why bring up Zionism? Warschawski answers

So why bring up Zionism, Finkel­stein asks, the “epithet du jour,” as he dismisses it with what he thinks is withering contempt? Why organize for that Utopian one/no-state solution when we have a “consensus” on a two-state set­tle­ment, by everyone except for those with power? Read below and see why. It can be difficult to organize behind a tran­si­tional solution that you know to be unjust even if it’s a short-term way to end needless suffering. That is the Finkel­stein position. Here’s something else that’s difficult: rec­og­niz­ing that 22 years after the PNC accepted a two-state set­tle­ment at Algiers, we are no closer to that set­tle­ment than we were then. In fact, we’re further now than we were a decade ago, and self-aggrandizing posturing about the irrel­e­vance of Zionism and the decades-long-distance between now and one demo­c­ra­tic state doesn’t bring justice closer. It postpones it, by orga­niz­ing behind a tran­si­tional solution, two-states, that is just as far from the present as one-democratic state. Posturing without a strategy is a feel-good position. So is posturing about a failed or failing strategy. Ask Michel Warschawski:

“Why must we deal with Zionism? Zionism is history, mere ideology, and one should focus on the real political reality, not on ide­olo­gies.” Such a statement is not unusual in the Palestine sol­i­dar­ity movement, and def­i­nitely needs to be answered, for Zionism is neither a mere ideology nor a matter of the past, but a living political movement, embodied by the State of Israel and its policy. Without a clear analysis of the nature of Zionism, one cannot under­stand the failure of the “peace process” and its sys­tem­atic sabotage by the State of Israel. Without under­stand­ing Zionism, it is almost impos­si­ble to try to predict the next moves of the Israeli leadership.

Zionism—A Relevant Question

Those who question the relevance of Zionism in the present political discourse often describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “national conflict,” similar to the conflicts between Serbs and Croats in former Yugoslavia, or the conflicts in Caucasia. No doubt there is a national dimension in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and both Israelis and Arabs are motivated by national feelings too. The core of the conflict, however, is not national but colonial.

At the turn of the 20th century, Zionism aimed to provide an answer to the Jewish question in Eastern and Central Europe and a solution to anti-Semitism through a com­bi­na­tion of two tools that were at the heart of the political culture of that era: the nation state and colo­nial­ism. The building of a Jewish nation state was the goal of Zionism, and col­o­niza­tion of the Western part of the Arab-East (Palestine) was the means. Nothing very special at the end of the 19th century, when the crisis of the Empires—Tsarist, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian—brought about the devel­op­ment of national movements aimed at creating nation-states. “Civ­i­liz­ing the un-civilized countries” through colo­nial­ism was also a common feature of foreign policy in these times. Zionism is, therefore, a mere product of its time, the aspi­ra­tion for an ethnic Jewish state realized through colo­nial­ist methods.

Despite the “post-Zionist” claim, the colo­nial­ist drive of Zionism did not end with the creation of the State of Israel, the borders of which (the ceasefire lines of 1948) were perceived by a majority of Zionist leaders as pro­vi­sional. In 1967, Israel extended its borders to the Jordan River, thereby expanding its sov­er­eignty over the whole of Mandatory Palestine. Speaking of “normal Israel” in its pre-1967 borders, and the “pro­vi­sional occupied ter­ri­to­ries,” whilst aspiring to a “return to the normal borders of Israel” is utter nonsense: the so-call “normal Israel” lasted less than 30 percent of the total existence of Israel up until today.

Irre­versibil­ity of the Israeli occu­pa­tion?

Does such a factual assess­ment mean that the occu­pa­tion of the West Bank is, in the words of Israeli analyst Meron Ben­venisti, “irre­versible,” and a partition of Palestine into two states impos­si­ble? Not nec­es­sar­ily: the real­iza­tion of the “his­tor­i­cal com­pro­mise” proposed by the Pales­tin­ian National Council in 1988 and the creation of a Pales­tin­ian state alongside an Israeli one depends on the relation of forces reflect­ing an equi­lib­rium between the Zionist ability to maintain the existence of the colonial State of Israel, and the Pales­tin­ian ability to impose an Israeli with­drawal from the ter­ri­to­ries occupied in June 1967. Such relation of forces existed between 1990 and 2000; perhaps they will again in the future, but such is not the current reality.

