November 30, 2007
dark hope
"I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem. I have a story, not yet finished, to tell." This is the opening line of David Shulman's powerful and memorable book, Dark Hope, a diary of four years of political activity in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is a record of the author's intense involvement with a volunteer organization composed of Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, called Ta'ayush, an Arabic term for "living together" or "life in common." The group was founded in October 2000, soon after the start of the second Palestinian intifada."This book aims," Shulman writes,
at showing something of the Israeli peace movement in action, on the basis of one individual's very limited experience.... I want to give you some sense of what it feels like to be part of this struggle and of why we do it.
Struggle with whom? Shulman explains:
Israel, like any society, has violent, sociopathic elements. What is unusual about the last four decades in Israel is that many destructive individuals have found a haven, complete with ideological legitimation, within the settlement enterprise. Here, in places like Chavat Maon, Itamar, Tapuach, and Hebron, they have, in effect, unfettered freedom to terrorize the local Palestinian population; to attack, shoot, injure, sometimes kill—all in the name of the alleged sanctity of the land and of the Jews' exclusive right to it.
His diary proceeds to show how this happens.
more from the NYRB here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 07:49 AM | Permalink
Comments
"What is unusual about the last four decades in Israel is that many destructive individuals have found a haven, complete with ideological legitimation, within the settlement enterprise"
Actually, it's SIX decades.
Posted by: saifedean | Nov 30, 2007 11:55:29 AM
Reading this review puts you in a state of rage and helplessness. for we are witnesing the slow strangulation of a people and have no power to do any thing about it. While America under Bush has made promotion of democracy its number one priority in the Middle East, the one place where democracy was practiced, but produced undesirable results for the Americans and Israelis, they are doing their utmost to starve the entire population of the Gaza Strip. What a shame.
But strangely enough it also gives me hope. I have believed for some time now that unless Jews take up the cause of the suffering Palestinians this problem will not be resolved. Only they are organized enough, sophisticated enough and principled enough to fight and win the rights of the Palestinian people. People like David Shulman and the Peace Now movement are the only hope for ever resolving this long simmering and violent dispute. My copy of the book just came in the mail today and maybe I will have more to say after reading it for myself. Eqbal Ahmed had pushed for a non-violent resistance movement in the Palestinian territories many years ago, but as this book suggests Palestinians never pursued it as a serious option. Interested to hear from Saifedean.
Posted by: Tasnim | Nov 30, 2007 9:16:41 PM
Morgan,
I was referring a friend to the comments section of this post, to find that one long, thoughtful, non-antagonistic and interesting one had been removed, as well as two shorter ones. The latter two disagreed with some of the points David Shulman makes -- an OK thing to do here, last I knew of it. I hope I'm hallucinating. May I ask you to explain this?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 3, 2007 9:54:22 PM
OK, I was hallucinating, and very happy to find that that is so. The comments I was looking for pertain to "Back in the Ghetto." Sorry!
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 3, 2007 9:57:48 PM
Tasnim,
The Palestinians have through the years attempted non-violence a lot, and many would argue, too much. There are fundamental problems that make nonviolence non-viable in the context of Palestine, and these have proved the undoing of all nonviolent movements so far.
First of all, the biggest problem is that no matter what the Palestinians do nonviolently, the world doesn't care about it. Every Friday for the last few years, there have been demonstrations of Palestinians outside Bili'in to protest the building of the wall that has confiscated most of this town's agricultural land. This rarely ever makes news.
The best illustration of this is what a friend of mine who was organizing some of these nonviolent protests once told me about the way the media treats them. Every time they would try to call major media to come cover the event, they would get the same reply "We can't make it unfortunately, but if any clashes happen, let us know and we'll cover it."
Simply put, the world has never been interested in covering stories of Palestinian nonviolence. Any newspaper that runs this in America gets beseiged with being called a terrorism-sympathizers for daring to portray Palestinians as humans. It's much more convenient to just make them all look like suicide bombers. This is not just something that might mildly inconvenience nonviolent protestors, it is something that is fundamentally destructive to the cause of nonviolence. Simply put, there is no point of nonviolence struggle if no one hears about it. You're not inconveninencing anyone but yourself. Given that most people have lives to live and children to look after, there is only so much empty posturing with no consequence on the real world that anyone can do.
Secondly, and maybe more importantly, is the way the criminals of the Israeli army react to such protests. They have simply always reacted with force. It becomes pretty hard to maintain nonviolence when an army as vicious and as murderous as the Israeli one reacts with overwhelming force, and most importantly, gets away with it.
