On Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Palestine, and the Left

Wait, are you saying that a leftist can’t be for a two state solution? Why not? Any current one state solution is going to be like Yugoslavia right before it exploded, as a very best case scenario.

Of course, the transcript shows that the question asked AOC was “what is your position on Israel?” and she answered that question. The fact that Corey Robin starts his post with a complaint that AOC answered the question she was asked, her position on Israel, is telling. All the more so because her answer is clear from the very outset that she is in favor of a two state solution, which combines Palestinian self-determination in its own state with the right of the Israeli state to exist – and not, as Robin dismissively suggests, a one-sided affirmation of Israel’s right to exist that ignores the Palestinian question. Add to this the fact that AOC has been critical of the actions and policies of the current Israeli government vis-a-vis the Palestinians, calling the recent violence at the border with Gaza a “massacre” (which was offered as the basis for raising this question in the interview)and that in this very interview is clear that the Israel presence on the West Bank is “an occupation.” What exactly is it about AOC’s response that has Robin so worked up? It is hard to believe that so much ink could have been inspired by the fact that AOC was addressing a question which, she made clear, was relatively new to her, despite Robin’s demands for expertise on demand. So is the real problem here that Robin, like many of his fellow BDS advocates, dismisses a “two state solution” as “liberal platitudes” because he does not accept the right of a state to Israel to exist alongside a state of Palestine?

What did you expect? She represents Puerto Rican aspirations, which is a legitimate role to take, but she’s 28 and a neophyte. Her election does not represent a vote of confidence for further left positions on anything. She will have to make choices about which issues of interest to the left she has the time and political space to pursue, and this may not be among them.

It really does say something about a person if you can take Ocasio-Cortez’s clearly not polished thoughts on Israel/Palestine and conclude this makes her a phony or a fraud. I mean, there is an argument about what some kind of purist left position on Israel ought to be, or has to be, but if you are able to look at a person like AOC and convince yourself she isn’t really committed to the domestic causes she claims to be because she doesn’t align with your views on Israel/Palestine especially given quite apparent and self-proclaimed level of knowledge, that is really a different thing.

Her proper ans should have been: I know the boundaries of my district and it does not include the State Israel, next question.

Part of me is tempted to say something like “let’s see if we can save ourselves before we try to save the world”. It isn’t my usual impulse. My usual impulse is that we can do a few things at once. But if we lose out to Trump again, we won’t be doing any of those other things either. This isn’t the typical “now is not the time” situation. So long as Trump is in power, now is really not the time.

Actually, Trump in power is the time to talk about Israel and the Saudis, because those are the countries he colludes with the most. Though I sympathize with Sebastian’s claim that we shouldn’t try to save the world, this is precisely why we shouldn’t be joined at the hip with countries like Israel and the Saudi Arabia in the first place.

Opposing Trump should mean opposing the policies he supports which harm people and you see such policies in action in Gaza and the West Bank and in Yemen.

‘I am a proponent of a two-state solution’ is just as little (or just as much) platitudinous as ‘I am a proponent of single binational democratic state’; they are platitudinous to the same extent; if either one of them is a platitude, then both of them are.

I am not sure how much trouble Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is likely to get into as a result of the way she answered this question, but for the sake of contrast I imagine somebody in a similar position who was asked the same question (‘What is your position on Israel?’) and who answered it by saying only ‘I am a proponent of a two-state solution’ and finishing the answer there, with nothing more. That person would (almost certainly) have got into less trouble with that answer than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is likely to get into for the answer she actually gave. For the sake of further contrast, I imagine somebody in a similar position who was asked the same question and who answered it by saying only ‘I am a proponent of a single binational democratic state’ and finishing the answer there, with nothing more. I suspect that person would have got into more trouble with that answer than the first person I imagined, but still less than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is likely to get into with the answer she actually gave.

Then there’s the answer suggested by dilbert dogbert. How much trouble would that cause for the person who gave it? I can’t guess that one.

1. If opposition to a two-state solution is to be the political litmus/purity test, then intellectual honesty would dictate that it be stated clearly and directly, without all of the pretense about AOC being inexpert, not really supporting Palestianian self-determination and the other misdirection. Having a real, honest debate. The fact that this critique is covered in this artifice and dismissive smirks about liberalism and never actually says a two-state position is unacceptable suggests an attempt to discredit without forthright debate.

2. AOC’s position would put her among the most pro-Palestinian self-determination and pro-Palestinian rights members of Congress. A position that dismisses her position as liberal platitudes is a position that is destined to be empty political posturing from the sidelines.

3. There is a reason why even the Noam Chomskys of the world have criticized BDS and insisted that a two-state solution is the only feasible way forward for Palestinian self-determination, and it is not because he is a liberal or is afraid to criticize Israel.

I can only imagine how having to answer that very question would make me squirm. One I know my position is far enough from the mainstream of American political thought, that it could be highly damaging to me -and potentially the left in the USA. So I would probably blow it in a similar manner. So she (and I) have Sebastion’s comment as an important part of our internal calculus. I think for she, and I too, that Palestine is an issue of secondary importance -if for no other reason than the fact that the odds that taking a stand would fix things is between zero and a very very tiny number.

Of course, it should have been obvious, that the question would be asked. She should have had a practice interview or three with a staff member, so as to be ready with a coherent sounding answer. I think any experienced politician would have done just that. But, she probably thinks, with some justification, that displays the sort of elitism against which Trump successfully ran. She ran mostly on authentic simple sincerity, but now she is discovering that real world politics demands more than that.

In any case, I can’t see her as a national politician. She intends to represent her highly atypical district, and that means she will have to take positions that the majorities in “typical” districts aren’t likely to be happy with. She may have a long run as a congress critter, but she will be about as mainstream as Charlie Wrangle was.

