Message to Western pro-Palestine activists: “Use your Western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people”

Ahmed talks about himself, his background and his view of the Palestinians’ stuggle

I first came across the name of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib in an article by Jonathan Freedland (itself well worth reading) in last Friday’s Guardian.

Freedland notes that there is a large constituency of US Jews “with the potential to be a new and crucial ally in the struggle for Palestinian independence”, but that they are being alienated by the pro-Hamas sentiment and antisemitic rhetoric of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on US campuses and elsewhere:

But when those people see activists praising Hamas – the men who killed, tortured and raped so many on 7 October and still hold dozens hostage – or carrying the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that does the bidding of the theocrats in Tehran; or saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live”; or chanting in sinister unison for the expulsion of a “Zionist” who has been detected in the camp; or lamenting the Jewish role in American feminism, they want nothing to do with such a movement. Because they know that movement wants nothing to do with them. And that feeling is not reduced when they hear a big-name speaker suggest to a New York crowd that any Jew who believes, after two millennia of persecution, that Jews need a home of their own is a worshipper of “a false idol”, a “profane” god.

Though, to be clear, the most striking condemnation of this hardening of supposedly pro-Palestinian rhetoric has come not from Jews, but from Palestinians. The protesters have taken “an extremist, maximalist, inflammatory, unreasonable, and totally illogical approach which is harmful to the pro-Palestinian cause,” wrote Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born Palestinian analyst who has lost a staggering 31 members of his own family in recent months. Via social media, Alkhatib urges the demonstrators to stop “wasting time with slogan-driven and maximalist activism that does nothing”, and instead to “use your western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people and promote a pragmatic path forward by engaging Israeli and Jewish audiences”.

Here’s the Tweet to which Freedland refered. I have changed the layout, but not of the words.

@afalkhatib

If you support the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and self-determination, please stop talking about “globalizing the Intifada” – I lived through the Second Intifada in Gaza, and I swear it was deadly, violent, painful, scary and I, along with many others, almost lost our lives because of it many times.

Please don’t praise Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades; please don’t advocate for violence against Israelis or Jews, including those with whom you strongly disagree; please never tolerate antisemitism and be aware of how anti-Zionism can easily slide into antisemitism, though they’re not the same and I, of course, don’t believe any criticism of Israeli actions and policies is automatically antisemitic.

Please remember that Palestinians want a state of their own, and as such, you should promote the Two State Solution regardless of how seemingly impossible it is with the settlements in the West Bank – calls for the ending of Israel and the creation of a single state are impractical, wrong, unhelpful and won’t get us anywhere.

Please seek alliances with mainstream Israeli and Jewish audiences, and don’t be deluded into thinking that by exclusively working with anti-Zionist Jews, you’ll be able to accomplish anything.

Please encourage and permit for a healthy diversity within the pro-Palestine movement to allow for a whole variety of opinions, views, takes, positions, beliefs, and strategies – forced conformity never ends well.

Please adopt pragmatism as a necessary approach/ethos for actually getting things done instead of wasting time with slogan-driven and maximalist activism that does nothing.

Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going anywhere. I’m under no illusion that figuring out how the two coexist will be easy; still, I beg all pro-Palestine activists and young people who are getting involved with this issue to please not be driven by pure emotion or ignorance.

Use your Western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people and promote a pragmatic path forward by engaging Israeli and Jewish audiences.

6:59 AM · Apr 21, 2024

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Shortly after reading Ahmed’s Tweet, I came across this (below) from a Jewish Israeli member of the peace movement Standing Together. I think the two statements complement each other:

An open letter to the Columbia University Gaza war protesters from a pro-Palestinian activist in Israel

By HAVIVA NER-DAVID

As a graduate of Columbia College (Class of 1991) and a peace activist who lives in Israel, I am watching videos and reports from my alma mater’s campus and wondering what I would have done if I were a student there now.

I am an activist and have been all my life. I believe strongly in the ability of grassroots movements and peaceful protest to change the world.

When I first moved to Israel, my activism was focused on feminism and religious pluralism. Today, however, I strongly believe the most pressing issue in Israel-Palestine today is solving the conflict.

Since well before the current extremist right-wing Israeli government was elected, I have been demonstrating against the occupation (later also the Nation-State Law declaring Israel officially a Jewish state) and working for Jewish-Palestinian partnership within Israel’s borders. My debut novel, “Hope Valley,” is about the friendship between a Palestinian Israeli woman and a Jewish Israeli woman in the Galilee.

I am a very active member of Standing Together, a movement of Palestinian-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis working in complete partnership towards an end to the occupation, Palestinian self-determination and a more equal, just and peaceful society within Israel. I am involved in a variety of groups and organizations committed to a vision of peace, justice and equality for all people on the land from the “River to the Sea.”

I remain active in these groups even after Hamas’ brutal attack on Oct. 7. I am even out on the streets now calling for a mutual ceasefire and a return of all the hostages (many of whom it seems are tragically no longer alive), as well as for the resignation of government officials and early elections.

