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Notebook #6

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Bringing about a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights will not be easy, but ultimately it is the only solution to the conflict. A state based on respect for the human rights of all its citizens is a better safeguard against anti-Semitism and racism than one based on ethnic nationalism and inequality.
The one-state solution

As an immigrant myself, and as a person whose first language is not English, I frankly find it insulting when people suggest that immigrants are only interested in narrow parochial concerns that affect their own “community”. As an atheist and a secularist, I am disturbed when I hear people suggesting that in a secular society like Canada, it is desirable for political activity to be centered around churches, mosques, and temples.
Inclusion or exclusion?

The dogmatists who seek to sweep this issue under the rug describe themselves as ‘feminist’, but theirs is a peculiar form of feminism, a version which condemns violence against women in principle, but seeks to silence those who speak out about violence against Muslim women.
Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl?

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Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
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Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
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– Abraham Lincoln

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Lady Martha is a woman I feel an instant bond with. Burdened though she is with her own woes – she has had a stroke, her doctor has told her she has “limited days to live due to the cancerous problems”, and of course there is the unfortunate circumstance of the husband who is an Englishman who is dead – she nevertheless has made the time to do something very special for me.
Lady Martha’s story

Radical Digressions
Ulli Diemer's Notebook #6

Small countries, big crimes

January 10, 2009 - #

As I write this, the “world’s most humane army” is once again demonstrating its humanity, this time by slaughtering half-starved refugees in the Gaza ghetto, the open-air prison in which Israel has kept one-and-a-half million people interned for more than 40 years.

The killing frenzy is being matched by equally frenzied efforts by Israel’s propaganda apparatus – which includes most of the North American media – to portray Israel’s crimes against humanity as necessary acts of self-defense.

One of the stock phrases Israel’s apologists repeat, parrot-like, is that Israel is “a small country”. The idea is to make us feel sympathy for Israel, the plucky little country standing up to dangerous foes. But what does it actually mean to say that Israel is “a small country?”

Does it mean it’s hard to find parking spots for the thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other equipment that comprise Israel’s massive armed forces? Is that why Israel keeps sending them into its neighbours’ territories?

Or does it mean that the pilots in Israel’s ultra-modern air force have to be careful not to bump into each other when they return from bombing schools and hospitals and houses in the Gaza Strip or Lebanon? Or is it that Israel’s size makes it difficult to find enough suitable locations to deploy the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its arsenal?

More likely, it’s a psychological defense mechanism Israelis use to persuade themselves that they have the right to keep seizing and occupying other people’s land and to use extreme violence against anyone who resists.

The “small country” ploy becomes much less plausible when one remembers that some of the most brutal colonialist powers of modern times have been small countries with small populations.

Portugal’s population was around one million when Portugal subjugated and largely destroyed the indigenous people of Brazil, who numbered at least five million when the Portuguese conquest began. Superior military technology combined with utter ruthlessness enabled the Portuguese to prevail there, and in its other colonies in Africa, India, and the Pacific.

Tiny Holland, with fewer than two million people but with a large and powerful navy and modern weapons, was able to take over and rule the territories that became the Dutch East Indies and the Dutch West Indies.

Belgium, another little country with modern military technology, ruled over the vastly more populous Belgian Congo, crushing resistance with methods that resulted in the death of half the native population within 25 years.

With its reliance on modern military technology to crush indigenous opposition, Israel follows the model of these earlier colonial-settler states in many ways. But it has one additional advantage that none of them had: the patronage of the ultimate imperial power: the United States. Given the role of the United States in funding Israel’s economy (Israel is the largest aid recipient in the world) and in sustaining the superiority of the Israeli military, it becomes meaningless to call Israel “a small country” – one might as accurately call it a huge military base.

One has to hope that enough Israelis come to understand, sooner rather than later, that there is no future in living in an armed camp that is always preparing for the next war. We for our part have to make sure that they understand that the world will not accept an apartheid state ruling over the Palestinian people by force.

Ulli Diemer
January 10, 2009

Labels: Colonialism, Gaza Strip, Israel, Palestine.

