Image by Rami Gzon.

There are very common refrains in our society. You know them: The United States and the West stand up all over the world for democracy, free speech, a free press, free markets, the rule of law, and human rights. This is what they tell us. What meaning these sentiments, which is indeed all that they are, may have once had, if ever, is lost. They have become pablum. Worse than this, they are lies repeated ad nauseum to inoculate societies from thinking for themselves. Palestine, perhaps like no other crisis before it, has exposed these common cants for what they are, mendacities of the highest order. Whether or not this truth will really take hold and stick in the society I do not know. I am not optimistic. But just as there was no going back after 9/11, our decadent party rudely interrupted by reality, so there is no going back after October 7th.

Let us briefly take each of these Western lies in turn.

Democracy

In 2006, when Hamas was democratically elected to majority seats in the Palestinian Authority (an election which none of the children of Gaza back then nor today had anything to do with), the Western world, that sole purveyor of global democracy, collectively lost its mind and shouted “No! We didn’t mean democracy like that!” Congress quickly passed a law barring any aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it demonstrated “progress toward purging from its security services individuals with ties to terrorism, dismantling all terrorist infrastructure and cooperating with Israel’s security services, halting anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, and ensuring democracy and financial transparency.” Likewise, the “Middle East Quartet” composed of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and the Russian Federation, issued a statement, saying, “A two-state solution to the conflict requires all participants in the democratic process to renounce violence and terror, accept Israel’s right to exist, and disarm.” Unsurprisingly, this enjoinder applied only to the Palestinians. Israel could not be expected to renounce terror, accept Palestine’s right to exist, and disarm. Netanyahu’s own party platform specifically denies support for a Palestinian state.

More than this, Israel, “the only democracy in the Middle-East” they tell us (with no regard for the fact that the worst autocracies in the Middle-East — Saudi Arabia and Egypt — receive billions of dollars from the U.S. every year), has instituted both a de facto and a de jure Jim Crowed existence upon the Palestinians. The Palestinians of Israel do not have equal rights. The Adalah organization maintains a list of over 65 discriminatory laws against Palestinians. The Nation-State Bill passed by the Israeli Knesset in 2018 expressly states that only Jews have the right to national self-determination within Israel. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank do not have freedom of movement between there and Gaza or inside Israel proper. Palestinians can be legally barred from living in Israeli villages. It is illegal for Palestinians to collect rainwater. Palestinians cannot get construction permits for their homes. They do not have the same marriage rights as Jewish Israelis. Any person who marries a Palestinian, regardless of their nationality, has their movements restricted within Israel and may even be prohibited from reentering the region. A Palestinian who marries a Jewish Israeli cannot be naturalized as Israeli. Some Palestinians who have managed to leave Israel are disallowed from ever returning. The aim of these citizenship laws are clear: maintaining Jewish supremacy at the expense of Palestinian rights. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid admitted as such, saying, “We shouldn’t hide the essence of the Citizenship Law. It’s one of the tools aimed at ensuring a Jewish majority in the State of Israel.” Israel is, plainly, not a democratic state.

Here in the U.S., some citizens are trying to exercise their democratic right to boycott Israeli goods. Unfortunately, many U.S. states make you sign a loyalty oath to Israel if you want government contracts or government jobs, specifically barring any tactics used by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement (BDS) against Israel. One recent example, the city of San Marcos, Texas, found that it was sending $4.4 million dollars to Israel every year. In response to the city council simply drafting a resolution to be voted upon which calls for shifting those funds towards domestic priorities, Texas governor Greg Abbott has threatened to remove San Marcos from all future state contracts. That’s our democracy at work — a (“conservative”) governor subverting localized control in favor of a foreign country.

Free Speech

I don’t know if you’ve noticed,........

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