United States Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had been scheduled to attend an October 20th virtual memorial event organized by Americans for Peace Now to commemorate 25 years since Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin’s assassination. But she suddenly pulled out last week when calls from Palestinians and their supporters labeling Rabin a war criminal caused her to reconsider. Now she faces a backlash from pro-Israel organizations spouting the familiar “anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism” rants.
What the more generic pro-Israel organizations are taking away from the incident is that even the most “progressive” strand of Zionism can never be progressive enough for Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic party’s next generation, showing that Jewish national rights have no place in contemporary liberal or leftist political circles in the US.
But both small “l” liberal Zionist (liberals who support Jewish self-determination) and big “L” Liberal Zionist (Israel supporters who dogmatically demand the partition of Israel into two separate states) organizations in the US have responded with shock and disappointment that Ocasio-Cortez would withdraw from the Rabin memorial.
In an open letter to the congresswoman, the “Zioness” movement wrote that “we are deeply troubled that you have decided to pull out of an event honoring the life and legacy of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who paid the ultimate price for his commitment to peace and justice, assassinated by a right-wing extremist for trying to advance the cause of Palestinian statehood.”
J-Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, meanwhile, tweeted that “as an admirer of Rabin’s and a long-time Peace Now supporter, I am hurt and troubled by [Ocasio-Cortez’s] decision to withdraw her participation and urge her to reconsider.”
Rabin has been largely heralded as a hero of Liberal Zionism (he himself was a Labor Zionist), his longest-lasting legacy being that of the infamous Oslo Accords. The issue, however, is not only that Liberal Zionism is a failed ideology, but also that it could never truly appeal to radicals or progressives (the Jewish liberation tendency that actually can appeal to these groups is ironically shunned by the pro-Israel community as too radical).
For the vast majority of Palestinians and their supporters, Liberal Zionism is an ideology that a) is racist; b) cuts them out of the conversation entirely, because the Palestinian Authority’s current leadership is anything but a true representative of the Palestinian people; c) doesn’t address their struggles or desires; and d) was championed by fairly brutal leaders.
Let’s delve a little more deeply into these.
Racist: The entire premise of the “two-state solution” is based on the idea that Israel must be a Jewish ethno-state with a Jewish demographic majority, and that the Palestinians are threatening that Jewish majority by growing too fast for Israel to maintain a Jewish demographic edge, leaving the state with no alternative but to place Palestinians outside its borders.
Cuts them out of the conversation: It requires a very creative imagination to think that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is a democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people, or that he can or would in any way act independently for their benefit.
Palestinian struggles and desires: This was addressed in a number of Vision pieces and elsewhere in much more detail than I could write here.
Brutal leadership: Rabin wasn’t quite the champion of peace Liberal Zionists portray him to be. During the 1948 War, long before his rise to the premiership, he commanded the military units responsible for the expulsion of Palestinians from Lod/Lydda and Ramla/Ramle.
He also, during the course of that war, fired the cannon that killed over a dozen of his fellow Jews aboard the Altalena ship in a failed attempt to assassinate Irgun Zvai Leumi (Etzel) commander Menaḥem Begin.
Later, during Rabin’s time as defense minister during the first Intifada, he ordered Israeli soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian demonstrators.
Peace Now itself is also highly problematic. As one of the many “peace industry” organizations, it exists on foreign money in order to promote a “two-state solution” that has not only consistently failed (often with disastrous consequences), but also entirely negates the strong desires of both Jews and Palestinians to access every part of their homeland. It’s easy to understand why Palestinian activists would be upset that Ocasio-Cortez would attend a Peace Now event commemorating Rabin, but I find it hard to agree with those Jews claiming that her decision to withdraw is anti-Semitic or even anti-Zionist. If anything, I think more politicians across the political spectrum should withdraw their support from two-state organizations like Americans for Peace Now that support the division of our country.
That might be the first step to actually achieving peace, now.
