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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Just see that I sent another tweet that same day: On average, apartheid South Africa held abt 4,000 political/security prisoners @ a time. Israel usually holds more than 6,000.
I can't remember where I found the Israeli statistics. The South African statistics would have been from a book called "A Crime Against Humanity: Analysing the Repression of the Apartheid State", by Max Coleman; A publication of the Human Rights Commission of South Africa.
Somewhat off topic, but on the day of the Palestinian prisoner solidarity hunger strike I tweeted: Between 1963-1990 73 South Africans died in prison. Between 1967-2010 197 Palestinians died in prison.
My experience from living in Gaza part-time is that at grassroots level there is little/no support for the statehood bid. So that's one reason that I think there won't be protests or an uprising. This regardless of constant irritating propoganda on Fatah/PA media. Honestly, if you leave home, you run into newspaper adds for statehood bid. If you stay at home, some radio/TV is on plugging it. It's the first time in my life that I regret having learnt Arabic.
Sorry, sidetracked. I was going to say that Gaza is a lot more politicised than the West Bank at this stage, and they don't support the statehood bid. And believe me, it doesn't have anything to do with Hamas. Many kids in Gaza are unemployed, learning English, getting on Facebook and Twitter, connecting with international activists, organising politics discussion groups, etc. They don't support the bid because they have a highly developed understanding of what it is. The common attitude is that they want rights, not peace; and equality/dignity, not just statehood.
I suspect that the Palestinians in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon don't care much either because it doesn't have much to do with what they're campaigning for, namely right of return to the entirety of historic Palestine.
And the chance of getting a protest going in the West Bank, as much as it hurts me to have to say this, is near zero. The protests in Cairo, London etc. were bigger than the one in Ramallah last month when Israel bombed Gaza. I understand the reasons for West Bank and Israeli Palestinian apathy very well; I spent some time there during the second intifada and the price they had to pay was beyond anything any outsider can ever grasp.
Point? The people who are sufficiently motivated to put Egyptian-style people power behind the bid don't support it, and those who do support it are too apathetic.
I'll read it tomorrow, but as far as I can tell from skimming, (of course I always told my students not to do that), it is true that the report recommends that the naval blockade is legal and that it does not comment at all on the blockade as a whole. As far as I know, the official mandate was never made public, and I wouldn't be surprised if Israel made their cooperation conditional on the exclusion of everything other than the naval part of the blockade. They must have known then already that the ICRC judged the blockade to be illegal and that legal experts would struggle to come up with a coherent argument for it.
In other words, no one is allowed to discuss whether Israel is imprisoning the people illegally; only whether they are acting within the law by closing the windows of the room in which they're imprisoning the people. I cannot see how any legal person can take this seriously.
But as for a plan of action, here are next year's "flotilla" plans. Since the UN report excluded the blockade as a whole from the things they recommended as legal, activists in their thousands should march on the border fence between Israel and Gaza and take it down. Then maybe we can have an honest report on the whole blockade. since Uribe qualified this time, we should beg the Libyan rebels to spare Qaddafi for the next round.
Yup, Annie, it's kind-of awful, but everyone is almost more tense about what might happen than about what is happening. And the knowledge that no one around the world will do anything to help is one of the worst bits. We're without electricity in most areas; rumours have it that Israel hit a power station. So we're struggling to communicate with families outside and many people are too scared to leave their homes to communicate with neighbours. the sound of explosions is almost constant, a lot of it is Israeli planes breaking the sound barier, probably to unsettle us further. We never know when it's explosions and when just cocky IAF pilots. I saw a factory bombed this afternoon and two horrifically badly injured children. It's been quiet for a while now.
The US cannot function as a peaceful neighbour, look at their relations with south and central America. Israel itself cannot function as a peaceful neighbour, and I'm sure you won't want to apply your formula to them. I'm sitting in Gaza at the moment crapping myself, counting the dead and especially injured children, knowing that no one will help us or stop what is clearly coming. But yes, if you want to believe that statehood recognition is predicated on managing to be a peaceful neighbour, and that the EU and US apply this consistently, dig your head further into the sand. You're heading for middle earth.
Thanks, Miura, a nice Ronald Dworkin paragraph. Spot on accurate.
"If you mean negative generalizations about Jews, then yes, that’s hateful. If you mean harsh criticism of Israel and/or Zionism, too bad. If Arabs have to listen to criticism of their societies, and they should, Israel should get the same treatment."
Donald, this strikes me as very right. Holy crap, have you guys seen the Angry Arab tear into Saudi Arabia, Syria, et al.? That makes anything Mondoweiss says look very gentle. Or my African friends criticise some African countries very harshly, and rightly so.
But if you want to be justified in criticising Israel, you'd better spend some hours voicing your everlasting love for it first. Or, as Witty demanded on Phil's earlier post, one has to dilute one's criticism of Israel by expressing constant sensitivity to the history of anti-semitism. And if one does not tone down one's criticism, then one cannot be a legitimate interlocutor in the Israel debate.
It's precisely this expectation of Israeli exceptionalism that most Mondoweissers object to, so to demand that the exceptionalism is respected before the conversation starts is to leave one of our strongest objections unaddressed.
That said, I do agree with Max Ajl that Mondoweiss has made things difficult for itself by focussing on the Jewish vs others issue. The Israel question has become as explosive as it has because of the way in which it brings together money (rich vs poor), power (hegimonic societies vs the powerless), race (white vs black/brown), religion (Jewish and Christian vs Muslim), etc.
By focussing mostly on the Jewish issue, which Phil obviously does very sincerely from his conflicted relationship with his own identity, the debate on Mondoweiss has gotten factually somewhat less nuanced and has as a result gone into a space that threatens to open up the Jew vs others issue further than the Israel case warrants.
That's why these kind of questions that eee asked on Phil's earlier post can arise: "Why is Phil highlighting Jewish power? Jews in the US have power therefore…?"
Since I think that money plays a greater role in muting human rights concerns in the Israel-Palestine case, I wouldn't have to answer these kinds of questions. For me, being Jewish is relevant to the situation insofar as being a member of any identity group results in fact-free group-think. If Israelis had been Hindus, with their history of British colonial oppression and massacres, the situation would have been roundabout the same as it is now.
Unconvincing. Dennis Ross hasn't been failing, he has been succeeding. That's precisely why he still has the job.
Walt assumes that the US supports a two-state solution, which commits him to this strange idea that the US has kept a negotiator in the job who has been failing for 20 years, even though they've been desperate for a solution which he clearly can't deliver.
For various reasons, the US backs whatever Israel wants and opposes what Israel doesn't want. In that sense Ross has been successful. Accordingly, I suspect that if Israel decides to unilaterally withdraw from, and completely wash their hands of, a piece of occupied territories, the US would help them push UN member countries to recognise it as a Palestinian state.
I guess it's back to this odd idea that Walt and Mearsheimer (and many of you guys) defend that the US has been consistently and systematically and deliberately acted against its own interests for decades. It just does not make sense.
That Christopher Hitchens article is brilliant. Please, guys, read it, it's like the ravings of some senile 100 year old.
His basic assumption is that the flotilla activists work in harmony with Hamas. Then, for a bit of "deligitimisation", I imagine, he links Hamas with the Muslim Brothers. Then, for some more "deligitimisation", he links Hamas with the Syrian regime and their crackdown on the Syrian people. He thinks that it is necessary to ask the activists whether they support the Syrian regime's crackdown or the syrian protesters. (Has he missed the fact that the Syrian protesters have almost the whole Muslim brotherhood among them?)
then, after linking the activists with Hamas and linking Hamas with the Muslim Brothers and linking Hamas with the Syrian regime, he goes on to link the Syrian regime with Hizbullah who is, of course, linked with Iran. So since the activists are hereby obviously linked with Hizbullah, they are expected to have views on the Hariri murder. (At least he didn't ask their views on the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program.)
O, and then, since Hamas' charter makes reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the activists are expected to have views on this too, since all these connections with all these above groups suggest that they endorse the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Even if his initial assumption of flotilla cooperation with Hamas had been true (no evidence provided, of course), the rest of the article is utter crap.
1. The blockade weakens Gaza civil society by keeping them in poverty, thereby strengthening Hamas.
2. The activists want to break down the blockade that will strengthen civil society, thereby weakening Hamas.
Strange version of working in harmony with Hamas, isn't it? He should go work at Qaddafi TV.
Like the rest of Southern Africa, South Africa's low life expectancy is primarily due to HIV and neoliberal economic measures that have increased the rich-poor gap to the largest in the world. Since I live in SA part-time, I am a member of three organisations that work against both these.
But since I live in Gaza about as much as in SA, there is no reason that I shouldn't campaign in support of my people there too.
Your argument is a very typical one: Gaza isn't that badly off.
Actually, Israel has broken down all its government and civil societal institutions, has forced it to live off aid, and yes, now that it's living off aid it's doing well in some areas. it certainly doesn't provide an argument for having broken down its institutions or for not allowing it to get back on its feet so that aid can be re-directed to other countries that need it next.
This is my mail to Greek embassies. Come on, are you guys still writing/calling? Forget about eee and let's do something useful.
I am writing to express my strong disapproval of the Greek government's decision to prevent the humanitarian aid flotilla from sailing to Gaza.
While I understand the enormous American and Israeli pressure that the Greek government is currently under, the decision to prevent the boats from leaving quite obviously does not represent the wishes of Greece's lovely people. Moreover, the decision seems to have been taken without any clear legal justification. If the flotilla is illegal, then the Israeli or American government should lodge a legal complaint against it. If they do not, then Greece is legally in the clear.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) just released a report that puts the unemployment rate in Gaza at 45.2%, one of the highest in the world. They also stated that by the second half of 2010, real wages had fallen 34.5% since the first half of 2006 when Israel tightened the blockade. 95% of the water is undrinkable. 80% of the people need food aid. The health minister recently announced that Gaza lacks 178 types of medicine and 190 important pieces of medical equipment. There is no reason at all for Greece to participate in this deliberately inflicted suffering.
As a South African whose country's cruel and immoral actions were funded and supported by outside governments for decades, I plead with you to be courageous and do the moral thing. Please allow the boats to leave your ports and sail.
In the South African case, only some corporates lobbied in the US against sanctions. In the Palestinian case, almost all corporates plus the American intellectual classes are lobbying against sanctions. Thus, in the South African case, people were more or less properly informed of what was going on there and could make an informed decision. In the Palestinian case, Americans are being ridiculously misinformed by the lobbyists so they cannot make an informed decision. That's why EI calls it a victory because, while having very few accurate sources of information, and after years of being fed inaccurate information, Americans are starting to back BDS regardless. That is an achievement.
And here is another one. In the South African case, the boycott call was made in 1960, but most people started campaigning against SA products only in the 1970s and 1980s. Official sanctions only kicked in in 1986, and with little enthusiasm even then. In the Palestinian case, the boycott call was made in 2005, and in six years it has come as far as South Africa's did in triple that time. European companies are starting to pick up serious trouble with getting government contracts if they do business with Israel. That was far from the case for South Africa-friendly European companies in 1965. And yes, of course the better informed people will get there first, so Europe will lead the US.
RoHa, for me that is precisely the bit that is not impressive and that shows how much closer Kushner really is to the mainstream than many think. The problem for Israel isn't what to do with an ethnic-religious minority, it's how to hold onto Jewish privilege while protecting the rights of a non-Jewish majority.
GF, you're assuming that US and EU support for Israel is a reasoned position, but from the way in which evidence is routinely ignored and "polly wants a cracker" phrases repeated, it is clear that emotions and money play a much larger role than reasoning here. So congress cannot be convinced of anything.
As the Guardian said today about the American birthers who are still unconvinced of Obama's American citizenship: "As Jonathan Swift once said, you can't reason somebody out of something they were never reasoned into."
I think that's why the Palestinians, including their leadership, are now appealing to international civil society to force the issue, like they did with apartheid South Africa.
Chet, kind of, although it seems as if most of the world has wisened up to this. First, Hamas has accepted the two-state solution; one of those two states will be Israel, one will be Palestine. Many people and probably countries can see that this amounts to enough of a recognition of Israel. Second, many of those same people and countries can see that the vast majority of the violence is perpetrated by Israel, and few are unrealistic enough to expect even further non-violence from the already least violent side. Many countries can also recognise the difference between Hamas and other more extreme groups, and have even publically warned that the blockade of Gaza is likely to breed more extremism. So these old bogeymen seem to be getting much weaker.
The question about the UNGA resolution is how much money the US will be willing to spend to bribe countries to vote against it. I'm thinking of states like Nigeria, Uganda, Chile, Norway, etc. etc., who basically think a Palestinian state is a good idea, but who are afraid of the master's wrath. Hamas' views are mostly irrelavant in that process.
Sigh. Most people supported slavery until they realised the immorality of it. Most people were racists until they were won over by the enlightened minority. Most people believed in the inferiority of women, even though they were wrong all along. So if that's your strongest argument, it needs some work.
Anyway, opinion polls tend to show a lot of sympathy for Israel, but many also show that Americans prefer that the US does not take sides in the conflict. Do you still want to use the majority view now that it's been cleared up?
I love helping to put up christmas trees in Israel and the West Bank when I'm there. Efforts by Jewish Israeli officials to block it get more bizarre every year. They mostly don't want to say no straight out, probably because they know it won't go down well in the media with those who think that "the only democracy in the middle east" accommodates minority religions. So they try to put us off by placing conditions on the size of the trees, the number of branches, the number of decarations, number of lights, exact placements of decorations and lights, to-the-centimeter placement of the trees, etc. etc. etc. I mean, how exactly is one supposed to move a huge old tree that's been standing there for decades ten centimeters to the left just for two weeks?
So I was delighted to see the Israeli media coverage of Nazareth Illit's mayor's tamtrum last year when he refused to allow christmas trees in Nazareth Illit, calling christmas trees "provocative" and telling us to "do that sort of thing" in Nazareth, not Nazareth Illit. All that is likely to get worse, though, if Arnon Sofer is right that Israel will be a traditional religious state by 2030 and the ultra orthodox will pass a million roundabout that same time. so there's a lot of work left, not just in dealing with the occupation, but also the rights of palestinians inside Israel.
I'm not an expert in international law, but I don't accept the claim that international humanitarian (or human rights or criminal) law is "expressly based on how democratic nations customarily behave in comparable situations." Many of the writers of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 actually admitted explicitly that all the parties to world war 2 were in total bridge of what became the Geneva Conventions, including the democracies. That was precisely the point, to write rules that would protect civilians in armed conflict, regardless of whether any country was at the time behaving accordingly or not. And considering the way democratic France was acting in Algeria, the way democratic Britain was acting in Kenya and the way democratic US was acting in Greece and Korea, that's one seriously good thing.
Anyway, one cannot tie international law to any one specific political system. it would be like prescribing democracy to countries who aren't currently democracies. It's not universal and a lot of the world would not have signed up to it then. So I'm sure that characterisation of international humanitarian law is wrong, even if Dershowitz uses it to try to win his point.
That's why I'd love commissions of inquiry in Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places, exactly to show that democracies do not live up to the superior standards that they claim to exemplify.
I can't write much, I can't bear it, I'm already crying.
I met Vik in Gaza and got to know him fairly well. He carried me away from the border one day when I clumsily twisted my ankle while trying to run away from IDF soldiers that were shooting at unarmed protesters. He bravely turned around under fire especially to come and get me.
He lived for people, and identified intensely with those that suffered. He dedicated his life to the Palestinian campaign for rights. I'm almost sure that he was given Palestinian citizenship after the 2008 boat trip to Gaza. But the street name idea is a great one.
RIP, Vik, we'll miss you. Your name will be added to the long list of people to pay tribute to the day the Palestinians win their dignity and rights.
I'm as usual late with a comment; damn this time difference!
Thanks, James, I loved the Nation article.
Another example is the town of Jos, in central Nigeria, where Western media endlessly talks about the violence between Christians and Muslims. This is sort-of true, but misses a lot of the point. Recently, climate change has been drying up pasture lands, which is forcing animal herders closer and closer to farming communities. Here their herds often destroy crops. Now it happens to be the case that the farming community is mostly Christian from the Berom ethnic group while the herders are mostly Muslims of the Fulanis ethnic group. As conditions become harder for the Muslim herders, they're trying to move into Jos, without work or money or anything. The mostly Christian town then resents having to share.
So originally the conflict isn't really about religion or ethnicity at all, it's about poverty as a result of climate change. Since rich countries refuse to do something substantial about climate change, these people's circumstances are likely to get worse. But because the Western corporate media cannot report this as fighting between the victims of greed-driven climate change, they have to report it as fighting between Muslims and Christians, or alternatively between Berom and Fulanis. In Western societies we call the same phenomenon the great threat of imigration that might destroy our wealth and way of life.
