How about, every time a politician tells us they believe
“Israel has a right to defend itself,”
We inform them that Israel is defending an illegal occupation.
Do you think they’d stop and pause?
Every time a politician tells us “both sides,”
We tell them yes, occupier and occupied,
Settler and indigenous
One of the world’s largest military power vs.
a dispossessed civilian refugee population
Would they stop and pause?
Every time a politician tells us “both sides,”
We tell them yes, two sides,
The oppressor and the oppressed,
and you,
You are with the oppressor, right?
The oppressor has the right to defend the oppression?
The occupier has the right to defend the occupation?
Right…
How about, every time a politician tells us
“Israel has a right to defend itself,”
We inform them that Israel is defending an illegal occupation.
Do you think they’d stop and pause?
No country has the right to defend an illegal occupation.
An occupying country has a legal obligation to end the occupation.
An occupying country has the legal obligation
to protect the people whose land it is occupying.
How about, every time a politician tells us “it’s complicated,”
We tell them it’s settler colonialism, you know it, you’re benefitting from it.
How about, every time a politician tells us
“Israel has a right to defend itself,”
we ask them “and do Palestinians have that right too?”
Do you think they’d stop and pause?
Or are they incapable of reflection, they can only mouth platitudes,
A ventriloquist’s marionette…
Platitudes are powerless to address genocide.
Platitudes are not the adequate response to apartheid.
Palestinians are defending their lives, their lands, their homes.
Their freedom.
Their dignity.
Their lives.
Palestinians have a right to defend themselves.
I hate that I have to write this, but there are people in my immediate circle who are discussing “the looting” taking place alongside the protests as if that sideshow was important, a critical matter that needs to be debated at some length, its outcome, as it were, of the greatest impact to the moment. These curious minds want to know, will the looters be arrested? Fined? Will they go to jail? Will someone actually watch the hours of footage from the security cameras all around the protest route, so as to identify the looters?
I have no answers to any of these questions, just some thoughts around the topic. Every time people take to the streets in large numbers, they can be grouped, loosely, into three or four large categories: protestors, opportunists, rioters, and looters. The protestors are the people marching for the cause that is the immediate reason why they are taking to the streets. In the present moment, that cause is law enforcement violence and racist police murders of Black people. The harrowing footage of police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd as he begged for his life for eight minutes and 46 seconds, while Chauvin’s colleagues watched him suffocate the unarmed black man with a “business as usual” look on their face, triggered an overdue national response, because people actually recognized it as one more such incident, an expected outcome of the encounter between Blacks and the police, rather than the exception. This national outrage is what we must keep in mind, and center at all times as we discuss the protests.
The opportunistic people are those who take to the streets with their own agenda, so long as they also agree, even if very vaguely, with the cause of the protest. They are the ones who will show up with their own signs, that they made many years ago and have held up at other protests, gatherings, rallies. They will have a large “9/11 was an inside job” sign at a Black Lives Matter protest, just like they carried that sign at the Women’s March in 2017. Sure, they do believe that Floyd’s murder was horrific, but 9/11 was an inside job.
Rioters are individualistic people who are angry enough to want to express their anger regardless of how it impacts the greater cause, or the movement. Seeing as there is a whole lot to be angry about in this country, one should indeed give some thought to the reasons these people are “rioting,” rather than “marching,” and why they distrust the system, any system, so much that they would not join an organized protest with specific demands, such as “Defund the Police,” even if they happen to agree with the overall mood, and demands.
Then there are the looters. Unlike the opportunistic people with their “9/11 was an inside job” sign, and also unlike the rioters whose anger is not channeled into organized protest, the looters are there to grab what they can, regardless of why the people have taken to the streets. The political reason for the protest that occasioned the looting is of no interest to them, they are not a part of it, they are functioning on its margins, taking what they cannot otherwise afford to buy. Feeling dispossessed, they have no respect for the possessions of others, especially when these possessions are held by faceless capitalist corporations such as Nike, Target, Starbucks.
