During Tuesday night’s “Jewish perspectives on the BDS campaign” debate in New York, the audience had the opportunity to make comments or ask questions. Esther Kaplan, the moderator of the debate and co-host of WBAI’s Beyond the Pale, called on me, and I had a question for the opponents of BDS.
Throughout the discussion, J.J. Goldberg, the columnist for the Forward, and Kathleen Peratis, a J Street board member, emphasized the need for solutions that would “work” to end the occupation. Goldberg made reference to the “peace process” and the 2003 Geneva Accord, seemingly saying that the way to settle the conflict was through dialogue and negotiations.
My question went something like this: The so-called “peace process” that you reference roughly started in 1991, with the Madrid Conference, and we’re now in the year 2010. That’s about 20 years. It appears that the “peace process” has failed and that negotiations have led to nowhere, and that was due to the Israeli refusal to accept a viable two-state solution. I said that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are willing to accept a Palestinian state in only 22% of historic Palestine. Israel, it seems, wants it all.
So, if negotiations have failed, why do you oppose BDS as a tool to end the occupation? BDS is, in fact, slowly working; it hasn’t had a huge impact economically, but that’s not the whole point, as Hannah Mermelstein, a panelist in favor of BDS, pointed out. Mermelstein said that an important part of BDS was that it was an educational tool as well, and that it’s opening up the discourse on Israel/Palestine. The Israeli government is deeply worried about this growing movement, as evidenced by the hysterical reports coming out of the Reut Institute and the latest draconian bill in the Knesset that would criminalize BDS.
Goldberg responded to me by saying something like this (I don’t remember it word for word): The peace process really only went on for less than a decade, during the Oslo years. The negotiations didn’t fail because of the Israelis; no, it was the Second Intifada and the suicide bombings directed at Israeli civilians that killed the peace process. The intifada put the nail in the coffin of the Israeli Left, and now the Israeli public believes that there is no one to negotiate with.
I didn’t get a chance to respond directly, but if I did, I would have said something like this: Mr. Goldberg, it seems that you are omitting some very crucial facts about the Oslo years. During the 1990s, Israel relentlessly continued to colonize the West Bank and Gaza. The occupation, and all of its mechanisms of oppression, didn’t end; Israel just outsourced the responsibilities it wanted to throw off its shoulders to the Palestinian Authority, which, under the boot of Israel, was never a fully functioning government. The Oslo years were more about “normalizing” the occupation rather than ending it.
Yes, the Second Intifada was bloody, but let’s not forget that the Second Intifada began as a nonviolent popular uprising. It only turned violent after Israel brutally suppressed the uprising, firing 1.3 million bullets into the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israeli security forces were directed to "fan the flames", as Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar reported in 2004.
As John Dugard wrote in a 2008 U.N. report, the violence perpetrated against Israelis during the Second Intifada “must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation. History is replete with examples of military occupation that have been resisted by violence - acts of terror.”
I think the boat that Goldberg is on has sailed, and that the two-state solution is dead. Soon, Zionism and the idea of an ethnically exclusivist state that denies the rights of its indigenous inhabitants will run out of gas. The BDS movement is being fueled by the fire of history, and will end with justice for Palestinians.
At the moment, I’m sitting in my office in Jerusalem, that is about 100 meters from the Hillel Cafe, where three people were killed (one a young woman the night before her wedding) by a suicide bomber in 2003. A bit further down the road there’s a plaque in remembrance of 8 people killed in 2004 on a city bus that was blown up.
I’m a leftist, my heart pains for all the suffering in Israel/Palestine (I have videod many times in Niilin and Bilin for a documentary I’m making, including interviewing a Palestinian activist who was subsequently killed by a rubber bullet), but—–
it’s useless to simplistically play the blame game as you do here: For almost anyone who has had their kin’s blood spilled by violent acts by “the other side,” mostly what they feel is fear that this kind of violence might happen again. Any Israeli who lived here during the intifada wants to feel 100% sure that it will not happen again.
