Exile and the Prophetic: Red lines

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Wednesday there was an important – and ironic – juxtaposition on the Mondoweiss website. Though specific to the Mondoweiss website, it’s emblematic to issues related to Israel/Palestine. When it comes to Jews, the war of ideas in the Middle East is hotter than ever.

Two stories, posted at different times, struck me. The first, posted early, and written by Jonathan Cook, was a report on the Israeli government’s calculation of quantities of food it allows entering Gaza. According to Israel’s own report, the calculation, specified in terms of calorie intake, was to keep Gazans hungry and malnourished but short of starvation. It’s an amazing story that has been documented in different forms for some time. Through Israel’s Freedom of Information Act, an Israeli human rights group, Gisha, recently secured the government’s secret document.

Founded in 2005, Gisha, in Hebrew, meaning both ‘access’ and ‘approach,’ is an Israeli not-for-profit organization that uses legal assistance and public advocacy to fight against Israel restrictions on Palestinians freedom of movement. As part of its legal work, Gisha represents individuals and organizations in Israeli administrative proceedings and courts. Gisha emphasizes freedom of movement because it sees it is a precondition for exercising other basic rights. Gisha’s work has a multiplier effect by helping Palestinians access education, jobs, family members and medical care

Since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel’s military has developed a complex system of rules and sanctions to control the movement of millions of Palestinians who under occupation. In the West Bank, Jeff Halper has called Israel’s system a ‘matrix of control.’ Though Israel has formally withdrawn from Gaza, obviously this applies to Gaza as well. Israel’s restrictions violate the fundamental right of Palestinians to freedom of movement which in turn violates additional basic rights: among them, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood and the right to family unity.

The calculation and control of food intake by an occupying power is horrible to contemplate. What Gisha found was a so-called ‘Red Lines’ document. This was drafted by Israel’s defense ministry in early 2008, just as the Israeli blockade of Gaza was tightened still further.

The defense ministry paper set forth proposals on how to treat Hamas-ruled Gaza as part of Israel’s attempt to update its traditional military deterrence principle to cope with a changing Middle East. Israel determined that the main challenge to Israel was from asymmetrical warfare. The ‘Red Lines’ document is part of a larger strategic initiative known as the Dahiya Doctrine. The name ‘Dahiya’ derives from a neighborhood of Beirut that Israel leveled in its 2006 attack on Lebanon.

Red lines – they’re all over the world. A dictionary definition of red lines: ‘A safety limit, as marked on a gauge.’ Everyone should know, however, that by the time you’re drawing red lines you’re already over the conceptual safety limit – humanly speaking.

The devastating precedents of controlling food are there for all to see. For Jews, the most obvious reference is the Holocaust. Students of the Holocaust know that corporate entities such as I. G. Farben used slave labor in plants strategically located adjacent to the death camps. To hold down costs and increase profits the nutritional needs of slave laborers was calculated. The calculation went something like this: How many calories does it take to keep a slave laborer in productive form and when, because of other debilitating factors, does that production decline so caloric intake become costly and wasteful?

The Nazis and their corporate partners did not want to invest resources in a slave laborer that had passed their productive labor time. At a certain – calculated – point in the laborer’s work life, it became more efficient to ship him off to his death. Better to invest his caloric intake in another newly arrived, healthy worker.

As we know from the debate in Israel, references to the Holocaust are found more often than in America. When used in America, the caution is not to compare what’s happening to Palestinians with the Holocaust. In Israel, the use of Holocaust imagery is sometimes reversed, as in the need to visit such an experience among Palestinians.

Whether the use of Holocaust imagery and terminology in Israel is hyperbole, it’s still striking. Cook cites an example of such imagery during the build-up to the Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008, when Matan Vilnai, an Israeli politician, warned that Israel was preparing to inflict on Gaza a “shoah,” the Hebrew word for Holocaust. He used the term in a positive way. Such a policy would teach the Palestinians a lesson.

Of course, the issue isn’t references to the Holocaust or even comparisons of Nazi and Israeli policies. The issue is Israeli policies vis-à-vis Palestinians. The ‘Red Lines” policy is predictable – and necessary – if Israel wants to permanently occupy, control and demean the Palestinian people.

The issue is occupation. Every occupation has its own logic. In this way, the Israeli occupation is no different than other occupations. Nonetheless, the journey of the Jewish people cautions against the logic of occupation with its own historical experience and, as well, with its prophetic legacy.

The second story was a statement instituting a new policy on the Mondoweiss website. The editors of Mondoweiss, Phillip Weiss and Adam Horowitz, will begin monitoring and excluding comments that denigrate Jews and Jewish culture. This applies to comments about Jewishness in Israel or in the Diaspora.

This decision came as result of the recent controversy over anti-Semitic comments posted from the Free Gaza Movement Twitter account. Weiss and Horowitz explained their decision this way:

That incident has prompted a lot of soul searching inside the movement for Palestinian human rights, because it showed that a significant part of the community wants to talk about Israeli policy in the context of Jewish history and Jewish identity, and do so in a highly critical manner. Clearly a lot of people, including many in our community, want to have these conversations and regard them as necessary to resolving the Middle East conflict. We don’t. We are tired of serving as a platform for this discussion, including in the comment section, and don’t see the conversation as a productive one. From here on out, the Mondoweiss comment section will no longer serve as a forum to pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.

Well put, I think, but since Jewish culture and religion – Jewish thought in general – is intrinsic to the discussion of Israel, the Holocaust, Palestine and Palestinians, the question remains whether such a discussion can be had without straying across the red lines of anti-Semitism.

Are the red lines of imposed hunger the same as the red lines of anti-Semitism? Not at all, at least not now. But they were once. And they have been other places as well.

Hunger as a weapon of war. One of the oldest weapons in history. For anyone to use it is a disgrace. For Jews to use it is a disgrace beyond words.

Anti-Semitism as a weapon of war. One of the oldest weapons in history. For anyone to use it is a disgrace.

Can Israel’s red line state policy be fought without crossing the red lines of anti-Semitism?

As elements of the Free Gaza movement – and elements of the BDS movement, too – prove, it’s easier said than done.

Vigilance is needed to overcome a historical barrier that has been millennia in the making.

How about ending both – state policies of hunger and anti-Semitism – at the same time? Could this be one of the hidden and most provocative challenges of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?