The looters don’t matter. I couldn’t care less about what happens to the looters. I am not interested in knowing whether they will be arrested. They are not concerned with the moment. They are a distraction, for those wishing to look away from the main event. And if your own concern, your curiosity, at this moment, is with the looters, and what they are taking, from which store, and what will happen to them, and to the store, then you too are not concerned with the moment.
And this moment, let us be very clear about is, is so much bigger than the looting. It is about a centuries-old pattern of police brutality, racism, and murders of Black people, and millions of us taking to the streets to say “Enough!” It is about George Floyd, about Breonna Taylor, about Charleena Lyles, about Tamir Rice, about Aiyana Stanley, about Sandra Bland, about all the people of color executed by police officers, from Seattle to Austin to New York, and every American city in between. This moment is, hopefully, the Civil Rights Movement of the 21st century.
So stop asking about the looters…
I’ve been thinking about the complexities of the rise in anti-Semitism for a while, and the Brooklyn attacks, which happened while I was there, jogged me into writing this note.
I just returned home to the Pacific Northwest from a five-week stay in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn—an area with a visible Orthodox Jewish majority. Most of the women wear wigs, the women and girls wear long skirts with black tights, most of the men have prayer shawls whose fringes show under their jacket, and almost every male, even very young boys, wears a yarmulke. There are multiple small Jewish delis, bakeries, and specialized hat stores, and the Dunkin Donuts store, as well as the Caribbean and Chinese restaurants, have a sign on their front window that states “Yes we are kosher.” Synagogues, yeshivas, Jewish pre-schools and community centers are on every block. As I took my daily walks, I saw many more menorahs in the house windows than Christmas trees and decorations.
This neighborhood is home and cultural haven to these Ashkenazi Jewish American families, I thought to myself, not unlike Dearborn, which is home and cultural haven to the Michigan Arab American community, and where Arabic language, but also Arabic culture, are taught in the public school system, and reinforced in extra-curricular Saturday and Sunday school. And while I must say that I bristled at the Israeli flags flying on some of the Brooklyn porches, I also appreciated the fact that a once ostracized, literally ghettoized community, could openly go about its lifestyle with no pressure to assimilate into the greater New York City or “American” way.
Then I heard about the December 11 attack on the Kosher market in Jersey City, just across the river. A hate crime against Jews. The next day, there was another attack on a Jewish man in Manhattan. This was followed by yet more attacks on Jews in Crown Heights, and Gravesend. These were not random attacks on individuals who happened to be Jewish, as all the attacks were accompanied by anti-Jewish slurs. All the way across the country, an Iranian Jewish synagogue was vandalized in East Los Angeles. And on December 27, an orthodox Jewish woman was also punched, in Brooklyn, as her young boy was ripped away from her and thrown to the ground. In fact, there has been an anti-Semitic attack in New York and New Jersey every day of this Hanukkah season.
Yes, anti-Semitism is on the rise, and while we can and do blame the Trump Administration for condoning, when it does not openly embrace, white supremacy, the fact is, these hate crimes were not all committed by white supremacists. In some cases, the alleged perpetrators were people of color, emboldened by the energized anti-semitic discourse in the country, since Trump’s presidency. And since it must be said, I am also extremely disturbed by the many accusations lobbed at some undefined “progressive left” that is supposedly behind the attacks, just because many are committed by people of color. When people of color commit homophobic or transphobic or Islamophobic crimes, the perpetrators are not considered the “progressive left.” The recent attacks on Jews are hate crimes, and “the progressive left” does not engage in hate crimes. There are gray areas everywhere, you know.
Also while in New York, I attended a staged reading of a play about the death penalty, and the criminal (in)justice system, one of the most racist institutions in this country. The weather was frigid, and as I stood in line outside the closed theatre doors, I commented on the fact that I would love to eat (but mostly, get out of the cold) at the vegan restaurant right next door, except that I could not patronize any establishment that serves what it calls “Israeli salad,” and “Israeli falafel.” The man in line next to me, with whom I had started a conversation about the death penalty, accused me of anti-Semitism, lecturing me on my racism until the theatre doors finally opened, sparing me his caricature-like interruptions of my arguments with “but Hamas…” That mansplainer had somehow fully bought into the misguided argument that any and all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. And that, if it were not for Hamas, Israel would not be violating the human rights of the Palestinian people. My attempts to explain chronology, history, international law, the Nakba happening in 1948, and the Naksa in 1967, whereas Hamas was not founded until after the first Intifada, in 1987, could not pass through his “but Hamas…” shield. Like me, he would not abide anti-Semitism, but unlike me, he could not distinguish between Zionism and Judaism, between anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism.
