There are contradictory ideas and instincts in American society when it comes to Palestine/Israel. On one hand there is a racist idea of Israel as the embodiment of so-called Western values in an ahistorical violent and/or often victim-filled Middle East, whose inhabitants suffer from their own passivity, and who fundamentally lay outside modernity. They are beyond self-governance. On the other hand, there is awareness, however depoliticized, of struggles against racism in the United States and around the world in the form of protest and revolutionary movements at home, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements abroad. Even though specific knowledge about these struggles in the Middle East is limited among the vast majority of Americans, the general principles involved are part of American historical experience and not unknown. They are not immune to the matrix of oppression they live in. These contradictions must be considered separately from official society: politicians, university administrations, corporations and the state bureaucracy.

Official society’s view of Palestine/Israel is of a different order. It is composed of two layers: the racist ideologues who actively seek to further the consolidation of the Zionist state over the indigenous population and the apologists who, always concerned with the legitimacy of their “leadership," seek to prevent crisis over Palestine from breaking out in America. They apologize and therefore support the actions and decrees, which emanate from the more active agents of colonization, imperialism and racism. The first layer engages the contradictions of American society and actively seeks to advance the strength of its racist tendencies, while the apologists seek to ensure that no crisis, no embarrassment, breaches the seeming calm and consensus of an efficient running machine. The outrage perpetrated against the Palestinians the past 55 years hardly disturbs those who oil the cogs of this machine. Unlike the great majority of Americans, official society is highly motivated to either liquidate the Palestinian “problem” or impose a sense of Oslo-like normalcy to an open sore that leaves them vulnerable to attack by anti-racists forces and a potentially mobilized public.

Toufic Haddad, in an article “Overcoming the Culture of Petitions”, focuses on a series of petitions that circulated last year in the West Bank calling on the regimes involved in the crisis to modify their policies, including the Palestinian Authority.[1] The petitions, according to Haddad, also castigated the Palestinian resistance over the use of armed struggle. What is important for Haddad in this case is not whether the political efficacy of armed struggle is feasible or not, but a much larger question behind the politics of the petitions. Haddad asks what impasse has been exposed in the political imagination of these petitioners by a Palestinian society that has rejected the Oslo framework and is consequently preparing the way for the future away from the Bantustan negotiations? This forward-looking momentum has revealed, like all great political movements, the sycophantic relationship with the ruling regimes these petitioning forces display. This remains true even at a time when the Intifada, once again, has demonstrated the sovereign and autonomous power of the great majority of the Palestinian people. Haddad seems hardly surprised that the “secular” forces, as he calls them, are in the predicament they are in. Haddad succinctly locates their problem. They have so far been unable to establish a position independent of the PA and the PLO, whereas the Intifada in only its first two months, on both sides of the Green Line, by its sheer force has left these forces in a cul-de-sac from which they cannot emerge. This dynamic Haddad has described in Palestine/Israel is, I would argue, alive in Palestine solidarity in the United States, though how widespread remains to be seen. The inability to define and carry out an independent position from the apologists is the dynamic by which I refer to petition politics.

Petition politics doesn’t refer to the act of submitting a petition in itself. The petition is, whatever form it takes, a step in alerting university administrations, corporations, and governments that they are not in compliance with the principles upon which a campaign is based. But what should those principles be – not just what is formally laid out in the petition itself, but also in light of what larger social, political and historical context the campaign understands itself? The answer to this question determines how a campaign is waged and what its strategic goals are. A campaign explicitly and firmly based upon anti-racism, democracy, and freedom is essential. The goal of a campaign is not to figure out how quickly it can enter the governing machinery of a university, or win acceptance by the media, but how far it can pull this machinery, in its embarrassment for being on the wrong side of right and wrong, to the maximum terms set out not only in the petition but also the absolutely essential political values upon which the campaign is fought. It is not the activity of bureaucracy that will determine the effectiveness of a campaign but the activity of its participants, organizers and supporters.

