Except for Palestine Quotes

“Had Jews merely wanted to live in Palestine, this would not have been a problem. In fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted for centuries throughout the Middle East. But Zionists sought sovereignty over a land where other people lived. Their ambitions required not only the dispossession and removal of Palestinians in 1948 but also their forced exile, juridical erasure and denial that they ever existed. So, during Israel’s establishment, some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for a Jewish majority state…. This is why Palestinians have been resisting for more than seven decades: They are fighting to remain on their lands with dignity. They have valiantly resisted their colonial erasure…. This resistance is not about returning to the 1947 borders or some notion of the past, but about laying claim to a better future in which Palestinians and their children can live in freedom and equality, rather than being subjugated as second-class citizens or worse.5”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“When the rights of Palestinians are defined only in terms of how they affect Israel, the implicit corollary is that Israeli rights are always of superior importance.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“When someone asks if one supports “Israel’s right to exist,” they are tacitly asking if one agrees that Israel’s elevation of Jewish rights above those of Palestinians in the land they all inhabit is acceptable. The question, in fact, is whether it was legitimate—after many centuries of Palestinians of numerous faiths, including Jews, living in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River—for Jews from Europe (and later Jews from around the world) to emigrate there with the express purpose of creating a state in which Jewish people would be privileged above others, especially the indigenous inhabitants.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“When the topic turns to Palestine, the same people who consistently advocate for freedom and justice fail to live up to their professed ideals.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“we are to adopt a progressive political outlook—one rooted in anti-racist, anti-imperialist, humanistic, and intersectional values—we must begin to prioritize the freedom, dignity, and self-determination of Palestinians.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“A zero-sum approach dictates that any gains for Palestinians must mean a loss for Israelis, and vice versa.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“BDS is a modern, grassroots nonviolent movement inspired by a 2005 call from a long and diverse list of Palestinian civil society organizations. Despite being ignored by world leaders and global media, BDS has been an integral feature of the Palestinian national movement.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Palestinians are not merely another nation, but a nation dispossessed by Israel’s creation.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“While Jews’ right to decide the definition of their own collective existence is axiomatic, their right to displace another people to lay claim to an historic homeland from many centuries past is not.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“The relevant political question is: Is the dispossession and ongoing denial of rights at various levels to Palestinians justified?”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“How can we in the United States and Europe, as well as in much of Israel, comfortably enjoy our liberal privileges and democratic governments, while Palestinians are deprived of the most basic rights?”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Recent years in the Gaza Strip have seen hundreds of Palestinians shot with both rubber-coated bullets (which can be lethal) and live ammunition, despite presenting no immediate threat to any Israeli soldier or civilian. Such actions have a long history and have been well documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Biden’s presidency offered, to borrow a phrase from James Baldwin, “a means of buying time.” By removing the immediate threat of fascism, white nationalism, and extraordinary incompetence, the American people cleared a little bit of space to better fight the perennial threats of white supremacy, capitalism, and empire. Embracing such a sober analysis of president-elect Biden’s platform enables us to set aside any illusions about the current political moment. We recognize that the effects of Trump’s reign will not magically disappear in the wake of the 2020 election. We also understand that President Biden is incapable, and in some cases unwilling, to repair the damage wielded by the previous administration. With such reduced expectations, we have little reason to believe that the Biden presidency will properly attend to the systemic issues that preceded and, indeed, helped produce the Trump phenomenon. This analysis applies not only to domestic matters, but also to U.S. foreign policy.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“American progressives cannot wave a magic wand and solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, but we can certainly take action. We can push Israel to allow the people of Gaza the freedom to rebuild their economy. We can put real pressure on Israel to stop expanding its settlements, and to allow Palestinian towns to grow, as well as allow the free movement of Palestinians in the West Bank. We can make it clear that our democratic values demand that we support Palestinians having the same right to a national existence as Israelis do, and the same right to live in peace and security. We can press Israel to stop blocking the rights that Palestinians are just as entitled to as anyone else. In short, we can act on our principles, which maintain that oppressive conditions diminish life for all but the very few who profit from them.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“between 1970 and 2001, Israel established twenty-one Jewish-only settlements in the Strip. This not only greatly aggravated the political situation, but also placed pressure on the available land and water resources, which the settlements, whose population never rose above some eight thousand Israeli Jews, used in quantities vastly disproportionate to their demographic representation.15 This was a predictable effect of an occupying power settling its citizens in a territory that it controlled through military rule—and in the midst of some 1.1 million Palestinians.16 It could be similarly anticipated that people living under such conditions would resist occupation, producing tension that would become more pronounced over time.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“for states to come about through the dispossession of another people.