http://indymedia.org.il
Similarities between the Palestinian & American situationsSunday 18 Aug 2002
author: Mark Salotte
I read through this discussion with interest, especially the responses Israel forwarded here. As an organizer with Anti-Racist Action, I was tempted to dismiss 'Rock of Dissent' on first reading. Not having been familiar with Mr. Shamir before, I went back and read a few of his articles.
This is an interesting discussion, and one which has always been hard to have in America. I appreciate people's civility and talking about reality instead of all the ideological constructs that confuse us. There are a lot of perspectives here: left/right, nationalist/internationalist, colonizer/subject, and people with just about every possible combination of these - and some whose perspective changes drastically in different situations.
The articles I read of Shamir's were about as good a perspective on the Palestinian situation as anyone could expect. Why then is he coming down on the exact opposite side of the apartheid question in America, or in Europe? Believe me, I live here, apartheid is real in any major North American city as it is in Palestine. The descendents of Africans brought here as slaves still live in ghettoes without basic services. What little community power exists is everywhere subordinate to the ruling system thats not much changed from the original genocidal settler project...
I don't know how to break down all the problems I have with Shamir's take on the National Alliance as a useful ally for the Palestinian struggle. It seems like a problem of basic humanity to me - if he can't identify with oppressed people everywhere, it makes me question how real his stance on Palestinians is? Saying that the "white nationalists" have nowhere near the political power that the Zionists do is meaningless and deceptive. The USA is founded and run on a program of "white" supremacy, just as "Israel" is on Zionism. If, say, some obscure ultra-right wing Israeli pro-settler group of a couple hundred people offered words of support for some struggle I was involved in, would it be honest or principled for me to accept that, and explain it away by saying they have nowhere near the power of the American racist power structure?
A story to compare this to is the story about how when Bernadette Devlin from the Irish republican movement came to the u.s., she was given the key to the city of New York by the Irish-American power structure running the city - who were the same cops, politicians, and corrupt union bosses that for decades had been holding down the Black and Boriqueno struggles. She saw right through that & gave the key to the Black Panther Party.
I also question Shamir's statement that ARA - or any of the groups he slags - are fighting on behalf of the "Jewish lobby". That's something our neo-nazi enemies say about us, true, but they see a Jew behind everything that doesn't fit their worldview. I'm surprised anyone fell for it. One point I should bring up is that we tried to hold a "Rock Against Racism" concert in Philadelphia earlier this year, which was shut down by the Anti-Defamation League (the premier Zionist organization in this country), who testified to federal agencies that we were 'violent extremists' and a 'hate group'. Yet to this date, the ADL has done nothing whatsoever to shut down the "Rock Against Israel". The reality is that neo-Nazis and Zionists feed off each other. Its those of us looking for an anti-racist alternative who are attacked from both sides.