People in the Palestine solidarity community have been debating the merits of Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign. Gabbard has earned the sympathy, or at least the interest, of some activists, while others (including myself) dismiss her as a Zionist.
Gabbard’s supporters point to occasional tweets and comments critical of Israel (most of them actually critical of Netanyahu). The best of them came during the Great March of Return in 2018: “Israel needs to stop using live ammunition in its response to unarmed protesters in Gaza. It has resulted in over 50 dead and thousands seriously wounded.”
They also cite Gabbard’s anti-war sensibility, though Gabbard likes to reify the logic of imperialism, as when she mocks neocon “chicken hawks” or informs Donald Trump that “being Saudi Arabia’s bitch is not ‘America First.’” Gabbard doesn’t resemble a liberal dove so much as a Cold War realist.
Gabbard’s career reveals a pro-Israel history. At what point is it appropriate to overlook that history, which has adversely impacted an entire nation? Conventional wisdom tells us that she’s changed and so we should celebrate her current iteration. This approach undersells the past and devalues the present.
Despite her rebranding, Gabbard did give a speech, alongside Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee, at a Christians United for Israel conference. She did tell CNN amid Israel’s brutalization of Gaza that Palestinians are “seeking to exploit the sense of morality that Israel has” by using children as human shields because they lack “care for loss of life of women and children, innocent civilians.” She did sponsor pro-Israel legislation in the government of the Zionist colony’s patron (to the tune of billions in economic aid and weapons). She did accept an award from Sheldon Adelson’s errand boy Rabbi Boteach. She did support RIMPAC, the ecologically destructive rim of the Pacific military exercises, which recently added Israel to the lineup. All of these things happened within the past five years.
A few passable comments don’t make up for sending Israel the weapons it uses to maim and murder Palestinian civilians. She has a long way to go on that count, if absolution is possible in the first place.
Gabbard hasn’t even started the journey. What, concretely, has she done to support Palestinian liberation? In no context but US electoralism do we consider sporadic criticism of Netanyahu adequate, or verbal commitment to a two-state solution progressive. We hold athletes and musicians to a higher standard. Gabbard’s presidential goals don’t justify caution; they illuminate the structural limits of her ambition.
The plain fact is that Gabbard has acted on her sympathy for Israel. She hasn’t lifted a finger to help Palestinians: no organizing in pro-Palestine spaces, no support for right of return, no mention of ethnic cleansing, no empathy for refugee camps, no recognition of 1948 and its aftermath. She hasn’t even disavowed her prior support for Israel.
When asked about Israel’s human rights record in a series of questions curated by the New York Times, Gabbard, visibly nervous, stammered through a half-sentence about “some challenges with Israel” before going silent. The interviewer prodded her to elaborate; Gabbard added a few keywords that almost managed to comprise a platitude. It wasn’t the performance of somebody inclined to courage.
Here’s Gabbard speaking about Saudi Arabia: “Saudi Arabia continues to spend billions of dollars funding the spread of the Wahhabi Salafist ideology that fuels groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups around the world. The US must stop arming Saudi Arabia, stop fueling this fire and hold Saudi Arabia accountable for their actions.” In contrast, she never condemns US funding of Israel, never suggests cessation of arms sales to Israel, never demands accountability from Israel, never deplores the global dimensions of Israeli policy, and never implicates Zionism as Israel’s core ideology.
Finally, as Palestinians, do we not have an obligation to honor similarly colonized communities, namely our Kanaka sisters and brothers who have patiently explained that from their vantage point Gabbard is bad news? Or the Kashmiris who dread what an emboldened Gabbard would mean for their national aspirations? By acting as if Gabbard’s apparent transition from devoted Zionist to halting peacenik is sufficient, we relinquish the internationalist practices that enliven decolonial possibilities.
It is strange that someone can compare Saudi Arabia’s evangelism on behalf of fundamentalist Islam, along with its proxy war with terrorist exporting Iran, with Israel’s secular society and liberal democracy, whose actions, for the most part, are designed to protect the citizens of Israel.
Jack F. Sigman: Claiming Israel is a secular society and liberal democracy is quite a stretch. Jews are the only group with real power, and democracy does not extend beyond white Jews. As for Israel’s actions, they are clearly slanted toward projection of power and expansion, not merely protection. You are only fooling the ignorant by trying to paint Israel as a peaceful and egalitarian nation.
Hardly a stretch. The plurality of Israelis are Arab Jews. All Israelis have the same political and civil rights. All states project power. Until the Palestinian Arabs end their attempts to gain what they want through terrorism, Israel will continue to peacefully build homes, neighborhood, towns and cities. Is Israel peaceful? How can you be peaceful when you must constantly fight Arab and Iranian terrorism?
However, Israel wants peace while the Palestinian Arabs want the peace of the grave.
Israel peaceful ?
I guess the same way Europeans were peaceful towards the Natives.
It would be better that you actually learn the truth rather than guess out of reflect and what you read in Electronic Intifada.
Ouch, that hurts!!
Frank, there is so much dehumanizing propaganda one can process in one day!
I tried to go through the door with the flashy pink Exit sign at the left end of the theater, and then I tumbled through the right door with a bad headache as 1/W. See, this place has a nontrivial topology where everything gets inverted, including the truth.
But certainly, there must be a way to escape this tortuous absurdity. Brad, Dan, Christian, Ayash, Azam, Don, and of course you dear Frank, if we all hold hands and make a dash for it while Steve is not looking, we might just succeed and be free to think again! Jack, if you are paid for staying, then by all means I will not insist you join us. One can repeat propaganda ad infimum, but personally I would not recommend this state of existence to anyone. Where is Peter and James? I did not see them for a while. Let us hope they are discussing their differences over coffee like grown-ups.
Everyone else, look at the header. It carries the name of the Admin! This is not a place for discourse, nor is it about liberating anyone or anything. It is solely made for the intellectual entertainment of its creator. If he were serious about the topics he wrote about, he would have engaged his readers in genuine and open debate. He could have linked the article above to a letter he sent to Tulsi in a parallel universe arguing his case. But he did not. He linked it to HIS Tweet! I do not blame him. We live in the age of social media where narcissism creeps at you without you realizing it. This is his podium, his stage, and you are mere spectators and hapless actors talking over each others heads but not to each other. Escape while you may! Go out and meet real people, of flesh and blood, and argue your case, even shout at each other, until you get exhausted, but make sure you part on civil terms no matter how much diametrically opposite your points of views are.
Ouch, that hurts!!
Frank, there is so much dehumanizing propaganda one can process in one day!
I tried to go through the door with the flashy pink Exit sign at the left end of the theater, and then I tumbled through the right door with a bad headache as 1/W. See, this place has a nontrivial topology where everything gets inverted, including truth.
But certainly, there must be a way to escape this tortuous absurdity. Brad, Dan, Christian, Ayash, Azam, Don, and of course you dear Frank, if we all hold hands and make a dash for it while Steve is not looking, we might just succeed and be free to think again! Jack, if you are paid for staying, then by all means I will not insist you join us. One can repeat propaganda ad infimum, but personally would not state of existence to anyone. Where is Peter and James? I did not see them for a while. Let us hope they are discussing their differences over coffee like grown-ups.
Everyone else, look at the header. It carries the name of the Admin! This is not a place for discourse, nor is it about liberating anyone. It is solely made for the intellectual entertainment of its creator. If he were serious about the topics he wrote about, he would have engaged his readers in genuine and open debate. He could have linked the article above to a letter he sent to Tulsi in a parallel universe arguing his case. But he did not. He linked it to HIS Tweet! Do not blame him. We live in the age of social media where narcissism creeps at you without you realizing it. This is his podium, his stage, and you are mere spectators and hapless actors talking over each others heads but not to each other. Escape while you may! Go out and meet real people, of flesh and blood, and argue your case, even shout at each other, until you get exhausted, but make sure you part on civil terms no matter how diametrically opposite your points of view are.
If I were merely repeating propaganda, I would just totally ignore you. Do all Israelis want peace? Of course not. Do all Palestinian Arabs desire the peace of the grave? Of course not. That being said, I will continue to generalize because this is not a scholarly paper.
There is no escape. There is only holding on until the enemy realizes he is never going to win. That the best he can hope for is 75-90% of his demands, based on a willingness to compromise.
Your suggestion reminds me of the Paul Harvey story about the professor who was going to escape the winds of war, did his research, and settled on an Island in the middle of nowhere…Midway.
Write off Jack Sigman as a delusional-or-deceitful apologist for the zionist entity in Palestine, and just jump over his/her/their input unread. He/she/they come over like the paid hasbarollocksers of Tel Aviv Central’s troll-farms.
[In case you’re not familiar with British-English slang, there’s a word – ‘bollocks’ – with two meanings: men’s testicles; and absolute rubbish. Portmanteau it – most appropriately – with the weasel-word ‘hasbara’, usually translated as ‘explaining’ but best rendered as ‘poisonous lying propaganda bollocks from the zionazis’, and you get ‘hasbarollocks’. ‘Sigman’ is doing hasbarollocks. Ignore.]
“Israel will continue to peacefully build homes …” Are you really serious with this comment, when you know that Israel is systematically destroying homes of Palestinian families to expand their colonization of occupied Palestine, especially in East Jerusalem.