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“If we claim to care about producing freedom and justice around the world, which is often the expressed basis for American foreign policy, then we must remain morally consistent. Palestine cannot be an exception.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Palestinians cannot get permits to build necessary extensions on existing homes in areas under Israeli military control, forcing them to build without them in order to meet basic demographic needs. This results in a steady stream of demolitions of so-called “illegal” structures. Unemployment in the West Bank is generally around 18 percent, and Palestinian workers frequently suffer a loss of income because Israeli military closures make it impossible for them to get to their jobs.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“To move beyond the current limits, we must be willing to hold the Israeli government—not just right-wing extremists, religious zealots, or neighboring regimes—accountable for its actions in the region, and especially for its denial of basic rights to Palestinians.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“These included repeated cuts in aid to the Palestinian Authority, the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization offices in Washington, a specific declaration by the State Department that settlements were legal, and the passage of a law forbidding aid until the Palestinians ended a fund that paid families of Palestinians imprisoned for acts of resistance, including violent ones, against Israel.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“No other country joined the United States in recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan, but U.S. recognition is still significant. Yet this is far from the first time that the United States has directly undermined international law for Israel’s benefit. Since 1972, the U.S. has used its veto power at the UN Security Council to shield Israel from forty-four resolutions criticizing its behavior or calling on it to comply with international law and UN”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Would Booker have stood against popular boycotts of Chick-fil-A, whose ownership stood up for what “they believe is right” by funding anti-LGBTQI* groups?”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Against the backdrop of these realities, the American political left has normalized a world in which it is acceptable, through words and policies, to embrace the ethical and political contradiction of being “progressive except for Palestine.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“The Palestinians had become fed up with a quarter century of talks that always prioritized Israeli concerns over their own. As these talks dragged on with no end in sight, Israeli settlement construction increased exponentially, and the occupation became ever more repressive.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“His decisions were all based on long-held policy positions of various sectors within the pro-Israel community. Many were bipartisan, such as the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which, as we explain in detail, was based on a law passed during the Clinton administration with an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“Such resources, which were offered without any concrete policy demands regarding Palestinian human rights or self-determination, provided Israel the financial security and “qualitative military edge” necessary to resist compliance with international law or earnest engagement with the peace process.8 Obama’s relative progressivism offered a distinction without a difference in the lives of Palestinians.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“While such an approach can serve as a pragmatic measuring stick, it cannot be permitted to shape our values, nor determine the boundaries of our advocacy. The imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians, a circumstance reinforced by the overwhelming political, economic, and military influence of the United States, can never be ignored or understated as we develop workable analyses and principled solutions. This means that any hope for a future in which all people of the region can live in peace, security, freedom, and hope requires the involvement of other states. It is up to us, as Americans, to ensure that our involvement is based on universal humanistic values that are applied in a consistent manner. Such an approach has not historically been part of U.S. policy. As we enter the Biden era, we must change direction. We must no longer render Palestine exceptional.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“The idea of an American “honest broker” in the Middle East has been a joke for decades. Only a real debate over U.S. policy can change that. That debate cannot happen if liberals refuse to critically examine every aspect of U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine to determine whether it is in step with their core political values. No longer can any position be “taken for granted,” nor can any solution be viewed as a non-starter. Rather, we must be willing to critically interrogate our entire approach to the current crisis. We must be willing to embrace, or at least consider, any solution that will yield freedom, justice, safety, and self-determination for everyone. This has been a demand placed on Palestinians and their supporters for a very long time, requiring them to justify the fight for their rights against accusations of bias against Israel and even against Jews in general. In a conflict as fraught with passion and zealotry as this one is, this sort of critical approach must be demanded equally of all sides and key players involved.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“fundamental change needs to take place in the American political discussion. We have illustrated how the United States has been deeply complicit in creating the political crisis that exists today. But it is not the reactionary pro-Israel religious zealots in the Jewish and Christian communities, the conservative, Islamophobic ideologues, or aging cold warriors and War on Terror crusaders who make the Israel-Palestine crisis unique. After all, these groups are acting according to their views and beliefs. Instead, it is the self-titled progressives who contradict their beliefs by justifying or ignoring behavior by Israel that they oppose or at least treat gravely when it is at the hands of other state actors.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

“To move beyond the current limits, progressives must embrace a more principled politics, one that begins by recognizing the fundamental humanity of Palestinians. From there, they can appeal to progressive values to assert that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights to freedom, justice, equality, safety, and self-determination as everyone else around the world.”
― Marc Lamont Hill, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics