On Monday, I am going to an organizing meeting at the Brecht Forum, convened by Norman Finkelstein. The meeting is an attempt to jump-start a freedom march that will consist of thousands of people marching en masse from Egypt, through Gaza, to the Erez checkpoint. The idea is to open the border, end the siege. In Finkelstein’s description, “If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens — Israel can’t shoot.”
Sounds awesome, beguiling, inspiring, effective, helpful, humane, heartful, right? Apparently not. See, Finkelstein has fucked up. For one thing, he’s white. For another, he’s from the West. Thus organizing this march is an insult to the felt-subjectivity of the Palestinian fellaheen, a witheringly condescending, brazenly wrong-headed paragon of Orientalist arrogance, typifying the subalternization of the Palestinian people by the West, the “entelechy of universal reason,” in the obscurantist academese of Dipesh Chakrabarty.
This seems like a kind of unfunny send-up, a poor copy of David Lodge, maybe? I wish.
See, one of my favorite web-sites, Pulse, has recently added an addendum to their description of this event by one Marcy Newman. I don’t know Marcy. Marcy doesn’t seem to know Norman. Marcy writes, “ok so i have one more bit to add. the poster for this event which i just saw on facebook is a poster of finkelstein himself. is this not the essence of the white man leading the native? seriously disturbing.” I’m Disturbed Too–but I’m disturbed by holier-than-thou Leftist internecine warfare. Here I had been thoroughly convinced by Finkelstein’s coruscating essay on the relevance of Gandhi to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, which ends with this riveting coda:
The Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire once wrote, “There’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.” Late in life, when his political horizons broadened out, Edward Said would often quote this line. We should make it our credo as well. We want to nurture a movement, not hatch a cult. The victory to which we aspire is inclusive, not exclusive; it is not at anyone’s expense. It is to be victorious without vanquishing. No one is a loser, and we all are gainers if together we stand by truth and justice. “I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am not anti-any government,” Gandhi insisted, “but I am anti-untruth—anti-humbug, and anti-injustice.”[188] Shouldn’t we also say that we are not anti-Jewish, anti-Israel or, for that matter, anti-Zionist? The prize on which our eyes should be riveted is human rights, human dignity, human equality. What, really, is the point of ideological litmus tests such as, Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist? Indeed, it is Israel’s apologists who thrive on and cling to them, bogging down interlocutors in distracting and endless intellectual sideshows—What is a Jew? Are the Jews a nation? Don’t Jews have a right to national liberation? Shouldn’t we use a vocabulary that registers and resonates with the public conscience and the Jewish conscience, winning over the decent many while isolating the diehard few? Shouldn’t we instead be asking, Are you for or against ethnic cleansing, for or against torture, for or against house demolitions, for or against Jews-only roads and Jews-only settlements, for or against discriminatory laws? And if the answer comes, against, against and against, shouldn’t we then say, Keep your ideology, whatever it might be—there’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory?
For the rest, it deserves to be read and re-read, then read again. I thought that ending the siege should be the first priority of Americans in the Israel-Palestine solidarity movement; that the march could tear the siege down, that privileged Westerners would march at its front ranks so that the IDF would be chary about raking it with bullets and rockets (The IDF has not shown a great deal of care for Palestinian life, unfortunately, and that and only that is why Finkelstein envisions Chomsky, Jimmy Carter, and Desmond Tutu at the front of the march). Also: Heathlander is covering the effort. I’ll be at the meeting. Post-mortem (should that be post-natal?) late Monday.
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life is complicated. the shrill tone at this stage is not appropriate, because NF deserves a lot of credit for such an effort, and the concept is sound and timely.
BUT,
Just because it is a good idea doesn’t mean it is OK to carry it out in a manner that reinforces Western racism.