The shining beacon of democracy

January 13, 2009 - #

Busy though it is slaughtering Palestinians, the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ is still finding time to make its democratic structures even more perfect. The Israeli Central Elections Committee has voted to ban the two main Arab parties, the Balad Party and the United Arab List-Ta’al. The ban also prevents most of the current handful of Arab members of the Knesset from running for re-election in next month’s national election.

The two parties are being portrayed as traitors because they publicly oppose Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza. However, the main reason for the ban is that Balad’s stated goal is to “transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.” In Israel, where non-Jews are second-class citizens by law, advocating equal rights for all citizens is seen as “denying Israel’s right to exist” as a Jewish state, and is therefore illegal.

The Israeli state is based on a system of legal apartheid, so this decision merely brings the electoral law into line with the rest. For example, 93% of the land in Israel is designated as state land, restricted to settlement, cultivation, and use by Jews only. Israel spends four times as much on the education of a secular Jewish child as on a Palestinian child, and twelve times as much on a religious Jewish child. Non-Jews (except Druze and a few others who are considered ‘loyal’) are not allowed to join the armed forces so they are automatically excluded from the benefits that are available only to people who have served in the military.

Note: The ban was subsequently overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Labels: Apartheid, Arab-Israeli Issues, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestinians.

‘Free speech’ – as long as it doesn’t offend anyone

January 2009 - #

Last April Fool’s Day, I added my two cents’ worth to the ongoing debate about ‘Israeli apartheid’ by writing and distributing a statement purporting to come from an organization called ‘Alumni for Responsible Speech’.

As part of my work with Connexions (www.connexions.org) I maintain an online compilation of resources on Israel and Palestine, so I have become quite aware of the extent to which the tactics of the pro-Israel lobby are now aimed at shutting down criticism of Israel, rather than attempting to rebut it.

I have tended to see this as an indication that they know they are losing the debate. Faced with declining support for Israel’s behaviour even among Jews, and finding it increasingly difficult to come up with plausible arguments to defend Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law, they are resorting to straightforward attempts at intimidation and censorship – including the old stand-by of labelling any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

The ‘Alumni for Responsible Speech’ satire took particular aim at recent developments at several Canadian universities, where administrators and faculty who like to pose as valiant defenders of academic freedom and free speech were showing themselves to be proponents of prohibition and censorship when it comes to ideas which they – or the university’s funders – find unpalatable.

At the University of Toronto, for example, pro-Israel faculty took out a full-page ad in the National Post urging the university administration to ban ‘Israeli apartheid week’ events from the campus. The U of T administration tried to get the Toronto police to do their dirty work for them by soliciting a ruling on whether it is ‘hate speech’ to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid. This craven eagerness to abandon the university’s responsibility to defend freedom of expression backfired when the cops proved to be more liberal than the university’s bureaucrats, telling the university that they saw no problem.

At McMaster University, the administration tried to ban the very use of the term “Israeli apartheid” on campus. This led to vigorous protests, including one from the student union at York University (which was also hosting Israeli Apartheid Week events) calling for the ban to be rescinded “in accordance with a basic commitment to freedom of expression and organization in the democratic context of the public university.” They went on to state that “This strange and unprecedented ban is a blatant violation of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent, and an attack on students’ right to organize. It is the position of the YFS and GSA that universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geopolitical questions should be promoted, not stifled. International controversy about use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid‘ cannot be resolved through repression, but through ongoing intellectual exchange.”

My Alumni for Responsible Speech “statement,” on the other hand, mischievously took the position that universities should “tolerate free speech” only “as long as it doesn’t upset anyone.” It called on university administrations to “protect students and faculty from being confused by exposure to incorrect or harmful ideas” and suggested a number of pro-active measures (largely inspired by George Orwell’s 1984) including a University ‘Department of Acceptable Truths’ “to ensure that only safe ideas are taught”, as well as strong measures against “thought crimes”.

“The Alumni for Responsible Speech” satire made the rounds on the Internet, circulated on number of campuses, and received praise from people who enjoyed the way it skewered people who ‘support freedom of speech’ only for views they agree with.

