He might have been better saying “as long as there is occupation, there will be resistance.” However John Dugard, of the UN Human Rights Council, is to be commended for insisting the world recognise that violent acts committed by the Palestinian are part of an ongoing nationalist war being fought against colonialism, apartheid and military occupation. His goal? To understand the drivers behind the violence to gain peace for the region and for him that means ending the occupation. The following is from the Haaretz -
A report commissioned by the United Nations suggests that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation and laws that resemble South African apartheid – a claim Israel rejected Tuesday as enflaming hatred between Jews and Palestinians.
The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body’s Web site.
In it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says “common sense … dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.”
“While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation,” writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three.
He cited checkpoints and roadblocks restricting Palestinian movement to house demolitions and what he terms the Judaization of Jerusalem.
“As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism,” he argues.
Read the rest of this entry »
Kafkaesque Jerusalem
February 4, 2008
Ilan Pappe recently wrote an article stating that Israeli policy is implementing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza. It was always thought that Palestinian residents of Jerusalem were better off, but this article by Lubna Masarwa demonstrates that Palestinians are subject to a Kafkaesque regime: arbitrary searches and blockades, confiscation of identity papers (thus losing residency rights), blockade of entire sections of the city, intrusive video surveillance, etc. The relentless drive to Judaize entire neighborhoods in Jerusalem requires the constant screwing of the Palestinians — no matter how long they have lived there. Israelis refer to this as “ethnic thinning”, the oh-so-genteel form of ethnic cleansing. Masarwa writes:
I will present a partial picture of the life of East Jerusalem residents. I will attempt to touch on the heavy price paid by Palestinian society in al-Quds due to Israeli defined “security considerations,” a designation trotted out by Israeli authorities on almost every possible occasion with intent to win battles in the demographic war over it sees itself engaged in against the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. In fact, a central and publicized objective of Israel concerning everything related to East Jerusalem is the creation of a demographic and geographic reality that will bring about an increase in the number of Jews living in the city and the largest possible decrease in the number of Palestinians living there. In order to reach this objective, the state enlists all of its institutions. For instance, the National Insurance Institute (NII), intended to serve the welfare of residents, also acts as a supplementary political appendage, serving the Zionist vision of Israel and harming residents through the non-provision of social services that it is obligated to provide. Almost every day, we receive complaints from tens of East Jerusalem residents whose national security allowances have been terminated. From conversations I conduct with the NII clerks, it appears that residents of East Jerusalem, in order to receive their national insurance benefits as mandated by law, must meet near impossible conditions. They must provide receipts proving payment of city taxes and electricity for up to the past seven years, photographs of their house, and proof they have no property in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The waiting periods for these residents can last years, and, in the meantime, they remain without the ability to receive medical attention or their legally mandated benefits-in numerous instances, the sole family income.
Exporting Apartheid
February 4, 2008
‘The public has to be more alert’, because Scotland ‘is set to become another Israel within five years due to the growing terror threat, it was claimed yesterday’. Who claimed? ‘Amnon Maor, head instructor of counter-terrorism warfare for the Israeli Defence Force and Israeli police’. He then goes on to announce the good news that ‘anti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life.’
One wonders why a British daily would publish this kind of propaganda from an agent of a state which has a known interest in generating a climate of fear through which it can cultivate support for its own brutal policies, and also create opportunities for its growing ‘security’ industry. But considering that this is from a story by Graham Grant in the tabloid Daily Mail (or more commonly known as the ‘Hate Mail’), one is not entirely surprised as given the paper’s editorial line, one could easily imagine a story in its january 1939 issue urging public caution against the growing threat posed by the Jew, quoting a Nazi. More from the ‘news’ item:
The international terrorism expert, who is training Scottish police, military and civilians in security tech-niques, says bag searches and metal detectors outside shops and leisure complexes will become the norm as a way of weeding out potential suicide bombers. Mr Maor also called for anti-terrorism lessons in schools to increase public vigilance and the routine arm-ing of police officers.
