Cutting Through -- October 14, 2020

A newsletter for thoughtful, independent analysis and opinion on politics, foreign and domestic.

Oct 14, 2020

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of the Cutting Through Newsletter. Please let your friends know about this newsletter. Building the subscriber list will help me to enhance the value of the newsletter and get more interesting and useful information to you. All they need to do is go to https://mitchellplitnick.substack.com/ and enter their email to sign up!

A quick reminder that you can find more about me and my work at my blog, ReThinking Foreign Policy.

And as always, for my latest hot takes, including some I occasionally need to walk back, you can follow me on Twitter, @MJPlitnick.

PS, don’t forget to pre-order Except for Palestine, my first book, co-authored with Prof. Marc Lamont Hill.

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THE LATEST FROM MITCHELL

In the latest episode of the ReThinking Foreign Policy Podcast, recorded on October

11, I revisit the debate over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cancelling her appearance at an event hosted by Americans for Peace Now to commemorate the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin twenty-five years ago. More on this later in the newsletter.

I also examine what I see in the behavior of both Donald Trump and the Republican leadership, which I do not see as coordinated, but which I do see—in both cases—as a response to a conclusion I think they’ve both come to that the vote on November 3 is not going to go Trump’s way and is more likely than not also going to result in the Republicans losing the Senate. I think both are preparing for that outcome, although Trump’s desperation to stay in power by hook or by crook (pun intended) is not matched by the GOP, which can play a much longer game.

So check out the podcast on your platform of choice, by searching for ReThinking Foreign Policy or you can listen to it directly by clicking here.

On October 11, I published a piece at Responsible Statecraft where I analyzed the latest from Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki. Once again, we are seeing maneuvers among various Palestinian politicians aimed at changing the current leadership, but this time circumstances may allow for greater success. Meanwhile, leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas leadership in Gaza have agreed again on elections in sic months. While we’ve seen all this far too often in the past, there are some reasons to hope that things might be different this time. I examine all of this in context in the article.

Finally, on October 8 at The New Arab, I recapped the vice-presidential debate. In its own way, this debate, with he constant evasions and double-talk, was almost as strong an indicator of the depths to which American politics have sunk as the circus of a debate that Trump and Joe Biden put on the week before. Still, unlike some news outlets, I did manage to find something more to talk about than a fly perching on Mike Pence’s head as if on the skull of a cadaver. Check it out for yourself.

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Thoughts on some current events

The Ongoing AOC-Rabin Debate

As I mentioned above, I took time in my latest podcast to revisit the issue of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her withdrawal from an event that will be held by Americans for Peace Now (APN) commemorating twenty-five years since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. With this short column, I’m doing it again, and if you’d ask why I’m devoting so much space to this, I’d say it’s a good question.

There’s also a good answer, or rather, several. There’s a much more important point at work here than most are debating.

This isn’t about AOC’s political acumen—she’s a first term congressperson with little political experience before her election, and Israel-Palestine is a political shark-infested bay with jaws everywhere looking to snap at the slightest mis-step. It’s not something anyone in a leadership position can avoid, and it’s equally an arena where newbies get scarred. All of us, whether we’re politicians, advocates, lawyers, activists, or journalists, have been bitten and scarred repeatedly, whatever our position on the issue is. So the fact that she fell into a difficult spot is not surprising, and it’s not the comment on her political acumen that her critics are trying to make it into.

Nor is this really about the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, per se. There are many historical figures who are seen as heroes by some and villains by others. Whether it’s Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Che Guevara, Kemal Ataturk, Alexander the Great, Aung San Suu Kyi, Marcus Garvey, and many others, historical figures and world leaders are ineluctably human and, when you get past mythologizing or demonizing, most tend to be complex figures. Figures like Adolph Hitler who just about everyone can agree on are rare.

There’s nothing wrong with having a debate about the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin. It’s the pre-determined boundaries of that debate that are problematic.

