The New School has posted this full recording of the discussion on Saturday afternoon. (h/t Alex Kane).
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The New School has posted this full recording of the discussion on Saturday afternoon. (h/t Alex Kane).
Carefully chosen freeze, video frame?
NF says a lot of things here that make me a lot happier with him in terms of his relationship with other Palestinian solidarity activism, particularly the line about wanting to persuade and not being enemies etc. This is what I want to see – that we as activists and supporters of Palestinians can disagree without the name calling and demonising each other.
That said, I still have a huge problem with NF”s notion of ‘reality’. He’s not a realist, he’s an actualist. He’s saying to the Palestinians that he is defining reality and they must settle for it. What he is defining is actuality, which one can see in the international laws he cites (let’s put aside the conflicting legal principles in terms of what applies to UN resolutions re: Palestine and international humanitarian law). However, that is not all ‘reality’ is. Reality is a constantly unfolding process that can have a multiplicity of possibilities. Anna makes that point when she points out how far BDS has come in a short time and how it’s affecting the debate. You can look at possibilities and be a realist. But to cut off possibility, as NF does, means that he is an actualist, not a realist. As such, he just becomes someone else who is telling the Palestinians what is ‘good’ for them and I find that rather paternalistic because usually whenever someone is dictating what ‘reality’ or ‘realism’ is, they are usually doing so from a position of power. Anna makes that point really nicely when she talks about Jewish privilege. NF ignores the new reality that is unfolding on the ground in Palestine outside of Oslo and UN resolutions. That is real too.
Here endeth my attempt at teaching Ontology 101.
As you can see in the recording Norman does not at any point say that BDS is against International Law. In fact, he was involved in BDS before there was a BDS movement.
Will you now retract your assertion that Norman claimed BDS was against the law, Philip?
Anna was glorious especially at minute 39. Every Jewish activist should listen to minutes 39 to 45.
I didn’t watch the entire debate, but skipped forward to the interchange between Baltzer and Finklestein.
I don’t know why Finklestein is being considered fringe of late. His two state arguments are sound and realistic. One striking point was that Israel’s occupation is cost free. Pressure on the US veto at the UN and the $3bn could easily tip the balance here.
Anna’s arguments I found were great, but somewhat idealistic. One state could easily be achieved by dismantling the Israeli regime, but there’s no carrot or stick to make this happen. I don’t think BDS will reach a broad enough audience for Israel to care financially and I don’t think it’s powerful enough to spur the Israeli public to sufficient discontent that a new political player who could change the current situation would appear.