You Don't Need a Doctorate to Say "Genocide is Bad."

Hillary Clinton attempts to defame Palestine supporters as "uneducated."

Hillary Clinton on Morning Joe last week.

Well, she’s back. Despite blowing the most winnable election in American history, Hillary Clinton returned to the media circuit to scold young people for Not Knowing Politics. Last week, the former Secretary of State appeared on Morning Joe to claim college protestors “don’t know very much about the history of the Middle East, or frankly, very much about history.” There’s that classic Clinton charm we all know and love. 

Clinton’s argument centered on young protestors “not knowing” that her husband offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a state at the 2000 Camp David Summit. As I wrote previously, this “offer” was a terrible deal for the Palestinians that would have made them a de-facto colony of Israel. Even Israeli statesmen admit Arafat was right to decline it. 

“Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians. If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David.” - Israeli Diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami

But putting aside her revisionist history, Clinton’s condescension is a stark example of how establishment forces defame opposing views. As soon as Americans began protesting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, they were chastised by the media, politicians, and Zionists as “not knowing what they’re talking about.” This was a calculated attempt to delegitimize the protests in the eyes of the larger public, with the added bonus of establishment figures’ favorite pastime: mocking pink-haired college kids who “just don’t understand realpolitik.” 

One of many such cases mocking pro-Palestine protestors for “not being informed.”

But here’s the thing: protestors don’t need to know the entire history of Israel-Palestine to speak out against the ongoing violence. In fact, subject expertise is never a requisite to condemn atrocities. When Americans marched for Black lives in 2020, very few of them (myself included) could provide a detailed explanation of how the Federal Housing Administration segregated cities with race-based loans in the 1930s, which fostered the under-development and over-policing of modern Black neighborhoods, which led to the murder of George Floyd. Rather, they saw videos of an innocent Black man strangled to death by the cops and were inspired to call for change. That’s a perfectly rational motivation, which applies to a spectrum of political issues. The 2008 financial crash and Great Recession disgruntled millions of Americans. The fact that only a handful of them could explain what subprime mortgages were and how they crashed the economy doesn’t discredit their frustration, just as not knowing the intricacies of a two-decade-old peace talk doesn’t mean someone, such as the below father of a USC student protestor, shouldn’t be moved by the unfathomable pain inflicted upon Gazans.

To get ahead of those who will attempt to twist my words, I’m not advocating for blind reactionaryism or saying feelings alone are enough to justify your politics. Beliefs should be based on material and historical analysis, so we can replicate what has worked and fix what’s failed. (Providing this analysis is why I started this publication). Pro-Palestine protestors aren’t motivated by the youthful ignorance Hillary Clinton claims but by a material understanding of the horror of Israeli imperialism, which they have witnessed through alternative and social media. They’re not ignorant of the reality of Israel-Palestine (I’d wager they’re more attuned to it than most), they just aren’t equipped to debunk the propaganda that Clinton, Morning Joe, and the American school system told them about Israel.

What makes this slander so despicable is that the political establishment only applies it against movements that challenge the D.C. consensus. If public forces are with that consensus, they never demand protest signs be peer-reviewed. When Hillary Clinton ran for President, she wasn’t giving hour-long lectures on the nitty-gritty of her economic or climate policies to ensure her supporters had scholastic understanding. Instead, she ran a vibes-based campaign best summarized as: “Donald Trump is a lunatic, so you should vote for me.” Though she lost the Electoral College, a majority of Americans agreed with her. Clinton, and every other Cold War-era political consultant whining that “These Crazy Kids just don’t know what they’re talking about!” know their slander is disingenuous. They would never apply this logic to any other facet of life, political or otherwise. If an expertly trained chef tried to serve Hillary Clinton sautéed dog shit, she would rightfully spit it out. The chef lecturing her that “He went to culinary school, and she doesn’t know the history of food” doesn’t change observable reality: his meal was repulsive and was rightfully scorned. It’s more than fair for Americans to apply this same logic to blatantly genocidal acts, such as this video of Israelis destroying humanitarian aid set for Gaza.

At the end of the day, Clinton’s tactic is not genuine politicking, but rather a pathetic attempt to reassure Morning Joe viewers (particularly the President, who watches it religiously) that they can ignore the protests and calls to end America’s arming of Israel. Fortunately for us, it won’t work. Every day, Americans log on to social media and scroll through video after video of mutilated Palestinian children, bombings of refugee camps, and Israeli officials declaring their intent to “flatten Gaza.” This is more than enough for any sane, rational person to stand up and say, “Hey. This is bad and we should stop it.” Hillary Clinton and her political cadre can pat themselves on the back and scold young Americans all they want. Their critique remains illogical, irrelevant, and achieves little more than reminding Americans why Hillary Clinton is a political failure. 

Like many of the student protestors, my social media feed and nightmares are haunted by images of child corpses, mutilated beyond recognition by American weapons. I don’t need a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies to know that’s wrong, just as I don’t need a political science degree to know Presidential candidates should campaign in Michigan.

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Thank you! In Solidarity — Joe