Not Your Average Fanatics

One of the most disturbing trends around today is the tendency of many well-meaning folk - Ilhan Omar for one - to apologise, or otherwise back down, when under attack by Zionists for comments in support of the Palestinian cause. The simple fact of the matter is that it is those who advocate for Israel, not those who advocate for Palestine, who should be apologising for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli apartheid. If pro-Palestinians have done their homework, and are in command of the facts, there should be no backing down or appeasement of Israel lobbyists.

US academic Steve Salaita's essay The problem with apology (stevesalaita.com) should be read in its entirety by anyone intending to weigh in on the subject of Palestine/Israel. Here's an extract:

"You probably know that pro-Israel activists are intense, but unless you've been their target it's hard to imagine the level of intensity. They never stop. This relentlessness separates them from garden-variety fanatics. A single punishment, no matter how vicious, is never enough. Their goal is to force targets into destitution, and then they'll keep going until observers are destitute by association. The belligerence honors the settler-colonial entity to which they're devoted. If you fight back (the correct decision), they'll smear you as anti-Semitic. If you ignore the noise, they'll grow louder. And if you apologize, well, it would be a bad idea. They'll see it not as a victory, or an opportunity for reconciliation, but as an invitation to be more exasperating. The lists of journalists, academics, writers, artists, politicians, musicians, and activists punished for affirming Palestinian life - or merely for running afoul of right-wing Zionist orthodoxy - illustrates that recrimination is its own kind of stimulus. It's been so effective, may as well accelerate the model. It's hard to imagine the model's demise without reshaping the anatomy of US political discourse. And forget about avoiding it. If you criticize Israel's behavior - or condemn Zionism, the more important approach - you simultaneously risk defamation, or at least the nattering inanity of both voluntary and professional trolls. Institutions exist around the world to protect Israel's reputation and inoculate the state against the kind of inquiry any healthy community understands as normal. These institutions are funded by billionaires and various government agencies. It can lead to the bizarre scenario of a solitary Twitter critic getting pitted against the world's most powerful forces. I was once that solitary critic."