I was ready to let this issue go until I saw an op-ed in the New York Times by Roger Cohen, once again berating AOC for her decision, and lecturing her on how to properly view Rabin. Like most such arguments, Cohen dismissed the widespread Palestinian view of Rabin, and I felt compelled to jump back in to point this out. Again, I stress, AOC was not trying to make a negative statement about Rabin, nor do I believe she was bullied into pulling out by supporters of the Palestinian cause.

No, AOC, I feel certain, simply did not know how problematic a figure Rabin is. Why should she? To any American not well-versed in the nuances of the history of Israel-Palestine, Rabin is simply known as a one-time warrior who was murdered for trying to embrace peace instead of war. The narrative is simplistic, but it’s a common one, and I’d wager that the number of people in the United States who know there is a more complex story there is quite small.

I think an op-ed that appeared today in Haaretz provides some insight into this controversy. It was written by Ori Nir, APN’s vice president for public affairs, and I find it to be the best case for the liberal Zionist view of Rabin I’ve seen by far.

Nir makes an impassioned defense of Rabin and his legacy, not ignoring his past (indeed, noting where he got considerable flak for his criticism on Rabin a few years before the Oslo Accords), and noting the opinions of Palestinians he spoke to at the time of Rabin’s murder. It’s a piece well worth reading, no matter what your view of Rabin is.

Nir seemed to go to great lengths to make his article a full-throated defense of Rabin and an explanation of why APN was not just holding the event commemorating his death but making a big deal of it.

Yet, the subhead for article—which was most likely penned by the Haaretz editorial staff and not by Nir himself—departed sharply from this tone: “Rabin was no saint, but he changed, and was gunned down for it. When the U.S. left refuses to remember his peacemaking with the Palestinians, they hand victory to Netanyahu and the Israeli right.”

That subhead reflects a sentiment not present in Nir’s article. He seemed to consciously avoid the question of AOC’s pullout, preferring to focus on his argument for why the commemoration of Rabin was important. But Haaretz wasn’t going to let the article just go out without the clickbait of controversy, apparently.

While Nir tried to make a positive case, one which included what he saw as sympathetic Palestinian voices, Haaretz found it necessary to reinforce the use of this controversy as a tool to marginalize the widespread, negative view of Rabin among Palestinians today.

As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, that is the nub of the issue. This is not about casting a poor light on Yitzhak Rabin, whose legacy in mainstream America is not threatened. It is not about respect for Rabin or for the pro-Israel, pro-peace, liberal Zionist groups. AOC did not intend to make a show of pulling out, she did so with a quiet announcement that never had to make any waves at all, but that others decided not only to make it into a big controversy, but to keep it in the air for weeks.

No, this is all about discounting the Palestinian view of Rabin, which is, at this point, largely negative. Nir relayed stories of Palestinians mourning Rabin’s death, and that was very real at the time. But the intervening quarter-century has changed the view of the “peace” Rabin sought, with many questioning his intentions, and, in any case, certainly looking at the outcome with anger and disappointment.

That, too, is a debate worth having. AOC pulling out of the Rabin event did not indicate that the positive view of Rabin was wrong, but that it was contested. By the same token, the legacy of the Oslo Accords is highly contested. Many believe it was doomed to failure from the first, many believe it was never intended to bring about a just resolution. Many others believe it failed precisely because of Rabin’s murder.

All these views have points to support them. None of them should be discounted. And it’s worth noting, no one was protesting the Rabin memorial before all of this, no one was trying to stifle the positive view of Yitzhak Rabin.

The Palestinian view, which is much more negative, merits the same respect from those who disagree with it. That’s not what the attacks on AOC reflect.

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Cutting Through -- October 14, 2020

A newsletter for thoughtful, independent analysis and opinion on politics, foreign and domestic.

Thoughts on some current events

The Ongoing AOC-Rabin Debate

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