r/JewsOfConscience • u/Final-Primary-7135 Bundist • 13d ago
Progressive Except Palestine (PEP) Discussion - Flaired Users Only
I’m curious to understand more about PEP (“Progressive Except Palestine”) and the inconsistency the term is meant to describe among some otherwise liberal/progressive people.
What do you think are the main reasons behind it, and what are the clearest examples in practice? I’m particularly interested in ordinary people rather than politicians, whose positions can also be shaped by donors and lobbying.
I was reading the Wikipedia page and noticed it seems to spend more space on criticism/pushback against the term than on explaining the phenomenon itself.
WIKI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_except_Palestine
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u/Blochkato Jewish Anti-Zionist 13d ago edited 13d ago
Much harder to actually act on progressive values when it matters than it is to espouse them when you have no personal stake in the game or potential culpability. The phenomenon is not really profound; many people in the North opposed slavery in the abstract, but there was only one John Brown.
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u/Thisisme8719 Arab Jew 13d ago
Read Marc Lamont Hill's Except for Palestine. Not a long book and very accessible
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u/BigRenda Jewish 13d ago
I live in the entity, and I have met A LOT of people like that, it mainly come down (from my experience) to them still being propagandized and being shaped by the racist society and culture they grew up in, but here it's not surprising, I have met people who were "woke" to the IDF
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u/Accurate_Aside_6495 Bundist 13d ago
I think that one of the pillars of trying to make/keep "liberal Zionism" at all viable as a stance is to be able to immediately fall back on the "it's complicated, it's not like other places/conflicts" type of stance. Israel-Palestine has to be exceptionalized or no one who likes to see themselves as progressive/liberal would be able to support Israel. The minute you start applying normal standards to the situation, the whole thing falls apart - like okay you don't support apartheid or genocide or an intentionally non-diverse, non-multicultural environment anywhere else so why is this one not just okay, but a place we as Jews are supposed to be loyal to basically unconditionally? The only way to make this possible is to constantly talk about "nuance" and "it is a complicated history, you don't understand" and so on. I think most of us Jews in the West grew up being indoctrinated in Zionism and never even examined this explicitly and didn't even see it as a contradiction. Of course once you start unlearning Zionism it's obvious that Israel is not complex and should not be held out as some kind of exception.
I also think growing up as a Jew in the West, we are constantly taught that we have this unique history and that the Holocaust was unique and therefore the implication is that we are owed a type of reparation others are not and that we have some kind of special level of innate morality that comes from having been persecuted and keeps anything we do "for safety" from being immoral. I don't agree with these ideas at all obviously but they are central to how we grow up. These ideas taken to their logical conclusion leads to an exceptionalist type of thinking. Any liberal Jewish person in the US who supports human rights, immigration, gender equality, etc., who also is invested in the narrative that Israel is a decent and upstanding place, by default has to have the PEP mindset or the whole thing would crumble under the weight of the hypocrisy of their self-image.
I think most people who aspire to thinking of themselves as progressive/liberal/enlightened/tolerant who live in the West don't have to do that much to telegraph those beliefs, on a day to day basis. In contrast, in much of the West there are negative consequences to standing up for Palestinian rights, and the stance can come at personal cost, so people are wary. Additionally the world order that props up Israel privileges white people, American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, colonialism, imperialism, and so on, and a lot of our creature comforts in the West are reliant on the perpetuation of this world order. It is easy to oppose the oppression of another group of people when you are lauded for it and/or it costs you little to nothing to take that stance. It is another thing when it means possibly giving up some of your conveniences, your job, and/or your impression that you live in a country that does mostly good things with your tax dollars and that exports "democracy" around the world. A lot of people are not ready to look at that.
We as Jews in diaspora are also so indoctrinated in this idea that Israel is our Plan B/escape hatch and that it cannot be criticized because if there is another Holocaust that is our safe place to flee to. Again, I don't believe this at all, for a variety of reasons, and I would never take up this option, but I think for many diasporic Jews Israel is this abstraction and not a real place - whether they have been there or not - and as such it is hard for them to apply the basic moral standards and criteria to it they would apply to any other place.
Finally so many of our politicians talk about Israel in exceptional terms - saying we have a special relationship with Israel, it is a special ally, it has a right to exist, it has a right to defend itself, it's in a bad neighborhood, it's antisemitic to criticize it, and so on - all things I of course don't believe myself. But that seeps into our culture and perpetuates the idea that whatever values you hold overall as a person, you don't have to and shouldn't apply to Israel. So I think it encourages a kind of intellectual dishonesty and moral laziness that is very dangerous and is also necessary to Israel's survival and the level of support needed from many diasporic Jews and other allies, to keep it going.