Thirdly, and this is a more philosophical argument, but it is often said that pacifism works against good gone wrong, but not against evil. In this case, we are certainly up against pure unmitigated evil. Simply put, Israel's government and it's army are determined to colonize Palestine, build settlements, steal resources, subjugate the population, and ethnically cleanse the land to ensure the superiority of one religion over all of it. Nonviolence just won't cut it in this situation, simply because the goals of this colonial criminal enterprise are set in stone, regardless of the actions of Palestinians. This isn't some conflict of equals were both sides react to each other's agendas. The colonialization of the West Bank is something messianic, enshrined in Israel's soul and a fundamental part of its Zionist policy. Every government since 1967 has actively built, supported and subsidized settlements. This has been true in periods of peace and war, and completely regardless of what the Palestinians do. There is nothing we can do to make them change their minds about this. Preaching that the Palestinians use nonviolence for this is similar to suggesting that Native Americans would've stopped European ethnic cleansing of America if they had just used nonviolence. Whether in America or in Palestine, there is such a thing as a colonizer coming in with a manifest destiny mindset with which you can not reason.
Nontheless, let me be clear: I am an opponent of violent resistance. My aim is to have Palestinians have the luxury of being able to resist nonviolently, and hopefully succeed. But for the lack of nonviolence, I certainly do not blame the powerless victim.
Saif
Posted by: saifedean | Dec 4, 2007 11:42:32 AM
Saif,
Based on your last paragraph, I'd guess you had some excellent ideas about how a non-violent resistance could be better organized to be both visible and effective, or you would not be an opponent of violent resistance.
In my view, the world needs and wants to know about Palestinians who do not support violence as the only way to prevail. True, the media may find this less tasty, but, compared to how it was regarded in the Vietnam Era and the years between 1967 and 1973 in the Middle East, the media is itself distrusted now.
I hope to hear more from you in this comment thread or in an upcoming post about how Palestinians hoping to pursue nonviolence could be more effective. What about Ta'ayush, that David Shulman writes about? What do you think could happen if organizations based on some of the same ideas as Ta'ayush were to become stronger and better known? And how would you improve on that model?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2007 12:17:46 PM
Saif: Apparently David Shulman's book tries to answer this question of why and how Israel has reacted to any non-violent protests, very harshly because they do not wish to let the Palestinians have the moral upper ground. So I will wait to comment till after I have read the book. We will pick up the discussion then.
In the meantime suffice it to point out that the two movements that succeede in the twentieth century, Gandhi's in India and Marin Luther King Jr.'s in America were against very powerful Governments. In both situations the protesters suffered for many years until finally they succeeded. But they never resorted to violence inspite of severe force being used against them. That fundamental decision it seems to me was the key to their eventual success.
Posted by: Tasnim | Dec 4, 2007 2:58:48 PM
Elatia,
Thanks for your comment. I have to emphasize though, my opposition to violence is first and foremost a moral issue, regardless of political imperative. I also happen to believe that it is counter-productive politically, though this may be my morality biasing my judgement.
The point I'm trying to get to is that my support for non-violence does not mean I have a roadmap of nonviolent resistance that can achieve success; and this is the biggest problem for nonviolence. Palestinians, who have tried every form of nonviolence in the book over the decades are going to be hard-pressed to be convinced by someone like me trying to sell them the moral argument, if it can not be effective.
This, then, throws the ball in the court of Israelis and, perhaps more importantly, Americans. If you really care about nonviolent Palestinian resistance, then you should make a principled stance in support of it, and in opposition to the occupation. The most disturbing trend for me amongst self-prescribed progressives in America is use their ignorance of nonviolence in Palestine to assume that the Palestinians are inherently violent, and that that is the root of the conflict, and that for them to do or say anything about the conflict, the Palestinians should first turn to nonviolence completely. This is not only hypocritical, but self-fulfilling. It is the silence of world opinion towards Israel's crimes and its indifference to the plight of Palestinians that most destroys the prospects of a solution, as well as Palestinian ability to non-violently resist.
Posted by: Saifedean | Dec 4, 2007 3:19:38 PM
Tasnim,
I think I will disagree with you. I do not think that the analogy with India and the American south holds in this case. At its most racist, there was nothing about Britain that made colonizing India as fundamental and important as colonizing the West Bank is for Israel, though admittedly the proximity and the security paranoia exacerbate this in the case of Israel. Therefore, after WWII and Britain's mounting internal problem, the determination to colonize India had receded greatly, particularly for the majority of the population who were more concerend about rebuilding their economy than holding on to distant empires.
