Nadine Gordimer--South African, Jewish, Nobelist--is under pressure to boycott a writers' conference in Israel that she had signed up to appear at next month. (Thus spake Haaretz, no it's not in the American press.) Looks like she'll boycott.
On Thursday, Ambassador Gillerman bragged about all the artists and writers Israel sends out into the world. He spoke of a book fair that Israel had lately sponsored, in Europe as I remember. Israel was also a sponsor of the Telluride Film Festival, which I attended last summer. This is an important part of Israel's outreach. Sponsoring the arts gives Israel a good name in elite circles, deflecting pressure from the very community you would expect to lead opposition to apartheid conditions in the West Bank.
Two British Jews urging Gordimer to stay home talk about the Nakba. Good for them, Nakba consciousness on the rise. They write, "The whole of Palestinian civil society has called for a cultural boycott of Israel." Gordimer opposed apartheid in South Africa. Sure hope she doesn't go.
It would be a great tragedy and travesty for Nadine Gordimer to withdraw from an artistic event.
Two points about it:
1. The artistic community within Israel is VERY progressive and constitutes a large portion of the dissenting community and solidarity with Palestinian humanity.
2. The input that will get Israel to change is involvement, interraction.
If Israel was parallel to South Africa, that of a small minority controlling a large majority, in which majority rule was in fact "just", then the question would be a different one.
In Israel/Palestine, the population is currently a Jewish majority, and MAJORITY rule now would result in some suppression of Palestinian rights, and certainly in the rejection of Palestinian national aspiration.
With a 51-49% majority/minority relation, either nationalism prevailing would result in a LARGE minority suppressed.
I personally consider the suppression of 49% to be UNJUST.
I personally would think much less of Nadine Gordimer if she took the conforming position of obeying the official left, rather than the free-thinking position of supporting the Israeli free-thinking sector.
Israel gets PR benefit from sponsoring international artistic events BECAUSE it routinely sponsors arts, not as a front.
A much more progressive approach would be to insist that Palestinian and Arab authors be invited (I don't know one way or another if they have or not).
Wouldn't you think so Phil?
Further,
At the event she will have the opportunity to speak her mind, and refer to Palestinian authors in particular, just as she did as an anti-apartheid activist.
When I ran Green Island Productions (producers of unabridged audiobooks on progressive themes), with the verbal support of Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, we began an African writers series. We were not able to acquire rights to any of Gordimer's works, but did agree to produce two works by Andre Brink.
The company folded due to my serious illness in 1996, before we began production on the Brink, Ousmane, Achebe, Emecheta, Ngugi Wa Thiongo works.
We did briefly correspond with Nadine Gordimer.
She should speak in the belly of the whale if she regards it as such, rather than be effectively silenced except for her "none of the above" single word.
No, Richard, I think she should boycott it. However, I am not dogmatic about totality of boycotts, rather the opposite. If it were up to me to stage-manage the reconstruction of the jewish-israeli cultural psyche, I would first of all devote a lot of effort to knocking it off-balance, and then try and recenter it on a lower level of self-infatuation. This is why my cultural level of reference in jewish-israeli culture is the punk rock scene:
link to niqnaq.wordpress.com
.
During the apartheid era, the cultural boycott of South Africa was rather effective. The country is physically isolated from the rest of the developed world. Being shunned in international academic, cultural and sports events made them feel even more isolated — and deservedly so.
Israel is not as physically distant, but it is nevertheless surrounded by neighbors who are either cool or openly hostile. Cultural isolation, along with cutting the unjustified American aid, would cure Israeli belligerence in a hurry.
According to an attorney named Christine Qunta, writing in the Cape Argus last year, in 1990 Nadine Gordimer "announced in the Herald of Zimbabwe that she thought the time for the cultural boycott was over. This notwithstanding that the broad liberation movement, which fought long and hard for the cultural boycott, had not decided that it should be terminated."
http://www.capeargus.co.za/general/print_article.php?fArticleId=3842614
Gordimer likely was reacting to the unbanning of the ANC and Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990. But the first democratic vote with black participation, resulting in Mandela's election, wasn't held until 1994. Was it really Gordimer's call to advocate dropping the boycott — in a foreign newspaper, no less — four years before arduous negotiations finally solidified the country's multiracial political settlement?
In any case, Nadine Gordimer has a highly focused understanding of how cultural boycotts work. She's going to have to address the issue head-on now.
The goal of anti-apartheid agitation was specific and unified. "One person one vote" in a state that EVERYONE regarded as an integrity. No design, no negotiation as to the jurisdiction of the state was up.
The ONLY question was whether a racial minority were the only ones allowed to vote, or whether all were allowed to.
It was a genuine PRO-democracy movement.