The United States is as disunited today as it has ever been in its entire troubled history. And for that, whoever the actual perpetrator of the crimes, I blame an administration that foments callousness, hatred, and violence, as it empowers white supremacy and buoys Zionism. And I do not for a second trust that this administration, with its cynical attempts to weaponize anti-semitism by criminalizing BDS, will adequately address the waves of hatred sweeping the country.
I am a full-fledged atheist–beyond “secular” and “agnostic.” But I would like to think that, if there was a visible marker of my atheism, I’d feel safe wearing it, just as Jews should feel safe wearing their religious markers, and Muslims theirs. I know many hijabi women, and hate to think that their scarf will designate them as targets in 2020, as it had done after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when a wounded American people lashed out at those perceived as “others.”
More than ever before, as hatred sweeps this country, we must be the ones who protect each other. More than ever before, the alliances we have formed over the past years, intersectional alliances across communities and issues, are critical ramparts against attacks today. I will not support the politics of people who would deny anyone their human rights, but unless your religious beliefs trespass on my rights, I will support you as you practice your spirituality, and celebrate your culture.
And I do hope my next president is the Jewish candidate from Brooklyn—Midwood, actually.
I am supposed to be writing a book chapter about Palestinian feminism, Palestinian women’s contribution to “the struggle,” Palestine as a feminist queer issue. I am an activist, and I would not be an activist if I didn’t fully, totally, completely believe that we can make a change, with knowledge and the right skills. I think readers who appreciate my writing do so because I think outside the box and, as one friend put it, give very good “rah rah talks.”
But here’s the deal. I am finding myself unable to write anything approaching “rah rah” about Palestinian women’s contribution to the struggle, as the few seconds—since that’s all I heard—of the recording of Israa Ghrayeb’s screams keep ringing in my ears. She was being beaten by her own family members as she lay in a hospital bed, as a result of a spinal injury she suffered while trying to escape from another beating, also by family members. A nurse heard her screaming, and recorded it on her phone. Others must have heard her screaming. No one intervened to stop the violence.
The details of Israa’s death are still unclear. Maybe I’m not supposed to write about this until the investigation is concluded. (yeah, right. The PA is in charge of that investigation…) What is clear, however, is something every Palestinian woman is sensing in her very blood cells, and that is, that we still have a long, long way to go before we achieve freedom, not from Israel’s violations of our human rights, but from our own society’s conservative zealots.
Of course we can note that every society is still sexist, still misogynist. In the few days since I heard the recording of Israa’s screams, I have been reminded again and again that the US president himself has gloated of achieving the social status where one can engage in sexual assault with impunity. I have read much about the cultural parallels. Yes, “crimes of passion” are the West’s version of “honor crimes,” and the murderers are said to have mitigating circumstances that grant them leniency, impunity. And I know too well that one in four female American college students will be raped before she graduates, and one in three American female soldiers will be raped while “serving” her country. These are sobering facts that should put an absolute end to any criticism of Arab or Muslim societies as particularly misogynistic.
But the prevalence of sexual violence globally does not shut down Israa’s screams.
We are fighting for Palestinian liberation, and that does not mean the liberation of Palestinian men. It means self-determination for every Palestinian. And self-determination also means a woman can enjoy life, and love.
And do not even try and tell me you agree because “Israa wasn’t doing anything wrong.” Yes, I know, she was with her fiancé, not some random lover, and she did not post anything “compromising.” I don’t want to hear that. Every woman should have the right to go out with whomever she pleases, engaged or not, straight or queer, without fear of being murdered by family members who find her love of life offensive.