Wo, I'm South African. And my country managed to fix itself through negotiations after trying to fix things through violence for years before then. That's why it's sad that Israel is planning to stretch this through violence for as long as it takes. If violence has not worked up to now, it won't.
Targeting civilians is a war crime, regardless of who does it, Russia, the US or Israel or anyone else. So the hypocrisy isn't mine.
Regarding cease fires, as I just quoted on the other article to a similar point made by you, there are studies that show that Israel is the more aggressive side, not Hamas. Between sept 2000 and dec 2008, Israel broke 79% of peaceful periods, the Palestinians broke 8% and they both attacked on the same day 13% of the time. When the peaceful periods were between 6 and 8 days, Israel broke 96% of them, and when they were more than 9 days, Israel broke them all. So Israel just doesn't have the world's sympathy anymore as this poor passive victim that sits and waits to be attacked. They're responsible for the problem,. Black people in south Africa were violent, the moment apartheid ended, their violence stopped. Stop pretending that Palestinian violence is coming out of nowhere. It isn't.
Witty, unless you can provide reasons for thinking that the Goldstone report was more political than legal, the rest of us will believe that international legal authorities are legal rather than political. Further, many of us have addressed the scope issue:
1. The problem to which Israel is responding has a political, not a military, solution. The Palestine papers add more weight to the already strong suspicion that it is Israel that is stalling the process since they're trying to continue to occupy some of the land outside the 1967 borders, that is, land that the UN Security Council has repeatedly judged they should not build on. so since Israel is using a military solution in Gaza because the political solution doesn't suit them, every imaginable international court will judge that the scope of their military assaults is way too wide. (or even that military action is illegal, period).
2. The groups in Gaza are prepared to stick to ceasefires, Israel isn't. You seem incapable of internalising the idea, but Operation Cast Lead started when Israel broke a ceasefire, not Hamas. So again, states have the right to defend themselves violently, but only if non-violent options are not available. Israel refuses the non-violent options, so give their military operations to the International Criminal Court or to the International Court of Justice, please o please.
The Goldstone report addresses the scope issue from Paragraph 1189:
1189. Israel’s operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have had certain consistent features. In particular, the destruction of buildings, including houses, has been a recurrent tactical theme. The specific means Israel has adopted to meet its military objectives in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Lebanon have repeatedly been censured by the United Nations Security Council, especially its attacks on houses. ...
1190. A review of the available information reveals that, while many of the tactics remain the same, the reframing of the strategic goals has resulted in a qualitative shift from relatively focused operations to massive and deliberate destruction.
1191. General Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli Northern Command chief, expressed the premise of the doctrine: What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. […] This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.
1192. General Giora Eiland: in the event of another war with Hizbullah, the target must not be the defeat of Hizbullah but “the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure and intense suffering among the population… Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behaviour more than anything else”.
1193. Col. Gabriel Siboni: With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. ... attacks should both aim at Hizbollah’s military capabilities and should target economic interests and the centres of civilian power that support the organization. ... Such a response will create a lasting memory among Lebanese decision makers, thereby increasing Israeli deterrence and reducing the likelihood of hostilities against Israel for an extended period. it will force Syria, Hizbollah, and Lebanon to commit to lengthy and resource intensive reconstruction programmes. ... This approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well.
1200. Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai: "It [should be] possible to destroy Gaza, so they will understand not to mess with us”. He added that “it is a great opportunity to demolish thousands of houses of all the terrorists, so they will think twice before they launch rockets”. ... “Even if the rockets fall in an open air or to the sea, we should hit their infrastructure, and destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired.”
1202: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni: "Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing."
1195. The Mission does not have to consider whether Israeli military officials were directly influenced by these writings. It is able to conclude from a review of the facts on the ground that it witnessed for itself that what is prescribed as the best strategy appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.
1203. It is in the context of comments such as these that the massive destruction of businesses, agricultural land, chicken farms and residential houses has to be understood. In particular, the Mission notes the large-scale destruction that occurred in the days leading up to the end of the operations. During the withdrawal phase it appears that possibly thousands of homes were destroyed. The Mission has referred elsewhere in this report to the “day after” doctrine, as explained in the testimonies of Israeli soldiers, which can fit in with the general approach of massively disproportionate destruction without much difficulty.
1210. Through its overly broad framing of the (Hamas) “supporting infrastructure”, the Israeli armed forces have sought to construct a scope for their activities that, in the Mission’s view, was designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza.
1211. Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.
1212. the Mission is of the view that reprisals against civilians in armed hostilities are contrary to international humanitarian law. Even if such actions could be considered a lawful reprisal, they do not meet the stringent conditions imposed, in particular they are disproportionate, and violate fundamental human rights and obligations of a humanitarian character. One party's targeting of civilians or civilian areas can never justify the opposing party’s targeting of civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, public and religious buildings, or schools.
This links up with the reason why the intentionality issue is unimportant. A main premis of the Goldstone report was that Israel re-categorised civilians as combattants (children playing on roofs might be spies, police might be soldiers) and then killed them. So they didn't think, "Ah, we'll kill ourselves some civilians," which would have been intentional. Instead they called the civilians combattants and then killed them. Same with infrastructure.
eee, I don't have to show that other armies do better in order to conclude that Israel has committed war crimes. Law provides a single standard on which everyone should be measured. Using indiscriminate weapons in built-up areas is illegal. So is targeting civilian infrastructure. etc. etc.
Thus, if other armies do not do better than Israel, then they're as guilty as Israel is. If other armies do better, then Israel is guilty alone.
I suspect the former is true, if that makes you feel better. Again, I'm not insensitive to the fact that other armies do it too.
Thanks for the chats, I have to go back to work. I actually appreciate you and Witty and gang around here.
This is becoming a pointless discussion. You insist on discussing all this in isolation of the occupation and the necessary brutality that goes with it, I cannot just omit it. End the occupation and give the Palestinian state the rights that all other states have and respect their people. If they attack Israel then, I'll join in with the condemnations.
If anything, your comment acknowledges that both sides are violent. Good. That was my point too in response to your comment that Hamas kept on shooting rockets into Israel after disengagement from Gaza.
Now, I have a plan for ending the tit-for-tat violence: allow the Palestinians a state or give them rights inside Israel. Your plan seems to be, "Keep on dropping bombs on them until their violence stops". OK, just don't complain about Israel being criticised then, in that case they deserve it.
I also find it alarming how resistent Israel supporters' arguments are to facts. You don't want to talk about ratio of dead Palestinians vs dead Israelis, because that makes Israel look bad. Same with injuries. Numbers of house demolitions and prisoners, except for Shalit, of course, are off the table. Your previous comment, "You can spin this with academic studies", shows that the same is true about frequency of attacks and ceasefires. Damn all that, facts are irrelevant. I don't know how to have a discussion then.
"You would be delighted to have UN inquiries? Then why don’t you?"
Uh, because I don't head the UN? Because the US runs the UN and would throw billions of dollars in other countries' laps to vote against such resolutions?
Look, of course I share your frustration that international law isn't applied across the board. Europe and the US are pretty much immune, Israel is semi-immune because of their relationship with the US, Africa, South America and some of Asia are absolutely targeted. Hamas and Hizbullah are completely targeted, since they're on terrorist lists, having restrictions on money flow, arms embargo, etc. But the appropriate response is to bring all countries into its jurisdiction, not to take all countries out of it, starting with Israel. Sri Lanca has upset the US, so they're next for an inquiry.
And whatever the attack on Israel is, it's not baseless. Israel's attacks were disproportionate and indiscriminate, 900-odd civilians died in three weeks.
First, of course there was a reason to continue firing rockets after Israel withdrew from Gaza, the whole of Palestine was still legally occupied territory, if not physical. Moreover, was Hamas going to stop attacking Israel while Israel worked with Fatah to overthrow them after they were elected? The rockets at the time did not come out of a vacuum. Let's again remember the academic study that found that, between Sept. 2000 and Dec 2008, Israel broke 79% of the peaceful periods, the Palestinians broke 8%, and both sides attacked on the same day 13% of the time. When the peaceful periods were between 6 and 8 days, Israel broke 96% of them, when 9 days or longer, Israel broke them all. So whichever way, your naritive of, "Hamas shoots rockets and then we have no choice but to respond", doesn't square with the facts.