In our times, however, satire has little chance of competing with reality. The battle over ‘Israeli apartheid week’ on campus had barely subsided when the York student union quoted above (“universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geopolitical questions should be promoted, not stifled”) waded back into the free speech fray. This time round, the same people who had fulminated about the “democratic freedoms of speech and dissent” and condemned those who would infringe “students’ right to organize” were deciding, by a unanimous vote, to prevent anti-abortion groups or individuals affiliated with them from organizing, leafleting, speaking, holding meetings, or engaging in other anti-choice activities.

Read the rest of the article here.

Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’
as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour

December 27, 2009 - #

For more than 60 years, Israel has engaged in a unceasing campaign to dispossess Palestinians of their land and their rights. Its ability to do this has depended on three factors in particular:

* overwhelming military superiority;
* keeping public opinion, especially in North America and Europe, on its side;
* making ordinary working-class Israeli Jews believe that it is in their interest to support Israel’s Zionist elite rather than making common cause with ordinary Palestinians.

Israel’s military dominance is unchallenged, thanks to unconditional support and limitless supplies of advanced military technology and equipment provided by the United States and its allies (including Canada). However, military dominance has not been able to achieve Israel’s ultimate goal: forcing Palestinians to stop resisting and to acquiesce in their dispossession and oppression. Israel’s relentless onslaught has been met by equally determined Palestinian resistance which, despite the odds, steadfastly refuses to accept the injustice of occupation.

This Palestinian resistance has called into being an ever-growing international network of support and solidarity. In dozens of countries and hundreds of communities around the world, organizations and movements have emerged to demand that Israel be made to adhere to international law and to basic principles of justice.

Israel and its supporters see these international campaigns as a huge threat. Israel has escaped the sanctions that have been applied to other states which commit human rights abuses and violate international law only because the United States automatically vetoes all attempts to hold Israel accountable. Israel is also crucially dependent on huge annual inflows of foreign aid, to the point where it is conceivable that the state would collapse if the flows of outside cash which prop it up were to be withdrawn.

Anything that undermines public support in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, therefore, threatens the external backing on which the Israeli state depends for its very existence. It is true that the governments which turn a blind eye to Israel’s violations of international law mostly ignore popular opinion in their own countries as well, but this could change if support for Israel were to become a serious political liability. In this regard, what is particularly worrisome from Israel’s point of view is the fact that support for Israel among Jews in the United States and Canada, especially among younger Jews, has declined dramatically. If Jews stop supporting Israel, then all foreign support is in jeopardy.

Threats to Israel’s international legitimacy bring with them an even greater internal danger: the danger that Israeli Jews will themselves start seeing the Zionist formula – in essence, a militarized apartheid state holding down the Palestinian population by force – as a dead end.

If working-class Israeli Jews were to see their interests as being different from those of the ruling elite – if they come round to the view that their long-term interests will be better served if they join Palestinians in working for a democratic secular state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews – Israel’s ruling class would find itself in the same untenable position that the white elite in apartheid South Africa faced in the early 1990s. Already, Israel’s rulers are debating what to do about the ‘demographic threat’ they are facing: Israeli Jews are leaving the country in increasing numbers to move to other countries, while the Palestinian population continues to increase.

The Palestinian resistance, and the growing international support which it has attracted, have had a substantial effect in changing the way Israel is perceived. Increasingly, international public opinion is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, systematic humiliations, imprisonment, torture, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians, children as well as adults.

Faced with the erosion of its credibility and support, the Israeli state has lashed out by using ever-increasing repression against the non-violent Palestinian resistance. One of the centres of this resistance is the village of Bil’in, which has been fighting the expansion of an illegal Israeli settlement on its land with weekly non-violent protests for more than five years now, protests which have turned Bil’in into an international symbol of non-violent resistance. The Israeli state has been using ever more extreme tactics of harassment and brutality to attempt to crush the village and put an end to the protests, which it correctly believes are causing substantial harm to Israel’s international image. Similar tactics of harassment and imprisonment are being used against other Palestinians who resist, as well as against Jewish Israelis and international solidarity activists who support the Palestinian cause.