And so, if I were studying at Columbia today, I would ask myself: Should I join your protests? After all, I, too, am pro-Palestinian.

But I am also pro-Jew.

And when you chant, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution!” and “From the Sea to the River, Palestine will live forever!” you are not calling, as I and my Palestinian-Israeli friends are, for peace, justice and equality for all humans within those borders. You are calling for the violent destruction of the country where we live, and the murder of its citizens — including the Palestinian ones. As we saw on Oct. 7, Hamas has no more sympathy for other-than-Jewish Israelis — not even for Muslim ones — than it does for Jewish Israelis.

When you say, “I am Hamas!” you are not identifying with innocent civilians, including children, women and seniors who were massacred and kidnapped or the women raped in captivity (according to eyewitness accounts from hostages who were freed). Even my Palestinian Israeli activist friends strongly condemned Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 and say Hamas is terrible for the Palestinian people.

And when you call out, “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here!” you are fomenting violence against and silencing other Columbia students. You may disagree with them, but does that mean they have no right to inhabit your shared campus — or even live? Do you think I, an activist in the struggle for peace and equality for all in Israel-Palestine, have a right to live?

Make no mistake; I have no problem with the keffiyehs you wear or the Palestinian flags you wave. But why is nationalist self-determination good for Palestinians and not Jews? Why is living in the Diaspora good for Jews and not Palestinians? And why do Palestinians have a right to live in security, but Jews do not? Unlike you, I do not even consider myself a nationalist. But I do believe in people’s right to live in safety, and I do not believe in double standards.

While I am an activist advocating for Palestinian rights, I also advocate for Jewish rights. While I march for a ceasefire, I also march with the families of the hostages and am volunteering to translate into English testimony from the Oct. 7 massacre — which is absolutely horrifying, even if there are those who deny it happened.

While I protest many of my government’s policies now and in the past, I do not think Jews have a moral obligation to commit suicide rather than enter sometimes tragic gray areas that are part of defending a country. Turning the other cheek is not expected of anyone anywhere. Why expect it only of Jews?

While you in the United States demand that we be sacrificial lambs, you inhabit and benefit from a country unequivocally acquired through colonialism and grown through slavery. This is not the case with Jews in Israel (although the British may have had colonialist aspirations by being here), even if agenda-driven pseudo-historians try to convince ignorant students that it is.

Israel is far from perfect. I am outraged at the Jewish-supremacist, messianic, theocratic, anti-democratic direction in which the country is currently headed. But the answer is to try and change that direction, not call for the country’s destruction.

I understand and relate to your show of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. The situation there is heartbreaking and devastating. But so is the situation here in Israel. The scale is just different, for a variety of reasons that are just as much the fault of Palestinian leadership as Israeli.

Our political leadership on both sides are using us all as pawns in this bloody conflict. It must end. They must agree on a political solution, and we, the grassroots from both nations, must demand this.

If you from abroad want to demand something, demand a resolution of the conflict and peace in the region, not the annihilation of one side. As has been often stated – there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 6. What there wasn’t was a political direction from either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership to achieve long-lasting peace.

The situation here is so much more complex than you care to understand. There is a bloody conflict going on, with people suffering and dying on both sides in brutal ways, not just in the past months but for the past century. One who studies the history and present will know that both sides are culpable and responsible for the conflict and its resolution.

Student activists, I too question the Zionist project. I grew up on the Zionist narrative. But when I discovered I had been told only part of the story, my answer was not to believe the Palestinian narrative over the Zionist one — because it, too, is only part of the story. The answer is to acknowledge both stories and both people’s suffering and try to find a way to hold it all and everyone’s humanity.

My ideal is for us to all live in peace and dignity on this land from the River to the Sea. That means two states, with perhaps down the line more open borders and cooperation — if we do the work to reconcile and heal. That is what my Zionism is about. Not Jewish supremacy or theocracy or even having a Jewish state; it is about having a safe place for Jews to live. But not at the expense of another nation. And so, my vision for this place would have to be safe for everyone.

And so, if I were at Columbia today, I would not join your protests. Because now I know I do not have to choose sides. I do not even have to buy into the idea of “sides.” This is a battle between those who support violence and an all-or-nothing approach to this conflict, and those who want to find a way for us to all win out by sharing this land. It saddens me deeply that you are choosing — perhaps out of latent Jew-hatred — the way of violence and hate instead of cooperation and mutual understanding.

There are people living here in this very real place. We are not a theoretical idea. And some of us are Palestinians and Jews who are working together tirelessly to make our vision of peace and equality a reality. If you want to promote peace on this land, please support our work. What you are doing now undermines it.

HAVIVA NER-DAVID

(Haviva is the rabbinic founder of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul, on Kibbutz Hannaton. She is a certified spiritual companion with a specialty in dreamwork, working with couples and individuals. She is the author of Dreaming Against the Current: A Rabbi’s Soul Journey, and the novels Hope Valley and To Die in Secret).

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