A common criticism of progressive anti-Zionists is that their alignment with groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—whose flags they wave and whose slogans and figures adorn their clothing, especially among the campus activists—exposes their hypocrisy on the very issues they claim to care about. These are misogynistic, homophobic, ethno-chauvinist regimes on the extreme end of all those categories.
The critique is accurate, of course. Anti-Zionism brings together a wide coalition of very loud hypocrites.
This is by design. It is not a bug, it is the way the ideological architecture of Palestinian nationalism was deliberately constructed. And to understand this is to understand why this form of unprincipled opposition to Israel’s existence is so dangerous.
The table was set by Yasser Arafat himself in 1969, the year he became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Making clear that his party, Fatah—which would control the PLO and therefore the direction of the entire Palestinian national movement—believed in nothing, officially, except the defeat of Israel, Arafat said:
“What is the meaning of an ideological identity? Does it mean that I should stand up and make a statement that I believe in Marxism? … Is this the time for defining the social content of Fatah’s number? I swear by God, there are no capitalists or monopolists or bourgeoisie in the ranks of Fatah… We are all not only poor, but have even lost our homeland…. What meaning does the Left or Right have in my struggle to liberate my homeland?”
His argument was that his gang was the true leftist ideal. Faruq al-Qaddumi, who died in Jordan two months ago, was the party’s secretary-general and political chief for much of his life. A few months after Arafat’s remarks above, Qaddumi gave an interview in which he expounded on why true leftism, as the Palestinians see it, requires a movement devoid of political principles:
“The leftist movement always speaks in the negative form. The left resists so and so, revolts against so and so and fights so and so. The left does not have a positive content except when exemplified in the form of a party or movement, and then this content becomes the tool for continuous change.” Any ideological stands the movement took, he said, would necessarily be rejected eventually: “The movement of history is in a continuous state of revolution and rejection.”
The push for principles is, he said, “infantile leftism.” The Palestinians are forever in the revolutionary phase, so they have yet to become whatever it is they will be. (As Kamala Harris might say, they will be unburdened by what has been.)
Anyone who seeks to live within the status quo is, Qaddumi said, a rightist—even the Jordanian Communist movement. Peace, stability—these are rightist concepts by definition and are unwelcome in the Palestinian national movement.
That’s why the movement cannot engage or ally with anyone who accepts the existence of Israel. “The international existence of Israel is what we are objecting to, and it is contrary to the nature of Arab existence in this area.”
Fatah’s control of the PLO at this time was so consequential because it was created as an umbrella coalition of Palestinian resistance groups. The last major holdout, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had joined the prior year. Arafat took over at the perfect moment to mold the entire Palestinian national movement according to his methods. Though there would be disagreement and discord, the main point of uniting the disparate factions of the Palestinian “resistance” was to threaten the stability of Arab states that didn’t back total war with Israel.
Fight Club’s first rule was “you don’t talk about Fight Club.” The PLO’s first rule was “you only talk about destroying Israel.” Everything else gets checked at the door.
What Qaddumi’s comments meant was not that supporters of the Palestinian cause should temporarily set aside their devotion to, say, gay rights or feminism. It meant that supporters must permanently set aside their devotion to gay rights and feminism and anything else they believed. Because the true state of a leftist movement, in the Palestinian rendering, is revolution in perpetuity.
This is the danger of the primacy of Palestinian nationalism on campus and among other, mostly but not entirely progressive, activist institutions. Nothing else matters but the destruction of the power structures wherever they are. Permanent revolution means there can be no peace, no compromise. If yet another generation of activists is reared on this one rule, it will apply to everything, not just Israel or Zionism.
Finally, how to reconcile the declared Marxist and socialist bona fides of the Palestinian national movement with its issue ban, which would seem to rule out much that animates the class war? Here Qaddumi shows the cleverness of the movement. The class war exists, but the Palestinians have… invented a new class:
“Because of the evacuation of the Palestinians, Al-Fateh represents the refugees. It is the only revolutionary movement which has transcended the Arab movements, Arab parties and the Palestinian regional movements, and it has done this because it has depended on the refugee class. The bourgeois concept, on the other hand, is one of attributes.”
In other words, in the permanence of the “refugee class” is where the movement finds its greatest strength.
The “pro-Palestinian” activists in the West are not unaware of all this—or at least those who speak for them and lead them aren’t unaware. The point of all this conflict is its permanence and its wide applicability. There are, of course, people who support the establishment of a Palestinian state but who do not support open-ended violent revolution. But of the two groups, the Western activist class tends to elevate and legitimize only the more extreme one, which makes no excuses for its hypocrisies and which cannot be placated by peace and compromise.