The relationship between a campaign and the bureaucracy, whether university or otherwise, is a key one. The bureaucracy, such as administrative committees, student and faculty government, is mobilized by the administration and allies in response to a crisis in their claimed leadership. In my view organizers should not seek to claim the legitimacy of their campaign by getting the assent of the bureaucracy and media on a minimum program. To do so is the extinction of the reason for being of the campaign. There has been more than one divestment campaign, for example, that has either constructed its basis on an idea of how quickly it can be granted legitimacy by the administration, liberal and social democratic professors and campus groups, or adjusted its basis midway when the signs of hostility come from the moderate sections of the administration. I believe, for a campaign to maintain its relevancy, autonomy and therefore its power for change, it is essential it conceives and executes its program not on the basis of the prejudices of these sections, but rather on one that creates a mandate based upon the contradictions and desires of the vast majority of people in the community. The first leads only to co-option, loss of control and power, and ultimately, irrelevancy. The second puts pressure and over time increases that pressure on the administration based upon a mandate they cannot control.

The conservative is not afraid of displays of power. Accepting the responsibility of their governing position they are far less humbled by a confrontation with an angry public. However the liberals, the “bewilderers” as Fanon called them, attempt to deny they rule or aspire to rule anyone. For as much as the liberals have readied the police forces nearby, in a velvet covered iron fist they wave the white flag of moralism – civility, dialogue, reasonability, exercising rights – which deems comprehensive action against the pervasive racism in our society dangerous. Unless it involves an ice pack to their agonizing conscience, according to the apologists, such action is not worth the Palestinian lives one could enumerate in an indignant letter to the local paper. A solidarity content to petition these forces without demonstrating consequences, either through the presentation of facts or moral pleas, is complicit in the continuation of the basic violence perpetuated by the Oslo framework whole-heartedly embraced by these apologist forces in official society.

The core of petition politics is to morally witness oppression, predicated on the belief that the authorities will act with their supposedly newly bestowed knowledge, against all historic evidence, if one appears rational enough. Of course, I am not arguing against rationality, but rather who gets to define what is rational. This cannot be achieved by debating sides of a story. Performance and belief are integral to political work and naming enemies signals to an otherwise unchallenged audience that there is more at stake than mere “awareness,” empathy and cultural artifacts. As Fanon said, “No colonial system draws its justification from the fact that the territories it dominates are culturally non-existent. You will never make colonialism blush for shame by spreading out little-known cultural treasures under its eyes.”[2] Further, no colonial system will run away in shame because it has been shown to make “mistakes” or violates “human rights” while its wider systematic logic goes relatively undisturbed.

Petition politics is based on a calculus of enumerating Palestinian victims who have no enemies except misinformation, such as an ignorant congressperson or university official. Meanwhile, the racist imperialist and Zionist forces have cast themselves as active agents; guardians of anti-Jewish racism; fighting a battle of right and wrong; safeguarding freedom and democracy against the irrational and the enemies of civilization. Like Haddad’s petitioners, some solidarity reacts to an agenda manufactured by these officials and ideologues, rather than forcing them to react. This solidarity is primarily defensive not offensive. It does not attempt to hammer away at its enemies with an alternative agenda, in the name of right against wrong, for liberation and against racism. It doesn’t dictate to its enemies what their political values are and tell them before the public to answer for it. Instead a castle of sand is built on UN resolutions, international law and human rights language. The racists hardly run from these concepts and, in fact, a major strategy by them has been to enter into a debate about the relative human rights abuses of many regimes around the world – even the United States. Even if people insist on relying solely on this language it is rarely used as a way to show that official society is systematically corrupt and unjust, and that it is up to us to take charge and change the way things are done. Instead, this paper work is carried around as a list of permanent complaint to remind official society that it is in their hands not ours. Further, they are abstract, do not relate to concrete historical experience, distrusted by American society for the hypocrisy they attempt to hide, and a great fog that sanctioned the predicament the Palestinians have been in for over a half-century. This solidarity operation largely proceeds through negation, accepting the unspoken label of guilty until proven otherwise put on them by the active anti-democratic agents of racism and imperialism. Petition politics does not label these forces guilty until proven otherwise.