Shouldn’t such a campaign have a steering commitee on which the people of Gaza are effectively represented before it goes out? What if Israeli response to this campaign is not to shoot Noam Chomsky but to let them pass peacefully and then bomb Khan Younis? don’t the people of Khan Younis has a right to be consulted, consider the risk, decide that it is or isn’t worth it? Shouldn’t Palestinian grassroots organizers in the U.S. be involved? Why hasn’t NF taken the basic step of announcing this initiative publicly AFTER making these consultations and creating an initial skeleton of a leadership? Where is the awareness that the basis of the campaign is using class and race privilege? Where is this awareness reflected in how the campaign has been announced (with a picture of NF)? The ISM has been doing similar things for years, and has always been transparent and conscious about that; it isn’t THAT hard.
Please use your face time at the meeting to reduce the shrillness but also help NF take the wax out of his ears. This is too important, and in the end it will NF’s fault if this campaign becomes divisive.
Gabriel,
You might be interested in the following comment from someone else, which I thought much more intelligent:
“it is a noble effort towards ending the Gaza siege. However, the following are concerns I have:
1) First, I agree with this blog that in 1936 it was the one of the many initiatives towards non-violent civil resistance. I would suggest someone email Norman to remind him of these past efforts of civil resistance and in your opinion, outline what exactly failed with them.
2) I discussed this global march with my brother-in-law, who holds a PhD in French history, specializing in labor history–dissertation was on the unionization of the French coal miners. He worked extensively for years as a union organizer, mainly unionizing professors. He ran for the Wisconsin assembly–some battles he won others he failed. But according to him, assuredly Norman will have to seek a united force of Palestinians–this division is killing them. Hamas and Fatah must, even though you can argue they have tried many times, must come together.
Okay guys, let’s say, if Norm’s plan takes off, and you agree with his plan, how will all of the participating Gazans, assuming you are an amalgam of Hamas, Fatah, PLPF ( acronym correct? ) or non-party, going to all coordinate.
3) If all of the rivaling parties are able to come into agreement, there must be some representatives in New York to organize along with Norm and his group. I am assuming the headquarters will be in NY, and if it takes off there will be representatives in other states.
The above must be firmly settled and grounded before moving on to point 4.
4) There must be someone that represents you Gazans as the consensual group based on my point 3, who lives in the US and can work in solidarity with the group in New York or their affiliates in other states.
5)You need solidarity in numbers, drawing from all Palestinian solidarity movements in all countries (and I mean ones that WILL WORK TOWARDS THE COMMON CAUSE OF LIFTING THE SEIGE, Despite their differences).”
I’m happy to try to bring up these points in the meeting, which dovetail with yours (although I think NF probably did some work while in Gaza in terms of a skeletal leadership; we’ll see). I’ll get a report out for everyone’s benefit ASAP after.
I am the one who wrote those 5 points on gaza.08.blogspot.com. Is that where you extracted them. I emailed them to Norman. Although he responded to me he blew them off with some gibberish. If you go to that site, the ISM were quite disappointed with some of his comments. My take on it was he did not address these points. I was on the same delegation as Norman but was downstairs at another meeting, and missed the ISM meeting. Norman is not an organizer he needs help from you guys, but he is frightfully arrogant so I hope he listens. Try to push my points through.
Best,
Diane–if you need support I will be at my home all day tomorrow working on various projects.
Hey–
Norman mostly took a back seat and let Medea Benjamin handle the organizing. She wasn’t totally on top of the points you and Gabriel brought up, but others were, including people from Adalah-NY, several other Palestinians were of course making the best and most relevant points. I’m asking 2 friends who went with me for their notes then I’ll write up my impressions. norman isn’t an organizer but there were a lot of organizers there.
–max
Thank you for your general impression of the meeting. Medea can be quite forceful and effective, but I imagined, as she is new to the I/P conflict, would not be conversant with points that I advanced. Just glad there was some representation of my ideas and of course others that could elaborate further.
well, sorry, I guess I am just not intelligent
fucking internet/bad prose. i meant more intelligent than marcy’s, not yours.
No need to whitewash it. He is probably not intelligent.
LOL
LOL, will get you the boot here, watch out.
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