Marc Lamont Hill

The United States repeatedly isolates itself on the world stage in order to shield Israel as much as possible from any consequences that it might face as a result of its policies and actions.

While Jews’ right to decide the definition of their own collective existence is axiomatic, their right to displace another people to lay claim to an historic homeland from many centuries past is not.

The United States and much of the international community insist that violence is not the path to solving this dispute. (For the moment, we will leave aside the vastly unequal representation of Palestinian violence as terrorism and Israeli violence as self-defense)

The United States and much of the international community insist that violence is not the path to solving this dispute. (For the moment, we will leave aside the vastly unequal representation of Palestinian violence as terrorism and Israeli violence as self-defense)

For the Palestinians, Americans and Europeans can support the simple principle of equal rights, a position that will very likely have a real political effect in time. Perhaps that is why BDS evokes such a viscerally defensive response, even from many ostensible progressives. It reminds us all too clearly that the simple support for equal rights—not in the abstract, but as the only route to a political solution in Israel-Palestine—would be easy enough for us, as citizens, to act upon.

For self-identified progressives, it is tempting to frame President Trump as a deviation from the political status quo. With regard to the Middle East, such a framing allows us to remain unaccountable for decades of giving left-wing support for—or at best tepid opposition to—policies that have undermined the possibility of freedom, dignity, safety, and self-determination for the Palestinian people.

Since Israel had stopped the Gaza attacks just three days before Obama took office, he was spared having to intervene to stop the fighting. He raised some hopes by endorsing a UN call for the easing of border restrictions for both goods and people in and out of Gaza, but did nothing to make it happen. Unsurprisingly, it did not happen.