That is NOT the question with Israel/Palestine. The jurisdiction of hte state is not clear as to what is agitated for. A just two-state (rather than a rump state), or a single democratic state (with the likelihood of very violent civil war). Dissent in this case is only "anti", not "pro" anything.
And "anti" in a pressure cooker.
Only if the dissent was very specific, and there was global concensus as to what the goal of the dissent was (and that it was just), then it might be effective.
Otherwise, the dissent is just rage, not activism.
The situations are NOT parallel, and to apply "medicine" that worked in one, is likely to poison the other.
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" 'One person one vote' in a state that EVERYONE regarded as an integrity."
Ever heard of Transkei? Venda? Ciskei? Bophuthatswana? South Africa had denationalized the bantustans and the people living within them. It was NOT "an integrity" when Nelson Mandela emerged from prison in 1990. Here's what it looked like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Southafricanhomelandsmap.png
The bantustans were not internationally recognized, just as Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Israel's security wall are not internationally accepted. But — as with the Palestianian territories — the bantustans served to exclude an unwanted group from nationality and voting.
Even the provinces of South Africa were reconfigured after the bantustans were reintegrated, after four years (1990-1994) of political negotiations. There were four provinces; now there are nine. Look it up in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_South_Africa
Israel will face the same border drawing issues, in regard to the occupied territories, that South Africa faced in reintegrating the bantustans. Like South Africa, Palestine was broken up into pieces, and may yet reintegrate.
Rump state for the PALS or Civil War. Who is Henry Fleming here?
Jim,
You do still get my point that South Africa and Israel/Palestine are FAR from parallel.
That there was concensus as to the objectives of the boycotts.
And, that there is NONE associated with proposed boycotts of Israel.
And, that the medicine that worked (its hard to know exactly what worked) with South Africa, may harm severely.
Boycotts themselves are an intervention, a collective punishment.
If the goal is very clear, and there is a path, maybe a collective punishment is warranted to make a greater good.
Boycott born of political rage though seems to me to be more of "lets guess to see what effect this chemical will have on the patient. Maybe it really is a medicine".
During South African Apartheid some U.S. companies operated in South Africa under the "Sullivan Principles," named for a Black American who promulgated a list of rules which gave equal value to Black workers within the company which applied them. But the Sullivan Principles proved to be nothing but a fig leaf, since the companies were BOLSTERING the South African economy, Sullivan Principles or no. Eventually Sullivan himself announced that the only way to conform to the Sullivan Principles was NOT to operate in South Africa at all until Apartheid was ended.
The same applies to Nadine Gordimer. Attending the event will only bolster Israel's image. The only way for people of conscience to win the rigged game that Israel is offering them is to refuse to play.
No, Richard, you are just playing with words. Unlike Bill "Sword of Gideon" Pearlman, you seem to be fairly sincere, but you are devoting far too much attention to rhetoric and far too little to substance.
Talking of boycotts, it is my opinion that both "Haaretz" and the unpleasantly-named "Guardian" are now following technically fascist editorial policies, and should be boycotted. I consider that people like Richard Silverstein are lending pseudo-left credibility to them, by engaging in the charade of "debate" and "comment":
Wow cool map Jimbo…
Here's another you might like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rhodesialand.png
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Rhodesia
Rabbi Richard Witty,
In the United States,the population is currently a Christian majority,and MAJORITY rule now would result in some suppression of Jewish rights,and certainly in the rejection of Jewish national aspirations.
Rabbi Richard Witty,
In the United States,the population is currently a Christian majority,and MAJORITY rule now would result in some suppression of Jewish rights,and certainly in the rejection of Jewish national aspirations.
"No, Richard, you are just playing with words."
Think about it further Rowan.
Pressure without a path is just pressure.
What is YOUR goal of the dissent Rowan?
Is the dissent to get to one-person one-vote in a single state from sea to river or to get to 67 borders (or minor modification by mutual consent)?
What is the world agitating for?
So far, all I hear is the complaint, but not the goal.
I get your point, Richard. Hard to know what the whole world is agitating for, but it seems to me the largest consensus is a split on the 67 borders; that has been the official policy of the USA not honored by anyone except in the breach, i.e., by facts-on-the-ground creep.
It's also true that the wrong medicine may be worse.
Are any historical models useful?
A combination of them?
What's better, partition or a bi-national, democratic state that represents all of its inhabitants equally before its law, regardless of race or religion? According to Ravinder Kaur, the partition into India and Pakistan resulted in a violent territorial rupture in 1947 and its legacy reveals partition to be conceptually flawed as a solution to political antagonism.
Yet, the desired unmixing was achieved in the exchange of population between Greeks and Turks in 1923, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from east-central Europe in 1944-49.
Lots of eggs were broken to make those omelettes.
It appears to me post-1994 S Africa is a closer model.
Is Iraq relevant? Is it better to divide up Iraq three ways as Joe Bieden advocated? Or try to reunite Iraq, but with a democratic face as the US is pushing now?
My goal is to find some way of "becoming a Jew" without sucking rabbinical dick, Richard.
or, if that turns out to be forbidden by universal agreement of all "Jews," then to use the very fact that all "Jews" – even the non-religious ones – agree upon the impossibility of it, to demonstrate logically that the "Jewish religion" is merely a camouflage for simple racial supremacism. No one before me seems to have had the moral courage to address this simple fact, probably because they have internalised the disguised racism of "Judaism" without daring to think about it, or because they feel no attraction to Jewish culture or Jewish life unless they are attracted by the "religion," which boils down to the same thing. They interpret "conversion to Judaism" as a ritualistic way of being adopted into "the Jewish people," which is a euphemism for "the Jewish race" – a necessary euphemism, since there is no "Jewish race," except in the minds of racist Jewish pseudo-scientists, analogously to what happens with "white race" pseudo-scientists, whose only aim is usually to form alliances with Jewish racist pseudo-scientists, in the hope that they can rebuild the white imperialist mindset of the nineteenth century.
This is the real explanation for the power of the Jewish lobby, it has nothing to do with conspiracy to gain and exploit unfair access, as most of you seem to think. Such unfair access if it existed would simply be a reflection of unfairly disproportionate Jewish wealth, the existence of which is nothing but an anti-Semitic canard.
I apologise if my logic is too complex for you, or if you unable to tell when I am being sarcastic, when I am being ironic, when I am being dialectical, and when I am just stating my own feelings.
Forget being an official Jew.
Who are you?
It doesn't matter if you have a foreskin or not.
If you wander in the wilderness persistently trying to figure that out, and are always reluctant to come to an easy consclusion, are always aware of lingering doubts, that's what it means to be a man who yet has to get up the next day. Do not unto others as you would not want done to you. Don't give one a crappy tie just to perform a good mask ritual. Do onto others as you would have them do to you. But don't give one a tie just because you'd like to have it without checking out first if that one has the same taste as you.
In American power politics (as well as in all Diaspora Jewish history), this is not a canard: Money talks.
I think you got it wrong Rowan.
The Jewish religion contains multiple interpretations of every concept that you could provide, radically different interpretations.
For example, the term "chosen people" for some means some entitlement, some innate superiority. For most that actually engage the thinking, it means responsibility.
you mean, it entitles you to be sanctimonious about your own racism. Pity you don't have the moral sense to see that – any of you.
I feel sufficiently pissed off now that I shall express this categorically : "Jewish identity" is NOTHING but disguised racism. There is NO other "Jewish identity."
Hannah Arendt, who is the closest thing I have to a guru at the moment, never disputed this. All she said was that people who happen to have been born Jewish shouldn't be exterminated because of it, and that re-territorialising "the Jews" would eventually lead to their normalisation as a nationality. You would know, if this ever happened, because it would become as meaningful for me to say that I want to "become a Jew," as it would for a Jew to say he wanted to "become an Englishman," utterly irrespective of religious beliefs or lack of them. To its credit, the "Church of England" recognises this, providing one isn't too blatant about it. In this respect, I suppose we owe John Locke a vote of thanks – though in fact I do have religious sensibilities, so I find Locke's ironically entitled book, "The Reasonableness of Christianity" absolutely disgusting to read. If one has to be religious, I think one should make a meal of it, like Kierkegaard. There is no reason why I shoulnd't end up doing just that – in my own time – after all, I am fascinated by Jewish kabbalah. What I reject is the idea that this should be the criterion for Jewish identity, and if you were educated in the social sciences you would see my logic, though you would still hate it, because it undermines your self-conceit.
In fact, the obnoxious racist posturing of the modern rabbinates is a conscious or unconscious adaptation to the herzlian-zionist logic, which calls for the so-called "leaders of the Jews" to deliberately make "the Jewish people" universally hated. In Herzl's theory, as elaborated over subsequent decades, this deliberately induced "anti-Semitism" serves as the fuel for zionist power. The logic here is the same as the old logic of the diaspora "Jewish leaders," who made their own communities hated, and then ran to the local gentile rulers for aid, offering in return to do make "their Jews" do the most unpopular jobs, like tax collection and bailiffry, while allowing the gentile rulers to pose as "humane protectors against the mob." Nothing so far has changed, except that it is done through a central State, rather than through local communities. For this reason, it is futile to imagine you can wash your hands of zionism – the hatred for zionism is the hatred for Jews, unchanged in substance, still deliberately provoked by your own "leaders."
