Global Palestine Solidarity and the Jewish Question

From its emergence in the late 1960s, global Palestine solidarity has had to defend itself from charges of antisemitism. Activists have responded with different strategies, ranging from rejection to admission and self-critique. Such strategies were often the result of deliberation with Palestinian revolutionaries. In this way, differently situated problem-spaces of ‘the Jewish Question’ – that of settler colonialism in Palestine and that of post-Holocaust politics in Europe – became entangled. Resulting inter-sectional alliances with, for example, Jewish voices and groups have often afforded the best protection from allegations of antisemitism. Despite these efforts, recent legislation criminalising Palestine solidarity shows that Israel’s well-funded campaigns to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism have been partially successful. This article looks for answers to today’s impasse in 50 years of solidarity on the Left and corresponding efforts to criminalise support for the Palestinian cause. Drawing on the archives of solidarity movements in Denmark and other European countries, it traces the current aggressive pushback to its roots in the early 1970s, when Palestine solidarity movements learned important lessons about how to balance their critique of Israel with public sensitivities around the Jewish question, and how to reckon with race and religious identity.