The JTA has an interesting round-up of #Occupy’s Palestinian solidarity issues:
While the pro-Palestinian events have been organized by outside groups, the closest Occupy Wall Street has come to endorsing Palestinian activism was a Nov. 3 tweet from the New York branch’s unofficial communications team expressing solidarity with the Freedom Waves mini-flotilla, which tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza before being stopped by the Israeli Navy. Within hours, however, the tweet was deleted. The Twitter account operators explained that notwithstanding their own sympathies, without a consensus from the movement they would not take a position on the issue.
Dan Sieradski took some undeserved heat for this whole affair, and had some very interesting thoughts as a result:
Worse yet, there have been attempts to push Zionists out of the movement by claiming their support for Israel’s mere existence is fundamentally racist and as such, they should not be part of any serious social justice movement. I find such actions deeply offensive. Insisting that I or anyone else pass a litmus test requiring the rejection of Israel’s existence so that I can protest the fact that my parents are in bankruptcy and foreclosure — which is actually what these protests are supposed to be about and which is why I got involved with them — is obnoxious and infuriating.
My take: Sieradski is right on about the tactical problems with integrating Israel-Palestine issues into the movement. The kind of strategic thinking that he’s advocating is the difference between a crowd and a movement. #Occupy is in a position to effect real change, but that can’t be accomplished if the movement’s direction and tactics are crowdsourced to the point of no accountability.
