The Entity Archives - Steve Salaita

The ABCs of US and Israeli Propaganda

The main function of US and Israeli propaganda is to affirm the disposability of colonized people. Dissent, then, isn’t merely a pastime, but the foundation of existential clarity and economic relief.

US and Israeli propaganda diverge according to circumstance, but they share basic characteristics (and modes of delivery). It’s easy to get sucked into the fantasy that we can make reporting and commentary more even-handed, but the propaganda model precludes that possibility. The model is dynamic; capitalism is the only ideology it absolutely preserves. Everything else is contingent on the needs of power. If at any point the economic and political elite need new narratives, corporate media will make the changes.

Except for Palestine

Progressive Except for Palestine (PEP) is a myth. Adherence to Zionism inhibits comprehensive political decency.

Progressive except for Palestine, PEP (or PeP), is a familiar appellation. Palestine solidarity activists have been using it for a long time to describe the kind of leftist who professes support for racial and economic justice without extending that concern to Palestinians. In other words, the appellation describes standard-issue liberals in the metropole.

In recent months a cognate has emerged: feminist except for Palestine. This species, often indistinguishable from the PEP, locates in settler colonization a space for women’s liberation. In some cases, FEPs affirm Zionist civility by highlighting male barbarity among Israel’s enemies. They have a cozy relationship with US intervention in backward regions of the globe and imagine that gender equality can be realized through Zionism. Lately, they’ve been trying to rid the Women’s March of radical affectations.