In New York, the Israeli Flag Is Burning

This time the smoke from the burning flag of the Israeli enemy didn’t rise from Amman or Cairo, but drifted through the sky of New York, which still retains, in a portion of its cosmopolitanism, a strong Jewish character as well as powerful supporters of Zionism.

The movement, founded in a struggle against capitalist encroachment, is not very different — in its opposition to this ugly face of the world — from the dynamic and indomitable movements on the Arab horizon. These movements are striking tyrannical leaders and those who cause human suffering, those who have been used by Arab powers for decades, to counter any departure from their dark text.

Thus it — that is, the Wall Street movement — has a natural connection to the Arab Spring and what it did to reawaken the human consciousness of freedom and justice, despite the hints that this awakening was being usurped and redirected toward areas where backward and unjust regimes could restore their tyranny in the form of imperial democracy.

The burning of the Israeli flag in New York wasn’t actually a rare protest at the heart of imperialism — solidarity with the Palestinians has already swept through other centers of imperialism in Europe, Asia and Africa. This happened, for example, with the break between British and Israeli academia, and when groups of Harvard students rejected any aggression against Palestinians, and so forth.

The Wall Street protesters hadn’t suddenly discovered Israel’s brutality at the time when they set its flag on fire. A few of them belong to groups that view the Jewish occupation of the global economy and protested by burning Israel’s flag. However, the majority that was shouting, “The people want the fall of Wall Street,” in fluent Arabic is fully aware that Israel is an insignificant player in global imperialism, causing much suffering for the Palestinians and the American taxpayers, whose money is draining into the pockets of criminal generals.

This awakening of the popular consciousness is not limited to this popular American protest. It is the American citizen’s realization of how the money he pours out for his country is spent by his government, other people and in ways that run contrary to the humanitarian values he believes in — he is the one going out and demanding the end of the American regime.

So should we then celebrate the burning of the Israeli flag in the heart of New York?

If this awakening, which resembles the Arab Spring revolutions, produced a moment like this, then there is hope that Palestine has begun to occupy a position of distinction in the awareness of popular Western groups, who will then have the power to influence their nations and shape a new relationship with the Israelis — a relationship that would not allow this orphaned existence, in which concessions run rampant, to continue. This awakening likely has the power to light a candle and has begun to illuminate a portion of what is in the tunnel.