There’s been some drama on a big listserv I’m on. It’s been hard, because I both value the community there, and I see it as a synedoche of the broader left. I’ve been processing it with a few other people who are similarly outraged.
Micah Sifry has been a particularly public, yet oblique, commenter and synthesizer on this.
First he wrote: What Israel/Palestine ‘Hot Takes’ Have Revealed: From the center, to liberals and the left, blind spots and callous calls. And a deep schism inside the progressive movement.
Then No Place to Stand: How pro-Palestinian, “anti-colonial” progressives are painting themselves into a corner, and damaging the prospects for a left that matters in American politics.
Lastly, he quoted me directly in “Your funeral is inconvenient for my activism”: On the weaponization of “genocide,” polarization on the center-left over Israel-Gaza, and the still necessary work of building Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.
To that last, I want to be clear — I have felt that others have told me that the funeral and grief I’m feeling are inconvenient to their activism. Not the other way around.
Regarding that drama — something good came out of it. More on that in a bit, but here’s a sneak preview.