Here is a good example of the kind of false outrage that the left really needs to avoid at the moment. From the OP:

Prompted about her use of the word “massacre,” Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t stay with the experience of the Palestinians. Instead, she goes immediately to an affirmation of Israel’s right to exist, as if Israelis were the first order of concern, and that affirming that right is the necessary ticket to saying anything about Palestine.

This is a fundamental misrepresentation of what happened. AOC was not “prompted” on her use of the word “massacre”, she was asked explicitly: “what is your position on Israel?” It’s right there in the text immediately above her answer, which is a direct response to the question she was asked. Now you could say that she’s a naive and unskilled political operator for having allowed herself to be drawn into answering that question rather than answering something else, but that’s a very different claim to arguing that she “doesn’t stay with the experience of the Palestinians.” In fact, she immediately – having answered the question she was directly asked – goes on to say that the question she was directly asked is not “the lens through which we should see this issue”. She then returns to the question of the massacre, and asks the listener to imagine if that massacre had happened in their own towns, how would they think about it?

Far from having denied Palestinians’ experience, she has politely answered the question asked, used that answer to say that the question is a distraction, then asked the viewer to relate the Palestinians’s experience to her own.

I would ask what exactly motivates criticism of this response? Is this part of some purity war in which anyone who says anything that isn’t 100% right-on about Israel needs to be immediately kicked to the curb? Is it the two-state solution and right to exist bit? Why would you misrepresent it and/or misunderstand it so significantly?

We have just finished a very ugly election cycle in which misrepresentation of democrats’ positions, purity positioning, and vicious attacks from the left hamstrung our response to a growing fascist – and need I remind you, treasonous – political movement in a nuclear-armed state. We now have evidence of some fairly serious corruption amongst the left-wing critics of the Democrats, including Glenn Greenwald taking money from an eBay founder to write articles criticizing the Democrats, Jill Stein using the money she raised for a recount to pay for her legal fees, and Assange in cahoots with Russian operatives. I would have thought after everything that has happened and been revealed in the past 18 months, the purity ponies would be a little more cautious about how they interpret Democrats’ words and actions, and a little less eager to split left wing movements. Yet here we have a quite egregious misrepresentation of the words of a bright and rising left-wing star. How far to the left do Democrats need to go before they are safe from attack by the anti-Democrat left, and what are the consequences for the country and the world if you keep up this kind of divisive activity? Attacking a 28 year old woman who has just had her first ever experience of major political activity, after she quite deftly handles a question on a conservative TV show, by misrepresenting her handling of the question… is that really what you want to be doing right now?

I think, on the whole, her observations are fairly innocuous without being completely vacuous. I would obviously like to hear someone taking a more left-wing line on the issue. But her remarks are less odious and less destructive than the official Democratic Party line, so much so that she would probably get into trouble with the power-brokers in that party if she were deemed anything other than a figurehead for a powerless left within that party (which is essentially controlled by the right).

Attacking her for this is pointless, because you are attacking someone without power. But also, of course, if she had actually taken a more firm line against Israeli aggression, land theft, fraudulent negotiation and so on — although it might have been more effective as a counterblast to Trump’s abhorrent stance on supporting Israel, it would not have had any impact on the Democratic Party as an institution.

Yes, Democratic voters are probably moving to the left on this issue. Not, however, powerful Democratic Party machine politicians.

Is there anyone in Congress with an opinion about Western Sahara? When was the last time any of them were asked?

“There is a reason why even the Noam Chomskys of the world have criticized BDS and insisted that a two-state solution is the only feasible way forward for Palestinian self-determination, and it is not because he is a liberal or is afraid to criticize Israel.”

Why should Chomsky be allowed to dictate the extent to which Palestinians get to demand the right to return to their own homeland? Palestinians can speak for themselves.

And again, it is the two state solution, or rather, the pretense that one supports it, which has been functioning as a litmus test. Only people on the far right openly reject it in favor of Israel getting everything. That is a danger in the era of Trump-Netanyahu collusion. What I think might happen is that Trump, if he doesn’t discredit himself with fellow Republicans, will move the Overton Window rightwards so that open support for everything the settlers want becomes the Republican position, and then people who mouth support for a 2ss without really meaning it will have that much more cover to give Israel unlimited support.

That is how professed support for a 2ss has been functioning anyway. People like Peter Beinart or Chomsky or yes, Norman Finkelstein really do support a 2ss and are willing to say harsh things about Israeli behavior and would like to put pressure on them. But for the vast majority of politicians and pundits, professed support for a 2ss is just a fig leaf. They say it because one is supposed to say it, and then in practical terms the US makes it clear by its actions that Israel can continue expanding settlements and blockading Gaza and we will support them anyway. It is common for people to say they support a 2ss and then blame the Palestinians for its lack, endorse Israel’s “right to defend itself” after the latest Israeli atrocity, and then change the subject after finishing with the claim that there won’t be peace until some indefinite time in the future.

As for Corey’s piece, he isn’t attacking AOC, but offering constructive criticism on an important issue where he thinks she should improve. That is what you are supposed to do with people you support.

My problem with Corey’s post is his unstated assumption that there is a proper left position on everything.

Of course, I’m right 100% of the time on every issue, and only change my mind when the facts change. But at least I understand how smart people operating in good faith will get it wrong on occasion. And I also understand that smart democratic politicians in good faith will often apply a thick layer of fudge even where they get it right.

(I’ve only known one politician who usually resisted the temptation to fudge. That’s Rudy Giuliani. He lies with aplomb and gusto, but seldom equivocates. That’s why he is a fascist politician, not a democratic politician.)

