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What I’ve Been Up To Lately
- Remember kids, Twitter Torah experiment at 2:30PM EST: Collaborative discussion on Parshat Balak. Get in on it at #balak. 1 day ago
- RT @spagnoloacht Video of my Creative Commons Salon presentation on the Jewish Digital Narratives platform http://blip.tv/file/2305108/ 1 day ago
- Yes Men pull out of Jerusalem Film Fest http://su.pr/1uJUsU 1 day ago
- More updates...
EPIC MORALITY FAIL.
Today I received an email (one of many such emails and comments I have received) from a member of Jews Against the Occupation who took issue with the nature and framing of Sunday’s planned protest against Israeli & Palestinian violence and who implored me to abandon our demonstration and join the Palestinian solidarity rally instead.
Though I won’t publicize the entire contents of the email nor the identity of the sender, there were two things he said which jumped out at me, whereas they exemplify precisely the type of thinking that makes this demonstration so necessary.
He writes:
As a member of Jews Against the Occupation and Adalah-NY, both of which work hard against anti-semitism in the Palestine solidarity community, I think its important for Jews not to start equating the two sides as the mass media does.
Yes, God forbid Jews start seeing Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians as no better than Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians (and vice versa)! God forbid we condemn attacks on civilians, no matter who’s attacking them! Clearly, when Hamas kills Israeli children it’s legitimate resistance to the occupation. When Israel kills Palestinian children it’s genocide. One side’s killing is obviously more justified than the other’s!
/sarcasm
Killing civilians is not a just means of pursuing political recourse, either morally or legally, no matter which party does the killing. One need not equate occupied and occupier nor deny one’s privilege or responsibility in order to renounce the murder of civilian parties. No civilian is so culpable for his or her government’s crimes so as to be deserving of a brutal death. Let alone that such a view is implicit acquiescence to the murder of one’s fellow, the belief that Palestinians have no other means to effectively resist the occupation not only limits and demeans the Palestinian people, it diminishes the potential of human ingenuity.
He added:
Uh, also, I honestly and sincerely don’t think that making Holocaust analogies is anti-semitic. Overblown? Maybe. But not anti-semitic.
(I’m assuming this was in reference to Charles’ post.)
So let me just get this straight: It’s not okay to compare the killing of civilians by Israel and Hamas, but it’s okay to compare Israel to Nazi Germany? Way to “work hard against anti-semitism.”
Uh, also, has it occurred to you that you’re who we’re protesting?
[P]lease consider joining the side that actually stands for equality and human rights throughout the Middle East.
I ask this gentleman and those who share his views to do the same.
Tags: civilians, gaza, israel, jato, palestine, protest, War
Myopathy.
All parties in this conflict are fiercely clinging to their respective narratives, their histories–all of which contain at least a grain of truth–because, they feel, their very existence is at stake. To recognize the suffering of the other is to validate his experience. If you’re approaching the conflict as a zero-sum game acknowledging that the other has suffered, and suffered at your own hand, itimplies that you’ve failed morally and that your justification for your actions, your narrative, isn’t the only way to view the history of the conflict, not the only Truth.
It’s time to recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game. It’s not just a matter of supporting a two-state solution, or even of being both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine; all of us who give a damn have to work at restoring the human dignity of all Israelis and Palestinians. It’s time to speak up when members of our community or others demoralize, vilify or otherwise objectify Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs, Muslims or Jews.
Apologists for both sides want to say that there’s no “moral equivalence” between the two. One side is somehow more justified than the other. I say that’s moral equivocation.
This may interest you, an excellent statement from the Manchester branch of the Anarchist Federation (UK):
No state solution in Gaza
One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Gaza: the Israeli state is committing atrocities which must end immediately. With hundreds dead and thousands wounded, it has become increasingly clear that the aim of the military operation, which has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire in June, is to break Hamas completely. The attack follows the crippling blockade throughout the supposed ‘ceasefire’, which has destroyed the livelihoods of Gazans, ruined the civilian infrastructure and created a humanitarian disaster which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to.
But that’s not all there is to say about the situation. On both sides of the conflict, the idea that opposing Israel has to mean supporting Hamas and its ‘resistance’ movement is worryingly common. We totally reject this argument. Just like any other set of rulers, Hamas, like all the other major Palestinian factions, are happy and willing to sacrifice ordinary Palestinians to increase their power. This isn’t some vague theoretical point – for a period recently most deaths in Gaza were a result of fighting between Hamas and Fatah. The ‘choices’ offered to ordinary Palestinian people are between Islamist gangsters (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) or nationalist gangsters (Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades). These groups have shown their willingness to attack working class attempts to improve their living conditions, seizing union offices, kidnapping prominent trade unionists, and breaking strikes. One spectacular example is the attack on Palestine Workers Radio by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for “stoking internal conflicts”. Clearly, a “free Palestine” under the control of any of these groups would be nothing of the sort.
As anarchists, we are internationalists, opposing the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any interests in common. Therefore, anarchists reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Israeli nationalism (Zionism). Ethnicity does not grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. People, on the other hand, have a right to having their human needs met, and should be able to live where they choose, freely.
Therefore, against the divisions and false choices set up by nationalism, we fully support the ordinary inhabitants of Gaza and Israel against state warfare – not because of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but simply because they’re real living, feeling, thinking, suffering, struggling human beings. And this support has to mean total hostility to all those who would oppress and exploit them –the Israeli state and the Western governments and corporations that supply it with weapons, but also any other capitalist factions who seek to use ordinary working-class Palestinians as pawns in their power struggles. The only real solution is one which is collective, based on the fact that as a class, globally, we ultimately have nothing but our ability to work for others, and everything to gain in ending this system – capitalism – and the states and wars it needs .
That this seems like a “difficult” solution does not stop it from being the right one. Any “solution” that means endless cycles of conflict, which is what nationalism represents, is no solution at all. And if that is the case, the fact that it is “easier” is irrelevant. There are sectors of Palestinian society which are not dominated by the would-be rulers – protests organised by village committees in the West Bank for instance. These deserve our support. As do those in Israel who refuse to fight, and who resist the war. But not the groups who call on Palestinians to be slaughtered on their behalf by one of the most advanced armies in the world, and who wilfully attack civilians on the other side of the border.
Neither one stare nor two states, but no states
Whoever dies, Hamas and the Israeli state win
I think the core issue here is wanting to have an answer to one of the most difficult International Relations issues in modern history. Children being killed is no good, period. Killing civilians is not ok…ever
Salam.
I support your effort and I do see it as necessary. But they had “near-a-point” there.
The issue is not for about numbers _well it IS, must say.
Israeli repression existed when the checkpoints wouldn’t allow Red Cross ambulances get through and people died, even of natural and light causes as a complicated labor. Cutting suplies of water and electricity is against International Laws, and Israel, as a State who calls itself a democracy, should accomplish them even when its Governments hasn’t subscribed some of the resolutions yet.
I’m not equidistant. I can’t be. And not because of my reasons commented at your post “Thoughts on Gaza”. Not because of I won’t never, ever, be equidistant with life conditions daily at both sides _c’mon, can you compare living without bike rides with living without food, water, air, medical aids, and still be serious?
The important fact here to face the future is that violence executed by a State is always worse than violence executed by armed civilians _that’s why we speak about terrorism as a crime. And democracies are supposed to not commit crimes.
@Yosef, please take christians in count. Palestinian are both
Yosef, props to you a great definition of myopathy. I think I might need to borrow that one!
Amen.
…& Christians…