You should take a look to that reality of the families passing their nights under the rubble of their destroyed homes, where they have been living since generations. I have never heard one right word of the so called defenders of the state of Israel like your comment. Why don’t you shut up instead of churning out such stupid lies.
What’s “strange” about it?
And Israel doesn’t have a “secular society” nor a “liberal democracy”, it has a rabid fundamentalist Zionist terror state.
That type language does not reflect Israel.
But your type of language reflect Israel, you said it ! You merely repeat propaganda and you can not help yourself to ignore the critical comments because it’s your mission to go against. This is the work of an occupied mind. It is well documented that the zionist indoctrination starts with the age of 5 in Israeli schools. You can read the book of Nurit Peled-Elhanan, the daughter of Israeli General Matti Peled. It is all over for you and your equals.
Its not a secular society because it has a state religion.
And it’s not a liberal democracy since half tge people living in its borders can’t vote.
Also it is a colonizing power which has employes ethnic cleansing in its goal to create an ethno state
England, Norway, and other secular liberal democracies have a state religions. All of the citizens of Israel have the right to vote. Israel colonized nothing. Nor did the Jews who legally immigrated to Ottoman “Palestine” and British Mandate Palestine.
While moving enemy nationals outside of the front lines so that they could not attack from the rear may be called “ethnic cleansing,” the fact that less than 1% of the “cleansed” population died during the time frame, when over 10% of the population of all other such groups died during 1947-52 and during episodes of actual ethnic cleansing ie Darfur, Bosnia, Syria, and elsewhere it is clear that the episode related to the establishment of the state Israel was the most humane in human history.
Oh dear Please stop with the BS Israel is committing blatant pre-meditated genocide & land theft against the Palestinians you are clearly purposely misrepresenting the situation. SHAME ON YOU
All genocides are intentional. The Israeli government has never stated an intention to commit genocide. Prior to the Arab initiated Palestinian Civil War, there was never a stated intention by the Jewish Agency, the pre-state government, to commit genocide. Indeed, there is no genocide expert who has declared that Israel has ever committed genocide or ever contemplated committing genocide.
If you are going to make accusations, you really need to read something other than Al Jazeera and Electronic Intifada.
Jack, for a picosecond back there I thought you tunneled with us! You were actually Frank!
But then I looked back and saw you are still stuck. Here’s the trick to escape: Jump out of the wall of the back stage. I know, you will vehemently object and say it is impossible. Yes, a classical person will bang her/his head on the wall till perpetuity. But remember, this theater is a place in the head of Steve. Nothing is real here, since truth does not exist. Close your eyes and imagine for a split of a second that you are a quantum particle, and you will easily tunnel!
Why am I back?! I still have unfinished business to do. Stupid me, I forgot to give Steve a message from a little boy who used to worship Kanafani. He admired Ghassan so much that he read all of his books by the age of ten. However, in few years, the “Grapes of Wrath” happened. No, not the one by Steinbeck, but the one of Qana. In a span of few days, one hundred and thirty thousand refugees from the south of Lebanon flooded public schools in Beirut. They had practically nothing. To the chagrin of his mother who thought it was unsafe, the boy volunteered with the Red Cross. Young volunteers were given the job of making sandwiches very early in the morning, and then distributing them to refugees till late in the afternoon. On the second day when he and another boy were leaving a school with a nonempty box of sandwiches, four little children ran after them crying, three little boys and a very little girl. He asked the children what was wrong, and they fell silent as if ashamed to acknowledge what befell them. Then the middle child said they had not eaten for two days, and asked if the boy can give them a second sandwich. See, this singular day made the boy detest (rather hate) Kanafani and all the hypocrisy he stands for. Like Kanafani, one can choose to be consumed by anger and cynicism, and one can appoint oneself the supreme moral judge of everything and everyone out of a severe sense of victimhood. However, by dehumanizing and dismissing the other, one will inevitably perpetuate the cycle of violence and suffering. He struggled for a long while to come up with an alternative, until he remembered the words of Frankl, “[b]etween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The alternative was to attempt to act like he did, silently, without judgement and without blaming anyone or anything, and perhaps, just perhaps, one is lucky and is able to help. Was that all the boy wanted to say? I guess so.
Jack, I forgot, was it the third or the fourth letter of the alphabet. Ah yes, I remember now, “dalet”. In any case, it does not really matter. Since then, we ran out of alphabet characters, and now we use 2^255 string characters.
Frank, before I tunnel again for the very last time, I have to tell you, I found Midway! Unlike here, it is full of real people (yes, the anecdotal ones you referred to in the past, but real nevertheless). Remember, hope is infinite in the quantum world, no matter how high the barrier! Finally, I think I finished my business here. Salam!