His warning came a day after the new head of Scotlands biggest police force said he anticipated another terror attack north of the Border within the next few years.
Is that not nice. Get them early, in the schools. Before they can think for themselves, scare the bejesus out of them and throw in a few hints about the potential ‘terrorists’. I am sure its going to do wonders for race relations.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled plans for Fortress Britain, announcing a raft of anti-terror measures such as bag searches and airport-style scanners in railway stations.
Yes, Gordon Brown, one of the leaders of the ‘free world’ building a bridge to the middle ages. Fortress Britain! According to Timothy Garton Ash, the British state already ‘collects more data than the Stasi ever did‘.
But Mr Maor said more must be done to ensure the public are fully
aware of the threat. He added: Scotland cannot consider itself to be immune to terror, especially after what happened in Glasgow. The public has to be educated to be more alert to whats happening or the whole of Europe, including Scotland, could be like Israel now within five years.
At least on this count — education — I agree with Maor: UK needs to be educated on what waging a needless war against an Arab country for Israel has wrought on its people. Fear. Generated by the undisputed masters of the art. The public has to be educated to be more alert to the fifth columnists who would no doubt like to turn Scotland into another Israel.
Mr Maor is working with security firm 360 Defence, based near Glasgow, to teach Scottish police and military instructors specialist anti-terror techniques such as disarming suicide bombers. The company is working with a couple of Scots police forces but refuses to name them for security reasons. Mr Maor said: In Israel, all levels of society are taught to become aware o f what’s around them. Its not because theyre paranoid its because it saves lives.
An awareness programme for crime, terrorism and drugs all rolled into one for schools and universities would greatly reduce the chances of terrorist incidents happening. Its up to government to lead the way. In Britain, not every police officer has a gun and disarming a suicide bomber without a gun is difficult not impossible, but difficult. Routine arming is a good idea but also proper training and training in verbal tech-niques so, hopefully, the weapon wont be required.
360 Defence director Simon Leila said: Just a little knowledge could save lives. If people see something out of the ordinary, they should tell the police we have to get over our British re-serve of not wanting to make a fuss in case we look silly.
In brief: ‘give me a job, dammit!’.
J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Diary of a Bad Year’
January 18, 2008
Michael Gorra on J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Diary of a Bad Year’
Halfway through J.M. Coetzee’s 11th novel there’s a chapter called “On music,” a series of elegantly phrased pensées that moves from bird songs to the heroic narrative of the 19th-century symphony before it ends by marking the difference between two masters of the German Baroque. For Bach, we read, it seems that “any musical germ …[contains] endless possibilities for development,” but with Telemann the work “sounds like the execution of a plan rather than the exploration of a potential.” “Diary of a Bad Year” is not precisely a self-reflexive novel, the kind of book in which the writer pulls himself out of his own hat; it’s nothing so simple. It does, however, provide an implicit set of instructions for reading, and none more pregnant than these words about music. No one will doubt either this book’s intelligence or its artfulness. A final judgment, however, will depend on which composer one thinks it most resembles.
A Lasting Settlement?
January 11, 2008
‘While George Bush talks up the prospects for peace, in reality he backs Israel’s assault on Palestinians’ legitimate national aspirations’, writes Karma Nabulsi.
West Point was the first United States military post built after the Declaration of Independence. It had been designed and constructed by Tadeusz Kosciuszko, republican visionary, hero of the American Revolution and the 1794 Polish Uprising, and one of the greatest liberation figures in modern history. Kosciuszko believed and fought for a vision of an America emancipated from foreign rule, an America of both individual and collective liberty, a country that only waged wars of self-defence, and never wars of aggression and occupation. He was one of the founders of a great American tradition, the practice of hope and audacity in the struggle for freedom.
That practice was contesting a tradition of colonisation, slavery and empire – indeed, in appreciation of his contribution at West Point, Kosciuszko’s commanding officer gave him the gift of a slave. Kosciuszclo immediately freed him, stating that all forms of slavery must be resisted, and that, in the contest for the soul of the republic, the side of liberation must always be chosen. To this very day, the American republic is constantly shaped by this ongoing battle between the tradition of cynicism and that of hope, one of conservative reaction versus progressive values and freedom.
