The Israel-Hamas War Will Reshape Western Politics | Canada News Media
Connect with us

Politics

The Israel-Hamas War Will Reshape Western Politics

Published

1 year ago

 on

It’s been a long time since the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians occupied such a central place in Western political attention and debate — certainly not since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009, arguably not since the second intifada ended in 2005.

In that fairly distant past, the politics of Israel-Palestine broke down into alignments that were familiar and decades-old. On the pro-Israel side in the U.S. were three broad factions: Zionist Democrats, centrist and liberal; neoconservative hawks; and evangelical Christians. As you moved leftward, sympathy for the Palestinians increased, with American progressives and European conventional wisdom finding common ground in their critiques of the Israeli occupation. Finally there was also a rightward form of anti-Israel sentiment, held by Arabist realists and Pat Buchananite populists and European reactionaries — but in the aftermath of 9/11, with neoconservatism ascendant, this felt increasingly marginal.

These broad groupings still exist — evangelicals are still very pro-Israel, the Democratic president is a Zionist liberal, the progressive movement is pro-Palestinian — but in the current crisis you can see a more complex alignment taking shape, with implications that extend beyond the Israeli-Palestinian question alone. Here, very provisionally, are some ideological trends and tendencies worth watching.

The radicalization of progressivism. Nobody who has lived through the last decade’s Great Awokening should be surprised that Western progressivism now has a more radical line on Israel than it did 10 or 15 years ago, especially given Israel’s own rightward shift in that same time. But the extent to which the rhetoric of “decolonization” turns out to naturally extend — or, maybe, naturally circle back — from cultural and psychological projects to literal support for armed struggle and tacit apologia for antisemitic terror still feels like an important unveiling, a revelation of radicalization’s implications, a doorway into a future much more violently divided than our own.

The emergence of an “Arab street” inside the West. In the post-9/11 era, we were accustomed to think of popular discontent inside Arab and Muslim countries as an important geopolitical force in its own right. But 2023 may be remembered as the moment when Arab and Muslim discontent began to really matter inside Western countries as well.

The recent protests in European capitals, especially, are less an extension of a radicalized progressivism than a straightforward expression of ethnic and religious solidarity with the Palestinians on the part of Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants. And the tacit alliance between this diaspora and a secular, feminist, gay-affirming Western progressivism — “Islamo-gauchisme” in the French phrase — raises big questions for both progressives and conservative Muslims about who is using whom and how the Western left and Western Islam might ultimately co-evolve.

The unstable European relationship to Israel. In one sense, the mass movements protesting on Palestine’s behalf in European streets would seem likely to ratify the pre-existing anti-Israel tilt of many European leaders. But if Europe is moving rightward overall, becoming more doubtful about mass immigration, more fearful of Islamicization and terrorism and more protective of its native culture as it slides toward old age — well, then, you could easily imagine European sympathy for the Israeli position increasing, with fear of an Islamist enemy within driving identification with Israel abroad.

And indeed signs of this are visible already: The British writer Aris Roussinos recently observed that commentary in Britain now seems even a little more sympathetic to Israel than American commentary, while across the Channel, Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to rally a grand anti-Hamas coalition and his government’s ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations belong to a very different landscape from the world of 2005.

The dilemmas of progressive Jews and Zionist Democrats. If the pressures on European elites come from multiple directions, the pressures on American Jews and Zionists inside the Democratic coalition push just one way: toward the right. Progressive Jews who thought of themselves as pro-peace, pro-Palestinian and anti-Likud are going to have a lot of trouble feeling at home inside a progressive movement that seems conflicted or paralyzed when it’s asked to condemn Hamas. Zionist liberals who are closer to the political center can take comfort that their worldview is still shared by most of the Democratic Party’s politicians, including the Democratic president. But the leftward ratchet in Democratic politics has been a powerful force, and generational turnover means that progressive activists may get a chance to reshape the party in their own image before long. At which point, where might Zionist Democrats go, if not toward actual conservatism?

A reconstituted neoconservatism, a resilient Christian Zionism. One thing that liberal supporters of Israel will find if they move rightward, indeed a thing that some are already helping to create, is a new variation on neoconservatism. This isn’t the George W. Bush-era version, with its world-bestriding confidence in American power and its hawkish grand strategy. Rather, it’s a more inchoate alliance against whatever progressivism is becoming. Many of its members still feel uncomfortable associating with a Trumpist G.O.P., but they’re too intensely alienated from progressivism to belong to the left-of-center coalition any more. This makes it a movement more like 1970s-era neoconservatism — a mugged-by-reality halfway house for intellectuals unhappy with their options but trending clearly to the right.

The other thing that rightward-moving Zionists will find is resilient evangelical support for Israel, which has persisted through all the disillusionments of the last two decades, all the anti-idealism of Trump-era foreign policy. This enduring affinity, embodied for instance in the pro-Israel statements of the new speaker of the House, reflects not just dispensationalist expectations of the apocalypse (though those certainly exist) but a widespread, very American-Protestant sense of the links between the American Republic and the Chosen People, the New World and the Hebrew Bible, that go back to the foundations of our country.

It’s also a worldview that many American Jews, secular Jews especially, find peculiar or suspicious. The question is whether that suspicion will diminish if the Democratic Party no longer seems like a safe harbor for their Zionism.

The uncertain attitudes of the alienated right. One thing that’s kept many Jews from moving rightward till now, of course, is a fear of right-wing antisemitism, the kind of xenophobia that Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 seemed to consciously stir to life. Trump’s actual presidency was pro-Israel, indeed often more pro-Israel than those of his G.O.P. predecessors, but along extremely transactional lines — witness Trump’s own initial reaction to the Hamas attacks, which was to gripe about the various ways that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had let him down. And an “America First” mentality, along with other forms of right-wing politics quite distinct from both neoconservatism and pro-Israel evangelicalism, clearly matters more to American conservatism today than 15 years ago.

Among my fellow conservative Catholics, for instance, there’s a longstanding anger at George W. Bush for invading Iraq and letting Middle Eastern Christianity be devastated by the ensuing wars and a sense that Israel was that foolhardy project’s accomplice. Among the would-be vitalists and Nietzscheans of the post-Christian right and certain other far-right influencers, there’s plenty of conspiracy theorizing and anti-Semitism. And then the Trump-era Republican coalition writ large includes a lot of nonreligious, disaffected, working-class Americans, for whom pro-Israel sentiments may come to feel, or feel already, like a luxury belief, a province of the elites whom they disdain.

My guess is that notwithstanding these specters on the right, over the long term you should bet on more rightward movement among American Jews, probably accelerated by the higher birthrates of the already more right-wing Orthodox. But mostly you should bet on unsettlement, on the right and left alike, as people come to terms with what the new debate about Israel and the Palestinians reveals about how much the Western world has changed already and how much more change lies ahead.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

 

Source link

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Politics

Quebec party supports member who accused fellow politicians of denigrating minorities

Published

21 hours ago

 on

November 18, 2024

By

 

MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.

Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.

Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.

Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.

Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.

Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

Virginia Democrats advance efforts to protect abortion, voting rights, marriage equality

Published

5 days ago

 on

November 14, 2024

By

 

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.

The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.

“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”

The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.

“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”

The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.

“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.

Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.

Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.

It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.

“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”

A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.

If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.

The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.

As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.

Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.

“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.

The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.

___

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

___

Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

Trump chooses anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary

Published

5 days ago

 on

November 14, 2024

By

 

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.

He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.

The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.

A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.

With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”

It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.

Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.

He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.

HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

__ Seitz reported from Washington.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version