I have long objected to identitarian solidarity, the facile equations between oneself and the latest victim of some particularly egregious crime. I am not Trayvon Martin. I am not Eric Garner. But yes, I do have much in common with Israa’, just as I have much in common with all the social and sexual violence survivors in the US, where I live. I know patriarchy kills. And I know there is no honor in honor crimes. And I know Palestine will never be free, until Palestinian young girls, and Palestinian queers and gender non-conforming individuals, are free of our own society’s stranglehold on our every movement.
I have always been irritated by the cliché solidarity statement “we are all [fill in the blank with the latest victim to receive media coverage.”] I recall the first time I became aware of the statement was after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, when suddenly, banners, Tshirts, and bumper stickers started appearing across the United States, proclaiming “We are All New Yorkers.” I lived in Boston at the time, and despite the long-standing rivalry between the two cities, and despite the fact that one of the hijacked planes had originated in Boston, thus giving that city its own reason to grieve, Bostonians claimed to be New Yorkers, to express their sympathy with the city that bore the brunt of the attacks. And I remember wondering about the source of that identification with New York, which seemed to go beyond sympathy, possibly into appropriation. I did not understand why being “American” seemed insufficient grounds to grieve the attacks, one apparently had to be a New Yorker.
The sentiment was nationwide, and I could not help but wonder how people in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Idaho, who had never been in the Empire State, and generally dismissed New York City as a “zoo,” now claimed it as their identity. What imagined community suddenly materialized, for someone in North Dakota, who did not feel that being “American” was sufficient to be hurt by the attack, and now wished to transform into a New Yorker? Was it, possibly, because they knew this was the one attack on US soil, ever, and they wanted some greater proximity to the crime? Was this the self-centered, self-serving “I know someone who knew someone,” that brings you a step or two closer to the action?
Over the years, “We are All New Yorkers” morphed into many more victims, individual and collective, and more recently, some of us discovered that “We are All Trayvon Martin, and even, sometimes “We Are All Palestinians.”
As a middle aged Palestinian woman, I knew I was not Trayvon. I wear a hoodie almost every day, and it does not endanger me. I was, and remain, utterly disgusted with the pervasive anti-Black racism that I detect in so many aspects of everyday life in the US, I speak out and write about it, but my outrage does not make me a young Black man. And I knew that, no matter how deeply outraged I was and remain at the murder of Trayvon Martin, nobody would mistake me for a young African American male. I am not Trayvon Martin.
At the risk of seeming uncaring (at least, to people who barely know me), I did not wear a “We are All Trayvon Martin” Tshirt, and I did not change my Facebook profile picture to that of the young man.
I stand in solidarity with the African American community in my city, and elsewhere in this country, but standing in solidarity is standing with someone, as an ally, to help them fight their struggle. I do not feel the need to claim it as my own struggle. When the slogan came out of Ferguson that “Black Lives Matter,” I did not feel the need to claim blackness, and I certainly did not feel the need to modify that to “All Lives Matter.” That dilution, whether intentional or not, is selfish and extremely offensive. It is one more expression of anti-Black racism. Let a community cry out in pain, for goodness’ sake! Stand aside, listen, don’t appropriate the pain. It is not yours. Black lives matter, black families suffer, black communities are devastated. Because they are black, not because they have “lives.” Claiming “All Lives Matter” at a Ferguson verdict protest puts you on the side of those who raised money to defend the killer cop. Keep doing it, and the KKK will welcome you in their ranks.
What lies beyond solidarity is joint struggle, the understanding that criminalized communities are fighting the same oppressor, the same system, though we may do it differently. And it is important to respect the differences, even as we learn from each other, about each other.
The riots in Ferguson that followed the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014 finally tore open the veil that had concealed the fact that we, Palestinians and African American, are fighting the same oppressor. Statements like “Occupation is a crime, from Ferguson to Palestine” do not ring hollow to Palestinians, nor do they seem far-fetched to African Americans. The hyper-militarization of the police in St Louis County, a police force trained by Israeli military experts, is but one indication of the one-ness of our struggle. The fact that every 28 hours, an African American individual is killed by law enforcement violence in the US parallels the killing with impunity of innocent Palestinians by Israel, its soldiers and armed settlers/vigilante. The same tear gas is used to poison us, from Ferguson to Palestine.
