now at the center of struggles for global justice. This ultimately helps to strengthen the bonds of resistance at the grassroots level. Solidarity becomes less performative - that is, less about romanticizing or exoticizing the struggles of others - and more about material issues: the real conditions of my life and the real conditions of your life are intertwined.
Poster created by US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
This returns us to one of Abu-Hijleh’s key observations from the panel: the indivisibility of justice. As he reminded us, it was collective struggle that brought formal apartheid to an end in South Africa, and it was collective struggle that enabled the entire process of postwar decolonization in much of the global south. This history remains deeply relevant today even as many of the symbols, tactics, and points of reference evolve. Pappé noted, for example, that instead of focusing on a narrow, nationalist politics of identity, many of today’s young activists in Palestine are more interested in a transnational “politics of identification” that leads them to express solidarity with struggles in places like Ferguson. For Abundis, this underscores the importance of grassroots pressure to make Palestine’s apartheid reality clear for all the world to see, even as political elites refuse to take the steps necessary to hold Israel accountable.
As the resistance grows, it seems inevitable that the Israeli state, having already identified BDS as a major strategic threat, will increasingly see anti-racism itself in the same light. Many have pointed out how Donald Trump’s “anti-antifa” rhetoric betrays his own affinity for fascism. Israeli “anti-anti-racism” would be equally revealing of Zionism’s organic connection with white supremacy.
This post is dedicated to the memory of Barbara Harlow (1948-2017).
Banner image: Protesters react to tear gas at George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. - Rosa Pineda / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)