Donald, Robin is clearly attacking AOC. He misrepresents her answer to the interviewer, and then runs off on a bender about the answer she didn’t give, drawing conclusions about her attitude towards Palestine that her answer cannot possibly imply. That’s an attack. Of course Robin won’t turn up to defend this – since he became a commentator on major media outlets his posts here are always just drive-bys, with no engagement in comments at all – but that’s what he did. You might think it’s what friends do to each other, but if so you probably don’t have many friends.

After hearing a lot of criticism of Corey Robin on this thread, I want to add something. I think it’s very different to have the view that, ‘there is this specific set of views on this topic that I want all my political allies to share’ vs ‘anyone who does not share this specific set of views is not really my all’. I read Corey Robin’s post as making the first argument, especially by taking responsibility for building a movement that will educate and persuade left-leaning politicians. You might disagree on the need for this, on the political practicality of asking for it, or just flat out disagree with the policy itself. But it is a productive process to have disagreements of this kind. Purity tests, on the other hand, are almost always destructive. There might be a few core issues where some kind of purity test is appropriate for movement building, or at least to recognize political marriages of pure convenience. This is not one of those issues.

What is the actual process that brings about a “two-state solution” or a “bi-national one-state solution”? Unless one can articulate how they come about and the describe the shape of the resulting political settlements, it is in fact all platitudes.

Looking at this from another perspective: how many CT commentators are in favour of a two-state solution in Ireland, and how many are happy to condemn the Omagh massacre? Of people who were just going about their daily business.

Since most of this thread seems to consist of liberals piling on Corey from the right (which unfortunately seems to be the norm with liberal foreign-policy criticism these days, from Russia to North Korea) I might as well try to pile on Corey and Ocasio-Cortez from the left, and emphasize that even the most amicable two-state solution anybody at Oslo could have possibly conceived is still incompatible with the human rights and dignity of Palestinians. Under the status quo, I as an American Jew with no connection to Israel could emigrate there tomorrow and settle on land that Palestinians had been kicked off of as recently as yesterday; nothing about this would be qualitatively less unjust under a two-state solution, in which I as an American Jew with no connection to Israel could emigrate there tomorrow and settle on land that Palestinians had been kicked off of as recently as 1967.

What’s more, at this point it should be clear to anybody mature enough to have basic object permanence that the two-state solution has been a shell game from the beginning, fully intended by the Israelis to keep the world’s attention busy while they gobbled up enough Palestinian territory to ultimately make the sovereignty question moot. The bare-minimum standard for any self-respecting leftist today should be a single non-ethnonational state from the river to the sea, with fully equal rights and a full right of return for all refugees dating back to the Nakba, and Ocasio-Cortez instead deciding to amplify the two-state solution narrative is ultimately running cover for the very massacres she rightly decried before her victory.

WLGR@39 wrote:

> Since most of this thread seems to consist of liberals piling on Corey from the right … I might as well try to pile on Corey and Ocasio-Cortez from the left

So, you’re just playing devil’s advocate and you don’t believe any of this? (If that’s not what you mean to say, maybe you shouldn’t have said so.)

> Under the status quo, I as an American Jew with no connection to Israel could emigrate there tomorrow and settle on land that Palestinians had been kicked off of as recently as yesterday; nothing about this would be qualitatively less unjust under a two-state solution, in which I as an American Jew with no connection to Israel could emigrate there tomorrow and settle on land that Palestinians had been kicked off of as recently as 1967.

The virtue of the pre-1967 borders is they were recognized by the UN. Israel has a “right to exist” but it’s a UN-granted right, not a god-given one.

There is no way to draw national borders from moral first principles: there is no such thing as a natural political map. Granted, the formation of modern Israel after WWII was high-handed at best, it’s there now.

> … the two-state solution has been a shell game from the beginning

Insincere advocacy of a position does not obviate the possibility of sincere advocacy, historical failures of a cause do not preclude the possibility of future successes. The Zionists may very well regard me as a useful idiot, but this does not condemn me to being one.

> The bare-minimum standard for any self-respecting leftist today should be a single non-ethnonational state from the river to the sea, with fully equal rights and a full right of return for all refugees dating back to the Nakba

And no true leftist could possibly disagree with you, the leftiest-leftist-of-all.

A single state plus democracy essentially means no more Israel– that’s not an outcome that would disturb me, particularly, but the currently existing Israel is unlikely to sign-off on it.
Myself, I think we might get to something like the two-state solution, if the United States would actually push for it.

Ocasio-Cortez may not live up to Corey Robin’s standards on this issue, but she’s doing way better than most American politicians– it took Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren some time to start to come around on this one.

I think Corey is being unfair here.

On the other hand, Israel is a long-standing contentious issue in both US and UK politics, and has become even more contentious of late: anyone running for political office had better have a carefully considered answer ready (even if they have no personal axe to grind), because the question is going to come up.
****

I’m not sure that Iraq has made it easier for politicians to ignore the Palestinian issue.
Israel/Palestine is now seen as part of a wider issue of foreign policy in the Middle East — an issue where getting it wrong has the potential finish a politician’s career (cf. Tony Blair).

I am not an American, and a relative newcomer to this site. What is it about American foreign policy with respect to Israel/Palestine that aligns “left vs right” — I’m used to the latter divide in relation to economic policy rather than international relations.

Any clarification would be most helpful, thanks.

“It is worth noting, however, that contrary to what you infer, there are a variety of positions on this question among Palestinians. Citing Palestinian authority for your preferred position is hardly a dispositive answer.”