Of course, as Jews, you know this. But you are heavily conditioned by the powerful force of mortal fear to react with shrill cries of horror if anyone ever says it. Look what happened to Arendt!
I really need to go offline, I haven't slept for days. But I can't resist pointing out one of the advantages of my position – you can't call it "anti-Semitic" without engaging in a process of definition and redefinition that will leave you looking even more ridiculous than I have allowed myself to look.
You should go off line Rowan.
Be careful about what you put out into the world. You have an affect.
Judaism is a wonderful path in life. For those that take it seriously and really dive in, it is a means of great service to the world, and great peace resulting from that.
There are ways to approach it that are not particularly adventurish spiritually, more getting along and conforming. And, there are ways to approach it that are ethically courageous and creating great light in the world.
One of the purposes of the conforming and community accountability element is to ground the practice in sobriety and reality, rather than ideology and fantasy.
Granted that many don't do that. The hilltop youth for example regard the fight to physically annex as part of the messianic process, even when it radically conflicts with the written commandments. They infer and rationalize a lot.
Many that dissent have never gotten as far as to actually talk respectfully to a practising Jew.
It is difficult, as many are very sensitive to the prospect that what they are candid about will be used for malevolent and/or misrepresentative purposes.
Its hard to get the trust of a practitioner, but it should be possible to find rabbis that are willing to share their spiritual life, and the Jewish community life, if they get the sense that you are interested in being a good neighbor to them.
In my view, Richard Witty does not get what Rowan Berkeley is driving at, and it is this: While the higher moral Jews strive for
a higher humanity, the lower Jews make the status quo; they are more practically powerful, so we have the usual state of affairs.
Let's look at VP Chaney and Ambasador Gillerman. Makes one want to puke. Makes Goering roll over laughing. It wouldn't matter except we have a USA election coming up,
I'm glad you see that I am "getting at" something, Charles.
I copmpletely deny the truth of Richard's claim. It is literally CENTURIES since "Judaism" as such has contributed anything useful or even INTERESTING to humanity.
Now returning to matters of more general interest, I suggest that you open the Haaretz web page, and see if you can distinguish the "news" from the "propaganda." I see no "news" on it at all, right now. Instead there are thinly veiled propaganda messages, such as the views of the Air Force chief on the resemblance between Ahmadinejad and Hitler. The only reason that the few good journalists employed there are allowed to present the occasinal article of interest is to make the newspaper appear to be something other than a fascist propaganda organ.
Yes, I said "fascist." I cannot yet speak about the hebrew-language Haaretz – I don't doubt that it is a real newspaper, since Haaretz's hebrew-speaking have to need for or interest in fascist propaganda. But the english-language edition is in my view a fascist organ, like the London "Guardian," and for exactly the same reason, which has nothing do to do with "jewishness" – it is the result of the fact that both "newspapers" articulate the fascist line of the so-called Second or "Socialist" International, to which both the British and the Israeli Labor Parties belong. The entire Second International is fascist, now, though when it became so is hard to say. I think that I am entitled to call it "fascist" because, unlike the explicitly rightist organs, Haaretz and the Grauniad are entirely devoted to providing a systematic deception wrapped up in pseudo progressive stylistic trimmings.
Note please that as usual I have clearly explained why what I am saying isn't "anti-Semitism."
On the other hand, as usual, JPost contains REAL NEWS, and it is much easier to decode, since it makes no attempt to dishonestly wrap its views in "progressiveness."
check this – it is a fairly accurate update on the diplomacy around the Gaza problem:
My contempt for Haaretz has now become so total that I am beginning to wonder whether some of the claims JPost has been consistently making for weeks might not in fact be true, such as that Hamas is deliberately and systematically appropriating all the fuel that comes through Nahal Oz.
I find it hard to dialog with someone that says
"It is literally CENTURIES since "Judaism" as such has contributed anything useful or even INTERESTING to humanity."
How would you know, Rowan?
Let me give you one example of great recurring service that Judaism gives to humanity.
That is shabbat. The orthodox I know (in-laws, and friends of my son) consume NO fossil fuels for 24 hours every week. They don't turn on a computer. They don't drive a car. They even turn off the heat to their house.
Me, All I do is entirely refrain from work, and try to drop any defensiveness or resentment.
Mine is mostly a gift to myself and family, more than a reduction on the pressures to go to war over oil (though Shabbat isn't practised for exactly that reason, more to give the whole world a breather, I guess thats similar).
Richard you are just a bigot, I am going to ignore your attemopts at provocation from now on, and continue to enjoy the rare luxury of being honest.
Now, if anyone wants to see some real journalism, they could look at Johann Hari's article in the London Independent, which discusses the tidal waves of sewage that poison the Gazan population, quotes Ilan Pappe, etc: