https://socialistproject.ca/2020/05/remaking-politics-of-palestine-solidarity-in-canada/
Remaking the Politics of Palestine Solidarity in Canada
ANTI-RACISM,
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• May 8, 2020 •
Hammam Farah
Alittle over a year ago, Arab YouTube celebrity Nas Daily held a talk at
McGill University in Montreal, hosted by the McGill Arab Student
Network. The
event page on Facebook
quickly drew controversy, as Palestinian students from various
Canadian campuses descended into a protracted back-and-forth with the
event organizers.
Commentators highlighted Nas’s role in whitewashing Israel’s crimes
against the Palestinians. For a Palestinian social media celebrity who
enjoys exposure
to 10 million followers, Nas presents a dangerously narrow view of the
conflict that minimizes Israel’s responsibility. It was thus of little
surprise
that Palestinian human rights clubs at McGill and Concordia University
(also in Montreal) scrambled to release statements of condemnation.
Still, in the
end, the event was held to a packed audience.
This episode was emblematic of the growing trend in the Canadian-Arab
community to engage in cultural and professional event programming to
the exclusion
of politics and education. Just as Nas tries to avoid the unavoidable by
turning the deeply unequal political relationship between Israel and the
Palestinians
into a cultural misunderstanding between Jews and Arabs, Arab
associations in Canada, both existing and newly emerging across the
neoliberal landscape,
find themselves in the awkward position of having to make being
resolutely non-political a point of pride. Inevitably, this means
avoiding those engaged
in political organizing out of fear of the shame that follows such
interactions.
The Erasure of Politics
This curbing of politics has enormous consequences for the Palestinian
diaspora in Canada. We are witnessing an attempt to redefine our
Palestinian identity
– from one based on our collective project of political emancipation and
resistance that began with the pre-1948 revolt against the British
Mandate and
developed throughout the post-
Nakba
Palestinian revolution, to an identity that sees our national symbols
like the kuffiyeh or the olive tree denuded of their historical and
political meaning.
Our culture of exile and resistance in daily life is being ‘made safe’
for the social integration of our elite’s ongoing integration into
Canada’s ruling
classes, while the exploitation and oppression suffered by the majority
among us – here in Canada and in Palestine – deepens.
An online search of local Arab community events in Canada turns up an
endless array of galas, seasonal mixers, networking events,
professional-development
conferences, more networking events, youth connects, and
entrepreneurial- and personal-branding workshops. These copycat events
are hosted by not only
one, but by numerous competing Arab associations and ‘professional
associations’. Any ‘political’ programming involves Arab youth meeting
representatives
from each of the three major Canadian political parties, as if they were
being presented with career options or consumer goods rather than
opportunities
for meaningful political engagement.
Similarly, on university campuses, several attempts have been made in
recent years, both successful and unsuccessful, to form Palestinian
student associations
that prioritize narrow identity-related concerns and entertainment
through food and dance. In one such case, a Palestinian student
association replaced
a chapter of Students Against Israeli Apartheid, and initially kept
overtly political events at arm’s length in its programming.
This was simply not the case a decade ago. Arab students displayed an
acute awareness about the role of American and Israeli foreign policy,
of capitalism
and imperialism, in shaping their lives. They prided themselves on their
understanding that injustice in the Middle East is tied to injustice
everywhere.
These prior generations of Arab students had a sense – grounded in an
internationalist framework – of the need to organize against injustice
by building
solidarity.
To be clear, we know that promoting cultural expression is imperative in
the struggle to defend ourselves against attempts to wipe us from the
historical
record. However, during my time as a student at York University and an
activist in the anti-war movement, Palestinian identity was defined by
cultural
symbols imbued with meaning derived from a socialist political framework
focused on building solidarity in the struggle against war, imperialism,
and capitalism
– the championing of a better world for all. The same cannot be said for
the experiences and worldviews of many Palestinian students today.
The phenomenon of political erasure is by no means limited to the Arab
community. It corresponds to the integration of the professional middle
and upper
classes of immigrant communities into the ruling (small ‘l’) liberal
elite that is central to the Canadian identity and the liberal
democratic state.
While Canadian multiculturalism has largely succeeded in integrating a
narrow layer of the ruling political and economic classes in immigrant
communities
to act as power brokers (often of even an old clientalist kind),
inequality within these communities, and within Canadian society more
generally, has continued
to grow apace. And as inequality grows, the interests of these elites
move further away from the interests of the working-class members of
these communities.
The result is that there is now a pronounced convergence between the
interests of elites in immigrant communities and the interests of those
of long-standing
within the Canadian ruling classes. At the same time, there is a
pronounced divergence between these interests and the interests of the
majority of people
in their own communities.
For example, Omar Alghabra, a well-known Arab politician in the Liberal
Party has more in common with the narrowing segment of upwardly mobile
middle class
and wealthy Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area than he does with poor
and working-class Arabs here. It doesn’t matter that Alghabra comes from
a humble
background. The point is that now that his interests are aligned with
the political elite in the Liberal Party, he can no longer afford to
stand up in
the same ways for those in his community who are struggling to make ends
meet. Community elites will tend to refuse to support causes or policies
that
may pose a threat to their own interests or those of their friends and
colleagues – whether supporting the unionization of workers that they
employ, or
supporting Palestinian human rights through political actions that
disrupt economic transactions. The focus on cultural expression without
political expression
fits the needs of upwardly mobile elites, but not the poor and
working-class people that are the backbone of the Palestinian diaspora
community.
The withdrawal of many Palestinians in Canada from political activism,
and the retreat into the world of professional politics, managerialism,
NGOs, and
cultural expression, inevitably has the effect of weakening the bonds of
solidarity that have proven crucial to rendering the oppression of
Palestinians
as increasingly visible to mainstream audiences. If our community elites
succeed in peddling representation and entrepreneurship as realistic
substitutes
for political organizing, it risks hitting the solidarity movement’s
greatest strength – its existence as a forum where Palestinians and
non-Palestinians
work together toward a struggle fundamental to our common liberation.
BDS and Solidarity with Palestine
The failure of community elites to not only advance the national
struggle, but also to improve the conditions of Palestinians in Canada,
means that the
task moving forward must be to organize a political alternative based on
the interests of the majority. That can only be done once the
organization of
workers here is acknowledged as a condition for meaningful solidarity
work. Activists in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement
should be
commended on their success in contributing to the sea change in the
discourse surrounding Palestinians over the last decade. Great strides
have been made
in the realm of public opinion in Canada, particularly in the union and
social movements, and amongst many First Nations communities. But the
reality is
that activity confined to the student movement, and conducted by
professionals in the NGO sector, is vulnerable to institutional pressure
and careerism.
These limits partly explain why the BDS movement has yet to convert its
discursive victories into substantive ones, and currently lacks the
muscle to compel
a real, material change in state policy toward Israel.
Initiating the next phase of the Palestine solidarity movement will
require going beyond BDS resolutions – which have been passed by many
major organizations,
including unions, to great fanfare, only to be left languishing, packed,
and hidden away for lack of power to enforce them. Only by working
closely with
organizers and rank-and-file activists in the labour movement in Canada,
as our predecessors in the movement against apartheid in South Africa
did, will
we be able to build enough power to promote meaningful international
solidarity. Such power is necessary to make political elites, both in
the Palestinian
community and Canadian society at large, act in our interests and halt
the drift toward anti-solidaristic attitudes and de-politicized cultural
expression.
•
Hammam Farah is a board member of the Palestinian Canadian Community
Centre and longtime BDS activist in Toronto.
BDS
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___
Steven Pinker
“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer.
But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming
naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's
highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]”
― Steven Pinker