placing the palestinian struggle

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Chris Kromm wrote:
>
>>A prominent African-American activist recently said in a talk that "the
>>leading liberation struggle of our time is that of Palestine." Much like
>>South Africa in the 1980s, it should be the focus of progressives in the
>>U.S., so that we can build critical mass -- since we live in the country, of
>>course, which has the power to shape the outcome of the conflict. (For those
>>of you who are secretly wondering, the speaker is/was resolutely opposed to
>>anti-Semitism, and made that point repeatedly, so this wasn't an anti-Jewish
>>thing.)
>>
>>What do people think of this assessment? And if "yes," what is to be done?
>
>Kind of hard to rank these things, but isn't the Bush drive for 
>imperial war pretty frightening?
>
>Doug

The Palestinian struggle, as well as Israel's deranged response to 
it, has thrown a monkey wrench into America's imperial war.  The Arab 
leaders, correctly fearing their own survival is at stake, managed to 
reconcile Iraq and Kuwait at the Arab League Summit, creating a 
united front against the war on Iraq that the Empire apparently 
wants.  That's a far bigger blow against the Empire than what 
anti-war activists in the USA have been capable of dealing so far. 
Surely we owe it to the Palestinians to prioritize their struggle -- 
one of the last struggles against old-fashioned colonialism.

Besides, if we let the Empire continue to support the Israeli Right, 
even up to the point of Sharon's preferred final solution (= Israeli 
statehood over _all_ of historic Palestine and expulsion of 
Palestinians from the occupied territories), it will be ordinary 
Israelis and Americans, not the power elites of Israel and the 
Empire, who will pay the price for it.  The price may be higher than 
911.
-- 
Yoshie

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