While walking home from work yesterday, I encountered a crowd of people protesting US policies in Israel and Palestine.The protestors called themselves pro-Palestine and wanted a "free Palestine."
One of the protestors was screaming at a police officer. I didn't witness the entire interaction, so there may be something I'm missing, but I did hear the protestor say something like the following to the officer:
You should be on our side. You're just service the white cishet male power structure.
That's a paraphrase because I don't have a perfect phonographic memory--but as far as paraphrases go it's pretty exact, I believe.
That's probably not the best tactic. As a non-activist, I'm in the cheap seats, but it seems to me the campaign for a "free Palestine" faces a lot of hurdles. One of the most important hurdles is to get people to care about it and endorse it.
I suspect that using the campaign to combat the "white cishet male" power structure doesn't do much to bring about that end. For one thing, a very large majority of people are "cishet," A smaller, but in the US still significant, number of people (maybe still a majority?) are white. A large number, maybe 50% or maybe a little less, are male. I don't think baiting them for their identities is the way to win them over.
And for what it's worth, I suspect the male cishet population of Palestine is robustly represented. "White" may be another story, depending on how you define whiteness. But while admitting I'm not expert, I venture that "whiteness" operates differently in Israel and Palestine from how it does in the US. Unlike some people, apparently, I'm not inclined to impose my western imperialist framing of whiteness onto other peoples about whom I know little.
Yes, I realize the "white male cishet" power structure is different from "white male cishet." You can be "white male cishet" and yet not support the current power structure or at the very least see the way things currently are as problematic. Someone might even argue that "white male cishet normativity" is in some way the basis of the world's problems with violence. (Add something about patriarchy, too, I guess. But I suppose that term "privileges" men somehow.)
But c'mon. The immediate problems facing Palestinians aren't the "white cishet male" power structure. That power structure, if it exists and if it's at all implicated in what's going on, is at least secondary.
I offer no comment here on my stance on the issue of "free Palestine" or Israel's response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks or what the response of the US should be. I have conflicted feelings. I'm all over the place.
I do hope for peace.