Second, there is no legal obligation on Hamas to allow anyone to see Shalit, as much as I wish they would and hope he is OK. Law specifies that, in case the authority that is holding the prisoner has reason to believe that there will be a rescue mission, they do not have to allow visits. Israel's shot themselves in the foot on that one with past rescue attempts.
eee, we are the wrong people to pitch this sort of argument to, because we're not saying that Gaza is terrible and Fallujah fine. Most people who comment on this blog are probably anti most wars and certainly anti Iraq war, and would be delighted to have UN inquiries. On other blogs we might write comments that reflect this, but since this is an Israel-Palestine blog, we're talking mostly about Gaza, not Fallujah.
eee, hardly. We're not soldiers precisely because we believe that political problems should be solved by political solutions, not military ones. And frankly, that's a fairly common international legal position. States have the right to violent self-defense only if non-violent options are not available. One cannot repeat this enough.
First, a political solution is available which Israel refuses to implement; the whole world has understood the solution for the past 64 years. And, secondly, if Israel breaks ceasefires while groups in Gaza stick to them, they cannot claim a lack of non-violent alternatives.
Kathleen, I keep on being surprised when people talk about NATO military intervention saving the democracy movements in the region. Or alternatively, that a lack of NATO military action would have quashed it.
The US refused to send planes and refused to push the UN security council resolution without Arab league support. They managed to get 9 of 22 Arab countries to agree in a meeting that only 11 countries attended. And even this slight Arab league support was obtained only because the US agreed to accept GCC troops in Bahrain to quash the democracy movement there. It has now been quashed. So Bahrain certainly wouldn't agree with you that NATO action helped the democracy movement in the region. It killed it for them.
And regardless of the amount of violence that Syria uses, the US is singing their praises as reformers because they're very scared of change there. In Yemin the US is panicking because anti-terrorism activities have ended, so they're trying to get Saleh to leave now that they have their own vile murderer, General Ali Mohsen Saleh, lined up to take over. Doesn't help democracy much either. Same with the Egyptian army. Same with the CIA members and American educated heads of the Libyan rebels. All they're doing is to find US-friendly replacements to rule post-dictator, democracy be damned.
I've said this here before, but the only lesson that dictators will learn from selective intervention is this: the US ignores attrocities committed by their friends (Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc), the US is powerless when friends of China commit attrocities (Sudan); therefore, I should cultivate relations either with the US or with China. It's isolation that gets you thrown out, not the amount of violence you use. Ultimately this lesson that the Libyan intervention is teaching is damaging, because it will make most future dictators with strong ties to the US or China very hard to throw out. Especially when they add the lesson that, if Qaddafi had held onto his nuclear program, his country would not have been invaded today.
Witty, the intentionality thing just doesn't seem very important, or even in the majority of cases a coherent subject for discussion. That's why most human rights organisations wrote reports on cast lead without bothering with the concept.
I mean, Hamas probably didn't target civilians intentionally either as a matter of policy. They launched indiscriminate attacks that they knew would kill some civilians, so they're without doubt guilty of war crimes. But did they have the intention in mind to kill civilians? Hell, even a Taliban suicide bomber that blows up a mosque more often than not intends to kill a politician or some Afghan soldiers, not civilians. But it doesn't matter, since the attack is completely indiscriminate and will kill many civilians.
Same with Israel. They launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks that they knew would kill civilians, so they without doubt committed war crimes. And they certainly intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure, there is no other way of interpreting a lot of what they did. But the huge majority of the Goldstone report actually argues about specific incidents that the IDF had no justifiable military target, that the instructions given to the soldiers provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population, that their choice of weapons maximised suffering and spread terror (flechettes and white phospherous), that they caused deaths by unjustifiably blocking ambulances, that they categorised too many civilians as militants or possible spies (like the children playing on roofs), etc.
The intentions thing wasn't that prominant. And anyway, it seems to come down to the difference between intentionally using heavy indiscriminate weapons in built-up areas (which they did do), and intentionally killing civilians (which they didn't do). Or intentionally categorising civilians as militants and/or spies and then killing them (which they did do), and intentionally killing people they thought of as civilians (which they didn't do).
So why is this question of intentionality important. And how do we know what intentions are behind people's actions anyway. I hardly know my own, let alone trying to guess someone else's. (Uh, if you've read the Goldstone report, it'll be obvious to you how little difference the intentions concept makes to the findings.)
Witty, the point of international law is that there are standard rules for everyone. You seem to be suggesting that Goldstone has now realised that it's justifiable for the IDF to act with laxer rules, which you call scope. But that, I'm afraid, is not up to Goldstone, or any other individual jurist. Again the point that so many have made, if Israel didn't violate international law, then why is there this push, which you now seem to have joined, to relax the laws of warfare. That's why Goldstone can say what he likes; other international jurists, the co-authors of the reports and human rights organisations cannot go along if the push is to hold Israel to different standards. (And yes, in case you were going to accuse me of double standards, I absolutely think a report on allied actions in Afghanistan is a necessity, and I think they'll fail in the same places Israel does.)
Moreover, if one had to carry out a serious analysis of the extent of the threats to Israel from rocket fire, a threat that kills 25 of your citizens in a ten year period would certainly not qualify your army for laxer rules of warfare, because the threat is negligible. I'm not excusing the rockets, but it's hardly a 9/11 or a Taliban suicide bomb or a US helicopter firing on wood-collecting children, is it?
Hence:
"What is the appropriate scope of IDF defense given active shelling of civilians in Southern Israel, and what is the range of admissable scope of defense?"
Most importantly, a political solution, not a military one. Secondly, since the rockets do fairly little damage relative to Israel's military actions, and since Gazan groups are obviously willing to stick to ceasefires, Israel has ages ago violated the admissable scope of defense. Remember, no country has the right to violent self-defense if non-violent means are available.
I'm also kind-of alarmed, but Goldstone will have to give a lot more than vague suspicions and prejudices if he wants the report withdrawn at the UN. And that's likely to be difficult, since the McGowan-Davis report has found that the IDF's investigations have not been particularly credible, and since other organisations have investigated Cast Lead and have drawn even stronger conclusions than his report, and since the other authors of the report stand by it.
In a way I'm glad that he is trying to backtrack so obviously ridiculously, writing an incoherent article that doesn't cite evidence for its conclusions, having written an article for the NYT just ten days earlier that apparently drew a different conclusion, accepting visits to Israel with ministers, declaring his undying love for Israel and the Israeli people with every step backwards. It discredits the backtracking completely as a tribalist thing.
Yup, it makes me think of the South African apartheid government who built a colaborative faction in the black community to oppose the rest, the security forces who armed the different factions, set them on each other and then, when they started fighting each other seriously, said, "tsk, tsk, look, how can the world expect us to negotiate with, let alone live with, those savages?" Thank god in that case the world was unimpressed.
Seafoid, I don't have an issue with Goldstone having written this kind of stuff. I think most of it is more or less true, especially if one takes the definitions that international law gives 'civilian', 'war crime', etc.
What bothers me is that the whole Op-Ed was aimed at telling us what criminals Hamas people are while downplaying Israel's crimes. And that is irritating and misleading, firstly, because he misrepresents the McGowan-Davis report in order to downplay Israel's crimes and, secondly because given the number of dead and injured people and destroyed properties, together with his inability to produce any evidence to show that his original conclusions were wrong, Hamas' crimes just are not as numerous as Israel's.
If I were him, I simply would have written an Op-Ed saying this: 1. why do supporters of Israel always misrepresent my report as not having criticised Hamas? I did, and my criticism was compounded by the fact that they predictably refused to investigate their actions after Operation Cast Lead. 2. The fact that Hamas has not conducted investigations does not entitle Israel to conduct what the McGowan-Davis report states are non-credible investigations. After all, Hamas is already being punished as outlaws by having been labeled a terrorist group, while Israel receives financial and military aid from various countries and enjoys trade relations everywhere.
But writing an Op-Ed to try to save Israel's image without being able to cite any evidence and in addition misrepresenting the McGowan-Davis report is sad, if possibly a bit understandable given the incredible abuse he's been subjected to. If anything, it again shows us the main strategy that our Western societies use to prevent freedom of speech and inquiry: savage emotion-driven attacks, vicious character assassination and career destruction, even to the point of throwing people out of their communities. Please let this community not join in. We can easily stick to facts and leave the poor man alone.
I don't think Witty is right that we need to discredit Richard Goldstone like the other lot did when the report was released. We can easily enough stick to facts. The Goldstone report documented findings, so did human rights organisations. This OpEd contains nothing that can be called facts, findings or investigations.