Similarly, segregation in the American South had for decades lost enormous appeal withink the majority of America. Yes, it was very popular in the American south, but the majority of the country thought it was morally reprehensible. It is one federal government after all, and it wouldn't take much prodding from the Civil Rights Movement to move the majority of Americans from passive opposition to active opposition on the issue.
But my biggest disagreement with you is your insistence that these movements did not resort to violence. This is a perfect example of hindsight bias and the halo effect: revolutions only become popular right before they succeed, and then forever after are glorified and polished. Suddenly, all of the bad things done by a revolution are either forgotten or assumed to be done by other people not representing the people whom we set as the poster-boys of the revolution. Mandela is the perfect example. His position on terrorism is way more extreme than that of Arafat, yet today no one calls him a terrorist, and everything that the ANC did is forgotten.
This is NOT to say that these revolutions are bad or evil, of course, but to emphasize that this dichotomy I am always faced with, which pits the Palestinian struggle as an evil barbaric corrupt terrorist one against the civilized, humane and modern nonviolent successful ones. The reality is that all these revolutions resorted to immoral means when the going got tough. The real difference was in the ability of the nonviolent resistance to bring about change. Where it succeeded faster, violence was less pronounced, where it succeeded slower, violence eventually set in more and more.
Here, again, it's worth remembering the Native American example. NOTHING they could've done would've prevented the Bible-thumping whites from the ethnic cleansing, it was not a reaction to native americans' actions, and there was no scope for the Native Americans to change it in any way.
Which brings me to my main point, we can not continue to blame the victim for not launching their revolution in the way that best suits our sophisticated tastes, and we need to concentrate on the real and fundamental problem: the oppressor and their racism. That is the key to everything, and nothing that the victim does changes the fundamental moral certitude of saying that the oppressor has to stop. This is not only morally right, but it is also the most effective way to bring about a change, and, to go back to your original question, to allow the victim the luxury of being able to undertake nonviolent struggle.
This takes me back to my answer to Elatia, I do not think that there is any scope for a successful nonviolent strategy, nor even for starting such a struggle, so long as the word maintains its support and passive acceptance of the oppression of Palestinians.
Posted by: saifedean | Dec 4, 2007 3:44:49 PM
Tasnim writes: "Gandhi's in India and Marin Luther King Jr.'s in America were against very powerful Governments."
Don't know enough about Gandhi to comment, but the civil rights struggle in the US was a bit more complicated than that. First there was 2-pronged strategy of fighting de jure discrimmination in the courts and confronting de facto discrimination on the ground.
It was the legal campaign that forced the federal government into a corner: they had to intervene and send troops to Little Rock, Ole Miss, and elsewhere, or allow the Southern governors to defy federal law.
So while the civil rights protesters were themselves non-violent, several of their most important successes relied on the intervention of men with guns. The peaceful demonstrators weren't just confronting powerful state governments who had been allowed to ride roughshod over their rights - they were also maneuvering to get a more powerful federal government to come to their aid. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson didn't send troops and FBI just because they were nice enlightened guys, but also because they had been forced into a position where they had to intervene or tolerate the defiance of "state's rights" governors.
Who could the Palestinians recruit to play the role of the feds in their struggle?
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Dec 4, 2007 3:51:26 PM
Vicki makes a very good point.
The access to the legal system is a vital part of fighting oppression even when (and especially when) you adopt a non-violent means of protest.
Although Gandhi's non-violent protest is the best one known outside India and it is also the most comforting one to recognize, very few now remember that one group of Indian freedom fighters had mounted a full fledged armed resistance against the British occupation force. They consisted mostly of erstwhile cohorts of Gandhi who came to believe that no peaceful negotiation was possible with an occupier who had no intention of relinquishing power and authority. The other fact that is not very well known either is that both arms of the freedom movement (Gandhi's non-violent non-cooperation and Bose's military uprising) enjoyed almost equal support among Indian citizenry. My own parent's generation were young men and women in the 1940s just before independence. I have met several elders who were Gandhi's followers and many who had fought in the jungles of Burma against the British forces. After the armed resistance was put down by the British, three of its prominent leaders (including one who would later become the father of one my school friends) were put on trial by the soon to depart British. If they had been found guilty, they would have been executed just as all earlier armed resistors had been. It is interesting to note here that the three Indian National Army officers on trial in 1945 were defended by some of the top Indian lawyers of that period, among them, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first PM of independent India, Indira Gandhi's father and Mahatma Gandhi's top acolyte in the non-violent movement.