The “two states solution” was based on the assump­tion that the balance of forces created by the Pales­tin­ian resis­tance through­out the 1970s and the 1980s, and the inter­na­tional context of these decades, can force the State of Israel not only to halt its colonial expansion, but even to partially reverse it. Such a com­pro­mise was able to provide to the Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion of the West Bank and Gaza an end to Israeli military rule and the de-colonization of their lands.

With the global war of re-colonization initiated by the US and the Israeli neo-conservatives at the turn of the 21st century, and the suc­cess­ful Israeli attempt to retract the limited Pales­tin­ian achieve­ments obtained through the Oslo process, the per­spec­tive of an inde­pen­dent Pales­tin­ian state in the West Bank and Gaza has lost, for the time being, its prob­a­bil­ity as a rel­a­tively short-term project.

Solutions and Rights
Does this mean that one must drop the demand for a Pales­tin­ian state and replace it with the per­spec­tive of a single (bi-national) state? The debate—especially outside of the Pales­tin­ian national movement—between those advo­cat­ing a “two states solution” and the “one state solution” is often absurd, as if we are con­fronted with a personal choice between two parallel options, to be selected in accor­dance with one’s own taste! “I like two, but I prefer one.”

What is missing in this supposed “choice” is the time factor, which was essential in Yasser Arafat’s strategy and the alter­na­tive options he placed in front of his people: an unjust com­pro­mise that can offer to the present gen­er­a­tion relative freedom and limited sov­er­eignty, or many more years of col­o­niza­tion, hard struggle and suffering until obtaining Pales­tin­ian com­pre­hen­sive rights. The 1988 PNC in Algiers endorsed the first option.

Whether it was the correct choice or not is a matter to be discussed by the Pales­tin­ian national movement. As for the inter­na­tional sol­i­dar­ity movement, including Israeli anti-colonialists—rather than debating solutions, it must con­cen­trate efforts on the issue of rights: national rights (right of self-determination), human rights (Geneva Con­ven­tions), social rights and indi­vid­ual rights (right of return).

Part and parcel of our struggle for the rights of Pales­tini­ans and the Pales­tin­ian people is the campaign for inter­na­tional sanctions on the State of Israel, for its innu­mer­able vio­la­tions of inter­na­tional law and UN res­o­lu­tions. The campaign for BDS (boycott, divest­ments, sanctions) against Israel is not only a way to tell the Pales­tin­ian people that the world cares for the Pales­tini­ans, but a matter of global public hygiene: a state that violates the law must be sanc­tioned, otherwise our world becomes a jungle in which might is right and there are no rules and ethical boundaries.

Since the victory over Fascism, in 1945, the peoples of our planet have iden­ti­fied war crimes and crimes against humanity, and, in the last decades, inter­na­tional tribunals have been convened in order to judge alleged war criminals. There is no reason why the Israeli leaders should not be account­able to inter­na­tional law be allowed shocking impunity.

The demand for an inter­na­tional procedure against the Israeli leaders  suspected of war crimes, as suggested by UN Rap­por­teur Judge Goldstone, is part and parcel of our joint inter­na­tional struggle for justice for Palestine, and, no less important, for a global order based on rights, inter­na­tional law and respect for all human beings.

Palestine is the barometer of the state of the world, as well as a frontline of the global con­fronta­tion between dom­i­na­tion and freedom.

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Between four governments*

Randomly, from Ma’an News: the Hamas gov­ern­ment in Gaza banned dis­play­ing lingerie or pajamas in the windows of stores. It also banned fitting rooms inside those stores or using tinted glass for their windows. This comes shortly after the gov­ern­ment banned smoking sheesha for women in public. The Fateh gov­ern­ment in Ramallah meanwhile prevents the issuance of new passports for many of the people living in the Gaza Strip, sometimes because they are affil­i­ated with Hamas, sometimes because someone says they are affil­i­ated with Hamas when they are not, and sometimes just because of general admin­is­tra­tive logjams. Some claim the shortfall is in the thousands. Egypt seized 10 tunnels today, part of a larger operation osten­si­bly meant to cut down on smuggling (right). And the Israeli-imposed buffer zone continues to encroach on Gazan land, now estimated to amount to 6.25 percent of Gaza, according to my friend Sabir Za’anin.