This dynamic gets further played out about who is the ideal audience of solidarity. Petition politics does not seek to create an audience out of the contradictions but rather leaves those contradictions largely undisturbed. American society gets engaged on official society’s terms. No fundamental beliefs are challenged because no crisis has been shown to exist. Crisis is avoided as much as possible because it is believed to be alienating. Palestinians become just another lot of victims that deserve the attention of the officials or empathizing middle class do-gooders. One doesn’t engage the pervasive attack upon Palestinian society (and the Arab and Muslim world) in the United States by dueling with opposing forces about who can be more “civil.” How is the broader American society to know there is a crisis if solidarity functions primarily as a library social or a permanent demonstration of complaint without consequences, where the ice of “civility” is never broken and the sanctimony of administrative rationality are never demystified?

Divestment is a major component of Palestine solidarity in the United States. Therefore it is not surprising that petition politics gets played out there. It’s an open secret that some divestment organizers don’t believe divestment will ever work as a strategy. This is something quite different than saying that divestment will actually happen. Even during the South Africa campaign many universities never actually divested but they did take an official position for divestment. This agnostic position sees divestment as a sort of media strategy and a semi-permanent platform upon which to make moral pleas and create “awareness.”

One of the long-term consequences of this is that actual confrontation with the university administration over investments is not considered a priority, which we are reminded, could be “divisive” and “alienating” to the campaign. The priority of such a campaign is “education,” primarily in the form of film, cultural events, and teach-ins by “experts.” These are not seen as component parts of a campaign, subordinated to a political vision and strategy, but become ends in themselves. Further, teach-ins are not seen as a tool to build the political capacity and skills of campaign organizers and for this reason are left to the “expert” professors most of whom are not peers in a campaign but more like consultants. Like the de-politicization of Palestinians through the victimizing language of human rights, the campaign becomes de-politicized by trying to minimize the central and strategic confrontation with the racist and anti-democratic values that deem the administration’s complacency on divestment as completely normal.

Sometimes such a campaign seeks to make allies with those who qualify their friendship with the Palestinian movement. Typically these are soft Zionists or liberals. Leaving such forces unchallenged is deemed pragmatic. Even when these alliances are shunned they are competed with by essentially saying little different than what they say, save perhaps giving ritual lip service to “return of refugees.” This strategic blunder puts together coalitions that may look good on paper but are in reality only skin deep. The quality of endurance by such alliances over a period of time is non-existent. This is akin to what Steve Biko had in mind of the South African situation when he wrote, “in adopting the line of a nonracial approach, the liberals are playing their old game. They are claiming a ‘monopoly on intelligence and moral judgment’ and setting the pattern and pace for the realisation of the black man’s aspirations. They want to remain in good books with both the black and white worlds.”[3] Fundamentally, this abdicates the definition and control of objectives. It is this same equation that delivered Oslo, both in the United States and in Palestine.

A solidarity that believes that the maximum line should be at this time “end the settlements,” “stop violence,” or equivocates when asked whether the end of the Zionist state is their goal (when many know that is what is wanted anyway), is irrevocably an Oslo solidarity. These slogans represent a program that the U.S. State Department can accept whole-heartedly. After two years of the Intifada, the functionaries of the State Department, the Congress, the Zionist Left and the Palestinian Authority can thank these slogans for helping put their relevancy and legitimacy firmly back on the table. With these slogans we find little memory of the last 10 years. It facilitates the crisis management: the effort by the State Department and the Left wing Zionists to get Palestinian existence back in a bottle and float it back on the calmed seas for another 10 years of what, so few say is, Greater Israel.

A program these forces will not accept at this time is the return of refugees, freeing all prisoners, full stop on the settlements, and an end to the two-tiered legal system, which includes the Palestinian Israel “citizens,” and to which the “legal” status of the refugees is attached. This program is not alien to the American historical experience. It represents the democratic and anti-racist ideals that many ordinary Americans can recognize. In its goal of international diplomatic and economic isolation of the Israeli regime, I believe these are essential concepts that must be wielded like weapons for a free Palestine/Israel.