Park With No Peace
November 4, 2007
The great Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has described the JNF as Israel’s main agency of ethnic cleansing. In UK, US, Canada and Australia on the other hand, this organization receives tax-deductible charity status. In the guise of a nature conservation agency, this quasi-governmental organization has long assisted the Israeli state in the expropriation of Palestinian land. Some of the villages ethnically cleansed by the Israeli military now have JNF parks built on top to cover the evidence. These parks usually carry the name of the country whose donors helped build them. Here is Canadian TV’s look from 1991 at the Canada Park which conceals the ruins of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba.
UN Envoy Attacks Mid-East Quartet
October 15, 2007
John Dugard, the South African International Law expert and UN rapporteur, is one of those rare individuals who has risen in the UN hierarchy without compromising on his principals. First he spoke out on the Israeli Apartheid, and now he has blasted the Quartet, and especially the UN’s role in according it undeserved legitimacy. BBC reports,
A top UN expert has said he will urge the world body to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators unless it addresses Palestinian human rights.
John Dugard, the UN human rights envoy for the Palestinian Territories, told the BBC the US, EU, UN and Russia were failing to protect the Palestinians.
He said the UN “does itself little good by remaining a member of the Quartet”.
In his role as a UN special rapporteur, Mr Dugard has been visiting the West Bank and Gaza for the past seven years.
Special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
They are advisers and do not decide UN policy.
“Every time I visit, the situation seems to have worsened,” he said in a BBC interview.
I will suggest that the secretary general withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories
John Dugard,
UN special rapporteur
“This time, I was very struck by the sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people.”
Mr Dugard attributed this to “the crushing effect of human rights violations”, and in particular Israeli restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.
He said that although Israel did have a threat to its security, “its response is very disproportionate”.
He said the purpose of some of the checkpoints in the middle of the West Bank was to break it up “into a number of cantons and make the life of Palestinians as miserable as possible”.
‘Weak’ response
The South African retired professor of international law said the response of the Quartet was weak because it was “heavily influenced” by the US.
The Quartet failed to engage properly on human rights, he said, and was also failing to deal with the current rift between the rival Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas.
The militant Islamist movement Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in June, ousting Fatah, which is led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr Dugard said the rift was threatening the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and that the UN “should be playing the role of the mediator”.
“Instead the international community has given its support almost completely to one faction – to Fatah,” he said. “That’s not the role the UN should take.”
Pessimistic
For these reasons, Mr Dugard said it might be time for the UN to leave the Quartet.
If [Palestinian] expectations are not met, I fear there may be serious consequences
John Dugard“In my most recent report to the General Assembly, which I will present later this month, I will suggest that the secretary general withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories,” he said.
It is a backdrop which makes him pessimistic about the major US-sponsored peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians, expected to be held next month.
Mr Dugard said he saw a greater danger – that of the Palestinian Authority raising expectations too high in the Palestinian community.
“If those expectations are not met, I fear there may be serious consequences,” he added.
The consequences include the possibility of a third “intifada”, a large-scale, violent uprising against the Israelis, he said.
Mr Dugard said this should be no surprise.
“Inevitably in a military occupation, there are likely to be those engaged in resistance.”
These people may be labelled terrorists, Mr Dugard added, but history treats them differently.
He cited the example of the French Resistance during World War II, and those in Namibia who fought occupation by South Africa.
“Now,” he said, “they are in government and treated as heroes.”
UCU, and the Academic Shock and Awe
October 1, 2007
I have for some time been conflicted about my decision not to join the UCU (or its predecessors). I am generally sceptical of rigidly heirarchical structures, and the leadership of unions generally is notoriously corrupt. The handling of the strike last year was so quite pathetic, and if I were an undergrad, I would have turned against the teachers like so many of them did, despite initial support from the equally ineffectual NUS. No attempt was made to reach out to the students and bring them on board (although I was not associated with any union, when I explained to them the rationales for the strike, I found them invariably sympathetic). The unions pretend to democratic ideals, but in fact remain rigidly top down. So here we have the latest: only months after the excutives of NUJ reversed the wishes of the majority of its member for a boycott of Israeli goods, the UCU’s leadership does the same. But as if this unprincipled action were not enough, it has even cancelled the tour of Palestinian academics who intended to meet their colleagues at campuses around the country to argue for the necessity of a boycott.
