America’s Whiteness crisis, and Zionism’s

THE SCREENSHOT OF A TRUMP SUPPORTER HOLDING AN ISRAELI FLAG DURING THE RIOT AT THE U.S. CAPITOL ON JANUARY 6, 2020. FROM LALEH KHALILI’S TWITTER FEED.

JVL Introduction

Joe Biden’s cabinet choices, and his Vice-President, may be relatively conservative but they are diverse.

As Philip Weiss argues, the idea of white supremacy is on the ropes: it lost in Georgia (to a black and a Jew) and became “a hideous mockery” in the Capitol invasion.

The story, he believes, has an Israel parallel, its principle of Jewish supremacy a model for white supremacists.

But he contradictions between Israeli ideals and Democratic Party ideals are glaring today. Even “liberal Zionists” will have to face them sooner rather than later…

 

This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Sun 10 Jan 2021. Read the original here.

America’s Whiteness crisis, and Zionism’s

Two men I know who voted for Trump in 2016 explained it to me in coldly racial terms: The Democrats have a strategy for winning high office. They will appeal to minority voters, who are growing in number and will make up the majority of the country in another generation. I want to put off that day as long as possible. My people built American institutions, etc.

This view was clearly not unrepresentative. Trump won the majority of the white vote in the last two general elections, and Trump’s racist messages about Muslims and Hispanics and African-Americans were in line with these men’s beliefs.

The good news from this last week is that the political calculus for electoral victory on such a racist basis has been smashed up. Surely in part because of Trump’s crazy claims that the November election was stolen from him, Georgians elected two Democratic senators, one black, the other Jewish. The next day a mob of hooligans and clowns and bigots almost all white stormed the Capitol at Trump’s urging, and several people died, and Trump’s own party is now running away from him.

Two months ago, Trump was a potent political force who won 74 million votes. Today Trumpism can’t be discounted, but the Republican party is torn apart, and the elders of the party are trying to chart a new strategy.

While a majority of white voters supported Trump in 2020, if you look into those numbers, a large majority of white college-educated women supported Biden; and Trump’s margin was down to 3 percent among white college-educated men.

The idea of white supremacy was made a hideous mockery by the mob at the Capitol; and it was not a winning approach in Georgia this cycle. Obviously the battle is not over for “the soul of America,” the nation’s identity in ethnic terms. But the Democrats’ conception of a diverse coalition has captured the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Diversity is now de rigeur inside the Democratic Party. Biden’s vice president and Cabinet choices are disturbingly conservative/mainstream in ideological terms, but they are ethnically diverse. And he is sure to govern with the idea that Our diversity makes us stronger. I believe that principle has been cemented by this election.

This is a story for me because of the Israel parallel. There were, of course, Israeli flags brandished at the Capitol Hill riot. And it’s no coincidence: Israel’s proudly-stated principle of Jewish supremacy, higher Jewish rights to land and office, have long been a model for white supremacists. As Jewish Voice for Peace commented on the Capitol Hill mob:

Many white supremacist groups both hate Jews and love Israel. Depending on their specific ideology, they may admire Israel as a model ethnic supremacist state, share its Islamophobic and anti-Arab views, and/or want Jews to be corralled in their own state far away from the US.

ISRAELI FLAG AT CAPITOL HILL RIOT, PHOTO FROM ALI ABUNIMAH’S TWITTER FEED.

The contradictions between Israeli ideals and Democratic Party ideals are so glaring today that they are inescapable even to “liberal Zionists.” The Israeli Jewish political system is structured to prevent Palestinian parties from ever entering the governing coalitions. The basic laws of the state are steeped in racism: they derogate Arabic, and they exalt Jewish “settlement” and the exclusive right of Jews to “self-determination.” This Jim Crow/apartheid system is made concrete by separate roadways for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and the shootings by occupying soldiers of Palestinian children who resist the seizure of their property. Haroun Abu Aram, 24, is paralyzed because he tried to hold on to a generator last week after his home was demolished by Israelis. The news yesterday was that the soldier who shot this unarmed man point blank will not be charged with a crime.

Liberal Zionists have had nothing to say about Haroun Abu Aram’s maiming, or the refusal to charge his state-sponsored attacker. J Street wants Trump removed from office and congratulates Raphael Warnock and Jonathan Osoff on their historic victories in Georgia, but has nothing to say about the latest demonstration of Jewish supremacist apartheid in Israel and Palestine. Because Israel is a… “Jewish democracy.” The hypocrisy is overwhelming, and will become unbearable in the new Democratic era.