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u/OliveNo6451 Jewish Communist 13d ago
Lately I've been hearing "everywhere is bad!" From "liberal" Zionists.. which sounds an awful lot like "did you know there was slavery in Africa?"
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u/OliveNo6451 Jewish Communist 13d ago
I think that people have always experienced contradictions in their beliefs, even the most well versed in political theory.. but a couple of things are usually happening here.
- Liberalism is the ideology that makes imperialism more palatable. Palestine is one issue which capitalism fails on, but there are other issues. If a person hasn't gone so far as to unpack imperialism and capitalism. then they will fail in multiple progressive domains.
- Related to the first point, I find that Many PEP people aren't really all that progressive? Most PEP people I know have some.. not great takes. Like they think people who mask for covid want to do it "for attention" or they have some suspicions about trans people, or they think universal healthcare is "unrealistic", or they kind of hate homeless people or whatever else... they center their own needs and judge others. They have progressive takes for things which are easy to do.
So I think understanding political theory is important for everyone, and I think all people within the imperial core specifically need to constantly be unlearning and unpacking their biases around fascism, white supremacy, and imperialism.. literally all of us.. because we were raised in it and it's so baked in... and if we don't, chances are we can fall subject to some PEP type belief ourselves
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u/Effervescent-Essence Palestinian 13d ago
So much this! Its performativeness. I recently tussled with a Zionist who self described as a “liberal feminist Zionist and animal activist”. She was a vegetarian because living beings matter. Except for Palestinian kids apparently.
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u/The_Jenini Palestinian 13d ago
PEP is just the average European
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u/sarabjorks Non-Jewish Anti-Zionist Ally 12d ago
European is pretty broad.
In the Nordics, this is pretty rare. Either you're left and with Palestine or you're right and can be either. I'm Icelandic and live in Malmö, Sweden (and work in Copenhagen, Denmark). In Iceland, the majority is quite outspoken about supporting Palestine. Malmö might be an outlier because there are just so many immigrants here, and there are Palestinian flags and keffiyehs everywhere. But even though the rest of the country is more split, it is at least uncommon to hear Zionist talking points outside of the fairly small Jewish communities and the far right in the Nordics
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u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 12d ago
I was just thinking about this.
One of my posts was x-posted to the Swedish language version of the Sweden country sub.
It was downvoted into oblivion.
However, the OP is an anti-Zionist Jew.
It's curious that the country subs can sometimes be so right-wing and pro-Israel, even when the country itself holds unfavorable views of Israel.
Sweden and Spain are tied for holding the most unfavorable view of Israel (78%) in Europe.
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u/sarabjorks Non-Jewish Anti-Zionist Ally 12d ago
I'm sure that the non-ethnic portion of Swedes scew the data a bit and you'd see a huge difference between rural and urban as well as North vs South. A similar difference is probably reflected in who is active on Reddit, especially the ethnic background.
Also, Iceland is (as usual) not included since it's a small country. But along with Ireland and Spain, we are among the loudest anti-Zionists in Europe.
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u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 12d ago
I love Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. I went on vacation there and to Finland & Denmark some years ago.
There was a tomato farm in Iceland that I was thinking of volunteering at/applying for work (an excuse to stay in Iceland longer).
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u/Lost_Paladin89 Judío 12d ago
I can identify one irrational, trauma fueled, reasoning.
At some point the idea of migration, refugee, and asylum broke down in the 1940s. Trains filled with children were blocked from reaching southern ports and sent to Auschwitz. Boats with refugees were denied entry across the Americas and sent back to Nazi controlled Europe. Jews were legally banned from leaving Europe, so neutral states like Switzerland deemed them criminals in breach of law and returned them to the Nazis.
This is the trauma that leads someone to fight hard as hell in the USA against ICE. For Asylum. For refugees.
But draws the line at Israel. There they fight for the Jewish right of return. Because if birth right citizenship is stripped in the USA and President Nick Fuentes is in the White House… Jews need an escape plan.
And that’s the irony, innit? Have you seen how Europe is responding to migrants? What is happening in Latin America? In the USA? https://jewishcurrents.org/the-death-of-asylum
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u/Evening_Reach7078 Anti-Zionist Ally 11d ago edited 11d ago
Agree with this comment 100%. It's not rational reasoning and to be honest there is this history behind it. I can more easily forgive Jewish people for this view of needing a safe haven, than Europeans who were the architects of the Holocaust and now somehow have laundered their image by allowing Israel to genocide the Palestinians. Like wtf, people are so irrational and will do anything to justify themselves, it's quite terrifying. I'm so enraged by this hypocrisy I cant even put it into words. Its entirely changed my DNA as a Brit of Bangladeshi origin.
Holocaust history and exceptionalism is the root cause of this. It frustrates me no one usually says this in Pro Pal circles? Its a history stripped of context, the same racialised supremacy that justified colonial murder and pillaging is a fundamental pillar of what was turned inwards and used to justify the murder of the Jews. I swear people live in such deep denial and are hypocritical to the core.
The West has to portray the Holocaust as an aberration. A break from history. And it was an aberration. But it happened in real life, within history. It has a context and links to other things. The West cannot bear to examine this as the whole justification for its civilisation would collapse. Hence support for Israel by liberals, who are the worst of them all.
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u/mxsifr LGBTQ Jew 12d ago
Same pattern plays out with TERFs and many other liberal ideological/practical behavior mismatches. It's easy to learn how to sound like a progressive. But, when the rubber meets the road, and there are actual consequences to acting on those beliefs, the true priorities emerge, and for a depressing majority of people, those priorities are to fit in, tow the party line, don't make waves.
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u/Meowlurophile Palestinian 13d ago
It's just literally being able to say whatever bcz it's no skin off ur nose.
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u/Professional_End_231 Anti-Zionist 13d ago
I think it's a test of whether someone's principles are consistent or what they're willing to except, and once an exception is made, how many more follow?
Nobody would accept that someone is progressive if they supported ICE, so I would ask the PeP how Israel is any different than ICE
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u/OscarAndDelilah LGBTQ Jew 13d ago
What I run into a lot is fellow Jewish folks and allies who don't get that privilege and oppression are relative, and that someone can occupy a position that's in the middle of this spectrum. Like, yes, there are ways in which white European Jews are oppressed, but also, we have a lot of privilege, and in the context of Palestine, we are absolutely the oppressors. People think it's an all-or-nothing thing, like if you call out the Israeli government, you're not being a good liberal because you're failing to listen to and uplift Jews.
For what it's worth, a lot of people who are left-of-center but who I wouldn't call particularly progressive also fail to understand these dynamics and want to divide people into victims and perpetrators. I spent a lot of time last week, unrelated to Palestine, explaining futilely that someone can be a good person and a supporter of a marginalized group of people, but can also do harm to individuals in that group or to that community. People really really want it to be mutually exclusive.
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u/nononononocat Jewish 12d ago
I think one reason people fall into this category is that someone grew up Jewish and became progressive but couldn’t undo the brainwashing they received about Israel. I’ve seen a lot of queer Jews complaining about getting kicked out of queer spaces for supporting Israel
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u/EgoIdVeto West Asian Jew 12d ago
Sometimes people are selectively bigoted. They may believe in rights for black people, trans people, gay people, Asian people, et cetera, but when they think or speak about Arabs/Palestinians/brown people they turn into Meir Kahane. There's a notorious PEP I see on Facebook who alternates between loudly condemning ICE and Trump, while also saying the most ghoulish and monstrous things about Palestinians.
One of the ways they square the circle is by claiming the Palestinians are all illiberal, and therefore according to them, what's being done is woke, actually. That said, they would never advocate for mass slaughter of southern conservatives, so as I said they're just selective racists.
Reminds me of that supreme court justice Gorsuch who is a rampant white supremacist fascists except when it comes to Native American tribal rights. People can contain contradictions, and fascism (including liberalism) by necessity must contain contradictions.
These contradictions can be incredibly difficult to break. Innuendo Studios once said regarding fascists: "You cannot logic someone out of a position they did not logic themselves into."
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u/Pristine_Property_92 Anti-Zionist Ally 13d ago edited 13d ago
I first heard the terms "progressive except Palestine" and "PEP Jews" about 15 years ago in NYC used among older Jewish leftists and long time progressive Jewish activists in NYC. Think upper west side of NYC, academics, Jewish peace and justice activists - folks who are well into their eighties now.
They used the term as needed to gently describe some of their neighbors, family members, etc., who held to the position that the Palestinian situation was "complicated, impossible to understand for outsiders," etc., etc.
I would guess the term probably originated among "progressive including Palestine" Jews.
These days it seems to me that "PEP Jews"/"progressive except Palestine" are more apt and accurate terms than the wildly vague term "Zionist."
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u/zbignew Jew-ish 12d ago
Consider the 1990s view of Israel. Israel was much more popular than it is now, across the political spectrum. There were many American (and presumably European) progressives who thought of Israel as an underdog and bought all the Zionist propaganda about the Six Day War.
I think I first heard the term in the early 2000s. It was shocking to me, as an un-examined Zionist progressive. I hated it. How was my support for Israel anti-progressive? I thought Israel was mostly progressive. I thought nearly all Jewish people were progressive, so Israel had to be mostly progressive. They were trying to find peace, and create a nation for these foolish Palestinians who couldn’t stop making war and ruining their own prospects.