Between the murders of Trayvon Martin in February 2012, and Michael Brown in August 2014, many more African Americans were killed. Ranisha McBride, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice…
Yet the murder of Michael Brown Jr by St Louis Police officer Darren Wilson on August 9 marked a turning point in the identification with individual victims of Law Enforcement Violence in the US. As the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan caught around the country, protesters did not feel the need to claim Michael Brown’s identity as their own. They knew that merely being black or brown was sufficient to be killed with impunity by the forces of “law and order” in this country, and in Israel.
Was Michel Brown’s killing very different from the many others? Or was the organizing behind the Ferguson protests a factor behind the change? What triggers that moment when a victim of abuse finally says “I’m not gonna take it anymore,” and fights back, or walks out? Either way, the global response to the impunity surrrounding Brown’s killing signals a growing, also global, consciousness of the pervasiveness of racism in the fabric of the state. There is no need to be Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Ranisha McBride. One only needs to be brown, black, poor, and the state becomes your enemy.
At the same time as the criminal justice system was exhonerating the white killers of African Americans, that same system was incriminating and imprisoning black and brown women for refusing abuse. Marissa Alexander was sentenced to a possible 60 years in prison for firing a warning shot at her estranged abusive husband, and Rasmeah Odeh is awaiting sentencing in a Detroit jail for having allegedly knowingly given false answes on her naturalization forms. Rasmeah had already served 10 years in an Israeli prison for a crime she “confessed” to, after 45 days of physical, sexual, and psychological torture.
What lies beyond the slogans, the clichéd expressions of solidarity, is an understanding that we are in joint struggle. I am not Michael Brown. But I am one who fights a system that was never meant to protect me, to view me as fully human, worthy of life, dignity, equal rights, just as that system did not view Michael Brown as fully human. The system is not broken. It is working as it was designed to work. It is a corrupt system, and we need to change it. We need to enact the alternative, stand together, understand each other’s struggles, understand how we are impacted differently by the same oppressive system, because racism and sexism do not affect me, a Palestinian woman, as they do an African American, male or female, even though we are both victimized by racism and sexism.
I’m teaching my “Palestine-Israel Conflict” course again, and again a few of my students are doing their final research project on suicide bombers, mostly because all they knew about Palestine before taking my class is that Palestinians are suicide bombers. By the time they start their research for the final project, my students are “understanding,” sympathetic. So they present to the class that suicide-bombers are made, not born. Only yesterday, one of my students shared with the class that about 70% of the suicide bombers have had their homes demolished by Israel, and that 100% of suicide bombers had seen a family member or loved one injured, humiliated, or killed by Israeli troops. This student was explaining that trauma leads to suicide bombing.
But I had to interject, and explain to her, and to the whole class, that there have been a total of 163 Palestinian suicide bombings, ever. And that’s an official Israeli figure, which includes attacks which only killed the bomber. So you know that if anything, the number is inflated, rather than reduced. And that’s the number since Israel first started dispossessing the Palestinians, even before 1948 (I guess that means it wasn’t Israel then, it was the Zionist terrorist gangs), destroying 450 villages, and ethnically cleansing 80% of the Palestinian people.
Now I’m not a number cruncher, but when you think of the millions—-literally, over 10 million Palestinians today– whose ancestral villages have been erased, whose human rights are violated daily, and yes, the millions who have seen loved ones injured and killed, the millions who have had to smuggle food in tunnels to survive a genocidal siege, and the millions of children who have seen their fathers and brothers arrested, and the hundreds of thousands who are seeing their homes demolished today, and their land and livelihoods stolen, then what we must emphasize is not that trauma leads to suicide bombings. My calculator does not have enough digits to show what a minuscule percentage of the millions of traumatized Palestinians have become suicide bombers. No calculator has enough digits for such a tiny fraction. Instead, what we must emphasize is that despite all that trauma, over decades and decades, we are an overwhelmingly peaceful people, a people that still laughs, loves, reaches out, rebuilds, educates, and engages in unarmed popular resistance, in sumoud, in proud and dignified defiance of the terrifying Zionist juggernaut..
