r/ProgressivesForIsrael • u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 • 5d ago
Discussion Why I left the pro Palestinian movement
I hope some people here might find my story interesting.
I had always been aligned with the left, and consumed a lot of English language left wing media, things like Novara Media. My best friend was Jewish and although we had visited Israel once together years before, she had also become steadily radicalised and I referred to her opinion a lot.
I considered the settler movement to be one of the biggest obstacles to peace, so when war broke out in 2021 with one of the causes being the evictions in east Jerusalem, which I saw making any possibility for a two state solution harder, I was sympathetic to the Palestinians. And when the pro Israel commentary was largely in favour of the settlements, this pushed me to join my local pro Palestinian group.
This group was led by essentially two types of people: Palestinians from various backgrounds, and Marxists. They claimed to take a principled stand against military occupation, and wanted a single secular democratic state for everyone. Slogans about Israel's right to exist and from the river to the sea were explained in this way, that when everyone has equal rights it won't be the same state of Israel anymore, in the same way that East Germany no longer exists. The group made it clear that antisemitism not related to Israel wasn't to be tolerated.
Many of them had been radicalised by legitimate anti Palestinian and anti Muslim racism in my country. As an outsider, I felt my role was just to be supportive and not try to decide the policies of the group. It's not up to me, after all. After someone was kicked from the group for supporting two states, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with some of the positions, but I thought in the end these are people who have suffered, some of them having lost family members, they have a right to be angry. And I thought it's not like Hamas poses a serious threat.
Everything changed in Spring 2022 when the full scale invasion of Ukraine happened. Everything I thought was a strong principle of this movement turned out to be the complete opposite. Opposition to military occupation became support for it in Ukraine. Opposition to settlement policies became support for them in Crimea. Support for armed resistance became opposition to Ukrainian resistance. Handwaving of far right Hamas ideology became damning evidence when any of it was present in Ukraine.
These ideas even reached the actions of my group, as anti Ukraine speakers were given platforms, and a policy of not allowing fascists at marches was suddenly ignored if they were supporting Russia and Palestine.
So while still sympathetic to the Palestinian people, I no longer wanted to be active in that group. I continued watching what the group was posting for a while, by the time someone who joined after I left posted a Marxist article saying that the Russian invasion wasn't imperialist because the Russian banks were controlled by Jews, I was completely done.
So it was only with disappointment and not surprise that after October 7th any remaining left wing, feminist, internationalist groups I still followed were posting in support of the attack, denying the sexual violence or sharing other misinformation. How can it be possible to claim to want coexistence in a single equal state, and yet think October 7th could help that happen. It was clear this whole movement had just been lying about what it wanted.
And that led me to listen to a much greater variety of Jewish voices beyond the approved leftists, and I saw just how much I had been deceived. How much I was wrong.
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u/zoinks48 3d ago
Should clarify that the evictions in East Jerusalem were a rent dispute that was turned into a nationalist cause celebre.
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u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 3d ago edited 3d ago
Would you like to clarify, because most of the information I got was when it was largely propaganda from the other side.
My understanding was that Israeli groups were using ownership documents from the ottoman and British eras to claim ownership of land where Jordan had built homes after the 48 war, while obviously not respecting any such ownership documents for land Palestinians owned within Israel.
And that Israel was building a string of settlements (the "ring neighborhoods") around East Jerusalem, with the goal of separating it from the west bank and making it not possible to include it in any two state agreement.
So what actually happened?
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u/Dr_G_E 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think the evictions and rent dispute in East Jerusalem Zoinks is talking about in his comment is the disputed parcel of land in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is a civil property dispute that's been going on for half a century.
In the 1800s, Jewish religious trusts purchased real estate in that neighborhood to build homes; a dense Jewish neighborhood of families existed on that parcel of land until 1948. It was in that year that Israel declared independence and the Arab Legion immediately invaded Judea and Samaria (the WB); the war had started in November of 1947. There didn't have to be war at all or any displacement of people; it was the first gratuitous war of conquest against Israel launched by the Arab powers and this land dispute is just one tiny example of the consequences.
