Gaza will fall, many will die, few will care
Progressives miss the mark (again) on messaging the stakes, and other thoughts on Israel-Palestine
Forewords:
#1: I’m going to write this in less technical language than I usually do, because I want it to be accessible to everyone who takes the time to read it. That said, if there’s any confusion, you’re welcome to talk to me about it. Also, this column assumes you understand at least a bit about the conflict.
#2: This will take you at least 10 minutes to read and is much easier to read on a computer. It’s up to you, though.
#3: I wrote this in one sitting, and it became pretty free-form. I apologize in advance for errors, but I’ve already spent nearly two hours here and I’m not going back to edit.
#4: If this comes off as me policing the language of the “oppressed” or whatever, I’ll own it. When thousands are dying, I don’t really care for niceties.
What’s happening in Gaza is nothing short of horrifying. I won’t spend too much time on that, because I’m sure you’ve already seen it (if you haven’t, open social media). What’s more horrifying, however, is the fact that the only group of people advocating for Gazans (progressives) are really shit at doing so. Meanwhile, the necessity for a ceasefire continues to grow.
So I won’t bury the lede. Modern progressives are notoriously bad at messaging, and it’s become obvious during the past few weeks. There are four ways that progressives have to course-correct their advocacy, if there’s to be any peace in the future.
Sidebar: here’s a bastardization of my position on the issue. Israel and Palestine need to both exist. Long-term peace is cool. Above all right now, a ceasefire is necessary. Everything underneath this outlines how progressives can clean house to reach those goals.
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1. Progressives need to convey/create a compelling theory of change
As an extended sidebar that I think contextualizes what I’m about to say, there’s a lot of data on generational gaps re: Israel-Palestine. Younger people tend to be sympathetic towards Palestinians, and older people tend to be sympathetic towards Israelis.
This is just a theory I have, but I think it’s intuitive. Older people grew up in an era where A) Israel was a developing country, B) Jews were largely the most oppressed group in the world, and C) the Holocaust was only one or two generations detached.
Younger people, on the other hand, grew up in an era where A) Israel became a prosperous nation, B) Jews found much better standing across the world, and C) the Holocaust became a ‘historical event’.
In today’s world, we tend to view issues through the lens of class analysis (in other words, viewing the world through the lens of the oppressor vs. the oppressed). Why? At risk of sounding like a historiographer — capitalism overwhelmingly won the cold war’s battle of ideologies, but not without absorbing some degree of the other side (think Frankfurt School-esque ideas). Namely, as conscious capitalists co-opted class analysis, even ideologies like liberalism began to embrace ‘reducing suffering’ among the oppressed as its primary heuristic for success.
Thus, for better or for worse, our sympathies tend to lie with who we think is more oppressed. And generational gaps have manifested along these lines — because older people came of age when Israel was perceived as ‘oppressed’, and younger people came of age when it was perceived as an ‘oppressor’.
There is just one implication of this, that you should keep in mind as you read the rest of this. I seldom ever like to concede that young people aren’t going to be the driving force of change, but history is on the side of older people on this one. Israelis and Jews really should not be viewed as oppressors (I know many of you do feel this way).
Historically, Jews have been the most oppressed group in the world. Modern Israel was effectively started as a refugee camp, given the amount of persecution they’d faced throughout the 20th century. To view this conflict as one where Israelis are nothing but the ‘oppressors’ is temporally ahistorical. You can/should recognize acts of oppression without putting that label on another subjugated people.
This is probably the most important ‘missing piece’ in the pro-Palestine movement — it lacks a theory of change to rally around. In other words, it needs to convey an endgame solution that is convincing.
All social movements need a compelling theory of change, lest they defy the laws of logic. Because if you want to convince people that you’re right, you need to be able to explain to them why the world would be a better place if they agreed with you (at the bare minimum). The most effective social movements are the ones who consistently paint a picture of why their world (if you agreed unconditionally with them) would be better than the status quo, to middle-ground voters and citizens.
Pro-Palestine advocates seem to be missing this very consensus. And for the sake of this column, I’m going to assume that most pro-Palestine advocates are not calling for the eradication of Israel. I’m doing this because A) I think it’s true, but B) if it’s not true for you, you’re terribly mistaken. To take a mass settlement of refugees that was able to bloom and develop over time, and call for its destruction (because you grew up in an era where people thought the other party was more oppressed), is not cool.