The OpEd doesn't, for example, give any new facts about the systematic and widespread destruction of property, and since the McGowan/Davis report says clearly that the IDF didn't and couldn't investigate its own policies regarding such things, the conclusion of the Goldstone report that such destruction was systematic and deliberate remains unchallenged. For heaven's sake, the Goldstone report concluded that a cement factory was brought down over a period of days by planting explosives in the walls. he cannot now claim, based on no further evidence at all, that it was accidental?
The OpEd doesn't give any new information about the use of white phosphorus, except to say, "Israel says they won't do it again". And again the McGowan-Davis report shows that they didn't investigate those policies. So the report's conclusion on that stands unchallenged.
The OpEd doesn't give us anything new on the targeting of children that were playing on rooftops; a deeply dodgy definition of "combatant" in anyone's book. So that conclusion stands too. Etc. Etc.
That's why I find the OpEd weird. He clearly wants us not to be too harsh on Israel, but he gave us no facts that overturn his original conclusions.
Witty says: "Goldstone now infers, ‘Israel is credible. Not perfect, not as public as I would like, not perfectly complete."
But that's the point about the McGowan-Davis report that actually concludes that the IDF is unwilling and incapable of investigating its policy-making and planning. That's why it's annoying that Goldstone uses the McGowan-Davis report to say that the IDF's investigations are basically credible, while the McGowan-Davis report concludes something very different. Secret investigations of an organisation that tries to investigate itself just aren't credible, which explains the McGowan-Davis conclusion.
Without being sarcastic here, seriously, I sometimes wish I was capable of this kind of naivity. If people were going to learn the right lessons about humanitarian intervention, such as that Israel shouldn't be allowed to massacre Palestinians, they would have learned it after Kosovo, Somalia or Britain's Siera Leone. That's the point, humanitarian intervention isn't humanitarian, otherwise they would have done something about the American government and the Ivory Coast and the DRC which, unlike even Bahrain and Yemin, are problems on a Ruanda-type scale. But they cannot intervene in the DRC, because Western corporates make too much money from that slavery and those killings in the mineral mines. And, well you know, the Ivory Coast hasn't quite been on CNN enough to work people up, and we don't really have interests there, so it doesn't qualify. And the US government that allows the world economy to be brought down and allows wall street speculating on food that increases food prices that ends up starving millions elsewhere, o well, we're making money out of that and it's not been on CNN either, so we'll certainly not allow anyone to intervene there.
That's the issue with humanitarian intervention: they always give these high-principled justifications, "O, but we cannot allow another Ruanda". And if we show them cases that really are Ruandas, they start moving their principles down the list of reasons on which to act, "O but we don't have interests there, it will be to difficult, we cannot get world consensus." It's more than just the inconsistency argument. The problem with humanitarian intervention isn't that it's inconsistent, it's that it moves the "humanitarianism" down the list of motivations in cases where it's not desired. Your theory simply isn't coherent if the foundation of it drops out depending on whether or not it pleases you to have it in there.
So don't wait for lessons to be learned about the Palestinian case. Humanitarianism precisely teaches the lesson that we intervene where it suits us, and the Palestinian case doesn't suit us. The lesson for governments is this: oppression will be tollerated if you're close to either China, russia, the EU or the US.
You sound more forgiving of Qaddafi's crimes and more critical of the rebels than me, though. Qaddafi's forces have been incredibly brutal, for years, not just now. And I genuinely believe that the majority of the revolutionaries want a better Libya, at least one where people's views matter. My issue is with pretending now that the military intervention is the only option, while numerous others were ignored before this. Imagine if the initiatives at the beginning of March were taken up by Western commentators and governments, and a political solution was absolutely forced. The deaths of all the civilians and rebels killed by Qaddafi forces, everyone killed by the rebels and the Qaddafi forces now pulverised by huge bombs would all have been prevented. So what Westerners are doing, re-Benghazi especially, is to pat themselves on the back for preventing a humanitarian catastrophe that probably would not have existed if they'd followed up the erlier initiatives.
Thanks for the collection that I was too lazy to compile, Bandolero. I think that many Africans are conflicted. They admire Qaddafi's anti-imperialism, and that's why some African countries and especially the exiles are romanticising him. But he also spread a lot of weapons around the continent, a lot of which ended up being used in awful causes. That's why some countries around are nervous about the extent to which he has now armed his citizens. South Africa probably played it roundabout decently; very grateful for the anti-apartheid help, but still maintaining some distance because of the authoritarianism and brutality. (The South African UN security Council ambassador tried to skip the vote by temporarily disappearing.)
Same with Uganda’s president Museveni, who has always been close to but somewhat annoyed with Qaddafi. That's why people like him thought that the better way would be for friendly countries to negotiate with the regime, rather than have unfriendly countries bomb it. The current action will enrage many Africans, and the racism of the revolutionaries hasn't helped. So I hope with all my heart that Africa doesn't get dragged into some anti-Western battle that has sort-of died down for some decades.
As an African, I'll say that I strongly support the anti-regime forces, there have been few more destructive influences on the continent than Qaddafi. But due to the numerous potential awful consequences of the military intervention, I would have prefered that other available options were pushed with as much enthusiasm by all the people who are now backing the military thing. At the beginning of March Hugo Chavez offered to mediate, but because Westerners think he's a lunatic, the offer was rejected by the west and the revolutionaries. In the same week the Bolivarian Alliance suggested that someone like Jimmy Carter should mediate, an suggestion that I think everyone ignored. Turkey proposed some power-sharing agreements. Even now the African Union is begging to be allowed into Libya, NATO wouldn't let them fly in, but it's probably too late already since no side under attack is likely to give in. Responsibility to protect means less destructive options before destructive options, and options that will stop violence instead of prolonging violence, otherwise one has failed in that responsibility. Of course refusing to sell Qaddafi weapons would have helped, so would refraining from carrying out coups on governments we don't like; Britain tried to throw out Qaddafi less than one year after he came to power. Who knows how he would have developped if he could have developed without being under constant attack.
As an African, I'll also say that the media coverage has been awful. This weekend demonstrated it well. I felt deeply for the Libyan woman that was filmed by the journalists in the hotel room after having been raped by Qaddafi forces; the one that was later dragged away by those same forces. Everybody tweeted it, all media organisations covered it. When the Africans from Ghana, Somalia and Chad arrived home with horrifying stories of revolutionaries gang raping their women, burning down their homes, killing them and keeping them under house arrest without food, Western media couldn't give a damn because they'd started cheer leading. This doesn't lessen my support for the revolutionaries, but I feel for my people and my continent that typically end up at the bottom of whichever pile the rest of the world constructs. Rape and killing shouldn't be politicised, and shouldn't be selectively harnessed for supporting ones prefered narrative. The anti-Qaddafi pro-revolutionaries narrative would have remained more or less in tact without de-humanising the Africans who suffered.
Holy sh*t, they'll have to stop the "US above world" and "individual above community" propoganda first, otherwise Americans will happily vote for wars that steal natural resources. In fact, the media system will have to change completely, otherwise people will simply vote for whatever line the politicians and journalists push.
Difficult issue. I despise Qaddafi and want him gone. But here is why I oppose military action:
1. this is not a moral judgement, just a descriptive point. The Libyans miscalculated by breaking into military bases on day 2 (Feb. 18), killing soldiers on guard, stealing weapons, arming everyone, killing security forces, refusing to negotiate while they were winning, and killing probably hundreds of black people, including foreign workers, because they thought they were mirsenaries. Due to our intervention (this weekend in fact), Qaddafi has also now armed everyone. So this is an armed civil war. We don't even know what percentage of Libyan people support him, but in Western Libya and Tripoli it can be substantial; remember that Libya is the highest African country on the human development index, and Western Libya is the most economically developed part. Our intervention will now stretch out a civil war that would have ended soon with Qaddafi taking Benghazi back. So, and please believe how much I hate saying this, the best case senario would have been to leave Qaddafi to take back Benghazi and appeal to friendly countries like Venezuela or Turkey to negotiate for Libyan civilians and place observation teams on the ground to report any sign of Qaddafi retaliation against them. Kosovo's intervention was also meant to be humanitarian, but the vast majority of deaths and attrocities happened after NATO bombing. Qaddafi already seems to have stepped up operations in Misurata today, so I think, like in Kosovo, the situation on the ground is going to get a lot worse now that we're involved.
