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AGR's complaint about Tony Greenstein and downplaying of Palestinian agency is, largely, correct in this instance. But on the other hand, his blog (TG's) is mostly accurate *factually* despite this. AGR's stretched metaphor about the American Civil War I'll let pass. TG is in Britain the most important columnist on the Marxist left with regarding to slaying of the increasing adaptation by a minority on the left to the "Atzmon effect" and the dovetailing of some on the left with the Zionist belief that one *should* put an equal sign between "Zionism" and "Jews". And Tony is active on the "Jewish Left", obviously, dealing with issues of anti-semitism and Zionism. I think at worse it's unfortunate he did *indeed* play down the clearly the active leadership role Palestinians play in the BDS movement today. But the fact is, contrary to AGR...it's a *good thing" generally that BDS be taken up, in the U.S. especially, *not as an extension of the Palestinian liberation movement* but as a *U.S.* anti-Imperialist movement in a united front type formation that seeks to win over the whole of the American people to defense of Palestinians and exposure of their oppression by Israel and Zionism. Otherwise, in fact, it becomes simply an extension of a narrow Palestinian exile politics and will doom it to failure. In the U.S. BDS has become the form by which all discussions around the U.S. relationship with Israel, and Israel's oppression. It is really the only forum by which the specific oppression of Palestinians in Gaza during the assault there was given an ongoing discussion. Gaza, more than anything, is what gave BDS some air under it's wings. The fact that Jewish-Americans play such a predominate role in BDS is because it is in fact a reflection in *small part* of that 'civil war' among Jewish-Americans over Zionism/Israel. Many BDS committees on campus, especially those without an active political Arab constituency, are often started by Jewish-American students. AGR seems to either deny this reality or is "opposed" to it for some reason having to do with exclusive(?) Palestinian agency. I'm *glad* Jewish-American students do this. Regardless...the success of BDS will be when and if they can break out of both the Arab and Jewish-American/leftist ghettos and develop a broad-based leadership and organization beyond these groups, especially among labor, and Latino and Black student groups. Anti-Zionism IS being attacked as anti-Semitism. That is because on *campus* it is Zionist groups allied with reactionary conservative one's, like David Horowitz's latch up, that is leading the charge and thus it becomes a "Jewish" issue. I would argue it's important for Jewish-American students in BDS and the BDS more over, to refocus, as AGR implies and I would agree with, around the issue of *Palestine* as much as possible. But we can't always control that narrative as AGR suggests. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