So what is an appropriate consensus? In my mind, it’s a legitimate two state solution (one that is optimally a little more generous to the Palestinians than the Clinton Parameters). But whatever it ends up being, it needs to contain the following two guidelines.
An explanation for Palestinian leadership, because nobody — from the median voter all the way up to Antony Blinken — is going to agree to hand sovereignty to (or strike peace with) Hamas’s current leadership
A reliable agreement for peace, which necessarily requires Palestinian advocates to recognize the legitimacy and sovereignty of Israel (along the terms and borders of the agreement)
For one, Hamas is undoubtedly a terrorist group, and a corrupt one at that. Honestly, they seem more interested in mercenary grifting — evidenced by their strategic partnerships with the Houthis and Iran — than governing the country. No diplomat on this side of the world is ever going to agree to hand off power to them, and no politician has the incentive to approve that (unless they really want to commit career suicide for some reason). On the other hand, this hand-off of sovereignty has to be sustainable.
I’m not advocating for a resurgence of Fayyadism, so much as I’m pointing out that the effort towards Palestinian sovereignty relies on internal stability. But I don’t think these are impossible objectives by any metric. And they’re prerequisites to proving any compelling theory of change as to why a world with Palestinian sovereignty would be preferable.
In short, imagine it in this way. You need to convince median voter Joe from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or Jill from Texarkana, Arkansas to change their mind on the issue. They’re middle-aged and have never agreed with Palestinian sovereignty. But you need them to side with you, because they’re a part of the world’s most powerful electorate, and the aggregation of votes from people like them pressure/drive the decisions that American diplomats make.
You are never going to convince them without a laser-precise theory of change. And you will never reach a ceasefire, much less sovereignty, without convincing them. Make the necessary changes and push it into society.
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2. Cut the euphemisms
There has long been a penchant for weird, inaccurate euphemisms from the American Left; especially the parts of it with a populist bent. There’s a fascinating column in The Independent that I read a few years ago that provides a pretty compelling snapshot of this.
Something is very, very wrong in American police culture. This is why the saying “ACAB”, or “all cops are bastards”, has become a popular rallying cry. It doesn’t actually mean every single cop is a bad cop […] “ACAB” means every single police officer is complicit in a system that actively devalues the lives of people of color. Bad cops are encouraged in their harm by the silence of the ones who see themselves as “good.” […] Live in the moment, and let it radicalize you.
Victoria Gagliardo-Silver for The Independent, June 1st, 2020
Gagliardo-Silver’s conclusion is bewildering. And before you get angry at me for skipping her analysis on systemic corruption, I’m not. I understand that there is a justification for it. I’m just criticizing how much of a clusterfuck the justification is.
See, the point of social movements is to convince the median voter to buy your side of things. And even if that doesn’t translate into immediate change, it translates into positive electoral patterns that deliver results over time. This is especially true for movements that start in the ideological minority and have to convince broader society to change their minds.
That’s a pretty hard thing to do in general. It’s even harder to do when your slogan means something different than the words in your slogan (shockingly, words convey meaning). Obama was right when he critiqued the catchphrase:
You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done […] The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?
President Barack Obama, December 2nd, 2020
“All cops are bastards”, but not really! We just mean that some cops are bastards, so “all cops are bastards”! “Defund the police”, but not really! We just mean we want to fund escalation training and defund certain special operations, so let’s go “defund the police”!
Simply put, it’s confusing. And compare it to the best political slogan of the modern era — “Make America Great Again”. It’s the best slogan not because it represents anything positive, but because it captures the essence of right-wing populism in a very straightforward way. It takes the anxieties associated with globalization/secularization/post-modernism, and packs it in one nostalgic punch.
But the Left’s failure to message properly didn’t end in 2021. Today, pro-Palestine advocates are yelling “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada”. Neither of these are convincing in the slightest. Below is a video from the last pro-Palestinian rally I was at (in Times Square), where thousands of people were yelling both.
Let’s start with the catchphrase “from the river to the sea”. This could mean literally a million things. It could mean something as innocuous as that we want to end discriminatory laws from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But it could also mean that one wants the eradication of Israel (intuitively very unreasonable, this will be elaborated on later).
Regardless, the ambiguity in this slogan reflects the uncertainties of the movement. What the fuck are you advocating for? How is Bethlehem Joe or Texarkana Jill supposed to change their mind on this, and create social change on the aggregate, if they don’t know?
