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THE MARGINAL REALISTS OF STANDING TOGETHER  
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Harold Meyerson
March 25, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ An all-too-rare organization of Israeli Palestinians and Jews works
for an unfantastical solution to the enduring conflict. What sets
Standing Together apart is the realism that informs their strategy,
politically marginal as that realism now may be. _

Sally Abed, with AFT President Randi Weingarten, left, and Alon-Lee
Green, speaks at a forum at the headquarters of the American
Federation of Teachers, March 20, 2024, in Washington., Photo credit:
AFT // The American Prospect

 

That political violence is more likely to produce countervailing
political violence than it is any kind of resolution acceptable to
both sides is, or anyway should be, a law of political physics. Those
who ignore or dismiss it tend to bring down catastrophes on their own
people, as both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians should have long
since learned, but tragically have not.

As _The Washington Post _reported
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week, recent polling [[link removed]] by the
Israel Democracy Institute of both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis
shows that most Jewish Israelis—63 percent—oppose the
establishment of an independent and demilitarized Palestinian state.
Fully 77 percent of those Jewish Israelis who describe themselves as
“left” do support establishing such a state, but the share of
Jewish Israelis who describe themselves that way had dropped to very
low levels even before the October 7 attacks.

The drivers of actual policy on both sides of the conflict are
ultranationalists: Hamas for the Palestinians, and the
settlers-über-alles members of Netanyahu’s cabinet for the
Israelis, who seek to drive all Palestinians out of both the West Bank
and Gaza. Both those drivers envision an ethnically homogeneous state
from the river to the sea, however effectively impossible that goal
may be. At a time when violent maximalists fight violent maximalists,
the hardest thing to find amid the current horrors is a trace of
realism.

That trace, however, was eloquently presented last week at a
remarkable forum
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Federation of Teachers (AFT). There, two young progressive
Israelis—one Jewish, one Palestinian—made the case for a bilateral
cease-fire and a two-state solution. Sally Abed, a Palestinian Israeli
recently elected to the Haifa City Council, and Alon-Lee Green, who
organized and founded Israel’s National Waiters Union, are both
leaders of Standing Together [[link removed]],
an organization of Israeli Palestinians and Jews working to promote
civic equality and security, social justice, and the establishment of
a Palestinian state.

Foremost among Standing Together’s missions, said Abed, is
“debunking the myth that Jewish security depends on the military
suppression of Palestinians.”

“We can’t do this by lecturing [Jewish Israelis] from a standpoint
of moral superiority,” said Green. If Israel’s Jews are to support
equality and a Palestinian state, said Abed, “they have to do it
because they believe it’s in their own self-interest.”

Needless to say, both Green and Abed have received torrents of abuse
from their respective communities for selling out, for preaching
“Kumbaya” when war is required, for lack of the presumably
messianic zeal that the moment demands.

In actuality, their strategy is rooted in sober left-wing analysis.
“Israel is the hegemonic power” in the region, Abed said, and any
strategy that ignores this reality is bound to fail. “There is no
way to resolve this conflict that bypasses Israeli society,” Green
added. “Outside pressure is very important, but the key question is
Israelis’ political will. Just shouting ‘your truth’ isn’t
changing reality. Changing that reality requires building power though
a coalition” encompassing both Jews and Palestinians (as, in an
infinitely less contentious arena, Green did in building a union of
those two diverse peoples).

Abed fears the Palestinian movement may subside into even greater
impotence once the current conflict ends. Reviving it, she said,
requires “integrating it into Israel’s progressive camp,” which
can’t be done if it simply champions Palestinian nationalism against
Israeli nationalism. “It requires the Palestinian movement to be
strategic,” she said.

AFT President Randi Weingarten, who hosted the session and had her
union bring Abed and Green over from Israel to tour the U.S. and meet
with the staffers on President Biden’s National Security Council,
called the two visitors “heroes.” Their advocacy of a program and
strategy that couldn’t be more at odds with those of the apostles of
ultranationalism who now dominate discourse and policy in Israel and
Palestine, and their supporters abroad, pits them against two very
strong currents. Zealots in both the Middle East and the West have
condemned the two as “moderates,” when they’re really anything
but.

What sets Standing Together apart from these zealots is the realism
that informs their strategy, politically marginal as that realism now
may be. Hegemonic powers cannot be dislodged by fantasies of
apocalypse or the kinds of terrorist attacks that Lenin termed “an
infantile disorder.” It requires real politics—the kind of
politics that’s foreign to Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas, and
their supporters both at home and abroad. It requires binational
movement building, which at best may be the task of a generation.
It’s well that Abed, Green, and the leaders of Standing Together are
young. They are, for now, marginal (not magical) realists, working to
build an alternative to the kind of nationalists about whom
Yeats wrote [[link removed]], in
chronicling the Irish civil wars,

_We had fed the heart on fantasies,_

_The heart’s grown brutal from the fare._

_[HAROLD MEYERSON is editor at large of The American Prospect
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_Read the original article at Prospect.org
[[link removed]]._

_Used with the permission. © The American Prospect
[[link removed]], Prospect.org, 2024 [[link removed]].
All rights reserved.  _

_Support the American Prospect [[link removed]]._

_Click here [[link removed]] to support the Prospect's
brand of independent impact journalism_

* Standing Together
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* Israeli Palestinians
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* Israeli Jews
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* Israelis
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* Arab-Israelis
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* Israeli peace movement
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* Israeli politics
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* Palestinians
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Ceasefire
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* IDF
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* Genocide
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Middle East
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* foreign policy
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* Biden Administration
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* AFT
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* Randi Weingarten
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* peace movement
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