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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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I don't think the events we are seeing now change the basic structure of US (or Anglosphere more generally) opinion on Israel-Palestine:

  • The anti-establishment left has always been pro-Palestinian to an extent which skirts the boundaries of cancellable anti-Semitism.
  • The pro-establishment left are basically pro-Israel, but need to hold their noses to support an Israel led by the current Likud/religious right coalition, which they hate for essentially the same reasons that secular Jews in Israel hate it.
  • The pro-establishment right are basically pro-Israel - previously they were willing to throw Israel under the bus in limited ways in to make nice to the Gulf Arabs, but they no longer need to because the Gulf Arabs are allied with Israel against Iran.
  • The anti-establishment right are split between Islamophobes (who support Israel on enemy-of-my-enemy grounds) and Christian Zionists (who support Israel in order to immanentize the escheaton) on the one hand and America Firsters (who think that US military aid to Israel is a waste of money) and anti-Semites on the other side.

With a Democrat in the White House, the pro-establishment left controls the government. If support for Israel on the pro-establishment left was weakening, we would see a change in government policy. What we actually see is the bog standard pro-establishment line on Israel since before Oslo - give them everything they ask for (modulo aid being blocked in Congress) while gently pointing out that American Jewry would prefer a more secular Israel, and that Israel could provide its allies with political cover by pretending to support a two-state solution at some unspecified future date.

While it is true that the core groups making these interruptions are small and heavily concentrated among muslim and "POC" demographics, along with a few white leftists, what's remarkable to me is the wider silence among the broader progressive coalition. Many Jews have remarked upon this, that sympathy seems to be muted or even absent. There is an unwillingness to police these radicals among the wider liberal public, which seems to suggest a hidden reserve of silent sympathy which is not being publicly expressed.

Or it suggests that the pro-establishment left isn't willing to engage in a public intra-left slap-fight in an election year when they can just support Israel quietly.

The UK Labour party's Keir Starmer may try to resurrect matters after the Corbyn years, but one gets the sense he is fighting against his own base which is usually not ending well for leaders in the long run.

Conventional wisdom in British politics is that the median voter hates the anti-establishment left sufficiently that a Labour leader can only win an election if he is visibly fighting against his own base. (This is most obvious viz-a-viz Blair, but the conventional wisdom dates back to the Foot era). Every Labour Prime Minister except Atlee is a hate figure on the activist left.

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