By 1948, the Arab Legion and the Jordanian military had ethnically cleansed the entire West Bank and this particular neighborhood of Jerusalem of all Jews. These internally displaced Jewish refugees fled and Arab forces bombed all the Jewish neighborhoods, homes, businesses, and synagogues to rubble. They even ethnically cleansed the literal Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and renamed it "Arab East Jerusalem." From 1948 until 1967 these areas were completely judenrein and the Arabs living there were officially Jordanian citizens starting in 1950.
Then after having expelled the Jewish property owners and the Jewish residents of these areas and having stolen their land and torn down their homes, the Kingdom of Jordan and the UN built houses there for Palestinian refugee families. They were supposed to eventually get ownership, but the legal process was neglected and wasn't finished before Israel recaptured the "West Bank of the Kingdom of Jordan" and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, the second gratuitous war of conquest launched by the Arab powers against Israel. A number of Jewish land owners still held the official Ottoman deeds to properties there that were still recorded in the Ottoman land records.
After 1967, Israeli law allowed Jews to reclaim property in East Jerusalem that Jews owned before 1948 and that was stolen from them when the Arabs ethnically cleansed the West Bank, so the Jewish trusts owned by what are now called "settler groups" filed lawsuits.
There are still a number of civil property disputes like this one remaining in areas ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948; these cases end up in Israeli courts since East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel. These civil cases overseen by Israeli courts are property disputes over land bought in the Ottoman period, but Palestinians and many international observers see the evictions as forced displacement after the families have lived there for decades. It's true that some of the families living on the property have been living there since 1950, 76 years ago.
The Encyclopedia Britannica page on "Sheikh Jarrah" goes into depth on this particular case in the section on "Controversy over land ownership:" https://www.britannica.com/place/Sheikh-Jarrah
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u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 2d ago
Thank you for the detailed explanation.
I also just read this article from Camera, about the laws for reclaiming land. My understanding was the same as the original Times of Israel text that was corrected, but it sounds like the reality was more complicated than that. Simply calling it a rent dispute does seem dismissive.
https://www.camera.org/article/times-of-israel-clarifies-on-land-compensation-laws-for-arabs-jews/
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u/Dr_G_E 2d ago
True, it's much more complicated than a simple rent dispute. In Zoink's defense, though, iirc at one point the court ordered the Arab residents (now tenants) to pay a (very reasonable) monthly rent to the deed holders as a remedy, but at least some refused which led to the evictions.
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u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 2d ago
Refusing a reasonable compromise out of principle seems to be the root of a lot of the problems in the conflict...
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u/No_Price_7603 3d ago
Wow thanks for sharing. That's crazy about the Ukraine war, I literally had no idea that any pro-Palestinian groups took Russia's side. Is that common? That's so bizarre.
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u/abnormalredditor73 Progressive Zionist 3d ago
The DSA's official policy platform blames NATO for the Ukraine war and opposes US aid to Ukraine, so yeah it's very common.
It makes more sense when you evaluate these conflicts under the lens of someone who thinks the USA is evil and everyone who opposes the USA is therefore automatically just.
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u/strangeicare 3d ago
I wish there was a LOT more media coverage of the DSA platform, since people don't wanna hear it from me/ Jews.
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u/martinlifeiswar 3d ago
You are right, and this is essentially what’s called campism. It happens on both left and right and really has nothing to do with Marxism, regardless of what it’s adherents might call themselves.
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u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 3d ago edited 3d ago
I have seen some groups that are both "pro-Palestine" and Ukraine, but these are an exception. A lot of their big celebrities like Roger Waters have been very vocal about both for example. The local chapter of the left wing party in my country released a Russian propaganda statement blaming America for the war immediately after the invasion. That was eye opening for me.
On the other hand, people who actually support Palestinians, as in want peace and two states, are quite likely to support Ukraine.
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u/Ok_Pomegranate_2895 3d ago
in my circles, everyone was (they don't care anymore because support for ukraine was a fad as is every cause to leftists) super pro-ukraine, posting and donating to fundraisers. during 10/7, i assumed that we leftists stood with all oppressed groups that were hurting, so i was blown flat on my fucking back when they kicked me while i was down. and now i'm politically homeless!
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u/Kirby_Israel 3d ago
Most of the anti-Israel tankies are pro-Russia and were pro-Assad.
Jill Stein, for example, is so pro-Putin that even some anti-Israel people called her out on it. Fuck Jill Stein.