Petition politics is the result of political ideology but it also flows from the honest difficulties solidarity activists face when trying to negotiate the difference between the political existence of the Palestinian Authority and those Palestinians who obviously do not share its political goals. Joseph Massad wrote recently that to blame one’s confusing position on the lack of a single “cliff-notes” message coming out of the Palestinian movement is wrong. He says such an “argument is a dangerous one” because “it ignores the fact that it is as a result of Arafat’s and Israel’s policies that Arafat remains the only available leader of the Palestinians. Israel has been assassinating Palestinian leaders around the world for the last three decades, at an accelerated pace in the last two years of 'targeted killings,' while it is Arafat’s leadership and his monopoly of power that has prevented alternative leaderships from emerging.”[4] During Apartheid in South Africa there was not a clear message coming out of a “recognized” leadership. There was a battle inside the movement in South Africa over what was the correct line to take and what were the goals of black liberation.

Palestine solidarity activists obviously do not want to “dictate” the terms of Palestinian liberation. However, all aspects of a total programmatic attack on Israel have not only a long history behind them in the Palestinian movement but also are part of the daily struggle in Palestine/Israel today. This is not dictating the terms and goals of the Palestinian movement but rather an embracing of the movement as a whole rather than selectively. It is a solidarity that does not make qualifications about its support of the Palestinian movement, including those shabbily disguised as being “pragmatic.” It seeks to build qualitative support in this country for a free Palestine/Israel not a quantitative one that will feel satisfied and disappear as hastily as it was put together once the State Department, Left wing Zionists, the European and Arab governments, and the Palestinian Authority come to a new deal about a “road map” whose routes we already know so well.

What solidarity lacks is an analytical framework, a consistent big picture in terms of opposing goals, which orders and gives meaning to what, for ordinary Americans who wish no particular ill upon Palestinians, seem like random or disembodied pieces of information. When these people ask the common sense question “so what do you propose as an alternative?” answering “end the settlements” is not enough. Not only does that not address the whole situation of the Palestinian movement, thereby playing into the hands of those who have tried and been largely successful at breaking up the movement into separate constituencies so that to the general American public they seem unrelated, but it leaves the framing of a positive vision of the future to those who oppose a free Palestine/Israel.

All of this is not about a more militant stance as spectacle. Militant appearing actions or slogans can aestheticize politics just as much as ritualizing “dissent.” A more “militant” stance like, in a different context, armed struggle in the Palestinian struggle, is not a matter of should it exist or not. It involves a larger set of political concerns and strategy. It is a question of what kind of political vision are we talking about. On the whole it can be summed up as moving from a perpetual mode of reaction, whether that means catering to the seemingly immovable prejudices of a not too ideal audience, lobbying opinion rather than creating opinion, or changing the rules of the way Palestine/Israel is perceived in the United States rather than accepting them as relatively fixed and eternal. I think it is important to ask what actions, analysis, and rhetoric attempt to build and legitimize our power independent of those forces that hold Arabs and Muslims in utter contempt.

The contradictions in American society over the widespread racism against Arab peoples are much more unstable than our enemies, including both the die-hard ones and liberal and social democratic racists would want to admit. We should not help them maintain the aura of normalcy about Palestine/Israel and its connection to American history and society.

Palestine solidarity in the United States has to overcome its own culture of petitions. I believe we must be partial to an analysis, rhetoric and methods that seek to exacerbate the contradictions in American society over the Palestinian situation. It is only through creating such a situation where we can bring this crisis, as surely as we know it is, to the fore of our society; that we can put the enemies in this country of Palestinian liberation on the defensive and claim an initiative that is generally lacking in solidarity politics. If we believe in American history, if we believe in our society to remake itself, rather than its benevolent bureaucrats and politicians, then we have no choice otherwise.

1. Haddad, Toufic, March 2002. “Overcoming the Culture of Petitions: Critiquing the Role and Influence of Palestinian ‘Secular, National and Democratic’ Forces”, Between the Lines. < http://www.between-lines.org/archives/2002/mar/Toufic_Haddad.htm>.
2. Fanon, Frantz, 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove, 223.
3. Biko, Steve, 1986. “Black Souls in White Skins?” I Write What I Like. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 21.
4. Massad, Joseph, 20-26 February, 2003. “Post Oslo Solidarity. Why have the Palestinians lost so much International support and how can it be regained?” Al-Ahram Weekly. <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/626/op2.htm>.