You had to find Midway? The name itself meant nothing to you? Your reference to Dalet is what? Are you of the Pappe school or the Morris school of thought. Pappe, of course, is noted as a poor historian who readily admits his politics clouds his objectivity so that his interpretations, much like Davis Irving’s, errs to favor his political position.
Israel wants a jewish state
Israel wants all land between tge jordan river and Mediterranean sea.
Problem- millions of Palestinians in tge area.
Solution – ?
Are you referring to 1948 or 2019? In 1948, based on the murderous Arab riots of 1921, 1929, 1936039, and the attacks that started the 1947 Palestinian Civil War, there was certainly the idea that the fewer Arabs within the borders of the Jewish state, the safer it would be. Not better but safer. However, there was no plan developed to put that reasonable idea into play.
Regardless, when the Jewish Agency took the offensive in March of 1948, it was decided that when Arab villages were behind enemy lines, they must be evacuated so that Arab fighters could not attack from the rear. Through that action and other factors, 750,000 Arabs left the area that would become Israel.
As 6,000 Arabs died via the process, it was clearly the most humane such action ever seen on Earth, despite the few aberrations that occurred.
This is laughable, maliciously so, in its wilful ignorance. Israel; a repressive, murderous society against those who are the indigenous people there, whom they’ve displaced, hence a typical colonialist enterprise. A rogue country, supported by American taxes.
As Israel colonized nothing, your complaint has no objective basis. It is humorous that you describe the only liberal democracy in the Middle East as a repressive, murderous, and rogue country. When can only imagine the comical description you give the repressive dictatorships that surround it, including genocidal Hamas and the kleptocracy of Fatah.
Hasbara talking points appreciated. Bye!
Unlike Electronic Intifada, propaganda is not used. But you’re welcome.
Secular Society and liberal democracy. You clearly are living under the rocks. Go read books on Zionist supremacy.
Americans do not DESRVE this fine young woman as president of the USA at all. They always chose garbage for president
Tulsi is a snake.
Israel is not our 51st state. We should have friendly relations with Israel, but stop giving it money, sharing intelligence and bowing to the pressure of AIPAC. It is a tiny country and not of economic or security importance to the United States.
Israel is of immense scientific and intelligence importance to the US. Additionally, American values dictates support of Israel, an island of liberal democracy in a sea of dictatorships.
Do you have anything to offer other than the usual parroting of the same old talking points?
The old talking points are just as valid today. They bore you?
We do not need Israel. We have more smart Jews in America than there are in Israel.
Please post the empirical proof that there are more smart Jews in the US, then there are in Israel.
I guess then it doesn’t need $4 billion from us each year. Thanks.
Wouldn’t you rather know instead of guessing based on a lack of knowledge?
How do I start? Gabbard isn’t perfect. No Dem candidate is on Palestine. Bernie is against BDS. WTF? (Though I notice that Ms. Khan now supports Gravel. What happens if he endorses Gabbard as is the rumor?)
I’ll just say that, as a supporter, Gabbard was politically ambitious. She did pose for those odious pictures with Boteach and Adelson. She did speak at CUFI. She did say those pro-Israel things. BUT, all prior to mid-2016. Gabbard’s political ambition clearly led her to do those things. She was being groomed in a fast-track DNC position. She said stupid shit in that capacity.
So two things:
1) Something happened in late 2016. Something profound. She resigned her fast-track position at the DNC to support Sanders. She did so publically, uniquely, and explicitly. I don’t know if many reading this know or understand how courageous that was. She gave up her political future in order to support something/someone she believed in. (and my guess is that she saw how generally corrupt the system was that was making her do stupid sht.)
2) All this “Zionist” stuff was based on that fast-track grooming.
3) The dismissal in this article of her CURRENT words is contingent upon her past words, yet she has demonstrated, publicly and explicitly that she DOES evolve her views, exlicititly, publicly, and in ways that cannot be retracted. Does Gabbard “side” with the Palestinian cause now? As a 40-yr advocate for Palestinian rights, I believe so to some extent, as a world view, but I simply do not know. TBD.
4) What I DO KNOW is that Gabbard is UNEQUIVOCALLY, explicitly, publicly Israel’s political ENEMY. She is against Israel’s/PNAC wars (currently Iran). So smarter people than I can do that math. Enemy of Zionist Israel/Influence or Zionist patsy. I am going with the former.
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Good article, Dr. Salaita. Great questions. Thanks.
And she did, recently, along with aoc, vote to outlaw bds.
My mistake. Itwas ms presley, not aoc, who joined ms gabbard in vote to outlaw bds.
No trouble outing Sigman as a filthy hasbaRAT here. All posts may be safely jettisoned as those of a deluded EPSTEIN RAPING / BLACKMAILING / 911 MURDERING mind.