Questioning tactics, or the effectiveness of actions is the most un-Palestinian thing you could imagine.
New York, November 21 - Pro-Palestine activists rebounded from the disastrous showing of their candidates in the Congressional, state, local, and presidential contests two weeks ago, vowing to address the shortcomings of their advocacy movement that contributed to the poor performance - specifically, by intensifying the in-your-face, disruptive, distasteful, vindictive, and irritating tactics that contributed to the losses.
A coalition of local, national, and international groups of varying formal and informal status - but all claiming the mantle of "grass-roots" despite funding from Qatar - expressed their intention to remedy the failure by further alienating American voters who already hold overwhelmingly pro-Israel views. This, they hope, will stem the tide of defeat that voters dealt pro-Palestine activists on Election Day.
"The only path for us is to do the same thing we've always done," insisted Linda Sarsour. "You don't mess with a good thing. Free Palestine is a good thing. Questioning our tactics, assumptions, or the effectiveness of our actions is the most un-Palestinian thing you could imagine. Of course we're going to double down."
"Progressives in general are going to double down," acknowledged Peter Beinart. "That phenomenon has already become clear among [Kamala] Harris supporters. Yes, you have the odd voice or two calling for the Democrats to embrace more mainstream positions and ditch the fringe issues, but the most influential, or at least the loudest, voices in our coalition argue the opposite: that Harris lost because she didn't tack far enough to the left. I sympathize with the fringe - obviously - but I recognize that we have on our hands the same refusal to engage with anything outside the assumptions that flatter us most, that make us feel virtuous. And isn't that what activism is all about?"
"When it comes to Palestine activism," he continued, "that epistemic closure gets magnified seventy-two-fold through the lens of the Arab-Muslim honor-shame mentality. Honor-shame won't let you admit error. That makes adapting to changing circumstances, or to failure, wrong. The voters didn't like Jill Stein enough? The Democrats didn't openly pander to our demands? The only acceptable 'error' is not doing enough of what we were already doing - in the case of American pro-Palestine activists, that means more disruption going forward, more strawmanning of Zionist positions as Jewish supremacism, more calling Jews racist for not standing firmly with us; in the case of the Palestinian leadership, it means more terrorism and incitement to violence, which has only hurt the cause. It's a perfect congruence of mentalities."
Please support our work through Patreon.
Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL