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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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