Israelis look at Lebanon and see the total hypocrisy of the UN supposedly preventing new Syrian missiles being brought to Hizbollah – approx. 20,000 more missiles have been brought in since 2006.
So again, to comment that in the chain of violence Israel is always the one that instigates the next round – is useless, unless you really enjoy keeping score.
If you think that BDS pressure alone will change Israeli behavior (even if it opens up discourse, which is a great thing), you’re just a pie in the sky armchair blogger. What MIGHT change Israeli behavior is the carrot as well as the stick: if Israel is given security assurances (unfortunately the U.S. is the only one still trusted by most Israelis) and probably U.S. troops on the ground in parts of the West Bank for several years, there may be some small chance that this tragic stalemate will change.
I think rather than getting involved in sexy international BDS activism, most Americans would do better
1. figuring out ways to break the stranglehold AIPAC has on American politicians via its lobbyists
2. pressuring Obama to get involved.
Check out my trailer here:
link to heartoftheother.com
harveystein,
You lost your case soon as you started whinning about Lebanon aquiring more arms etc. as if the ‘other’ has no right to protect themselves – only Israel does.
Also, I’d like you to consider that the very spot where you sit in your cozy apartment, no doubt is a spot where palestinian blood and tears were shed in ’48 and ’67.
You’re kinda only one foot in the waters of justice, harveystien.
Oh well: granted that zionism has that kinda insidious stanglehold on the moral sensibility of the jewish people.
You’re a fair example of how Israelis will never be free of their ‘Palestnian problem’ till they’ve liberated themselves TOTALLY from every zionist thought-tentacle strangeling their futures.
I think the hypocrisy of the UN, specifically the permanent members of the Security Council, relates to them not addressing the huge flow of arms and military equipment to the IDF from the US, while dribbling on about Hezbollah getting arms from Syria and Iran. Let’s not forget Hezbollah is a direct by-product of Israel’s bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when the IDF indiscriminately slaughtered Lebanese civilians in the tens of thousands and the Shi’ite group formed in response to this.
Stein’s pov is Israelicentric, but his recommendations are right on.
potsherd,
Nothing wrong with Harvey’s recommendations – as part of a combined effort that includes direct action against Israeli human rights violations (as well as a whole lot of other stuff).
Darn it potsherd my old pal, how is it possible to break the lobby’s hold on congress?
Campaign finance reforms are NOT gonna happen. Will enough American citizens ‘wake-up’ and threaten to redirect their vote away from aipac-brown-nozing politicians? I doubt it. Can we strengthen the pro-Palestinian lobby? Forget that dead horse!!
Yet, in today’s internet age, zionists are finding it not so cushy no more. Seems to me that this in itself, activities on the internet that is, is having more of an accumulative positive effect on the ‘case for Palestine’ than anything else tried out before. By successfully exposing the lies, the mass murders and swindles of the Israeli regimes (all of them!), the Palestinians are in effect bypassing congress altogether and going right to the ‘heart and mind of the free and peace-loving globe’, who are in turn turning to their own politicians and saying: please stop Israeli crimes, this is OUR wish and you must follow it and not follow what America dictates you on the Israel issue.
Yes, not only is Israel under international pressure to ‘correct’ it’s behavior, but the USA too is under pressure to do ‘some degree of right’ before the last semblance of it’s influence and power in the region go to hell in a zionist basket.
This is the planet’s new political mood, potsherd. It’s all about GLOBAL PEOPLE POWER, not lousy, corrupt politician power.
Global People Power (GPP) is the new negotiator at the international table, all thanks to the internet. GPP will continue to grow and collect momentum and a new breed of citizen-politicos it will keep birthing.
My point is, it doesn’t seem like you need politicians to directly affect change anymore – more specifically, globally. Strangely, we woke up one day and discovered that the ‘me me me’ age that began in the early 80′s (remember yuppydom being the religion of the day?), went out with our collective depression over Iraq and having to see/hear/read about so much death and destruction of ‘ordinary’ civilian lives. It seems to me that we’re in a brand new ‘electronified’ and evolving era of doing politics. With every passing day, our problems are not solved but added to and citizens the world over are identifying with each other’s ongoing problems and saying to their politicians in unison: THE STATUS QUO IS UNSUSTAINABLE!