Between all these oppres­sions the Gazan people are smothered, which prompts talk in Gaza of the “two occu­pa­tions.” These indig­ni­ties and oppres­sions highlight the absurdity of having all the respon­si­bil­i­ties of asso­ci­ated with governing a state but without sovereignty—usually the first require­ment for a gov­ern­ment, at least, roughly speaking. And that’s why Pales­tin­ian political analysts are now talking about dis­solv­ing the gov­ern­ments in Ramallah and Gaza. They’re useless: once a resis­tance movement becomes a gov­ern­ment it can become directly respon­si­ble for oppres­sion. That’s rea­son­able. What’s less rea­son­able is that it becomes respon­si­ble for welfare, and we see how that turns out with the ridicu­lous back-and-forth over Gaza’s elec­tric­ity, which is Israel’s respon­si­bil­ity and no one else’s. If Israel wants to occupy, let it at least do the occupying itself.

*Plus the Empire.

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back in Brooklyn

I am by the way back in Brooklyn, via the Mossad/mukhabarat manning the gate in Rafah. Not pleasant but could have been worse. Only took about 8 or 9 hours to pass from Gaza City to Egyptian Rafah. I will be speaking at a fundraiser for the US Boat to Gaza at the Colony in Woodstock, NY, at 7 PM on July 30 (this Friday) and am otherwise available for speaking within rea­son­able driving distance of Brooklyn, people buying me lunch, or whatever, or starting in the fall also within driving distance of Ithaca.

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murderous sanctions

On the sanctions campaign against Gaza:

The war, when it came, was directed as much against Gaza’s economy as against Hamas militants. Key features of the bombing campaign were designed – as its principal planner, General Gabi Ashkenazi of the Israeli air force, explained to me after­wards – to destroy the ‘critical nodes’ that enabled Gaza to function as a modern society. The air force had dreamed of being able to do this sort of thing since before the 2006 Lebanon War, and Ashkenazi thought the intro­duc­tion of precision-guided ‘smart bombs’ now made it a practical propo­si­tion. Gaza’s elec­tri­cal power plants, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions centres, sewage plants and other key infra­struc­ture were destroyed or badly damaged. Ashkenazi, I recall, was piqued that bombing in addition to his original scheme had obscured the impact of his surgical assault on the pillars sup­port­ing modern Gazan society.

Visiting Gaza in that first summer of postwar sanctions I found a pop­u­la­tion stunned by the disaster that was reducing them to a dev­as­tated Third World standard of living. Gaza City auction houses were filled with the heirlooms and furniture of the middle classes, hawked in a desperate effort to stay ahead of inflation. In the upper-middle-class enclave of Tel al-Hawa, I watched as a frantic crowd of house­wives rushed to collect food supplies dis­trib­uted by the American charity Catholic Relief Services. Doctors, most of them trained in Britain, displayed their empty dis­pen­saries. Every­where, people asked when sanctions would be lifted, assuming that it could only be a matter of months at the most (a belief initially shared by Haniyeh). The notion that they would still be in force several years later was unimaginable.

The crossing author­i­ties’ stated purpose was to review and authorise excep­tions to the sanctions, but its actual function was to deny the import of even the most innocuous items on the grounds that they might, con­ceiv­ably, be used in the pro­duc­tion of rockets. An ingenious provision allowed any committee member to put any item for which clearance had been requested on hold. So, while UNRWA and other NGOs, and aid-giving nation states, might wish to speed goods to Gaza, Israel and its ever willing American partner could and did block whatever they chose on the flimsiest of excuses. As a means of reducing a formerly func­tion­ing territory to a pre-industrial condition and keeping it there, this system would have aroused the envy of the blockade bureau­crats derided by Keynes. Thus in 2007 Israel blocked, among other items, salt, water pipes, children’s bikes, materials used to make nappies, equipment to process powdered milk and fabric to make clothes. The list would later be expanded to include switches, sockets, window frames, ceramic tiles and paint. In 2009 Israeli rep­re­sen­ta­tives force­fully argued against per­mit­ting Gaza to import powdered milk on the grounds that it did not fulfill a human­i­tar­ian need. Later, the diplomats dutifully argued that an order for child vaccines, deemed ‘sus­pi­cious’ by weapons experts in Tel-Aviv, should be denied.

Through­out the period of sanctions, Israel frus­trated Gaza’s attempts to import pumps needed in the plants treating water from Wadi Gaza, which had become an open sewer thanks to the destruc­tion of treatment plants. Chlorine, vital for treating a con­t­a­m­i­nated water supply, was banned on the grounds that it could be used as a chemical weapon. The con­se­quences of all this were visible in pediatric wards. Every year the number of children who died before they reached their first birthday rose, from one in 30 in 2006 to one in eight four years later. Health spe­cial­ists agreed that con­t­a­m­i­nated water was respon­si­ble: children were espe­cially sus­cep­ti­ble to the gas­troen­teri­tis and cholera caused by dirty water.

Obviously, not exactly the same as in Iraq. I had to do a bit of re-writing, but not so much; replacing place-names nearly suffices. In Gaza, sanctions have alter­nated with massacres; summer 2008, winter 2008–2009, while sanctions began in 2005 and continue to this day, predated by the violent repres­sion of the Second Intifada. Sanctions were obviously inef­fec­tive in both cases in terms of their objec­tives: getting rid of the gov­ern­ment and replacing a bel­liger­ent gov­ern­ment with a friend­lier one, more amenable to American/Israeli diktat. Another crucial dif­fer­ence? In the case of Gaza the world resisted and resists. Boats went in to try and break the siege insis­tently, and that insistent pressure perhaps prevented the very worst from taking place in Gaza. Gaza is not Iraq from 1991–2003 and that is very good. But it could have been, and since there will inevitably be more resis­tance from Gaza, it could yet be.

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Nuremberg laws redux

For sleeping with a Jewish woman an Arab man goes to jail:

Saber Kushour apol­o­gises as he asks his guests to move the plastic chairs on his breeze-block balcony a little closer to the door to his house. If he were to sit where they are now, he explains, the elec­tronic tag attached to his ankle would set off an alarm. Kushour’s edginess is under­stand­able – he is recalling a 15-minute encounter almost two years ago which he says “has destroyed my life”. Last week the married father of two from east Jerusalem was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the “rape by deception” of a Jewish woman who claimed she would not have had sex with him had she known he was an Arab.

What might have been a tawdry episode – casting neither Kushour nor the woman in a favourable light – exploded into a debate in Israel about racism, sexual mores and justice. “I am paying the price for a mistake that she made,” Kushour, 30, told the Observer. “I was shocked at the sentence – it shows a very vivid and clear racism.” The message from the judge, he says, was that “because you are an Arab and you didn’t make that clear, we are going to punish you”. In his verdict, Judge Zvi Segal conceded that it was not “a classical rape by force”. He added: “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor inter­ested in a serious romantic rela­tion­ship, she would not have co-operated. The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophis­ti­cated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbear­able price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.” At his home in Sharafat, where he is confined while awaiting an appeal, Kushour tells a different story. The woman has not been iden­ti­fied and has not gone public with her account.

Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews:

Ezra held [mixed-marriages] to be a terrible sin. For the Judean or Israelit­ish race was in his eyes a holy one, and suffered des­e­cra­tion by mingling with foreign tribes, even though they had abjured idolatry…That moment was to decide the fate of the Judean people, Ezra, and those who thought as he did, raised a wall of sep­a­ra­tion between the Judeans and the rest of the world.

Simon Dubnow, History of the World-People:

These mixed marriages, customary alike among the humble and the great, jeop­ar­dized the purity of the of the race and the religion. The national culture of the Judahite people was not yet strong enough to absorb alien elements without their leaving a trace. During this period when it was con­struct­ing its habi­ta­tion, it needed national isolation so as not to disappear among the nations, and so that Judaism would not become one of the numerous religious cults in the East, which lacked all universal value and were ulti­mately washed away in the deluge if history.

From The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand. That’s the pro­gres­sion of Zionism. Dies hard. But still, seriously: don’t we want to kill it?

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wasn’t the Egyptian wall meant to fail?

Egyptian officials are now openly admitting that the under­ground steel wall lining the Gaza-Egypt border is porous. Gazan “smugglers” have pen­e­trated the wall hundreds of times and are not remotely troubled by it any longer. The cars that used to be brought through quartered, after which the parts were welded together in Gaza, are now brought through whole. Very big tunnels. I’ve always assumed that the wall was meant to fail or con­structed with the knowledge that it would probably fail, as part of the Egyptian-Israel-American materiel and diplo­matic dance.

What would have happened if Egypt had actually cut off the tunnel trade when 80 to 90 percent of Gazan imports were coming in through the tunnels? People would have started starving to death. Israel currently wants people to suffer—the Pales­tini­ans in Gaza “will get a lot thinner, but won’t die”—but it does not want to provoke actual famine. Israel doesn’t mind the tunnels. If it minded them, it would bomb them more fre­quently. It’s not like the world does anything when it does so, or when it re-bombs Rafah airport or anywhere in the Philadel­phi corridor, despite the flagrant ille­gal­ity of such bombing raids. But it must be seen as to mind them so the gov­ern­ment can get hys­ter­i­cal about the weapons-smuggling that it doesn’t care about either. In turn, Israel and America lean on Egypt to build a wall, while their con­sul­tants probably tell them that it will be easily pen­e­trated. Then it gets pen­e­trated. Goods keep on flowing in, along with weapons. Israel does not mind those weapons, because they provide a pretext for keeping Gaza under occu­pa­tion and severing Gaza from the West Bank. The gov­ern­ment can also spend public money on missile-shield systems that it can sell to India and Singapore (which partially funded the devel­op­ment of the Iron Dome system). And everyone stays happy. Gaza maintains its lifeline. The Egyptian dic­ta­tor­ship makes a show of complying with American demands, keeping the military aid flowing in. And because people aren’t starving to death, the pressure to totally lift the blockade is eased just enough so as to head off an explosion, espe­cially, as always, in neigh­bor­ing Arab dic­ta­tor­ships and Europe, where public opinion matters a bit more than it does in the United States. Meanwhile Israeli public opinion sees the military and elites claiming to act in the interest of their “security.” And every­thing stays the same—the players pedal furiously simply to remain in place, and maintain the appear­ance of change amidst a static reality.

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No, I don’t care about the new “mall” in Gaza

I did not see the new Gaza “mall” before leaving Gaza. I’m sure that like the news sites are reporting, that it is there. Who cares? Here’s who cares. Right-wing bloggers and Zionists are giddy that Gazans have a new place to shop. Jacob Shrybman comments, “Similarly, on the day of the Gaza mall’s opening, UNRWA President John Ging said the people of Gaza ‘Can’t afford to buy cans of Coca Cola from Israel.’ But they can afford new clothes, luxury hair products, and children’s toys at the new Gaza Mall?” Shopping mall–all 19,600 grandiose, palatial feet of it–means no human­i­tar­ian crisis. No human­i­tar­ian crisis means no crisis. No crisis means no problem. No problem means no siege. No siege means no occu­pa­tion. No occu­pa­tion means Hamas is the main obstacle pre­vent­ing the trans­mu­ta­tion of Gaza into Dubai.

I don’t know if I can start dis­sect­ing this kind of “thinking,” because there’s no thought involved, just a series of stylized images standing in for thought and analysis, based on pre-rational instincts: “Defend Israel! Pales­tini­ans Aren’t People!” The images go in a rough sequence, kind of like this. The first replaces the phrase “human­i­tar­ian crisis” with pro­trud­ing ribcages in Haiti. The second says that if people aren’t at the level of absolute des­ti­tu­tion, then their crises are irrel­e­vant and should be invisible—let’s place a screen in front of them. The third is a resolute denial of thinking: who cares what the ICRC, the World Bank, the UN, and the Lancet have to say about the human­i­tar­ian situation in Gaza: the incidence of stunting, mal­nu­tri­tion, hundreds dead because they can’t access medical care, a barely-functional economy reliant on the service sector, the tunnel trade, and charity. And the fourth is total racism: Israel imposes this economy and this “crisis” on Gaza, and if it were the reverse, no one would tolerate it for a moment.

Gaza does not have to be as bad as Burundi or Iraq or Haiti to be in intol­er­a­ble crisis. Yes, there is a mall in Gaza full of stuff. But. Unem­ploy­ment is at 40 percent using con­ven­tional measures that con­sid­er­ably under­es­ti­mate effective unem­ploy­ment. At last check, the consumer price index was at 131, whereas in the West Bank it is at 125. The average daily income in Gaza is 71.5 shekelim in the public sector, 43.7 in the private sector. The shekel trades at about 3.87 to the dollar. There are about 180,000 people employed in Gaza. The numbers can’t be inter­preted without the correct frame: each worker supports about ~8, perhaps a little more, other people—the numbers probably don’t include those receiving money from the PA in Ramallah. Average household income in the Gaza Strip is 1,567 shekelim, a little less than 400 dollars, or about one dollar a day.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion comments:

There is also evidence of a health and envi­ron­men­tal disaster in the Gaza Strip due to the destruc­tion of infra­struc­ture and sewage systems: the pathogen content of drinking-water samples is 16% (the universal water safety norm rec­om­mended by inter­na­tional standards is 1%). … It has been estimated that the health status of nearly 40% of those suffering from chronic diseases has dete­ri­o­rated as a result of the reduction in health-care services.