In a microcosm, what happened with the NUJ and UCU is symbolic of everything that is wrong with Western style democracy. So long as the opinion of the electorate reflects the interest of the elites, they are allowed a voice. Should it ever come in conflict, as it did in this instance, it can be simply ignored.
Here is the letter sent to the head of UCU Sally Hunt by the President of Federation of Union of Palestinian Universities’ Professors & Employees.
Open Letter to Ms. Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the University and College Union
PFUUPE | | September 29, 2007
Dear Ms. Hunt,
We have received with dismay, although not entirely with surprise, your letter of September 28, 2007 to members of the delegation of Palestinian academic trade union members informing them of the decision by the University and College Union’s leadership to cancel their speaking tour to the UK to discuss the academic boycott of Israel with their colleagues at universities there. We wish to state clearly that we believe that our British colleagues have been deprived of an opportunity to better inform themselves about an issue which is of concern to conscientious academics and intellectuals the world over. Moreover, we are disappointed to see that the leadership of a prominent organization of academics such as yours has not defended the right of its members to engage in debate on this matter. Open debate and discussion are the foundations of academic freedom, and thus we cannot understand why the door to open consideration of controversial ideas has been so abruptly closed.We shall continue to pursue other avenues to make our case heard in the academic community in the UK, and shall not be deterred by the cancellation of the invitation extended to us by the UCU. While we do not have the resources of the Israel lobby in the UK, we do think that fair-minded British academics will be willing to listen to our case and give it thoughtful consideration. Truth is stronger than power, and we trust in the integrity of British academics to know that instinctively.
We do not think that your members are unaware of the significant role played by the UCU’s predecessor, the AUT, in upholding academics’ commitment to justice. During the struggle against the odious apartheid regime in South Africa, British academics were at the forefront of the academic and other boycotts of the racist state. We do not see why considering ways of fighting Israeli oppression of Palestinians should be subject to different considerations.
We appreciate the sentiments expressed in your letter about “finding a way of opening a dialogue with the Palestinian academic community on building solidarity.” The best form of solidarity with Palestinians, whether they are academics or ordinary people, is direct action aimed at bringing an end to the occupation and the regime of apartheid in Palestine. Isolating Israel in the international arena through various forms of boycott and sanctions and forcing it to obey international law and respect Palestinian rights is one of the strategies open to international civil society, including members of the academy. We are confident that our British colleagues will begin to realize that true solidarity with Palestinian academics requires a political commitment to bringing about an end to oppression and injustice.
Sincerely,
Dr. Amjad Barham
The President of Federation of Union of Palestinian Universities’ Professors & Employees
The decision has also been condemned by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).
BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine) today condemned the decision of the University and College Union (UCU) to cancel the tour of UK campuses by Palestinian academics. UCU was specifically instructed to organise this tour by the UCU Congress last May. The tour was intended to raise debate within the union about an academic boycott of Israeli universities. The UCU leadership under General Secretary Sally Hunt is hiding behind ‘legal advice’ which they have not disclosed to their members in order to sabotage a decision with which they disagree.
In May 2007 in Bournemouth, UCU Annual Congress voted by 158 to 99 in favour of a resolution which instructed the National Executive Committee to
circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches/LAs for information and discussion; encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists; issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.
actively encourage and support branches to create direct links with Palestinian educational institutions and to help set up nationally sponsored programmes for teacher exchanges, sabbatical placements, and researchThe UCU senior office holders led by General Secretary Sally Hunt argued fiercely against this motion. The motion’s effect was to initiate a year-long debate about boycotting Israeli universities. Having lost the argument they are now finding other means to subvert the democratic vote of the union’s highest decision-making body.
