Speaking the truth about Israel in US congress

Last month, US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in public what everyone who cares about what is happening in Israel and Palestine has known for years. Addressing the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago on 15 July 2022, she said “we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible.” These words marked a rare admission of the situation on the ground in Palestine today, where the geographic foundation for the two-state solution that US politicians continue to promote has been almost completely eroded.

It is often said that no good deed goes unpunished and that appears to have been the case here too. As soon as her comments were reported, Democratic lawmakers including Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz leapt into action, calling Jayapal’s objective statement “hurtful and harmful” as well as “insensitive.” Under extreme pressure from her counterparts in Congress, Jayapal offered her “apologies to those who I have hurt with my words.” The shift away from the material conditions of the occupation of Palestine and towards the “feelings” of those who feel hurt by critical statements about Israel is indicative of what is happening on a wider scale in connection with worldwide efforts to cancel Palestinian activism and to criminalise pro-Palestinian speech.

''Is it not racist to deny a Palestinian the right to voice their own experience? Racism remains even if it is coded in the language of “hurt.” If we accept the rhetorical turn that has dominated US public discourse around Israel since the advent of the IHRA definition, we are forced to choose between acknowledging Palestinians’ point of view and being accused of antisemitism. This is an unsustainable—and unacceptable—opposition that follows logically from definitions of racism that prioritise feelings over material conditions.''

This tendency can be traced back to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which conflates Israel-critical speech with antisemitism in ways that undermine free speech. Many governments, including the US State Department, have embraced this definition either in whole or in part, and members of Congress have also allowed it to guide their understanding of what constitutes antisemitism. The definition has proven useful to Israel advocates by including anti-Israeli sentiment within the scope of antisemitism. This strengthens the position of those who wish to reduce antisemitism to matters of words. At the same time, with its focus on words over material conditions, the IHRA definition obscures the actual operations of antisemitic racism, and the cost it extracts through the loss of lives and livelihoods.

What if, contrary to the claims of the IHRA definition, we understood racism as a prejudice that is manifested through structural inequality rather than a feeling triggered by words? Then we would see that there is no need for the fight against racism to come into conflict with the demands of free speech.

The problem with focusing on feelings to establish racism rather than looking to material inequalities is that it leads to a vicious cycle in which no one side can ever attain justice, because everyone is too busy nursing their own grievances. Wasserman Schultz’s emphasis on words that she calls “hurtful” deflects attention away from the ongoing displacement of the Palestinian people. A Palestinian in particular has every reason to experience as racist a state that actively discriminates against Palestinians through the denial of their freedom of movement and the brutalisation that takes place every hour at checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza.

Is it not racist to deny a Palestinian the right to voice their own experience? Racism remains even if it is coded in the language of “hurt.” If we accept the rhetorical turn that has dominated US public discourse around Israel since the advent of the IHRA definition, we are forced to choose between acknowledging Palestinians’ point of view and being accused of antisemitism. This is an unsustainable—and unacceptable—opposition that follows logically from definitions of racism that prioritise feelings over material conditions. Everyone has the right to be offended, but no one has the right not to be offended, or to translate their feeling of offence into an unequivocal demonstration of racism.

Following the uproar over Jayapal’s words, Republican Congressman August Pfluger introduced a resolution that implicitly condemned Jayapal for calling Israel racist. “The State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state,” the resolution reads, and Jayapal, no doubt overwhelmed by pressure from her own party, joined with the 412 other Democratic and Republican Congressmen to vote in favour of the resolution. We know from her earlier remarks that Jayapal understands the situation in Palestine better than to support a resolution saying Israel, a state which has been described as apartheid by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is not racist. But the tendency to reduce antisemitism to the hurt feelings of Israel’s supporters in the halls of Congress has clouded US public discourse and made it impossible to speak the truth.

Congresswoman Jayapal’s brief moment of truth made those who set the agenda for US foreign policy towards Israel uncomfortable. Thankfully, there are still brief moments when the lies that are enshrined in US foreign policy can be exposed, even by politicians. Yet Jayapal herself voted “yes” in the very resolution that was devised to shame her for speaking out. This speaks volumes to just how much stands in the way of speaking the truth about Israel in US Congress.

The nine members of Congress who voted against the resolution were all people of colour. Among them was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who explained to reporters her reasons for voting no in simple yet lucid terms: “Combining both a vote on antisemitism and discussion of apartheid and different rules and two-tier legal systems is very cynical. And I don’t think that is the right thing to do.” These members of Congress, many of whom represent majority-minority districts, understand the connection between anti-Palestinian racism and racism in the United States.

If we want to change US foreign policy towards Israel—and with it the status quo of an increasingly brutal occupation that endeavours to erase Palestine off the map—we need to reject the cynical reduction of antisemitism or any other racism to “hurtful words.” We need new ways for recognising antisemitism and other forms of bigotry that centre the lives of those who experience it every day.

Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of numerous works at the intersection of aesthetics and politics, including Erasing Palestine (2023), Writers and Rebels (2016) and The Persian Prison Poem (2021). With Malaka Shwaikh, she is the author of Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine (2023). Her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books, Middle East Eye, and World Policy Journal and her writing has been translated into eleven languages.

Follow her on Twitter: @rrgould

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.