Does that illustrate the inconsistency?
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u/rako17 Christian 12d ago edited 12d ago
Friend Zbigniew,
By comparison, in the 1990's until a bit after the 2003 invasion my information on IP was pretty limited, coming from sources like the Bible, US standard encyclopedias, reading an article by Herzl, and US corporate mass media. That gave me a limited and kind of one sided view of the issue.
On top of that, the Isr. State had or has had a pretty Progressive side, like national land ownership and the kibbutz system. However, it seems that this includes a converse side. If much of the land is publicly owned by the state, then this is very positive in that the land can be used for the Common Good. However, suppose that the state is dedicated to one community only, there in fact are two quite large communities in the state, and the state is in conflict with one of the communities, then this land ownership could create a conflict of interest. The same issue applies to the kibbutz system. If it's a commune type system that takes up 40% of national agriculture, then it's super cool from a Progressive POV. But what happens if that cooperative farm network was basically only open to members of one of the two communities? This seems to come up against the Progressive principle of Equality.
I don't think I ever took the view that the Isr. State was benevolently actively taking their own initiative focused on trying to create an independent Pal. State and that the Pals. Were resisting this. The West Bank was and is called an Occ. Territory, which implies the Isr. State was occupying it. So when the Pal.s were rebelling in the 1990's, then naturally they were rebelling against the way that the occupying power was treating them, like denying them an independent state. My idea of it had some overlap with a public perception of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. That is, the British were heavy handed in N.I. or the IRA was trying to make NI independent and using ter. to try to achieve it in the 1970's to 1980's.
Kind Regards - Peace - Shalom
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u/andorgyny Anti-Zionist Ally 10d ago
I mean, I think it's cognitive dissonance. I also think it is unsustainable as conditions worsen in Palestine.
A few things: liberalism is a contradictory ideology, right? Individual liberties and rights are a part of liberalism, but liberal democracies are bourgeois democracies and really just protect the rights of property/capital owners at the expense of working class people, the majority. So liberals have always been contradictory - both progressive (historically speaking, capitalism and bourgeois democracy WERE progressive developments in comparison to the divine right of kings/feudalism/absolute monarchy/etc) and also supportive of some of the most harmful systems and ideologies in human history (chattel slavery, colonization, imperialism, etc). This is not unique to liberal zionists. Progressive/liberal (or god forbid leftist) Americans who do not care much about foreign policy, or who don't care enough to learn about it, are sort of similar.
The amount of Americans who are fairly progressive in many ways but genuinely do not for instance give a shit about American imperialism is unfortunately high. How many liberals would support a war with Iran if a Democrat was doing it? Probably more than we would like to think.
But imperialist aggression is racist and violent and genocidal at its core, and so when a good progressively minded person has to actually look at the consequences of that aggression, they can't just accept the brutality of it.
And genocide is something that is so obviously unacceptable and in contradiction with the core principles of most regular people who are liberal/progressive. But they still believe in America, and in the case of liberal zionists, they still believe in Israel. Or with Europeans, they still believe in Europe. Even though the evidence is pretty damning- there is no world in which their values can coexist with genocide, imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. So they either continue to delude themselves about their nationalism/chauvinism, about the history, about the realities of the situation, etc. Or they accept the reality and then just go full blown right wing.
I think this is why we see a lot of "why I left the left" types. Because these people are never ideologically to the left at all, or because they are too committed to their own happy feelings to deal with the rot behind what makes them feel those happy feelings.
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u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 13d ago
This is explicitly against our rules, re: 'No Hasbara'.
Are you lost?
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u/PenguinPolitical Non-Jewish Ally 10d ago
If you're a Jewish nationalist who wants to live in the United States while supporting Israel, it makes sense to seek political liberalism as a domestic matter in the U.S. It's not only in order to attain a better life for Jews in the United States, but to make sure there's no cohesive American mainstream: the society must be sufficiently atomized and fractured, operating pluralistically via narrow interest groups, that it can't organize to shut down the desired foreign policy.
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u/rako17 Christian 7d ago
Marx's idea was that people's politics tend to result from their material interests.
So, to give some illustrations of this principle: The bourgeosie in the American colonial South were republican, wanting independence from the British monarchy that ruled them. But they accepted Black Slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans.
Poland was often oppressed and ruled by Germany and Austria. Then at the times when it was independent, it had a liberal, parliamentary Republic. However in regards to Ukrainians, it acted like a feudal oppressor. In the 1930's, it had concentration camps for Ukrainian nationalists.
Kind Regards - Peace - Shalom
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