This use of the law to interfere with democratic freedoms is a deeply worrying tendency – witness the 2005 Serious and Organized Crimes Act preventing protests around Parliament and Downing Street, and the decision last week to ban the march in Central London planned by the Stop the War Coalition.
BRICUP has the deepest doubts about the validity of the ‘legal advice’ which UCU is claiming as the reason for its cancellation of the tour by Palestinians, and the effective banning of discussion of the boycott topic in union branches. BRICUP demands answers to the following questions:
- who provided the legal advice?
- what was the verbatim advice received? It needs to be published so that it can be open to critical scrutiny
- was any previous advice sought from other sources, and if so what was its content?
According to BRICUP co-chair Professor Jonathan Rosenhead “It is all too common for governments and other bodies to go to a lawyer who will give them the advice they want to hear. This is how the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith got the advice that the invasion of Iraq was ‘legal’”.
Further information: Mike Cushman 07736 705294
www.bricup.org.uk
info@bricup.org.uk
As for how this reversal was brought about, Sharif Elmusa’s article on the Israel lobby’s “Academic Shock and Awe” campaign sheds some important light.
The Israeli emperor now wears only the clothes of apartheid. Many people are noticing and are speaking up. Some have taken steps to boycott this, perhaps the last, apartheid state. The wave includes a wide range of participants, from academic and labour unions to writers, artists, church and student groups and others. Together they speak of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Some of those in the forefront of the campaign are Jewish, including the art critic Peter Berger, Steven Rose at the Open University, and Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who labelled the Israeli system as worse than his country’s former apartheid regime, endorsed divestment. What drew the ire of Israel and the Israel lobby the most, however, is a resolution by the British University and College Union (UCU) at its congress 30 May. The UCU resolution encourages its members to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israel academic institutions,” and to forge closer relations with Palestinian universities.
The Israel lobby has reacted to the UCU’s move in Britain with an academic “shock and awe” operation. What I am referring to is the one-page advertisement in The New York Times 8 August, paid for by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC assembled for the ad the signatures of more than 300 American college and university presidents endorsing a statement by Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, that pronounces an identity of interests between US and Israeli universities: “for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you [the UCU] are seeking to punish.” It then menacingly takes the logical step: “Add Columbia to the boycott list.” This way the battle is shifted to the enemy’s turf: if you boycott Israeli universities, we will boycott you — a British eye (and a Palestinian one as collateral damage) for an Israeli eye.
The ad places Bollinger’s statement inside a frame at the centre of the page, flanked by presidential names on all sides. The design, together with the first person form Bollinger uses in the statement, intensify the power of the message and give it a sense of urgency. The text is short, terse and declarative. It does not indicate the reasons that led the UCU to pass the resolution after a long and open exchange, making those who backed it sound like extremist airheads. Contestation is the lifeblood of democracy and intellectual advancement, but the big guns do not seem to feel they owe anyone a rational counter-argument. Worse, they do not mention the Palestinians at all; unlike the UCU that frames its resolution in the light of “Israel’s 40-year occupation [which] has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society,” the “denial of educational rights for Palestinians,” and “the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation.” So while the ad is visually framed, it deliberately and callously lacks context. And while it evokes high-minded principles, it takes, behind the reader’s back, the side of the powerful against the wronged. Who then deserves to be called “shoddy intellectually and politically biased,” the UCU, as Bollinger alleges, or he and his colleagues?
The UCU debated the motion over a period of two years. Its resolution in fact was a call for further debate on the boycott, a key point omitted by Bollinger. The union tackled questions like: Why single out Israel when there are so many other bad states in the world? What is the role of Israeli academics in their state’s practices? Does a boycott impinge on the human rights of those subject to the boycott? In contrast, the 300 academic CEOs, like autocratic rulers, have circumvented discussion of the issue on their campuses. That the Israel lobby felt it must respond with such force and without deliberation, in fact, belies moral weakness instead of strength. Like any totalitarian system, the lobby fears that any cracks engendered by free conversation would lead to the crumbling of the edifice of falsehoods it has constructed about Israel and the Palestinians. Rigid structures collapse suddenly.