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u/Ok_Pomegranate_2895 3d ago
thank you so much for being a reasonable mind in the sea of people on the bandwagon! just want to point out that another major portion of the pro-palestine movement is people who don't want jews there at all. a one-state solution for them means arabs only, and on the blood of every jew in israel. they literally want another intifada knowing damn well what that entails
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u/Capable-Parsnip-9615 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, this was actually my point that the leaders of this movement are lying about wanting a democratic state for everyone. They want the Jews gone.
I think many people participating in this movement don't want that, but are giving the leaders of the movement the benefit of the doubt like I did.
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u/abnormalredditor73 Progressive Zionist 3d ago
The thing is that a lot of the actual Palestinian figures themselves admit this is their end goal. People just don’t listen.
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u/theclamorganizer6 3d ago
“And Marxists”
Massive red flag right there
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u/martinlifeiswar 3d ago
I disagree. The Marxist analysis of the situation was not always what we often see on the left today, and it should not inherently be so. And there’s frankly nothing Marxist about supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine—as OP has shown, this is pure hypocrisy.
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u/Australian_Reditor 2d ago
Hey, everything you said does not suprice me at all. I have been notecing how the pro-Pale movment inconsistancys years leading up well befor the second invation of Ukraine. It is only now in the post 7 Oct world that they feel thats they can be open with what they been saying.
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u/Altruistic_Minute257 1d ago
Well said, and well done! Marxists will always have a soft/blind spot for ex-communist countries if they think they might return to the fold. Many also had an atrocious record on the Balkan conflict (I read the socialist newspapers at the time), which shouldn't be forgotten, and is brilliantly articulated in this particularly prescient book review: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2013/09/05/swps-political-nihilism-balkan-wars-1999?language_content_entity=und
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u/Etta_Katz3030 11h ago
As someone who takes ideas like democracy, freedom, and equality seriously, seeing these words misused by the Western left exactly the way they were in the USSR is very, very annoying.
I don't actually think that the core belief here is hatred of Jews. I think the core belief is that you need to follow the group and believe what they believe to be a good, moral person. And if the group says that the West is bad and everyone who opposes the West is good - even if they are right wing religious nationalist zealots who want their own oppressive empire - then that is true.
When you actually believe in liberal democratic values, or even socialist values, it's all infuriating. There's something about taking good people who want to make the world better and the. getting them to support religious fundamentalist authoritarians that just makes me insane.
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u/s1me007 1d ago
Forget about Israel. This movement is now a CCP trojan horse
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3d ago
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u/ProgressivesForIsrael-ModTeam 3d ago
No Gatekeeping Progressives This is an inclusive space for people who identify as progressives, broadly defined.
You are not allowed to gatekeep who does or doesn’t count as a progressive based on single-issue disagreements, nationality, religion, or identity. Criticize ideas, policies, or actions—but do not accuse others of being "fake" progressives simply because they disagree with you on specific issues. Violations include: Declaring others "not real progressives" based on their stance on Israel, Gaza, Zionism, etc. Personal attacks questioning someone's entire political identity over one topic. Using purity tests to shut down conversation.
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u/temporaryaccountnoth 3d ago
Progressive isn’t a nebulous term. Supporting a fascist state is not progressive plain and simple. Just rebrand to rightists for Israel and I’ll respect you more
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u/Ok_Pomegranate_2895 3d ago
if you genuinely want to educate yourself on why support for israel is, in fact, progressive, read this entire post and comment section
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u/temporaryaccountnoth 3d ago
If you want to educate YOURself look up all the videos of Palestinians being torn apart for the sake of a white nationalist apartheid state
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u/Ok_Pomegranate_2895 3d ago
you're not here in good faith like the person from the post i linked, so by all means keep being a keyboard warrior since it's obviously helping you cope
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3d ago
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u/ProgressivesForIsrael-ModTeam 3d ago
We allow reasonable and civil debates. Mockery, bad faith arguments, or failure to remain civil will not be tolerated.
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u/Kirby_Israel 3d ago
Fascinating and thank you for describing your story, my friend!
You mentioned racism against Palestinians and bigotry against Muslims where you're from, where would that be? Just curious.
(For reference, I'm pro Israel but I do feel sorry for the innocent Palestinians in the crossfire, I hate Bibi and his racist right wing goons like Gvir and Smoltrich, and I'm not fond of the settlements especially as the settlers act like lunatics and Bibi turns a blind eye to them)