The success of the flotilla is giving a lot of down-trodden people all over the world some creative ideas on how to go about gaining their justice.
The internet here is the real hero.
The internet is the new Che Guevara.
The ANC had a slogan: ONE SETTLER. ONE BULLET. The same goes for les vernisage in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Did the so-called leftist Stein weep for all the WWII “Good Germans” who became collateral damage? Did he weep for the Afrikaaners? I’m just as much a Jew (if not more so) than him. But, the Israelies do NOT deserve our sympathies. They’re in this up to their eyeballs.
No that was not the slogan of the ANC who always advocated coexistence between ALL South Africans. It was the slogan of the PAC (the Pan African Congress) who were and continue to be far more militant.
OK, Taxi, Debonnaire, and Miss Dee Mena – you win. But notice how you’re STILL playing the blame game. You might be “activists”, but you’re not peacemakers. You’re ideologues, not pragmatic or practical.
(An ideologue is ruled by ideas, and all facts have to get squished into their preconceived ideas: Israel bad, others good). Ideologies are sexy, they definitely motivate people around the world – but they often cause much violence in the service of their ideas.
I wasn’t whining about Lebanon – only describing what’s going on in many Israelis’ heads. Ideologists aren’t really curious what’s going on in anyone’s heads except their own….
Of COURSE Hizbollah (and Hamas) have been stimulated, from the start, by both Israeli violence and cold Israeli strategizing – but knowing that, how does that bring us closer to peace?
Or maybe we don’t really want peace, but a “justice” that is really first cousin to revenge (a justice that has been “served” to those who deserve it, i.e. criminals).
Pray tell harveystein, how will YOU Israelis achieve an ENDURING peace WITHOUT equitable justice? Seriously guys, you have the upper hand and you STILL dont’ have a clue how to achieve peace with your neighbors – obviously.
Also, I don’t know about others here but I’m no ‘activist’ – I’m an unaligned citizen here to participate in the ‘the war of ideas’.
And no it’s a NOT a ‘blame-game’, it’s simply calling the spade a spade. You really gotta stop passing the bucket of blood to the Palestinian victim. I ask you to be brave and remove the zionist blinkers and look at the picture as a whole. Take responsibility – and this is crucial. Respect and acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of murdered Palestinians were all snuffed out in YOUR NAME.
Time to be introspective and high time for calculating a ‘reparation package’ to the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrians.
I think harveystein has many handles here. The phoneme structure of his sentences give him away.
i’m w/you MRW. so many little obvious clues.
Any Israeli who lived here during the intifada wants to feel 100% sure that it will not happen again.
this is code for what all the rightwingers say. basically you can have peace when WE are convinced we’ll be safe, which always comes around to…not yet. but mostly i listen to those little clues. people who tell you right where they are sitting (except curiously enough no one is ever sitting at the foreign ministries hasbara central). people who self identify as ‘leftists’ (which just so happens to be what rightwingers call us on the left tho i’ve never really met a leftie who self identifies as a ‘leftist’), my heart pains for all the suffering and i go to lots of demonstrations in bilin really i do but it just so happens YOU are not really serious about peace and YOU are an ideologue and YOU are just a pie in the sky armchair blogger unlike me of course who can speak for what israeli’s really think and even tho i’m so leftist i just happen to basically agree w/like…everything rightwingers agree with in terms of …BDS.
iow, trust me and don’t boycott israel. moving right along.
harveystein proclaims: Ideologists aren’t really curious what’s going on in anyone’s heads except their own…
Oh contraire, I, who is likely a leftist ideologue by any definition you accept, am absolutely fascinated with what is going on inside Israeli brains. I try to imagine myself in that space frequently. It is a dizzying experience. For example, I really do believe that a vast majority of Israeli Jews live in continuous terror about the existential threat and I believe that they really do believe that their lives will be improved if somehow they can convince the US to bomb Iran. The levels of paranoia are also something to behold. These are kinds of psychopathologies that are impervious to rational discussion and is why I believe a point has been reached where gentle persuasion will no longer work and brute threats like BDS are the only tools that can break down those mind sets. Harvey, I think we are on the same page.