But India was different from Palestine. Indians were a majority in their own country. There was a legal system they could resort to. The British colonial government's back had been broken by the resistance in the colonies and in the battlefields of WWII.
Having said all this, I have nothing to say about Israel-Palestine that others haven't already said. My only feeling on this matter is that nothing much will happen until the US truly decides to be an honest broker and sincerely encourage peace seekers on both sides.
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 4, 2007 4:40:11 PM
It might help to look closer, as Vicki and Ruchira have both just done, at other liberation movements -- for points of both analogy and disanalogy to the I/P conflict, if what we're seeking is a truly illuminating fundamental close resemblance that could point a way forward. The one that keeps coming back and back is Apartheid, of course -- that's not new. But, as was true in S.A., where a large number of white South Africans worked to bring down Apartheid because it was wrong, not because it was infeasible, there are a large number of Israelis who are working to bring an end to the occupation, for the same reason. To my mind, the big question is how like-minded Israelis and Palestinians can work together. If everyone thinks that's a statistically too small number to factor, then do hostile parties have a better shot at the same end in peace conferences? I can remember when people figured that there was nothing but a bloodbath coming for South Africa -- just no other way to throw off de Klerk & Co. They were wrong -- but the interesting thing now is the details of how and why they were wrong.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2007 7:22:57 PM
Vicki and Ruchira,
Thanks a lot for these enlightening contributions. You are both perfectly correct.
Elatia,
Thank you for this excellent point. Here is one fundamental difference that might show you why things were different in South Africa.
Whenever the apartheid government passed a law that oppressed blacks further, the world condemned it unequivocally. No matter how the blacks reacted, violently or nonviolently; no matter what the 'reasons' behind these laws, and no matter what the white justification was, the result was always the same: the world said no to racism.
Compare this to the sorry state of world opinion on Israel, where Israel literally gets away with murder (as well building walls, racist laws, land theft, racist segregated road networks, wanton abuse, torture and countless other niceties) and no one says anything.
All the reactions we hear to these actions in the west fall into two categories:
1- The racist reactions that justify the destruction of the livelihood of a people for the sake of the perpetuation of a racist regime
2- The cowardly reactions that preach to Palestinians about how it really is ultimately their fault for not doing this or that or the other thing differently, and then start waffling with generalities and content-free statements to whitewash the whole issue into a silly disagreement over semantics, while making sure to avoid mentioning anything critical of Israel.
Let us for once, stop blaming Palestinians for everything, and recognize that, just like in South Africa, there really could be an evil at work here. And that the solution really could be in opposing this evil.
Posted by: saifedean | Dec 5, 2007 12:34:32 AM
The fact is that anyone who feels strongly that non-violence is the answer to the conflict in the Middle East can go there and try it out. Many people have - Rachel Corrie, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Thich Nhat Hahn (founder of engaged Buddhism).
You can even sign up for a relatively short stint like this one:
http://rcnv.org/programs/mideast
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Dec 5, 2007 12:22:45 PM
Dear Sword of Religion,
When exactly did the Palestinians try "non-violence"? There are violent attacks on Jews since at least 1919. You are absolutely right that the protests at Bil-in hardly ever get "accurate coverage" in the media, here is one rare example. Your rant about no coverage would be more accurately said about qassams which only get coverage when someone dies.
As for segrated roads, where do they exist? I know of roads for Israeli citizens, 20% of whom are Arab but "racist", don't exist mate. As for "murderous responses", the percentage of civilians in Israelis killed since 2000 is 68%, most miles away from any battlefield killed by a bomber who got to look them in the eye before he/she killed them. Percentage of Palestinians "not actively engaged in hostilities" when killed is around 49% - this would include "militants" not actively shooting at time of death, people transporting ammunition and targets of IAF missiles. Seems pretty clear who is targeting civilians.
PS for accuracy's sake there are four places with democracy in the Middle East, Turkey, Israel, Iraq and "Palestine". The Palestinians were the only ones voted in a racist, extremist bigoted government - unless like stone-throwers you consider Hamas "non-violent".
Posted by: Danny | Dec 11, 2007 5:24:26 PM
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