‘Progressive’ votes on anti-BDS bill offer a political defense of the indefensible

‘Progressive’ votes on anti-BDS bill offer a political defense of the indefensible

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If it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, paddles like a duck, then probably it’s a duck. Or a good imitation of one. When self-described progressives like Ayanna Pressley and Ro Khanna walk and talk like Netanyahu, it’s fair to ask what kind of politicians they really are.

Both have defended voting for House Resolution 246, the latest effort to demonize the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, by claiming that it does not deny the right to practice the non-violent strategy of boycott. Ro Khanna goes further, seeking to don the mantle of President Lincoln with the truly incoherent claim that “My role model is Lincoln’s approach to governance. He was not an abolitionist early in his career but he did help end slavery.” What can that mean? That because Lincoln temporized on abolition, and waited for a catastrophic civil war to attain the ends that abolition sought to achieve, Ro is right to temporize on BDS, a non-violent civil society movement which, like abolitionism in its time, is steadily gaining popular support, and certainly the support of all true progressives? Is he, like Lincoln or Netanyahu, more concerned with re-election than justice and rights?

READ MORE: https://mondoweiss.net/2019/07/progressive-political-indefensible/

Image: Rep Ro Khanna, D-Calif., speaks at a rally against Mike Pompeo’s nomination for Secretary of State on April 11, 2018, in Washington. (Photo via MoveOn.org)

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