Anti-racism or Palestine Solidarity?

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Anti-racism or Palestine Solidarity?

The Western countries encouraged South Africa to abandon apartheid, but their unquestioning support for Israel ensures the continuation of this crime against humanity. Might it have happened the other way round? Could the USA and its allies have decided to pressurize the Jewish state into granting the right of return to the Palestinians, while supporting a nuclear-armed white apartheid state in southern Africa?

If it had happened the other way round, there would be non-stop wailing that Western Europeans once again abandoned the Jews, while continuing to defend their racist cousins. But it didn’t. This is not a coincidence. The political atmosphere encouraged the West to abandon white power, and reinforce Jewish power. This is something the current anti-racist approach has difficulty comprehending.
Palestine solidarity in Western countries has tended to assume that, since Zionism is a form of racism, it can be defeated in the same way apartheid in Africa and segregation in America were defeated. Like the anti-apartheid movement, Palestine solidarity has been dominated by the left. Unlike the anti-apartheid movement, it has been unsuccessful.

Not everyone is a liberal. Rather than pointing out that Israel is “Islamophobic”, it might be more effective to raise the wider truth that Zionism ethnically cleansed the Palestinians because they are not Jews, not because many of them are Muslims. Lauren Booth’s phrase “we are all Palestinians” is a teeny bit exaggerated (Booth, L.; 2012). But it is true that Jewish supremacy is harmful to most of us, over 95% of the inhabitants of the Western world, rich and poor. Exposing Israeli anti-gentilism and Christophobia might be more persuasive to most of this population than the left-wing anti-racist argument that Zionism is an offshoot of their own racist, imperialist, Western attitudes.
The post-world war two academic left-wing consensus includes

the Franz Boas school of anthropology, which lied about the peaceful nature of hunter-gatherer life in contrast to European civilization
scientists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and others, who slandered academic rivals, who tried to apply the Darwinian approach to human beings, as “racists”
the “critical race theorists”, who excoriate and exaggerate white ethnocentrism, but give Zionism a pass

For example, Mari Matsuda, in Words That Wound, (1993; p. 40), says: “I reject the sweeping charge that Zionism is racism”, and goes on to claim that Jews can only be racist if they identify themselves as white. Stanley Fish agrees with former president George Bush senior, that to equate Zionism with racism is to twist history, which tells us that Jews have always been persecuted (1994; p. 60).
Not all of these theorists are self-identified Jews, but many, if not most, are. They say things like

it’s hard to see racism when you’re white”

while denying that “race” is a meaningful concept, and relying on the taboo against mentioning their Jewishness. In their introduction to Alas, Poor Darwin, Steven and Hilary Rose approve of Boas’s 1950 claim that “the concept of race is not science but pseudo-science” (Rose & Rose; 2000). Richard Lewontin concurs, on the grounds that there is approximately seven times as much genetic diversity within human populations as there is between them (cited in Frank Salter, Genetic Interests, 2007; p. 92).

But, regardless, it is in every one of your genes’ interests to influence you to favour individuals with copies of itself over those without. Of the genes you don’t share with the whole of humanity, there are, on average, more copies of those genes in individuals whose ancestors lived in the same area as yours than there are in people whose ancestors have not.

Frank Salter explains that, if everyone in the world were cousins, altruism would not be adaptive at all. It’s the difference between our relatedness to each of two individuals which makes us prefer one over the other. Of the genes which differ between individuals, those in our parents, children, and siblings, are more likely to be copies of our own. This is why we are altruistic to our relatives. Evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane worked out that it makes genetic sense to die for two or more brothers or sisters, or eight or more cousins, but not fewer (cited in Connolly, K., and Martlew, M., 1999; p. 10).
But what about choosing to help someone from the local population, rather than another person taken at random from the world population? The percentage increase in selective advantage is just as great as that in choosing your relatives over random individuals in the local population. I am inclined to spoil my granddaughter rather than nearby children who look similar to her. My genes also code for favouring those nearby children over children from far away who look different to them. But we’re taught that the first of these indulgences is a grandparent’s privilege, whereas the second is a symptom of white privilege.

A rough measure of the explanatory power of a theory about society is how infrequently it uses the word “ideology”. Racial identity isn’t ideology. It is the result of the workings of natural selection. Perhaps even ethnic hostility is genetic. There is evidence of inter-tribal massacres during the Stone Age (Keeley, L.; 1996). Given its adaptive character, it would be surprising if genes failed to code for ethnic identity; it is no great leap of faith to suggest that xenophobia may have a biological basis too.
Given the genetic basis of race, what needs explaining, is not white identity, but its relative absence. Yet we are supposed to believe that this identity is strongly entrenched, uniquely malevolent, and invariably xenophobic.

Some readers will think, mistakenly, I’m advocating white self-awareness to counter Zionist influence. But that misreading only illustrates my point; we are always on the lookout for “racism”.

It could be wrong – that’s the nature of scientific theories – but the evolutionary approach at least helps us steer clear of anti-white attitudes. It also avoids hatred toward Zionists; we can understand why Jewish xenophobia exists – because it works. Whether or not the Jewish people were “invented”, any group which intramarries, homogenizes. Ethnic cleansing can be adaptive too. There might be payback, but genes have no foresight. Throwing away our Rose- (and Gould-) coloured glasses, enables us to understand Zionism, rather than moralizing about it, which can be dangerous; it might lead you to try to blackmail the driver of an Israeli bulldozer, by standing in front of it.

In the co-op movement on the American west coast, crypto-Zionists undermined the campaign to boycott Israeli goods by slandering Palestine solidarity activists as “racists”, who needed to “unlearn oppression”. Similar things happen in universities. White guilt has also begun to influence the workings of mainstream society. Minnesota is having a campaign against white privilege, featuring highway billboards of a blonde, blue-eyed girl with anti-racist messages written all over her face (Unfair Campaign, 2012), and a sermon by Jewish critical race theorist Tim Wise.

Palestine solidarity in Australasia, North America and Western Europe would be more effective it it