Good grief. I don’t claim to speak for Palestinians or claim that they all agree on what solution they would accept. I think it is safe to assume that most would like a full right of return if it were achievable. Many might settle for a 2ss if that is the best they can get. As for what Americans should do, leftist or not, we should be pushing back against politicians who reflexively support Israel and challenging memes that are biased in Israel’s favor. I don’t mean AOC here. To me she sounds like someone telling the truth— she probably doesn’t know that much about the issue, was appalled by the shooting of the protestors in Gaza, but it hasn’t been a central issue for her and she was caught off guard in that interview. I would love to see more people like her in Congress, but hope she has supporters like Corey advising her on this issue.

Getting back to “Israel’s right to exist” and a “ two state solution” and so forth, in my opinion these are empty platitudes because they can be asserted and yet mean many different things. In practice they are usually meant to frame the issue so that Israel already exists, has all the benefits of statehood and US support and Palestinians might be allowed a state to be established some time in the indefinite future after much negotiating if only there was a partner for peace. “Right to exist”could mean what I think Chomsky says—Israel like every other country has the right not to be invaded and occupied even if people disapprove of its government. But “ right to exist” could also be a slippery way to say that it was okay for the Palestinians to be expelled from their homeland and if you bring up the right of return, you are challenging Israel’s “ right to exist”. I think it is used more often in that sense, to shut down any discussion of the right of return.

As for a two state solution, as I keep saying many of its advocates don’t really mean it. See previous comments as I don’t want to keep retyping the same thing in different words. The best argument for a 2ss is not that Israel has a right to keep those demographic threats from returning, but just the pragmatic one that recognizes it might be impossible to get Israel to agree to a 1ss unless it is the apartheid version. But the pragmatic argument is losing force, as Israel seems unwilling to go for a 2ss either.

My favorite comment on the Israel/Palestine issue was by a notorious commenter in the comment cages at another site who designated Israel as Uncle Sam’s Mini-me. For the rest, talk amongst yourselves.

I wish you had articulated your proposed position without first spending time explaining why a candidate you support didn’t do a good job on the subject. This will be taken up and used against AMO by the further left, as well as the Russian Twitter bots, that shirk at nothing to cause more division. Especially, the hasty readers will read the first half of the post and decide that this is evidence AMO is either an anti-semite or has no care for the Palestinians.

Joe Lieberman has just published a Wall Street Journal editorial supporting AMO’s opponent, who is still on the ballot due to the oddities of the NY primary system (single divisible vote in primaries would be a vast improvement.)

This was so not the time to publish anything even mildly critical of AMO. The Democratic Party may yet lose this seat in this most critical election year.

FN@:

In English, a prompt is a question.
[…]
This is a basic English comprehension question.

Re-defining words and then lecturing those you disagree with for not understanding your proposed non-standard English is not a good way to convince anyone of anything except that you view the conversation as a game. Your pedantry sounds as ridiculous as a Molen Labe enthusiast explaining what the Second Amendment really means.

And for all your defense of AOC, to include of course your implicit attempt (as usual) to turn any criticism you disagree with into an exhibition of bigotry, you don’t seem willing to credit her response in your attempt to “win” this conversation. She certainly treated the questioners’ entire statement focusing on the issue (i.e., the prompt – not the question; the prompt) as being pertinent, as is made evident by her response.

Why do you misrepresent Corey’s response so egregiously? He gave a list of better elements that could have explained a “position on Israel” without immediately and apologetically setting her foremost thought on her position as a defensive platitude about its vaguely- defined “right to exist”. To me, even moreso than sounding as though she’d been caught flat-footed by the line of questioning, she sounded like she was struggling to find a way after the fact to justify her tweet.

David J. Littleboy: One reason we lost the presidency last time was […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuoKLLLpiuE

Ocasio-Cortez disagrees with you.

faustusnotes, a “prompt” is a reminder or hint. It is not by any stretch of the English language “a question”. Corey’s response was not “vicious”, it was not an “attack”, it was not “dirty bullshit-smeared laundry”.

Pull your head in.

Little boy.

What an apt name!

As a South African, I know nothing about Orcasio-Cortez.

However, the kind of hysterically totalitarian support which she is receiving from some supporters of the right wing of the Democratic Party on this thread does seem to suggest that she is viewed by many as a potential right winger.

This may be a mistaken perception on the part of the right wing, but it certainly seems worth considering and the original post does seem much more justified in consequence.

Incidentally, the Democratic Party right wing’s hostility to free discussion and debate and its savage loathing for any political position except its own narrow perspective — which is often quite absurd — must surely be a major obstacle to taking the Democratic Party seriously as a party standing for anything positive.

a “prompt” is a reminder or hint. It is not by any stretch of the English language “a question”.

This is getting more than a bit silly and off-topic, but a “prompt” is quite regularly the name of a question on an exam, so this claim is pretty clearly wrong.

Reflecting, it occurred to me that a good general rule for the foreign policy of any country would be not to attempt the unilateral imposition of a solution stipulated by that country to a problem somewhere else in the world. Applying that general rule to this particular case, it would seem to follow that the US shouldn’t attempt the unilateral imposition of its own stipulated solution on Israelis and Palestinians: the US shouldn’t be stipulating for a two-state solution, a single binational state, or any other kind of settlement.

mfb @ 61: I don’t know why I am so surprised about the obliviousness of academic ultra-leftism to its own contradictions (perhaps I place too much premium on graduate education), but this comment borders on the surreal. Talking about “hysterically totalitarian support” of AOC by the “right wing of the Democratic Party” at the same time that you are making common cause with fucking Joe Lieberman in attacking AOC over her position on Israel and Palestine is beyond belief.

J-D @ 65: Are you seriously suggesting that elected officials, who are involved in the making of American foreign policy after all, should have no position on what the US should do to advance Palestinian self-determination?