But past that, “globalize the intifada” is where catchphrases take a more pernicious turn. Now, if we’re being intellectually honest, this isn’t a call for genocide against Jews. Elise Stefanik might want you to believe that, but it’s really not a reasonable interpretation of the phrase. Most of the kids yelling it just view it as a call for revolution against the system.
Yet, it’s still a really bad catchphrase. Previous intifadas have manifested into violent protest/rebellion against Israel. So the most intuitive interpretation of the slogan is viewing it as a call for war. Certainly short of global Jewish genocide, but extremely uncompelling. It’s also impossible to convince Bethlehem Joe or Texarkana Jill that a good endgame lies in sparking a massive war in the Middle East.
This might all seem trivial, but it’s not. A social movement’s punchline represents the values it stands for to broader society. “Taxation without representation” birthed the most robust democracy in history. “Workers of the world, unite!” rallied Marxism to global prominence. “Every man a king” gave Huey Long a cult following. “Ti-mi-soa-ra” brought down Ceausescu’s Romania.
They did so because they capture straightforward demands that make sense to average people. But slogans that call for God-knows-what or war? “From the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” won’t ring in the same change.
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3. Cut the excessively academic language
If you don’t want to read all of the following in this section, here’s a three word summary: praxis > ideals.
The American Left also has, for long, integrated pompous and pedantic concepts into its advocacy. In other words, so much of the messaging is densely academic — and it’s apparent when progressives say things like “liberation politics” or “decolonization”.
I understand why this is the case, and you can too if you examine the circuit of information that these ideals are generated by. Progressives are disproportionately college educated, and influential progressives come from overwhelmingly wealthy backgrounds and elite schools. By contrast, working class people are less likely to have higher education and generally align with moderates.
The issue with this gap is that progressives tend to operate within epistemic bubbles, given richer, college-educated professionals generally don’t live in ghettos. And the way that novel political information is dispersed within said bubbles is fairly simple. Researchers (generally college professors with doctorates) will write some theoretical observation on the world (like “liberation politics” or “decolonization”). If the idea is compelling enough and picks up enough steam, it becomes consensus. Then, you can find it being taught inside of Ivy League classrooms and sold in the “political theory” section of Barnes and Noble.
Of course, this information never gets to anyone else, because A) it requires a great deal of technical knowledge to read theory, and B) excess time is a privilege (that regular people don’t really have to spend on theory). Word of mouth doesn’t help much either, given the insularity of class divides in American zoning.
In sum — there’s a huge information gap between influential, elite progressives and everyone else. This might sound paternalistic, but it’s true — higher education does in fact teach you more about the world. And yet, this still manifests into a disconnect in progressive advocacy — because the densely academic, lofty ideals of progressives are conveyed in such an elitist manner that it is incomprehensible to everyone else.
An example of this? I grew up in a pro-union part of Los Angeles that was shaped by the historically blue-collar segments of the entertainment industry (lighting, set construction, etc.) — it’s voted for liberally for so long that Google can’t tell me the last time we sprung for a Republican.
But if you asked someone there whether they understood the nuances of decolonization or if they’d read Michael Parenti, they’d probably give you a blank stare. But I currently live in Cambridge, Massachusetts (a college town that holds both Harvard and MIT). Most people I’ve talked to about Israel-Palestine make reference to decolonization and theories of indigeneity as central to this discussion.
From there, a problem is much more apparent. When the people that show up to these protests start yelling about things that no one else is receptive to (and they’re the only ones showing up), it just becomes self-aggrandizement. I want to tear my hair out every time I see a college kid post about “ending colonization” in Palestine too — either you’re not bright enough to think critically about your target audience, or you’re purposefully ignoring that thought to gratify yourself.
The appropriate path to take on this? Stop talking about these detached concepts, and start messaging like every other successful anti-oppression movement in history. Talk about the instances of injustice going on, platform the stories of people who have been disaffected, and press the advantages of sympathy that you have. Hearing about micro-level experiences that regular people can empathize with is always more successful than macro-level theories that most can’t understand.
Sidebar: one might argue that we should do both. No, we shouldn’t. Don’t convolute what works with what doesn’t.
And that analysis is assuming that these academic concepts are even true in the first place. This segment has been quite charitable to these ideals, and has assumed that “colonization” is valid, but just isn’t being conveyed properly. But the concept of colonization, and modern Israelis as colonizers more broadly is inaccurate too. A third generation Israeli (who didn’t choose to be born there) is just as much a colonizer as you are (living in America). I might write another piece at length on that specifically, but in short — these are a people who have lived there for 5-6 generations now. A 6th-generation Israeli knows no other land, and advocating to remove them = ethnic cleansing.