2. The UN resolution prohibits regime change; allows only for protection of civilians. But if we stick to that, then Qaddafi will stay in control of the rest of Libya, while Benghazi and Tabruk will become Western protectorates. Splitting Libya is in noone's interest, it's likely to create at least one failed state that we will have to fund, and Western propped up protectorates won't have credibility for long anyway. So the only way forward is to put boots on the ground and fight with the revolutionaries to overthrow Qaddafi and remove those who are prepared to fight for him, and that, dears, is another Afghanistan. The UN resolution doesn't allow for invasion or occupation, for some officials, like the British chancellor, has already said that they don't think of small ground operations as an invasion/occupation. Point? Humanitarian intervention will split Libya, so mission creep to regime change is essential.
3. Eventually we will be judge on the results, not on our intentions. And since chance is good that it won't go well, placing US-EU citizens at risk of more hatred and potential attacks by whoever sticks by Qaddafi or doesn't like the result is irresponsible. The Arab league, South America, African Union, China, Russia, Germany, India and the Taliban are already complaining, and it's hardly started.
4. The humanitarian case for intervention is much weaker than it would be in, for example, the DRC or Sudan, or for intervening in Wall Street food speculation that drives food prices up and starves millions in Africa-Asia, or rich countries like the US that refuses to provide services and allows 40,000 people to die anually of treatable illnesses. Even the Israel case, not because of the number of dead, but because it's apparently permanent, makes a strong humanitarian case (especially to stop providing them with weapons!) Or the Bahrainis and Yemenis that have mostly stayed nonviolent and are being mown down by US weapons. So if we are humanitarians, we should do other things first.
I have a lot more to say, but will shut-up for now. I seriously hope I'm wrong anyway, all my thoughts with the Libyan people.
Wow, thanks, Miura, I haven't seen this before.
Ignore him, he's racist and usually wrong about things. He first spoke out for apartheid South Africa, and by 1994 when he realised they'd lost, he complained that having the rights of white South Africans violated will be much worse than apartheid ever was. This is what he wrote on election day in Toronto's Financial Post:
If the new government succeeds - if it preserves peace and order in South Africa and observes the rule of law, if it raises the standard of living of the poor majority without violating the property rights of the wealthy minority, if it adheres to the constitution and respects the rights of minority groups whether they are black, white, or neither - well then those of us who have been skeptical of the anti-apartheid cause will owe a big apology to the diplomats and protesters who brought the new ANC government into being. We will have to confess that our skepticism was wrong, that a decent and effective alternative to minority rule had existed all along, and that sanctions against South Africa did indeed enhance the cause of human rights.
But, but, but . . . If the new government is not a success, if it does not keep the peace, if it does not respect minority rights, if it confiscates property, if it suppresses the press, if it uses illegal means to hold on to power, if it is corrupt, violent, and ruthless, then the anti-apartheid pressure groups will owe the skeptics at least an equal apology.
When you go trampling about the world overturning governments that have done you no wrong because you disapprove of the way they conduct their internal affairs, you had better be awfully sure that the alternative you are recommending will indeed be an improvement. If you are not sure, if there is no better alternative, then the attack on that friendly government is a reckless and cowardly gamble: cowardly because the fellow spinning the roulette wheel will not pay the price when the gamble loses. In their hour of victory, I hope the anti apartheid crusaders of the West will forgive a little frank speech from their defeated opponents: The reason we disagreed with you was not that we favored apartheid. Of course we didn't. We disagreed with the anti-apartheid crusaders - and disapproved of them - because we knew that they were motivated not by any substantial concern for the welfare of South Africa but by moral exhibitionism. There is at least one prediction about the new South Africa that I can offer with absolute confidence: with white minority rule broken, the ostentatiously righteous will move on to other issues. Abuses by the ANC government will excite world opinion about as much as the abuses of the Zimbabwean governments that conquered white Rhodesia now do.
Yeah, I understand that a successful campaign for Palestinian rights needs people like Remnick, Goldberg, Freedman and the like, there aren't enough of us otherwise. But they just don't give a crap about justice, do they?
Remnick's on the record saying things like: "both sides are responsible for the situation; for example, the Palestinians should have accepted the 2001 two-state deal". So he clearly sees nothing wrong with forcing the Palestinians to give up half of East Jerusalem and the right of return (even though more refugees are created today, every day), or to force them to accept de-militarisation and those huge settlement blocks in the West Bank (increasing in size everyday). He's comfortable with Israel/US dictating what 22% of the land that was once almost 100% theirs the Palestinians should accept plus other conditions.
It's a position that's meant to save zionism, not bring about justice. In other words, if we try to take more, then we might lose what we have already stolen. So we'd better stop stealing now. not exactly a moral position, is it? But they try to pretend that it is. That's why they almost irritate me more than the obviously racist rightests who have no values and are proud of it. But Phil is right, that's the type of conversation that the "liberal" American Jewish establishment is capable of at this stage, and it is progress, god help us.
Fuster, your favourite style of argument seems to be to change the topic halfway through a discussion.
For example, when someone says that Israel has aspects of a theocracy, you want to discuss Vatican City and Iran, since you think those are worse theocracies than Israel. But Vatican City and Iran are irrelevant, since the concept "theocracy" has a well developed definition from which people can draw aspects to compare and contrast with Israel. So the change of topic covers for Israel and leads the discussion off on a tangent.
Or if I remember right, it was also you who led a discussion of Michael Lucas' financial bullying of the NY LGBT Center into a discussion of gay rights in Iran. discussing gay rights in Iran (which are in deed apalling) pulled the discussion away from topics that would have been relevant, e.g., whether Israel's reasonable treatment of the LGBT community is a reason to overlook their awful treatment of the Palestinians, whether it is appropriate for wealthy people to pressure organisations to do what they want them to do, etc.
Disagreement on relevant topics is always welcome, and I've engaged people like eee here whenever I had time. But as one of my Philosophy professors lectured me when I first started tutoring and grading papers: "of course the question of whether cows exist is vaguely relevant to a paper on whether vegitarianism is morally required, but we have to draw the line somewhere".
Thanks so much, Motaz. I protested with the Egyptians for three weeks, but there is only so much of the intensity of the emotions that an outsider can share. To watch the devistating realisation that something so positive could end up splitting a cherished society was one of the hardest parts for outsiders like me. Your story manages to capture the emotions of that realisation and more. The fact that, while outsiders were watching a revolution, you guys were suffering through it. I've always considered Palestine a second home, now Egypt is also in my heart forever.
Ah, but it's not that simple, see. Some groups are being systematically disadvantaged because it benefits the super-rich. The poor are getting poorer because the rich are getting richer. So telling poor people to finance their own charities to try to compete with the rich is hopelessly naive. The problem is precisely that they do not have any money. They need compassion and altruism. Similarly, since corporates back the Israeli occupation, money for the Palestinian cause is thin on the ground. That's why I'm calling your attitude "money before morality". If it cannot be financially backed, it shouldn't be fought for.
eee, the disanalogy between the LGBT center and other cases of aid-giving/withholding is that a lot of the campaigning for LGBT rights proceeded on pure good will, altruism and morality. If the LGBT community had to wait for the monied classes to fund their struggle for rights, their campaign would still have been in its infancy today. So the unhappiness with the center is understandable, I think. Other disenfranchised people want the same consideration from the LGBT community as the LGBT community needed from others. It might not be a particularly practical "living in the real world" attitude, but it typically is idealism that steer campaigns for the oppressed against those that oppress them.
But guys, as much as I agree that eee's attitude of "money not morality" is awful, the progressive community needs a response to this kind of situation. Just telling a center that is already a charritable organisation to p*ss off some rich people and lose sh*t loads of money won't win us this thing. In addition, it's a form of victimising an organisation that is the victim of the bullying tactics of others. Can we think of anything constructive?
Lewis is a racist idiot. The Brits voted for religious maniac Blair, and noone says that they aren't ready for democracy because of that. The Americans tend to elect the Republican religious nuts (to the horror of the rest of the world, I might add), but they're allowed to keep their democracy even if it means wars that kill hundreds of thousands elsewhere in the world. All Americans and Europeans vote for parties that implement policies that bring down the world economy and accordingly starve millions in Africa and Asia, but their bad choices do not count against Westerners having democracy.
The lesson we can learn is that voting is a side-show; the real contribution that the people can and should make to their countries is to steer their governments' behaviour through labour strikes and street protests. And frankly, it seems to me that the "Arab savages" are a tad ahead of us on that one at this stage.