Corey Robin @ 36: It’s a tough world. When you decide that now is the appropriate time to launch an attack on AOC for support of a two state solution and give it the widest possible visibility you can, there will be objections. When you do so with a less than intellectually honest argument, it will be pointed out.

“Are you seriously suggesting that elected officials, who are involved in the making of American foreign policy after all, should have no position on what the US should do to advance Palestinian self-determination?”

Most officials elected to the House in the US Congress have very little to no influence in the making of American foreign policy after all. It would be perfectly appropriate for most of them to have no position on what the US should or should not do to advance or not advance Palestinian self-determination. And if they did have a position, it would be perfectly appropriate for them to have a position that a two state solution would be more likely to be workable than a Yugoslavia solution (even though neither are likely to work/be available any time in the near future) because setting up new Yugoslavias isn’t a ‘solution’ either.

I agree with Corey’s post. I also am very enthusiastic about AOC though I was barel aware of her until recently, but her response in that interview was weak and she acknowledges it herself when she says she is no expert on the subject. It was disappointing to though of us who knew about her tweet on Gaza and thought she knew more about it than she apparently does. I am still enthusiastic about her and what she represents.

I think some of the reaction to Corey’s post here is part of a dynamic that in this blog started in 2016 but on a larger scale began with the Nader campaign in 2000. Back then the argument was that Nader should have run in the Demicratic primaries, made his case on his issues, hopefully moving the party leftwards and then supporting the Democratic nominee because third party candidates simply draw voters from the candidate with a chance of winning. That makes sense. Of course it was always put in the most ferocious damn you to hell where you will spend an eternity next to Hitler if you don’t agree terms, but the logic made sense. But the argument has steadily morphed into the current version, where any criticism no matter how constructively meant is evidence that you are trying to undermine the Democratic Party and are therefore evil and will spend eternity in hell in a cage next to Hitler.

I exaggerate a bit. But I had essentially the same reaction as Corey to AOC’s interview and suspect many others did as well. I thought Corey did a fine job explaining why.

Donald, you may be right that the current round of monotonous anti-left tirades from US liberals is mostly just warmed-over table scraps from the original meal served in the wake of Nader’s “spoiler” in 2000. I’m too young to have any real personal recollection of which other banal grudges from previous election cycles might be contributing to the mix, but what I can say is that the whole line of anti-spoiler reasoning is silly on a very basic game-theory level. A losing primary campaign from the left would give centrist Democrats no incentive whatsoever to “move the party leftwards” if they can rest assured that the left will only ever surrender and endorse the centrist Democrat in the end, so the only way they’ll face any pressure to move left is if they’re genuinely afraid of the risk of a “spoiler” like Nader, and the only way to make them afraid of that threat is to give them reason to believe you might actually go through with it.

Indeed, I suspect centrist Democrats’ fear of such a strategy successfully forcing them to the left could be exactly what prompted such an astonishingly out-of-proportion ideological demonization frenzy against Nader in the first place: if you can’t beat ’em, convince ’em (and everybody else) that their potentially effective strategy is literally Satan incarnate.

faustusnotes, I think you are right that Corey’s reading of AOC’s response to the interviewer’s question was uncharitable. Where I disagree with you and David Littleboy is whether this amounts to stabbing AOC in the back. It really depends on the other things Corey has said elsewhere on the topic, but I think what we’re observing here is people on the left being gun shy about reasonable criticism of the point of view of the political leader (I don’t even think this rose to the level of criticism of AOC personally). And being gun shy makes sense because the left has a terrible history of taking criticism and turning it into pouting, name-calling, withdrawing support, etc and etc! And it certainly sounds as if some people are doing exactly that with AOC on this question. What a shame and disgrace! But I don’t see Corey doing that here.

Alternate-reality OP:
‘”MH: You, in the campaign, made one tweet, or made one statement, that referred to the controversial policing, and subsequent deaths, of strikers at exploitation-corp warehouses and called it a “massacre,” which became a little bit controversial. But I haven’t seen anywhere — what is your position on exploitation-corp?

AOC: Well, I believe absolutely in exploitation-corp’s right to exist. I am a proponent of a solution which satisfies both managers and worker representatives. And for me, it’s not — this is not a referendum, I think, on the legality of exploitation-corp. For me, the lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer, if sixty people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if sixty people were killed in the South Bronx — unarmed — if sixty people were killed in Puerto Rico — I just looked at that incident more through . . . through just, as an incident, and to me, it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened to political protesters. But I am —

MH: Of course the dynamic there in terms of property rights —

AOC: Of course.

MH: And employment relations is very different than people expressing their First Amendment right to protest.

AOC: Well, yes. But I also think that what people are starting to see at least in the systematic exploitation of workers is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition, and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.

MH: You use the term “the systematic exploitation of workers”? What did you mean by that?

AOC: Oh, um [pause] I think it, what I meant is the length of shifts that they are increasingly expected to work in some of these places and incidents where workers are experiencing difficulty in maintaining work-life balance.

MH: Do you think you can expand on that?

AOC: Yeah, I mean, I think I’d also just [waves hands and laughs] I am not the expert on economics on this issue. You know, for me, I’m a firm believer in finding a solution that satisfies both present managers and worker representatives on this issue, and I’m happy to sit down with leaders on both of these. For me, I just look at things through a human rights lens, and I may not use the right words [laughs] I know this is a very intense issue.

MH: That’s very honest, that’s very honest. It’s very honest, and when, you, you know, get to Washington and you’re an elected member of Congress you’ll have the opportunity to talk to people on all sides and visit exploitation-corp headquarters and the unions and —

AOC: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that’s one of those things that’s important too is that, you know, especially with the district that I represent — I come from the South Bronx, I come from a Puerto Rican background, and worker relations was not exactly at my kitchen table every night. But, I also recognize that this is an intensely important issue for people in my district, for Americans across the country, and I think what’s at least important to communicate is that I’m willing to listen and that I’m willing to learn and evolve on this issue like I think many Americans are.”