Last thing I’ll say on this. Surely, some of you will be angry with me. How dare he dismiss the valid legacy of liberation activists! You leftists in America aren’t the new age embodiment of Thomas Sankara. Fuck you and your ideals if they’re coming at the expense of things like a ceasefire (which would be more likely if you put down your self-gratifying advocacy and picked up what works). It is such a privileged take to prioritize ideology over praxis.
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4. Stop defending the indefensible
I’ve already talked about my thoughts on the oppressor-oppressed dynamic in this situation, and why I don’t think it’s a good benchmark. But if you really refuse to compromise with me on that, at least meet me here. Hamas’s fighters are barbaric in a way that no one should be. As Jill Filipovic captures:
Initially, many journalists, women’s rights advocates and other commentators held off from commenting on sexual violence that occurred as part of the Oct. 7 attacks. I’ve made a career out of writing about women’s rights, including the scourge of rape in conflict, and I also held my tongue and my pen, waiting for substantive reporting and clearer evidence to emerge. This is, after all, an obligation of our profession. Accusations of rape are extremely charged, and uncorroborated claims that turn out to be exaggerated or untrue can undermine the public’s trust in journalists and their belief in the veracity of sexual violence claims more broadly. Rape in war is underreported, difficult to track and hard to corroborate.
But soon after the attacks, the evidence started to come in, and it took the form that evidence of wartime rape often does: accounts from survivors of the attacks, emergency responders, medical personnel, those who examined the bodies and journalists who were permitted to see some attack footage. Some of these accounts have been presented by organizations, including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. A Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has been established in Israel.
The accounts being published are grisly and upsetting. One survivor of an attack told PBS that he hid in a bush for hours as Hamas carried out atrocities. “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls,” he said. “After they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite.” And, he said, “they laughed. They always laughed. It’s — I can’t forget how they laughed.”
Jill Filipovic for the New York Times, 12.13.23
This section will be much, much shorter because the conclusion is very simple. Hamas is indefensible, and they do not deserve moral absolution. Do not die on that hill — history is never kind to those who do. Also, don’t die on the hill of defending Osama because of his views on Palestine (which I’ve now seen like 10+ social media posts doing). This makes you look like a lunatic not only to society but also to me.
More importantly, actively shame those extremists in your circle who defend Hamas. Their fantasies are derailing peace solutions for Gazans, by giving the Richard Hananias of the world a crap ton of material to nutpick with. This is no time to bend on basic principles.
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I don’t know how else to end this. But if you’re a progressive, there really are two paths you can pick from.
The first is a world where pro-Palestinian advocates present a compelling theory of change; one that is easy to understand, not densely academic, and not shrouded by euphemisms. Bethlehem Joes and Texarkana Jills across the country change their minds slowly but surely, and things like ceasefires and sovereignty become far more accessible in the future.
The second is a world where you say “fuck Sungjoo, he’s a lot less progressive than I thought”, and stick to your guns (despite the fact that it is clearly not working). While those inside of your epistemic bubble will cheer you on, Palestinians will continue to get shellacked. Gaza will fall, many will die, few will care.
— SJY, 12.21.23
This is a bit of a late comment, but hopefully you see it. I agree with most of what you say here, except there is one major problem. You challenge leftists to present a plausible vision of change, but you also admit that a final settlement cannot exist with Hamas as it currently exists in power. However, you also advocate for what is plausibly the only way to remove Hamas from power: via force. Technically, you advocate for a ceasefire here, but my assumption is that you would want Israel to either stop the war entirely or scale it back to a point in which removing Hamas from power would be virtually impossible.
The fact that these protestors are primarily motivated by social signalling and self-aggrandizement is already an insurmenoutable problem, but even if it was not, they would still have to acknowledge the only opportunity for change is to remove Hamas from power, and the only plausible way to do so is through force that will result in the deaths of thousands upon thousands more civilians (and, even then, it may not work). If you are unwilling to pay this cost, then the only alternative a withdrawl from Gaza and letting Hamas continue to rule for the foreseeable future. They will not give up power voluntarily, Israel will not create a two-state solution with them, and the West Bank will not join a two-state solution without them. If you want a ceasefire, you have to acknowledge that there will be no solution to the conflict. I'm not saying that this position is wrong; just that it is the only alternative go removing Hamas by force.
Six months on, this still holds up. In the meantime, thousands more Gazans have been killed.