I find all of this terribly tedious. When supposedly leftist Israeli governments were in power, wasting years talking and refusing to make consessions and breaking agreements like the 2003 roadmap, then Europe and the US were happy with Israel's commitment to progress and happy to blame Palestinians for the lack of it.
Now they're all screaming at the right-wing government as if the problem would be solved if Netanyahu could disappear.
If I were Netanyahu (o god where did that ghastly thought crawl out of), I'd simply do what Livni does, all while making speeches in the settlements and in party conferences to re-assure everyone that it's not serious.
Europe and the US are clearly stupid enough to accept that sort of thing.
The best comment on the Tablet article was a guy who told us to read literature from the 1300s before we can understand how "beautiful" zionism is.
Has anyone ever compiled a book with journalists' comments and stories about working for the MSM in the middle east?
I also find it frustrating that the rudeness of some BDS supporters counts against BDS, whereas the rudeness of some anti-BDS supporters does not count against anti-BDS. Still with me?
But since BDS supporters are trying to push an issue based on moral reasons, hate-filled speech will damage us. One cannot have hate and morality in the same message. It rightly makes people wonder about our motives. Some of those facebook comments were apalling, I felt terribly ashamed.
Since I spend a lot of time in Israel-Palestine, I often have to slow myself down before I speak, because my emotions about what is happening there are intense and raw. I always keep Desmond Tutu's advice to South African blacks in mind: "Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity." Difficult principle, but if we're wishing to achieve something, rather than just scream, it is a necessary one.
I typically have these conversations in two ways. 1. I giving statistics of home demolitions, building permission and refusal, deaths, injuries, number of attacks and breaking of peaceful periods, political prisoners, ethnic cleansing from East Jerusalem, size of what is left of Palestine, etc. Israel loses all the number games by many miles. 2. I try to explain the way in which BDS leads to a feeling of isolation in the target population, of how it indicates disapproval of the status quo, of how it shifts the power relation between the oppressor and the oppressed a little back towards the oppressed so that negotiations are more than the lion and the lamb deciding what to have for supper.
Eee, to distinguish it from a lot of sarcasm on message boards, this is a genuine question to which I'd be interested in knowing the answer.
Do you know of any recent Uri Avnery writing where he defends zionism or the two-state solution (as opposed to one-state) on moral grounds? He takes a very pragmatic approach, arguing for example that a one-state solution will lead to ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population or to decades of intercommunity fighting like in Lebanon. But I haven't seen him try to make a moral case for zionism or for the concept of a Jewish state recently. Do you know whether he has?
I think that the intense frustration that non-zionists feel are towards people that make that moral case. And it is those that make the moral case that I think Phil is trying to exclude from those who can still make a meaningful contribution ahead.
Kathleen, I share your sentiment and wondered about a gas mask campaign myself. But then thought that this would only make the occupation forces do something even more violent. If they're wearing masks and gas doesn't stop them from climbing and breaking the wall, then the soldiers will simply come up with some violent thing that would stop them. So we would probably only end up hurting them more by trying to help them.
I've been at many of those protests myself, and I'm in awe of the people who continue to go back every week. We think of you every Friday, guys, following tweets and sending positive thoughts. You're special.
Apartheid South Africa security forces killed 3,000 blacks between 1948 and 1994.
The South African armed resistance groups killed roundabout 600 people over the same period.
The SA security forces and government split the black community through selectively arming some and giving influence to others. 18,000 died in infighting of this kind, almost all between 1985 and 1994. That's why, though the Palestinian community is being split by Israel, I admire them for more or less hanging together.
"How do we score the efforts by other countries to enact regime change against Israel?"
Actually, attacks against Israel have always been to get stolen territory back, to put pressure on Israel to recognise Palestinian rights, or to make Israel see that aggression against neighbours could have lethal consequences. It's definitely not to achieve regime change.
Why would they bother with regime change; the one Israeli regime is as unlikely to make compromises necessary for a settlement as the next.
Obviously those that see a campaign for equal rights as a de-legitimisation campaign interpret that as an attempt to replace a Jewish state with a multicultural one. So an equal rights campaign is read as an attempt at regime change. Skrewy values.
As for Lebanon and Jordan, I think you'd find that the people who disapprove of Israeli efforts to change regimes also disapprove of US, French, British, etc. efforts to do the same.
I'm with Avi on this one. It's been a strange experience to watch liberal Zionist commentators in the US suddenly realise that Israel is spectacularly on the wrong track. One wants to scream, "Where on earth have you been for the past few decades?" For example, freaking out about the rabbis encouraging Jews not to rent to Arabs. But isn't buying up land and renting it to Jews only what the Jewish National Fund has been doing for decades?
All those decades when especially American commentators prefered to ignore or deny racism in Israel. They're not interested in evidence or facts, and having a discussion with someone that is not sensitive to evidence is like discussing quantum physics with my labrador while he's chasing a ball.
Discussion can make the sensible minority larger, though, so I guess we'd better continue trying. Look at how many people have come around lately, even though it is their own skins rather than the plight of the Palestinians that they're concerned about.
Jeffrey, Juan Cole wrote a good article the other day in which he argued that Obama may have lost congress (where the lobby rules), but that he still controls the US' UN representative. Thus, if he wanted to, Obama could get a resolution passed in the UN to start sanctions against Israel. So it's not so much the lobby-laden congress blocking critical action, it's Obama and the white house themselves. (Fear of not being re-elected in 2012?)
I further don't understand why people continue to say that Chomsky and Ajl and Zunes and the like deny that the lobby is influencial. We think that the lobby exists, that it's influencial and that it drives American foreign policy against the interests of the American people. But we think that it gains its strength from the big corporates whose financial interests are well served by the relationship with Israel. Or, rather, the lobby's strength is not diluted because of having to compete with rich corporates for attention, precisely because their messages are the same. The Islamophobes that make up the "articulate opinion" section of the lobby are thus able to exercise more influence than they can in, for example, the Afghanistan case where corporates (especially those serving the domestic American market) are now starting to lose money.
It's not a denial of the lobby, it is an explanation of how the lobby works. people who deny that corporates play a role basically posite that a bunch of screaming Islamophobes mysteriously gained control of government policy. We just explain the phenomenon by showing that the screaming bunch of Islamophobes' agenda aligns with corporate interests which steer government policy in other cases too, thus accounting for the strength of it.
I won't be surprised if Shlaim and Freeman agree with this. All they're saying is that Israel is a strategic liability to the US, and Chomsky et al would agree with that. That's precisely the point, the lobby and the corporates steer US policy against the interests of the US as a whole, but consistently with the corporate interests that typically determine policy.
Wondering Jew, from a white South African who had wrists and shoulders broken as an 8-year-old by the security forces at anti-apartheid protests, here it is in a very small nutshell:
1. The South African business community called for an end to apartheid. Why?
(A) Because as a part of BDS, international banks called in South africa's loans in 1985, which threatened to bankrupt the country.
(B) Because armed resistance and mass unarmed protesting de-stabilised the country sufficiently for international investers to withdraw. In fact, the mass protests of hundereds of thousands in the streets rendered the country ungovernable by the end of the 80s, and the US and Europe disapproved of violence against unarmed protesters.
(C) Because apartheid had some major internal inconsistencies that rendered it economically non-viable. E.g., under-educating blacks caused a lack in skilled labour, underpaying blacks caused the consumer market to be too small, etc.
2. The South African white community was re-assured by the ANC that whites could hold onto their wealth and thereby their privileged place in society. That removed the greatest worry of the whites - that the ANC were communists. Remember that, while most South Africans were racist, it wasn't their racism that drove them to support apartheid, it was their fear of what would happen to them if the black (suspected communist) majority took over the country.
3. Rather than just rugby, white South Africans split the world into the civilised (europe and the US) and the uncivilised (African blacks, Asian Muslims, etc). Many Israelis do something similar. And being completely rejected in all spheres by the people one deems "civilised" has an enormous psychological effect.
I sent Phil a comparison piece a while ago, but then disappeared off to Afghanistan when he wanted to communicate about it. Maybe I should try again.
As a non-American and non-Israeli, the only thing I can contribute is to say that if the US wants to be involved in a permanent war against those that oppose its policies, like Israel is in a permanent war against those that oppose its policies, then they will have to take up the same security measures as Israel, racist or not. And Americans will not protest any more than Israelis do; after all, "those terrible Muslims pose a massive threat to our security". In the name of security, Americans are likely to allow anything, like Israelis allow anything. Just indoctrinate the masses sufficiently so that noone questions the original policies that cause the insecurity.
