There's this dilemma i've noticed amongst anti-zionist (and non-zionist?) Jews working to ending jewish support for the occupation, and it's truly bizarre to watch as a Palestinian. The dilemma, to put it shortly, revolves around the question of legitimacy.
The kind of activism i'm talking about focuses on convincing liberal and conservative zionists that their support for the occupation goes against their (Jewish, liberal) values. In this way, it's intimately concerned with changing the given narratives Jews recieve about zionism.
Beholden to its audience, this work is constantly towing the line of what its viewers will deem politically "legitimate". It has to challenge the way zionism operates without challenging zionism itself. Doing so would "alienate the base," spelling obscurity.
As a Palestinian activist, this is totally foreign to me. I am illegitimate-on-arrival: my very existence already challenges zionism, insofar as it confirms that without colonialism—without my displacement—its project could not exist. I am proof that zionism is violence.
In effect, remaining "legitimate" in American Jewish zionist circles appears to be about one's proximity to Palestinians and Palestinian narratives. Close enough that you don't seem bigoted, but not so close that you're forced to question the narrative behind the Jewish State.
Organizers and journalists emerge now to navigate the waters between J Street's (legitimate) "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace" platform and JVP's (illegitimate) solidarity with Palestinians. They're changing the narrative maybe, but constantly under the threat of losing their platform.
I'm like, welcome to my world.

Obviously, I want to support efforts to end support for the occupation — to the end that I, as a Palestinian, am given self-determination, political power, and yes, legitimacy. But I just don't have the luxury of access to these waters at all.
I'm not interested in the game of preserving these comfortable narratives that are told about zionism. If speaking openly about Israel's colonialist history "alienates the base," then the problem is an inability to accept the most basic truths of the Palestinian experience.
My thoughts? Legitimacy among those who seek to preserve colonialism is not something worth striving for. Palestinians have never had it, and it is solely through the work of our activists that our movement remains alive today.
Anti-colonialism will always be illegitimate, insofar as it seeks to overturn the global order and command power for the powerless. Only through committed anti-colonialism can we truly "change the narrative" — that is, commit to amplifying the narratives of Palestinians.
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