At stake for the academy is not just the question of the boycott; it is also matter of who has “voice”. Organised British educators are saying that they, too, not just the heads of their institutions, can take initiative in shaping relations with others. They, not the heads, after all are the teachers, trainers, researchers and collaborators. Will members of faculty and students at American universities — even those opposed to the boycott — demand that the issue be tabled for deliberation and that all concerned get a chance to freely express their opinion? Or will they accept the decree of their presidents in silence?
British academics that objected to the resolution felt at least obligated to express, in a message to the UCU, their sympathy with the Palestinian plight and the chronic stranglehold Israel has over their educational development. It is doubtful that many of the signatories of the US ad are even aware of this dark side of Israel’s conduct. How much does, for example, Susan Hockfield, president of MIT, my alma mater, and a neuroscientist, know about the issue? Shouldn’t she have consulted, before signing such an important policy position, members of her own faculty, among them Noam Chomsky? Had she talked to him or other region scholars she would have learned a great deal about Israel’s systematic dispossession of the Palestinians; about the numerous and extended closures of Palestinian universities; about the thousands of students who were imprisoned and banished into exile; about the ban in the last couple of years against academics with dual nationalities from entering into the West Bank and Gaza to resume teaching. She could have been informed of this, and much more. Fortunately, it is not too late for Hockfield to educate herself. She can venture into the West Bank and Gaza and discover the truth first hand. If pressed for time, she can visit websites such as those of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel ( www.pacbi.org ) and the UCU ( www.ucu.org.uk ).
Still, lack of knowledge alone does not sufficiently explain the mobilisation of 300 academic presidents. Bollinger himself must understand something about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He handled several fabricated charges by pro-Israeli media and activists against Palestinian and other Arab professors at Columbia, including the late Edward Said, Joseph Massad and George Saliba. We can only conclude, especially since the cost of the ad was defrayed by the AJC, that Bollinger and at least some of his colleagues fell under the influence of the Israeli lobby. In The London Review of Books, Spring 2007, Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt — who have written a book on the lobby due for release this month — cite the testimony of several highly knowledgeable Washingtonians on the lobby’s reach. One of them, former Senator Ernest Hollings, said on leaving office that “you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC (the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby group in Washington) gives you around here.” Could the 300 presidents forge no other policy on the UCU’s resolution other than what American Jewish lobbyists dictate to them?
Their stance carries a moral burden. By siding with power, and by trying to abort the boycott effort, they abet in depriving the Palestinians of the only viable non- violent course of resistance to the Israeli occupation of their land. The international boycott of white South Africa’s apartheid system eventually led to the collapse of that system. Equally salient, but often forgotten, is that the boycott strengthened the hand of Nelson Mandela and others in the African National Congress who advocated peaceful means for achieving majority rule. Otherwise, there would have been much more bloodshed, and perhaps no reconciliation between blacks and whites. The US government was one of the very last to join the boycott against South Africa, after a prolonged pursuit of hypocritical “constructive engagement”. (Israel never joined and maintained its strong historic links with apartheid South Africa.) When the boycott took hold, however, American academics and others were rightly proud to take part and to engage in civil disobedience in front of South Africa’s diplomatic missions and offices. What is the difference between South Africa and Israel? The Israel lobby? Perhaps. But in the end, Bollinger and his peers must accept responsibility for their unilateral, politically biased attempt to pre-empt debate. The start of the new academic year is a good time for concerned faculty and students to demand a voice.
* The writer is an associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.
It Is Unjust and Absurd To Apply Economics To The Hell That Is Palestine
September 20, 2007
A powerful piece form Karma Nabulsi.
No people, territory or issue on earth have had more international attention devoted to them than Palestine and its people. Yet no conflict looks further from resolution, and no people further from achieving the freedom promised them. More Palestinians lack more basic freedoms today than they did 60 years ago. While an expensive and extensive peace process was in full swing, Israel managed to illegally expropriate most of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, install hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers, kill more Palestinian families, arrest more young men, destroy more crops, homes and businesses, build a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice, and set forth, unchecked, a policy of aggressive expansionism in Palestine that continues until this moment.