Next week is Palestine Awareness Week, and this, the beautiful sumoud of my people, is the Palestine Americans must become aware of. Ours is a legacy of resistance that would make any people proud.
This is an old post I had written for INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, which I just realized I had never posted here. So, there
http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/reflections-from-detroit-standoff-with-standwithus/
“Whiteousness:” the unshakable belief that one knows what’s best for others, especially those of other races or lower income brackets.
Two thousands? Three thousands? Why are Palestinian lives so cheap, that we don’t know, will never know, the number of besieged refugees massacred 30 years ago in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps? And what about their names? Why do the words Sabra and Shatila simply line up alongside other names of locations: Deir Yassin, Tell el-Zaatar, Qana, Jenin, Gaza, a chain of massacres punctuating the miserable lives of the Palestinian people, ever since the Zionist colonial vision of turning Palestine into a Jewish homeland first took shape? We do not have to pledge “never forget.” We do not need to make that pledge, because we cannot forget, we do not have that luxury, not with the daily reminders, the scars, the longing, and the ongoing slow genocide in Gaza. What we must pledge is to have the vision and determination to put an end to this dehumanization. We must pledge to be the people who make “Never Again” come true. And not just for the Palestinian people.
I write about Palestine because I am Palestinian, and I know the experience of displacement and dispossession in my gut. I grew up in Beirut, mostly passing, fearful of the few tenacious Palestinian-inflected words that would give me away as a Palestinian. A purse for me was always “Juzdahn,” I could not form my mouth around the Lebanese pronunciation, “Juzdane,” so I did not use the word. Blanket was “Hrahm,” not the Lebanese “Hrame,” so I chose the safer “ghata” (cover), which would not give me away. There are words I simply dropped from my vocabulary, one of them being the Palestinian word for “slippers,” which I cannot even remember now. I knew as a kid not to say it, and now, it’s gone…
In 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which culminated in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, I wanted to stay in West Beirut, where I felt safest (never quite safe, but safer), but my mother insisted on us all leaving and going to Broummana, in the “Christian side” of the divided country. We did, and I spent many days with my long-time Christian friends, whom I trusted. I met their friends. One guy had trained his two ferocious guard dogs—-truly killer beasts–to attack trespassers. His command for “attack” was “Get the Palestinians.” Another of my friends was very good friends with the granddaughter of Suleiman Franjieh, the former president, and I visited Zghorta with her. There are some days I will never forget in my life, days when I felt sure I was going to die, it was just a matter of minutes, the next rocket, the next checkpoint, the next militiaman or soldier to ask me another question… That day in Zghorta was one of these days. I did not speak a word, for fear of sounding Palestinian. My Lebanese ID would not have protected me, it was well-known that some Palestinians had obtained Lebanese papers, many long years ago. In restrospect, I cannot but wonder why I agreed to go to Zghorta. All I can say is, when you’re young, and nowhere is safe, and you feel your life is worthless, you take greater risks than if you think you matter. And a part of me thought that by hanging out with Maronite Christian friends, I would pass better than if I were with my usual Muslim and Palestinian crowd.
How many died in the Sabra and Shatila massacres 30 years ago today, while I passed for Lebanese Christian that summer? Why do we not know their names? Why are Sabra and Shatila merely names of locations, that line up alongside the names of other locations, all memories of massacres punctuating the miserable lives of a people who existed, and did not pass?
I do not think the circumstances of the Palestinian people are unique. I believe our history is merely one manifestation of the many faces of racism, imperialism, colonialism, intolerance, heterosexism, that have culminated in massacres against other people, other peoples, around the globe: Native Americans, enslaved Africans (sixty million, or more), gays, European Jews, Roma, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese… No list I draw could be exhaustive, because we do not have the names of entire communities who were massacred for being who they were.