I agree that there are times when some people seem more interested in revenge than peace, but a peace without some measure of justice isn’t what we should be aiming for. I also agree that Israelis have legitimate concerns about security, but their neighbors have greater concerns.
“Any Israeli who lived here during the intifada wants to feel 100% sure that it will not happen again.”
Well, I think what that means is that they hope that Palestinian violence never reaches them again. I don’t think the majority seems to mind the suffering they inflict on Palestinians. I do try to get inside the heads of Israelis and never having been there, I go by how they behave and they behave like 19th century Americans taking land from the Native Americans. And Americans haven’t changed that much. Americans, or many of us, are often clueless or indifferent to the suffering our foreign policy inflicts on others, but we become fearful, outraged, and incredibly self-righteous when someone inflicts violence on us. After 9/11 Susan Sontag made a basically innocuous statement (not even that “leftist”) in the New Yorker saying that we shouldn’t react stupidly and she was subjected to incredible vilification. People who actually went further and said that we have done worse things to others were regarded as subhuman. It’s my impression Israelis have more and more become like Americans right after 9/11.
“Israelis look at Lebanon and see the total hypocrisy of the UN supposedly preventing new Syrian missiles being brought to Hizbollah – approx. 20,000 more missiles have been brought in since 2006.”
The UN hasn’t been terribly effective at restraining Israel either. Have the Israelis noticed that? Anyway, which side has killed more civilians? Israel’s neighbors have much more reason to fear Israeli weapons than vice versa. And don’t tell me this is keeping score–it’s true and until Israelis realize it they’re not going to be partners for peace.
“So again, to comment that in the chain of violence Israel is always the one that instigates the next round – is useless, unless you really enjoy keeping score.”
Sorry, Harvey, but this is stupid. Israeli defenders constantly portray Israelis violence as a “response” to Arab violence and so long as they harbor this delusional view, of course they are going to be opposed to making peace with Arabs. I suspect that most Israel defenders believe their own propaganda and given what they believe, the conclusions they reach are quite logical.
Israel doesn’t want peace, doesn’t want justice. Israel wants impunity.
Harvey how can a solution be found unless Israel addresses the occupation, the settlements, the land and water expropriation, the racism towards Israeli-Arabs, its increasingly right-wing government, it’s excessive abuse of human rights, and takes the necessary steps to remedy this situation?
Choruses of Kumbaya and group hugs are not going to deal with the pertinent issues. Israel, like South Africa, is going to have to ‘fess up and deal with the root causes of the conflict. But it continues to avoid this by giving lip-service to peace talks and not taking the necessary action.
I don’t agree with harveystein, but I welcome him as a new voice to Mondoweiss and I hope he keeps commenting.
Did somebody mention Harvey Firestien? Oh yes welcome, I’m glad I don’t have to hear your graveley voice. Uhhnn, yes I’m left with the only suitably plausable explanation for oponents of BDS. That is they’re not making their aurguments in good faith.
James,
Harveystein is not a new voice here. He pops up from time to time, lectures the lot of us on how ideological, one-sided and ultimately anti-peace we are because we don’t accept his “some are more equal than others but my proactive heart bleeds” variety of truth, justice and the Israeli way.
Israel has always murdered Palestinians who resisted occupation and ethnic cleansing, whether the resistance was violent or non-violent. Neither death is more noble than the other.
How true you words, Les.
How very sad.
Since when is The Moral Cause Of Our Time (Mandela) an ideology? Hitler yearned for Peace, too, Harvey. Zionism is the scourge of the Earth, Nazi-ism with nukes. Who’s the ideologue?
When the strong desire “peace” it usually means something else. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. Tacitus.
I think Harvey has his heart and body in the right direction.