Citizens of this country may wish to ask why this is so, and what on earth their government has been doing all this time with their money. Yesterday the government attempted to answer this question with the launch of a report on the Economic Aspects of the Peace Process. What the report doesn’t explain is the direct link between throwing economics at this conflict and the repeated failures to solve it.
The symbiotic relationship between the illegal “facts on the ground” created by Israel in occupied Palestine; the simultaneous loss of nerve by almost all international leaders and institutions to reverse those facts; the subsequent flurry of international activities designed to avoid challenging illegal Israeli actions – this triangle of desolation has been masterfully described in a remarkable publication by Chatham House, entitled Aid, Diplomacy, and Facts on the Ground: the Case of Palestine. Its authors – World Bank representatives, UN officials, humanitarian agencies – detail the economic, political and diplomatic strategies by which international donors have (by deafault or by design) encouraged illegal Israeli practices that have made peace impossible. Without polemics or partisanship, these expert contributors coolly demonstrate the calamity of this approach, and suggest practical solutions to redirect attention towards doing good.
Two of the most treacherous mechanisms of avoidance need highlighting: diplomacy through international negotiations, and the type of economic assistance given to an increasingly impoverished Palestinian people. Since the Oslo agreement in 1993, every subject Israeli governments refused to discuss was removed from the negotiating table. Unfortunately this required excluding the people and issues essential to resolving the conflict: the Palestinians and their right to their land.
First it was the refugees, the majority of the Palestinian people; absurdly, the main victims of the conflict were denied respect, involvement, and participation in peace. Next came the elimination of an entire sector of Palestinian representation under occupation: some assassinated, others now languishing in Israeli jails in their thousands, most of whom want peace – just not one entirely on Israel’s terms. And finally an international boycott of any elected party whose political views unsurprisingly run counter to its enemy’s. An inevitable outcome of these exclusions is that all civic-minded, active and representative Palestinians have quit, in revulsion, the corrupted public space and secret backrooms of such negotiations.
As well as entire sectors of people, political issues Israelis deemed unacceptable have also been pushed off the agenda. This is the ugly shape of the international conference President Bush is seeking to convene in November. Its purpose is to legitimise the intolerable status quo, especially Israel’s recent military conquests. Worse, it will endeavour to demonstrate, through a PR campaign by paid-up pro-Israel lobbyists, that the deal is authentic and supported by ordinary people uniting for peace. Everyone who disagrees will face being smeared as marginal, anti-peace, or dangerously extremist.
The “problem” of Palestine is now restricted to a discussion in purely economic terms. It is not the military occupation, the enforced exile and statelessness of millions of Palestinians, or the daylight robbery of Palestinian land that needs confronting, but the lack of economic stability in occupied Palestine for jobs and development.
The latest initiative from the government suggests improvements driven by private investment. The absurdity of proposing to stimulate investment in this hell – where because of Israeli closures and checkpoints Palestinians cannot trade between their own towns much less with the outside world – or the fact that the present economic catastrophe is a direct consequence of the military occupation, gets no acknowledgement here. By avoiding the real issue of Israeli intransigence, and with no plan on tackling it, neither jobs nor justice are on offer to Palestinians. They expect international support to help them win their freedom – or at least not assistance in their oppression. As Mary Anderson, a contributor to the Chatham House book, explains: if you can do no good in Palestine, at least do no harm.
Karma Nabulsi is a fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University karmanabulsi@hotmail.com
Israel: Apartheid Not Peace
September 2, 2007
Israel is an Apartheid state, no doubt, but its media is far freer than its US counterpart. The following report form JTA is ironic for several reasons. For one, British and American Zionists have long tried to suppress acknowledgements of the sort which are commonplace in Israel about its political reality.
The British Zionist Federation canceled a London appearance by Ha’aretz columnist Danny Rubinstein the day after he called Israel an “apartheid state” at a United Nations conference on Palestinians.
Rubinstein, the Israeli newspaper’s Arab affairs editor and a member of its editorial board, told an audience of some 350 people that “today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities,” according to sources at the event, held at the European Parliament in Brussels. He went on to say that Palestinians living in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israel each had “a different status,” according to a summary of his speech by a United Nations web site.
Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Schwammenthal told JTA he was so shocked by what he heard that he later confirmed the comment with Rubinstein. “I asked him if he really thought Israel was in a state of apartheid and he answered ‘yes,’” Schwammenthal said.
Rubinstein also said “Hamas won the election of the international community and Israel cannot ignore that” and argued that the security fence Israel was building could not be justified, sources said.
The British Zionist Federation issued a statement Friday saying that it had read about Rubinstein’s quotes in a JTA news report Thursday and verified them with him the next day. According to the Zionist federation, the result was a “mutual decision” to cancel Rubinstein’s event.
“Criticism of Israeli policy is acceptable,” the Zionist federation’s chairman, Andrew Balcombe, said in a prepared statement. “However, by using the word ‘apartheid’ in a U.N. conference held at the European Parliament, Danny Rubinstein encourages the demonisation of Israel and the Jewish people. I believe he was naïve to attend the UN conference. Indeed his own newspaper Ha’aretz had earlier reported that Israeli and EU lawmakers had attacked the UN meeting for having a completely one-sided, anti-Israeli agenda.”
The Zionist federation’s conference, titled “Israel at 60,” is being held from August 31-September 2 in London.
Rubinstein, who did not return a call seeking comment, made his remarks during a forum that pro-Israel non-governmental organizations — including B’nai B’rith, U.N. Watch and NGO Monitor — have described as Israel-bashing sessions run by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. The pro-Israel groups say that the U.N. committee has a long history of opposing Israeli interests.
Pro-Israel critics say that the name of the U.N. conference, “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestine Peace,” was misleading, as solutions for peace were not on the agenda and only speakers with harsh words to say about Israel were given an opportunity to present their views.
At this year’s event, attendees gave an ovation to members of the Neturei Karta, the ultra-Orthodox sect that vehemently opposes Israel’s existence and participated in a highly publicized gathering of Holocaust deniers in Iran. Observers said that during one workshop, Richard Kuper, spokesman of the London-based European Jews for a Just Peace, argued that Israel supporters emphasize the conflict in Darfur to direct attention away from Israel’s human rights violations, according to witnesses. Several other speakers at the forum called for boycotts of Israel.
Seven members of the European Parliament published a letter to the International Herald Tribune Friday, saying that “despite the neutrally sounding title of its conference,” it “has a proven record of anti-Israel bias, spreading propaganda that presents only the Palestinian narrative, including the delegitimization of Israel — a UN member state.”
Susanna Kokkonen, political director of European Coalition for Israel, which represents five different Christian organizations and works closely with members of the European Parliament who advocate Israeli interests, said the two-day conference, which kicked off Thursday, had “an atmosphere that was thick with hate towards Israel.”
“I was most shocked to hear an editor from Ha’aretz condemn Israel in a way that was worse than the Arab speakers,” Kokonnen said.
Rubinstein shared the podium with British Parliament member Clare Short, who reportedly said apartheid in Israel was worse than in South Africa. “Israel doesn’t want a two-state solution and the E.U. is allowing the state of apartheid to continue. We have to start sanctions against Israel,” she told attendees, according to several observers.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based U.N. Watch, an organization with ties to the American Jewish Committee, said that simply by agreeing to speak at the conference, Rubinstein was lending it legitimacy.
“It’s disturbing that a leading Israeli journalist is participating with a Soviet-era enterprise whose sole aim is to assault Israel morally, legally and financially,” Neuer said. “But that he would full-throatedly join the jackals and call Israel ‘an apartheid state’ is an outrage. Though Rubinstein was officially presented by the U.N. as a member of the Ha’aretz editorial board, we trust that the newspaper does not condone the delegitimization of Israel.”