Let’s be clear. This is not good. Prompted about her use of the word “massacre,” Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t stay with the experience of the workers. Instead, she goes immediately to an affirmation of exploitation-corp’s right to exist, as if manager ownership were the first order of concern, and that affirming that right is the necessary ticket to saying anything about workers. Asked about her use of the phrase “systematic exploitation of workers,” Ocasio-Cortez wanders into a thicket of abstractions about work-life balance and “the length of shifts that they are increasingly expected to work in some of these places.” She apologizes for not being an expert on a major worker-relations issue. She proffers liberal platitudes about a mutually satisfactory solution that everyone knows are just words and clichés designed to defer any genuine reckoning with the situation at hand, with no concrete discussion of anything the US government could or should do to intervene.
[….]
There are some of us, many of us, who care deeply about the exploitation-corp/worker relations issue from an anticapitalist perspective and who are also realistic about US electoral politics. We’re not naïfs who think that the politicians we support are going to come out right away, or right now, in support of radical non-hierarchical worker self-government, which is the position we hold with regard to the warehouses. We also realize that the Left that is beginning to think about electoral politics is young (not in terms of age but political experience), and it will take us all some time to figure out how to advance our positions in a way that will win support and translate that support into policy.
[…]
Not only does Ocasio-Cortez have to have a position, but to be a credible leftist voice in Congress, she has to have a leftist position on this issue. Now, before everyone concludes that means she has to call for radical non-hierarchical worker self-government, there are many ways to talk left about exploitation-corp that are considerably better than the current liberal pabulum and that do not require an elected official to commit political suicide.

There is the human rights vernacular that Ocasio-Cortes herself alludes to (a particularly popular approach, as sociologist Ran Greenstein pointed out in the discussion on my Facebook wall). There is the language of the efficiency of a healthy, happy, unstressed workforce, which people like Nathan Thrall have pushed. And other ways still.

Ocasio-Cortez could talk about conditioning new government contracts on worker rights improvements. She could talk about limiting exploitation-corp’s access to the state’s police training programs and facilities. George H. W. Bush, after all, withheld government contracts to exploitation-corp because of their reduction of wages below subsistence levels and extension of ever-longer shifts — not a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but here in the US, in the early 1990s. All of these claims are well to the left of any current political discourse in Congress and would force the debate forward and would be productively polarizing. And maybe propel Ocasio-Cortez to even more of a leadership position on the Left.

This is not just about the warehouses. This is about US employment-relations policy as a whole. It used to be that US employment-relations policy was the Left’s strong suit. Back in the 1970s, when it seemed as if the Left’s confidence in its state-ownership policies and positions was flagging, its critiques of US management structures, government contracts, and the national worker-repressive state were in ascendancy. Some of these positions even made it into the left wing of the Democratic Party. Since then, the Left has gotten very weak on this stuff. Not in terms of its moralism on corporate policy, or the antipoverty rallies it will show up at, but in terms of being able to advance a position that would begin to command national assent, form public opinion, and then be translated into policy.

This is a problem: it should be the easiest thing in the world right now, for example, to go after runaway, inefficient, state-aid programs to bloated hierarchical corporations. Yet there’s hardly a credible or potent left voice that is pushing that agenda, much less getting a hearing within even progressive circles of the Democratic Party. Indeed, in this age of alleged partisan polarization, authorizations of massive increases in spending for crony capitalism and hierarchical corporations pass both houses of Congress with hefty Democratic majorities — with scarcely anyone noticing, much less protesting.

So, again, this isn’t about the warehouses only. Or I should say, the warehouses are the proverbial canary in a coal mine. From the warehouses you get into the question of the rights of subaltern workers as a whole, which leads to US labour policy as a whole, and issues of budgets, spending, legality, monopoly, and all the rest. All the more reason for Ocasio-Cortez to get up to speed on it.

Like it or not, Ocasio-Cortez has been elevated to a national position of leadership and visibility on the Left. If she wins in the general election, as everyone believes she will, every single thing she says and does will be watched and scrutinized. It simply will not do to say, oh, she’s only twenty-eight, oh, the media is so nasty, oh, let’s not have circular firing squads.’

I leave this alternate-reality’s equivalents of posts 21, 29, 31, 50, 52, 54 et al., and especially 44, as an exercise for the reader.

It is fine to criticize politicians from the left, or wherever you think is correct.

In this particular case the criticism is a bit weak because
1) most House members don’t need to have a position on Palestine;
2) her position on Palestine isn’t particularly wrong;
3) her answer definitely wasn’t wrong in the way that Corey talks about, as she didn’t erase the Palestinians or center on Israel, she deftly turned around the question about Israel into a much better question about a bunch of other things.

And that is without even getting to the substantive question of whether a single binational state is any more realistic than a two state solution. (Will gay people be allowed in this new Muslim state? Will it have the freedom of speech of say Egypt (or Iran? Will it kick out Jews if the majority doesn’t like them enough?))

eg @45

Re your question about the left/right alignment in the U.S. on this issue: The U.S. ‘right’ tends to be (there are exceptions) uncritically supportive of Israeli govt policy, esp if someone like Netanyahu is in office, while the U.S. ‘left’ has a range of views, but all wd be critical of Israeli govt policy w.r.t. the W Bank and Gaza. But most elected legislators at the natl level, even if they’re not right-wing on most issues, tend to be strong supporters of Israeli govt policy or at least not vocal critics, and they vote approx $3 billion in (mostly) military aid to Israel annually. The Trump admin, having moved the US embassy and withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, is definitely on the Right on these issues.

to SusanC @62

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I am Canadian. In my experience, foreign policy questions of the sort generating so much controversy in this thread aren’t a feature of the mainstream Canadian political narratives — certainly not for candidates upon first winning the party nomination in a Federal riding. Perhaps for party leaders, but even then the Israel/Palestine issue has not generally featured prominently here.

Thank you also for providing the more general category of anti-imperialism, which might otherwise not have come top of mind in my thinking about Israel/Palestine.

@77
”Alternate-reality OP”

That might be ”the problem”? – as where did this come from:
AOC: Well, I believe absolutely in exploitation-corp’s right to exist.

No she doesn’t – and she never will – and anybody who tries to construct such a a silly ”Alternate-reality” should… should be called ”Greenwald”?
-(and I’m kind of curious if this comment makes it through?) –

perhaps with the conclusion that AOC is really and truly ”cool”?

Faustusnotes

It’s about spending a whole fucking comment thread having to explain to supposed academics about how questions work and basic words in the English language so that I can pierce their veil of lies and get to the point.

Corey Robin suggested that it would have been better if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had made some reference to conditioning aid on human rights improvements and/or to cutting military funding to Israel; that it would have improved the quality of her answer if she’d done something like that. So if you want to come to grips with the point, you could explain your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing (as the case may be) with that assessment.

“So I’m curious to know whether, when RogerGathmann referred to a Palestinian majority, what was meant was a non-Jewish majority.”

It’s because you’re only counting the currently resident population while one of the top demands that negotiations have always broken down on is the “right of return” which includes an additional 4 million people. Now it may well be that not every single one of those people would return. But that is where the instant and clear majority figures come from.

J-D@87 wrote:

Corey Robin suggested that it would have been better if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had made some reference to conditioning aid on human rights improvements and/or to cutting military funding to Israel […] you could explain your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing (as the case may be) with that assessment.

It’s true that Corey Robin said this, but it was buried pretty deep– you have to read pretty closely to figure out what it was Ocasio-Cortez was supposed to say.

Faustusnotes has a point that Corey Robin’s initial move looks like a misread of what she did say– I gather Corey Robin was set off by the phrase “Israel has a right to exist” plus using the phrase “two-state solution”– it’s “platitudinous”, etc. (He’s claiming to be expert in presenting the Israel/Palestine issue to non-leftists but isn’t doing a great job of presenting it to leftists).

I think the main point faustusnotes was trying to make keeps getting lost in grandstanding and ranting that borders on personal attacks– when you accuse someone of circular firing squad syndrome the odds are good you’ve succumbed to it yourself.

While we debate about whether someone who will be among the most progressive voices in Congress on questions of Israel and Palestine is good enough, the Netanyahu government passes an omnibus bill that strikes at the essence of democracy, pluralism, minority rights in Israel. Classic inability of marginal left to understand where the real fight lies while it consumes itself in purity tests. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/middleeast/israel-law-jews-arabic.html

Roger, of course another inherent premise of Israel’s demographic calculus is to categorically deny any right of return whatsoever to Palestinian refugees from 1967/1948 or their descendants, whose return en masse would render the possibility of a Jewish majority in Greater Israel entirely moot. Given that many of these refugees’ homes prior to ethnic cleansing were within the 1967 or even the 1948 boundaries of Jewish Israel, a 2SS would have to formally sanction Soviet-style mass ethnic population transfers in the Israeli interest in order to make the ethnic gerrymandering feasible, which by any reasonable standard is already a far greater concession by the Palestinians than completely abandoning every single settlement outside the Green Line (including the massive ring of SoCal-style suburban ReMax hellscape tracts all around Jerusalem) would be by Israel.

Of course one could also propose a 2SS with no right of return for Palestinian refugees, but in that case you’d already be talking about retaining Israeli control over Palestinian sovereign immigration and border policy, so you wouldn’t actually be talking about a “two-state” solution any more than Indian reservations or bantustans were a two-state solution for the US or South Africa. And since even that much is at least as far if not much farther than even the most liberal 2SS-supporting Israeli Zionists are willing to countenance (and leaps and bounds more radical than the median consensus opinion among Israel’s Jewish population today, mind you) then those of us who unconditionally support basic human dignity for all people might as well stop beating around the goddamn bush and drop the entire two-state charade already.

roger gathmannI wrote, twice, that I was curious to see your figures. Now you’ve shown them to me. So thank you!

Incidentally, showing the figures makes it clear that you were not taking into account the point raised by Sebastian H, so the clarification is not just to my benefit.

No Joseph, my point isn’t getting lost in grandstanding, it got lost in 50 comments of the Putin friendly left trying to redefine the meaning of the word “prompt”. My point was made very directly and clearly, backed up with practical examples.

And I am not grandstanding,I’m angry and I’m berating the people who think this kind of behaviour is cool. For the past 18 months I’ve sat through untold hours of hectoring on here about how the Dems are no better than the repubs,that they need reform,Bernie was betrayed by big donors, the party is as bad on foreign policy as the GOP, Hilary was the real militarist etc. Well love and behold, you get a genuinely left wing (even,almost, by international standards!) candidate and within a week of her ascension to national fame those same people are attacking her for being not left enough, on obviously spurious grounds.

Right now your country faces a real national crisis. You need to have all hands on deck. But it appears that a large slice of the left thinks you can better help the Palestinians or fix the global environment by being a pure,powerless party of opposition. This attitude makes me angry, and I’m happy to say so.

eg@100:

It would appear that the issue serves as a signalling device between “Team Pepsi” and “Team Coke”

Much like everything else.

I will have to think about the reasons for its particular salience in American domestic electoral politics.