He is seeing on the ground the reality of Israel and the reality of Palestine, and actually working to make change.
He, like Phil, has committed his professional life to documenting both the injustices and the context of what is going on in Israel/Palestine.
Respect it.
Harvey’s films are a bit more positive than Max’s, though they speak of similar observations. They have a much greater promise of changing hearts and minds if seen.
Poor Harvey Stein. With Witty backing him, he’s doomed.
“Any Israeli who lived here during the intifada wants to feel 100% sure that it will not happen again.”
Some Israelis however, don’t want it to happen again to anyone:
1988 – Rabbis for Human Rights (Israel) founded
1994 – The Parents Circle (Bereaved Parents for Peace) founded
1997 – Israeli Committee against House Demolitions founded
2000 – Taayush (Arab Jewish Partnership) founded
(to name some of the more important Israeli peace and human rights groups founded in the wake of the intifadas)
if Israel is given security assurances
Do the Palestinians, who have suffered far more and are at far greater risk than Israelis, also deserve security assurances, or do they not love their children as much?
Whew! Roll up your blogsleeves – Pow! Bam!
Shmuel: Do I sound so freaking Israeli arrogant that your comments came out sounding equally so? Can an Israeli citizen still living in Israel and an Israeli living abroad still respect each other? All I was doing was voicing for a minute the concerns of Jews here (on a site where concerns of others are voiced predominantly) . OF COURSE Palestinians have suffered more greatly than Israelis. One way I like to look at it is – while all states, armed groups, and citizens in the region bear some responsibility, Israelis bear the most, so we need to be the LEADERS in peace (although with the current IL admin it’s hard to imagine) – because the Israeli military is maybe 50x bigger than Hizbollahs, 500X bigger than Hamas’. Maybe you and I should have a sulha?
Syvanen: so maybe we agree on the psychopathology metaphor… But would you then really suggest brute threats be the ONLY therapy applied? What kind of clinic do you work in?
Donald and others: my favorite Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, says that Israelis are like everyone else, “only moreso”. All groups are generally ignorant/desensitized to the suffering of others compared to suffering of their own. Israelis certainly have (Avnery’s phrase again) a “national autism” towards others. So yeah, some forms of BDS might help, if applied intelligently (not brute threats). But more humane forms of activism, like the Parents Circle (that Shmuel mentioned) are probably more profound ways of changing peoples’ mental habits.
In an hour I’m going to the weekly demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, which some of us think and hope may be the rebirth of the Israeli/Palestinian left. Hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis demonstrating together, forming face to face friendships, working groups, pooling energies. Come on down– I’ll post video of it here in next few days: link to heartoftheother.com
Do I sound so freaking Israeli arrogant that your comments came out sounding equally so?
Your comment on Alex’s article goes like this:
1. Israeli victims.
2. Some sort of equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian losses.
3. Let’s not “play the blame game”
(Me: a theoretical possibility were the violence and injustice not ongoing)
4. Israeli fears.
5. Hizbollah acquiring arms in Lebanon.
(Me: reasonable behaviour considering the devastation Israel wreaks in Lebanon every few years; and nary a word about Israeli armaments – far superior in quantity and quality.)
6. Equivalence: “chain of violence”, not always Israel’s fault.
7. Straw man: “If you think that BDS pressure alone will change Israeli behavior…”
8. Israel’s security concerns and need for “assurances”
(Me: Security assurances must be given all around – more to those who are more at risk. They are not a “carrot”, but a sine qua non for any solution.)
9. Smear against BDS activists: “sexy international BDS activism”
10. Don’t blame or pressure Israel; take it up with the US government and US lobbies.
So yes, I found your comment arrogant and self-righteous. I’ll let you decide whether my response was equally so.
11. Have a look at my movie about Arabs confronting … Jewish suffering.
(Me: Reminds me of the old joke – That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?)
OK Shmuel. No sulha. Man the guns!
How melodramatic. It either hugs and kisses or trench warfare? I don’t like your POV, and apparently you don’t like mine. Zeh hakol. I think we’ll both get over it.