Very conflicted about this myself. Polls at the end of the 1980s show that white South Africans wanted apartheid to continue, but by then apartheid legislations had been weakened throughout the 80s and sanctions strengthened throughout the 70s and 80s. So though they wanted it to continue, they were resigned to its end. In the South African case, it was thus much more productive to change actions after which initiatives were introduced to change attitudes.
Most of these comments assume that it is necessary to change the attitudes of Israelis, and that a change in action will come only once attitudes have been changed. But people have been living with these attitudes for decades; we cannot spend decades more on changing them while Palestinians and Israeli and international activists are being killed and indured. So, at this stage I support BDS of Israel as a whole, not because I believe that they will like it, but because I don't care much what their attitudes are. That can be worked on once their behaviour changes.
As for American attitudes, BDS doesn't need a majority, it only needs to create enough controversy for a moral vs immoral picket line to be drawn. Then even people who have no view on Israel-palestine at all will go along, especially given international law and majority european support. I usually feel better when I see that it is primarily white people over the age of 40 that blindly support all Israeli policies. it probably means the potential movement for change is larger than we think.
And, frankly, while I understand why people target only companies involved in the settlements, settlement-building is an initiative of the Israeli government. So leaving the government out of the sanctions target list seems non-sensical. Target the organisations whose behaviour one wants changed. Targeting settlements won't change ethnic clenzing in east-jerusalem, destruction of Bedouin villages, Arabs being extremely under-represented in the public work sector, etc. it's discrimination and racism.
Can they not see that this is why they're losing support? The "change that we have to resist" that he talks about at the end is clearly the change that allows people to see Palestinian suffering as on par with Jewish suffering. Because of course Jewish suffering is meant to be something uniquely tragic. It's the same mistake that they make when people challenge them about all the people in Gaza that are dying of treatable medical conditions and the children that are anemic. They typically say, "the only prisoner in Gaza is Gilad Shalit." It doesn't do well in world opinion because it is brutal and violates people's most basic sense of morality.
Here is the website of the guy who wrote weeping. It has a video and some other stuff.
link to weeping.info
Here is one that applies particularly well to the Israeli-Palestinian case. It was an anti-apartheid song written and sung by a South African group. It's haunting, because parts of it are sung with the melody of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika in the background. And it was written against the backdrop of the whites' fear of the black South African population and their violence on us. It captures Itamar's point from yesterday powerfully.
Bright Blue: Weaping.
I knew a man who lived in fear,
It was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near;
Behind his house, a secret place,
Was the shaddow of the demon he could never face;
He built a wall of steel and flame,
And men with guns to keep it tame;
Then standing back, he made it plain,
That the nightmare would never ever rise again,
But the fear and the fire and the guns remain.
It doesn't matter now,
It's over anyhow,
He tells the world that it's sleeping;
But as the night came round,
I heard it slowly sound,
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping.
And then one day the neighbours came,
They were curious to know about the smoke and flame;
They stood around outside the wall,
But of course there was nothing to be heard at all;
My friends, he said, we've reached our goal,
The threat is under firm control;
As long as peace and order reign,
I'll be damned if I can see a reason to explain,
Why the fear and the fire and the guns remain.
It doesn't matter now,
It's over anyhow,
He tells the world that it's sleeping;
But as the night came round,
I heard it slowly sound,
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping,
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping.
The thing with Hitchens that I sometimes appreciate and sometimes find infuriating is that he refuses to be intellectually consistent. The achievement is that it shows that he hasn't finally made up his mind about the world and that he is prepared to think through situations as he comes across them. But it does make some of his pronouncements hard to take.
As far as I know, without having made a study of his work, he has always been consistent opposing Israel's occupation of Palestine; in fact, he is very critical of events from before the 1967 occupation. But then he also criticised Chomsky for attributing attacks on the US to anger about the number of innocent people that the Americans and their allies kill. So I hope he's not saying that, when Israel does it it's wrong, but when the US does it it's OK. It's a common view, but has never made sense to me.
As a South African, I always find this to be the saddest element of the Israeli Palestinian situation. South African white and black people were never so completely cut off from each other. As apalling as apartheid was, we never had walls and check points, so it was much harder for races to live so completely past each other. It had a fairly limited effect in the mainstream, translating into something close to the Israeli political left: "o gosh, we can see the suffering of these people and feel quite bad for them; so if they stop fighting us we will give them some more privileges so they'll suffer less." But at least the suffering was hard to avoid noticing, while walling people off makes it easy to hide.
The mixing also explains why many white South Africans were involved in the resistance struggle. Regardless of the amount of ANC violence, (and read our Truth and Reconciliation Commission documents to debunk the common belief that it was limited to infrastructure), white people at all times participated in their tens of thousands. Dare I repeat that the Jewish participation was especially lively? That's why those who take themselves as speaking for the Jewish community in South Africa are constantly under attack by former anti-apartheid activists for their support of Israeli policies.
A palestinian voting rights campaign would be difficult, considering that the PA has already taken down artwork displayed in the westbank that motivated for a one-state solution. So the Palestinian community would have to be sufficiently united to campaign, not only against Israel and its allies, but against their own, um, government. And this would have to involve Palestinian society leaders either negotiating directly with Hamas (which is probably why, if rumours are to be believed, Hamas wants someone like Marwan Barghouti included in the Shalit prison swap deal), or somehow excluding Egypt, Israel and the US from mediation talks. Obviously foreign activists can't take the lead, as much as I'd love to hear Obama defend granting and withholding rights based on ethnicity/religion (which some journalists would then hopefully ask him to do). It might also place pressure on those that believe that the BDS campaign should apply to settlements only, and not to Israel as a whole. That's what made anti-apartheid campaigning easier; black South Africans all wanted the same things and were willing to fight for it.
But I can't see why, now that they have organised sufficiently to get regular protests going, they cannot organise to get ideas going and work them into the protests as they have already done on a small scale. Set up mock voting stations with international journalists and former politicians/nobel peace prize winners (Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu since Mandela is a bit frail), bombard Israeli offices with citizenship requests and registration of new political parties and requests for tax forms and job applications to Israeli institutions (with copies to the US state department), burn all identity cards on mass like the South Africans did, make fake Israeli IDs and march in mass up to check points, etc. But ultimately, it will have to be a Palestinian campaign with extensive international support.
If the world sees no problem with settlers residing in occupied territories and residents of the territories being moved out, I'd be surprised if anyone will care about settlers living in a foreign country; especially considering that the international community will probably recognise a Palestinian state, but avoid controversy by refusing to endorse a statement about its borders. So the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state has never seemed particularly promising to me. But it's for the Palestinians to decide which initiative they want to push.
As much as I like the idea, I'm also not wildly optimistic about a campaign to show ostrich-like Americans how Israel acts against American interests. There is a lot that can be used in a neocon counter campaign: "the Israeli deterrent keeps the extremist Arabs and Muslims in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Syria and even Iran under control (I mean, America cannot do it all by themselves), all countries spy on each other so why make an exception in the Israeli case, Israelis are bright enough to help the US develop weapons, the Liberty was an unfortunate accident," etc. Sadly they can do the same with the voting rights plans: "if Israel gives Palestinians voting rights, when Israel no longer has a Jewish majority a nuclear arsenal will be in Arab hands," etc. Long deep sigh.
A pity that European countries are so scared of antagonising the US, otherwise a campaign in the UN General Assembly for countries to call to exclude the US from the peace process (yuck) would have been interesting. I mean, it's not as if evidence is lacking that they have not had any success. And obviously there is no way of using international law to force the US and Europe out of participating in the occupation, except in the form of an International Court of Justice call that everyone will ignore.
What disturbs me more is that I'm sure a ban for the Turkish IHH is on the cards. One needs to coordinate with Hamas to get some types of stuff into Gaza. Or what about collecting money for Gazan state orphaniges or schools or universities. Even organising to be allowed to enter Gaza's sea port requires contact with Hamas. So many of the people on that flotilla sailed alarmingly close to doing things the American government would consider illegal. It's bloody sad when remembering that the US government classified the South African ANC as a terrorist organisation, and that the ANC did a lot of charritable work for the South African black population. So under current US standards, anti-apartheid activities to help black South Africans would have been illegal or at least deeply unacceptable when applying for visas and so forth. It's sad to see that current democrats are more extreme than past republicans like Reagan.