Shortly after the Sabra and Shatila massacres, I pledged never to pass again. I knew passing was a privilege I had, which most did not, and I did not want to live a privileged life, I committed myself instead to working so that those without privilege could live. When my Lebanese passport expired, a few years later, I did not renew it. This time, my mother’s pleas went unheeded, because I had determined that I was going to devote myself to making sure that we do not need a fake passport to secure survival. We were not going to erase ourselves, forget our words.
I did not witness the Sabra and Shatila massacres. But what I experienced that summer, in the knot of fear that gripped my gut as I passed, is what prompts me to work, until my very last breath, to ensure that “Never Again” comes true in my lifetime, not just for my people, but for all the people who are deemed “undesirable” by the evil forces of hatred disguised as self-preservation.
Because the Palestinians who were massacred in Sabra and Shatila 30 years ago today, the thousands whose names we do not know, matter.
I often speak, and write, about the Palestinian call for solidarity in the form of a global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, until Israel abide by international law. http://www.bdsmovement.net/ It is the strategy that helped end apartheid in South Africa, and I am convinced it is what will end apartheid in Israel. When I say that, I get an array of responses. The negative ones range from the sometimes surprised, but mostly supposedly outraged “Israel is the only democracy in the region” to “Apartheid is a strong word, it’s not quite accurate, and it will alienate too many people.”
I am not interested in addressing the absurd, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” Or let me just get this off my chest: “Zionism–a political ideology whose vision is to create a state for people of a certain perceived ethnicity–is racism. When the very foundational ideology of a country is racism, it cannot be a democracy. Now go away.”
However, I do want to address the variations of “not quite apartheid” opinions. Most of these argue that, because there are differences between South Africa’s legal system of discrimination against its brown and black people, and Israel’s legal and extra-legal system of discrimination against the Palestinians, the term “apartheid” does not apply.
Such distinctions are not generally, if ever, used to negate the fact that two other historical manifestations of a known phenomenon are one and the same, despite apparent differences. Sadly, there have been multiple genocides throughout history. Focusing on the differences, despite the acknowledged similarities in scope, vision, desired goal, etc, strikes me as something on the continuum between self-serving evasive hair-splitting and an act of bad faith.
Yes, Israel in 2012 is not South Africa in 1989. So what? There have been many episodes of genocide in the history of the world, and I’ll bet my last penny no two were identical. Does it mean only one was a genocide, and all the others “almost but not quite genocides”? Does it take rape as a weapon of war? Not all genocides used that. Does it take gas chambers? Only one did. Does it take biological warfare?.. One can always look for differences. My approach is, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. lays eggs like a duck that will hatch little ducklings, then I might as well call it a duck, even if its feathers are not the same pattern as the Original Duck.
South Africans who lived under apartheid rule have visited Palestine, and described it as “worse than apartheid.” Desmond Tutu should know, whose visit to the West Bank reminded him of South Africa’s worst days. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1957644.stm
Similarly, South African minister Ronnie Kasril, upon visiting Israel, described it as “infinitely worse than apartheid.”
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/israelworse.html/
British journalist and author Ben White has written two books on Israeli Apartheid, one named simply Israeli Apartheid: a Beginner’s Guide, the more recent one Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy.
As early as 1989, Israeli writer Uri Davis published Israel: An Apartheid State, and in 2004, he published another book on Israeli apartheid, entitled Apartheid Israel; Possibilities for the Struggle Within. .
To cut a long list short, let me add one more, the Facebook note made by Ran Greenstein, an Israeli professor currently teaching in South Africa. In that note, Greenstein tackles and responds to the Zionist arguments that Israel is not an apartheid state, because {fill in the hasbaroid drivel] :
Interestingly, Greenstein himself, who has written the arguments to counter anyone who would claim that Israel is not an apartheid state, nevertheless insists elsewhere that it is “a special type of apartheid.” Yes, and when you know it is apartheid, and persist in splitting hairs, your sophistry is complicit in the crime you have identified, named, labeled…
It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”
It is apartheid. It stretches from the River to the Sea. Let’s abolish it, from the River to the Sea.
nadaelia 