Hamas isn’t exactly soundly managing the Gazan economy, but that’s because there is barely any Gazan economy to manage. Agri­cul­tural exports–all exports are effec­tively banned, the seaport is unusable. Remember that. Write down the facts above and repeat and repeat and repeat them. Gaza is not Haiti and doesn’t have to be Haiti to be under unac­cept­able economic embargo. The closure policy is unac­cept­able because it’s gra­tu­itous, it’s self-conscious state-terrorism.  It’s intol­er­a­ble. Full stop.

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Gisha on the “easing of the blockade” for people

Via Gisha:

As dis­cus­sion of “easing” the closure of Gaza continues, restric­tions on movement between Gaza and the West Bank remain tighter than ever. Last week, the Defense Ministry announced that the “easing” would in no way expand criteria for travel of people between Gaza and the West Bank.

In an op-ed in Tuesday’s Haaretz, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens implies that the division between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has only to do with the very real obstacles presented by 40 kilo­me­ters (25 miles) of land and the political divisions that define the opposing ruling author­i­ties of the areas. In fact, Israel’s policy sep­a­rat­ing Gaza from the West Bank goes back long before the Hamas-Fatah split and is entrenched in every aspect of life. It is what prevents families from living together, even when a father is split from his children; it is what prevents a patient from seeking treatment in a Ramallah hospital, even when that treatment isn’t available in Gaza; it is what prevents a trader from shipping his wares to the West Bank, even when the Pales­tin­ian economy would seem to include the whole of the Pales­tin­ian territory; it is what prevents Fatma Sharif from studying at Birzeit Uni­ver­sity, even when the program she wishes to study does not exist in Gaza. It is what prevents movement between Gaza and the West Bank almost com­pletely, but allows for a one-way ticket from the West Bank to Gaza. It is why nearly 35,000 people living in the West Bank with “Gaza” written in their ID cards are afraid to leave the house for fear of forced removal. It is the subject of a new inter­ac­tive media tool called Safe Passage, www.spg.org.il, showing what is not new and not “internal” or “geo­graph­i­cal”, but rather inten­tional, about the sep­a­ra­tion of Gaza and the West Bank.

We encourage you to play, Mr. Arens.

Amira Hass adds: “Israel has achieved an almost total victory in its 20-year-old policy of severing the pop­u­la­tion of the Strip from the West Bank, to the point that this severance is not con­sid­ered part of the blockade.” By the way, it took me 8 hours to go the 40 kilo­me­ters from Gaza City to Egyptian Rafah. Richard Estes points out that Israel essen­tially confirms the anarchist argument against states. The Gazan borders confirm the anarchist argument for open borders, too. And to those cat­er­waul­ing about brown people defending them­selves: The guns aren’t coming in through the borders. They’re coming in from elsewhere, and Israel really does not give a shit.

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BP and the Ocean

We have not in fact yet returned to normal operating hours, and I know this isn’t about Palestine. Cross-posted from Truthout.

The news from the Deepwater Horizon cat­a­stro­phe keeps on worsening. First, we heard about a piddling 1,000 barrels per day. That number was from the Coast Guard. Then, there was a quick rise upward to 5,000 barrels daily. Then, rumors suggested about 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day was more likely. BP and Obama admin­is­tra­tion spokesper­sons alike hushed us: Fifteen-thousand barrels a day, folks. This is no Exxon Valdez. Don’t worry a bit! Of course not, why would we? Now, the gov­ern­ment and BP are admitting to the “range” of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, and, to quiet surging rage, have acqui­esced to a 20 billion dollar escrow fund. Perhaps, in several weeks, the escrow fund will be doubled and BP’s spokesper­son will start mumbling about the pos­si­bil­ity that their own higher-end estimates of 100,000 barrels per day are accurate, while BP engineers plunk increas­ingly complex Rube Goldberg devices down onto the streaming wound.

But imagine that none of it had happened at all. Imagine running the last 70 days backward. Marsh grasses dying from oil loaded with chemical dis­per­sants poisoning their roots coming back to life; seabirds turning from tar black to white; corpses of dolphins and whales floating backwards out to sea from the estuaries and wetlands in which they’d washed up, then, the rims of their blowholes clearing from the asphyx­i­at­ing oil; crabs suddenly coming back to life and scuttling around; ships speeding in reverse to their normal stations, the rubber con­tain­ment booms going back into the ships’ holds and the floors of the rubber rafts; the metal platform rising sturdily from the sea; the fire­fight­ing ships’ water hoses absorb rather than spray water. Then, the flames, instead of leaping out from the exploding rig, leap back into it and disappear; the oil, blowing out in brown-black clouds deep under­wa­ter, slowly getting sucked into the pipe and, then, the pipe seals shut and the machinery of deep-sea oil pro­duc­tion proceeds apace.

And, then, the Gulf of Mexico dis­ap­pears from the news, too. Maritime pollution is not the subject of near-daily edi­to­ri­als in the major news­pa­pers. The health of the seas is suddenly out of vogue. Meanwhile, all of the petroleum that’s lurking in emul­si­fied columns beneath the surface of the Gulf instead is incin­er­ated, trans­formed into CO2 (carbon dioxide). But at least the Gulf of Mexico is spared ecocidal levels of con­t­a­m­i­nants right?

Not right. Not even close.

Continue reading BP and the Ocean

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I am done with Matt Taylor. we now return to normal operating hours

Enjoy? Or something?  Cross-posted from Mon­doweiss. Here is Taylor flailing in response. It is sad.

At Mon­doweiss and elsewhere, a dis­cus­sion about “violence” versus “non-violence” has been taking place over the past month-or-so, since the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara, reveal­ingly joined recently by Nicholas Kristof. In the face of empirical and ethical decon­struc­tions of the argument for “prin­ci­pled” non-violence for Pales­tini­ans and the total abne­ga­tion of force by sol­i­dar­ity activists, Matthew Taylor has offered a lengthy rejoinder re-stating his case for the moral, ethical, and pragmatic efficacy of Pales­tin­ian non-violence. Taylor begins by defining “violence,” goes on to re-assert the utility of Gandhi, accuses me of mis-understanding Gandhi, condemns Pales­tin­ian violence, and moves on to a How-To Guide for the Pales­tin­ian Resistance.

Here’s Taylor defining “non-violence”:

Non­vi­o­lence is a powerful method to harmonize rela­tion­ships among people (and all living things) for the estab­lish­ment of justice and the ultimate well-being of all parties. It draws its power from awareness of the profound truth to which the wisdom tra­di­tions of all cultures, science, and common expe­ri­ence bear witness: that all life is one.

If we can’t define “non-violence” and “violence,” we can’t discuss them. Is the above a def­i­n­i­tion or non-sensical babble? The latter. No def­i­n­i­tion, no dis­cus­sion. Earlier, I suggested that it is not so simple to define “non-violence” and “violence,” a sug­ges­tion that the gob­bledy­gook above inad­ver­tently confirms. Try a very quick thought exper­i­ment. I am in a room with a man holding a gun to my head. I have a stick in my hand with a spike in it. There is another person in that room. If I refuse to use force against that man by hitting him—possibly lethally—with my stick, he will kill me, then kill the other person. If I kill him, I will save the other person and myself. What kind of “non-violence” causes excess violent deaths and redounds to violence? The theorist raises his hand, quavering: “There are excep­tions!” Of course there are. Otherwise the tension between theory and ethics would simply rip the argu­men­ta­tive fabric apart. Academic non-violence theory provides for excep­tions in the case of sudden and over­whelm­ing force. More col­lo­qui­ally, self-defense, taking its cue from common sense and inter­na­tional law. What “prin­ci­pled non-violence” mainly means in practice is the refusal to use bodily-harming force except when con­fronted with a deadly threat against which there is no other way to resist.

That exception makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the principle—building an ethical and moral firewall between a per­mis­si­ble exception for self-defense in the face of immediate, corporeal danger and an exception for self-defense against the struc­tural violence of colo­nial­ism, occu­pa­tion, or cap­i­tal­ism. Espe­cially, this does not make sense when the goal is the min­i­miza­tion of human suffering. The dif­fer­ence is essen­tially aesthetic—there’s no ready-to-hand alter­na­tive to violence in self-defense when the threat is manifest and present, despite the theorist’s aesthetic pref­er­ence for militant non-violent practice, the inverse of fascist war-fetishizing. Despite the abstract grace of the theory, it needs an exception to shoehorn it into reality.

Continue reading I am done with Matt Taylor. we now return to normal operating hours

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