The US government funds a large amountof Israel’s military, and likes to regard Israel as one of the its main allies in the middle-east (how Israel regards itself often seems to differ).

So, this isn’t just another story of some remote country behaving badly: we pay them to do this.

Also, for several decades, Israel and it’s sympathizers have managed to distort the discussion of these issues in the United States. This has been true even (perhaps especially) in liberal/left circles: looking at the issue from the Palestinian side was essentially forbidden in places like the _New York Review of Books_, let alone the _New York Times_. Some of the heat you see is a “won’t get fooled again” backlash against that manipulation.

“Ocasio-Cortez could talk about conditioning aid on human rights improvements. She could talk about cutting military funding to Israel.”

Yes: she could talk about it. It would be a good thing if she, and others, talked about it. It might also be a good thing if Corey had made that excellent point clearer and more prominently instead of two thirds into a 2300 word piece. LFC is free to disagree but if you are a skilled writer criticizing a politician for not getting her points across clearly in a TV interview, maybe you shouldn’t be surprised if you get criticized for not getting your points across clearly in a 2300 word blog post. If several people apparently get your message wrong, sure it could be that they all can’t read properly or are arguing in bad faith but, maybe, the problem is that your message wasn’t stated clearly enough? And maybe the more constructive response would be to take the criticism seriously (as I hope AOC takes the criticism seriously) rather than dismissing it unjustifiably as “personal attacks”?

WLGR,

Most of the 2SS plans I have seen do include a right of return for refugees. The right of return would be to the state of Palestine. That is upsetting to many hardliners on the issue, but has been openly discussed by the leadership, including Mahmoud Abbas, who said he has “no need to return to Safed”. I also don’t see any mention of Israel controlling a Palestinian border policy or immigration there. Where are you getting that from?

I don’t see any Israeli govt ever agreeing to a single ‘binational’ state encompassing the current territory of Israel proper plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (The law that just passed, referred to a couple of times here already, only underscores this.) I think US pressure on Israel, if a US admin ever got the courage to exercise it, could nudge it toward a two SS, but I doubt any amount of pressure could move it to accept a single state outcome.

So the only options, afaict, are (1) a two state
solution of some kind or (2) endless conflict.

That’s not to suggest that AOC shd say what I just said. What she should say is, I think, a separate question.

Bob, there is nothing you say against a 1ss which wasn’t said about one man one vote in the case of South Africa. And of course South Africa is not a utopia today.

The pragmatic argument for a 2ss is the strongest one, but all tge serious important people everywhere have agreed in a 2ss for decades and look where it is now. I also agree with Brenner— even if you think a 2ss is where things will go, there is nothing wrong with Palestinians demanding all their rights. It shifts the Overon Window away from where it has been stuck for generations, where Israel’s right to exist is established and Palestinians are asked to negotiate for 22 percent of what is left of their homeland.

The strength of the BDS movement is that it was started by Palestinian civil society and not by the hopelessly corrupt PA or by people who still daydream of violent liberation. There is no reason why they should let their goals and demands be determined by oh so helpful Westerners. If they decide on their own to settle for something less, that is their decision. We Westerners have been helping the Israelis keep a boot on their neck and should have the decency to shut up about what they should ask for. The MLK letter from a Birmingham jail seems relevant here.

One other point. I think the most important thing American citizens could do is stop our government’s kneejerk support for Israel. That is our responsibility. It isn’t our place to tell Palestinians what they should demand.

A quick word to point out that Nathan Thrall is indeed worth reading.

While the U.S. Congress has been generally unwilling to exercise much leverage on Israel by putting conditions on aid (or threatening to reduce it), Congress has had no similar reluctance when it comes to aid (much less to begin with) to the Palestinian Authority:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Force_Act

First, neither a two state solution nor a one state solution will be viable until things get a lot better. And I use the passive voice there not because I’m letting sides off the hook, but rather because there is like 500% blame to go around.

Second, talking about what Palestinians ‘want’ as if it were a unitary thing is silly. A lot of them want a single state without Jews. A lot of them the want two states. A lot of them want one state mixed. The BDS movement seems to have settled on what it wants, but that a different issue entirely. The BDS movement doesn’t represent “the Palestinians” any more then Hamas or even Hezbollah in Lebanon. Arguably less.

Third, it does absolutely no credit to the argument to pretend that any near term unitary state with a right of return can hope to be politically better than maybe Egypt (and even that is almost certainly an unrealistic best case scenario). And Egypt isn’t the kind of state any progressive should be remotely happy about.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to do way better for the Palestinians if we can. Because what a huge majority of them want is better lives. But it does mean that we shouldn’t be blind to the reality of what certain paths mean.

Corey, I found the paragraphs dealing with the importance of a clear, overarching policy vision the most important parts of this post. It’s essential that DSA, and other parts of the left, articulate a clear alternative to prevailing narratives as soon as possible.

This said, ACO, other candidates, and activists on the ground also need to be aware of the blowback that awaits them the minute they begin questioning the desirability of a US-led World Order and such. Right now, there’s clearly interest in the mainstream media in listening to leftist movements and candidates, and to what they have to say. Medicare for All, free college, things like that: those are now things worth at least a debate, from a media perspective. In that sense, there’s at least a degree of goodwill towards DSA, and something like a willingness to give them a fair shake.

That will change *dramatically* the minute DSA develops a clear alternative to establishment foreign policy blueprints. I still feel foreign policy largely explains the intensity of elite opposition to Trump in 2016 – i.e. the fear he was, at best, nonchalant about American global leadership. If elites develop similar concerns about the Left, Democratic Socialists will face a bipartisan campaign of denigration and sabotage that will make Republican hostility to Obama look like a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. All I can say is, get ready and put your helmets on.