At the same time as it attempts to crush internal resistance, the Israeli state, aided by its supporters in the United States and Canada, has launched extremely aggressive and well-financed propaganda campaigns abroad whose goal is to counteract the decline in support for Israel.

A telling characteristic of these campaigns is that they by and large do not focus on attempting to justify Israel’s behaviour. One has to assume that the architects of the propaganda efforts realize that it is no longer possible to explain war crimes and human rights abuses in a way that the international public will accept.

Instead, the focus has shifted to attempting to shut down criticism of Israel by targetting the most outspoken critics with crude smear tactics and outright censorship.

On a growing number of campuses, for example, this has involved harassment and firing of outspoken professors (e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel), as well as attempts to ban events such as ‘Israeli apartheid week’.

In Canada, we are now seeing an attempt to silence criticism of Israel by labelling all such criticism as ‘anti-Semitism’ and therefore as hate speech. This tactic has a triple purpose: to suppress public awareness of what Israel is doing; to discredit critics by smearing them as ‘anti-Semitic’, and to keep Jews onside by frightening them with the spectre of anti-Semitism.

In Canada, the Harper government, fanatically pro-Israel, is fully involved in this effort. It has cut funding to groups which have supported Palestinians in their quest for justice, and it has set up a Parliamentary body charged with coming up with the legal rationale for making it illegal to criticize Israel.

If the Harper government is successful in getting its way, statements such as the following, all of them expressions of generally accepted principles of human rights and international law, will henceforth be classified as anti-Semitic hate speech in Canada:

‘A state must be the state of all its citizens.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that the Israeli state has a duty to serve and represent all of its citizens equally, Palestinians as well as Jews.

‘Everyone born in a state, and everyone who has been a permanent resident for a specified and reasonable period of time, is entitled to citizenship.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it would mean that Palestinians under the rule of the Israeli state have the right to be citizens of Israel.

‘All citizens of a state must be equal under the law, equally entitled to the rights, privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. A state may not favour, or discriminate against, citizens, on the grounds of religion, ethnicity, or race.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel has to dismantle its discriminatory, apartheid-style system of laws.

‘Every state must accept its internationally recognized borders and must renounce all claims on territory outside of its borders.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it would mean that Israel would have to stop seizing land beyond its borders.

‘All states must abide by international law, including the Geneva conventions, laws against collective punishment, laws against torture, etc.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel has to stop engaging in ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and other violations of international law.

‘Refugees have a right to return to the lands from which they were expelled by an invading army or occupying power.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it means that the Palestinian refugees expelled from their homeland by Israel must be allowed to exercise their right of return as guaranteed by international law.

‘Sanctions should be applied to those who violate international law.’
Saying this will be classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ because it implies that Israel should face sanctions for engaging in collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, for practicing torture, for committing war crimes, for defying UN resolutions and World Court rulings, and for other illegal acts.

The attempt to outlaw criticism as Israel by labelling it as ‘anti-Semitism’ is a serious threat which needs to be exposed and challenged. At the same time, it should also be recognized as a tactic of desperation, a tactic that has become necessary because of the ever-growing opposition to the crimes of the Israeli state.

The resort to increasingly blatant open repression is a symptom of loss of control. In the past such tactics would not have been necessary because any criticism of Israel was confined to the outer fringes of public debate. Now it has become mainstream, and those who support an ethnically defined, apartheid-style Israeli state are feeling increasingly threatened. Those of us who support a democratic secular state should feel encouraged, even though the struggle is far from won.

Ulli Diemer
December 27, 2009

This article is also available in Arabic.
This article is also available in French.
This article is also available in Polish.
This article is also available in Spanish.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestinians.

Are the police doing their job?

July 6, 2010 - #

It was good to see Naomi Klein tearing into the Toronto police for their violence and abuse of power at the recent G20 summit in Toronto. However, I can’t agree with her at all when she tells the police to “do your goddamned job”.

Fact is, the police ARE doing their job.

Their job is to protect the wealth and power of the ruling elite against any challenge. That involves – among other things – intimidating and suppressing anyone who is not respectful and subservient.

Upholding law and order in a society whose ‘order’ and legal system are based on inequality and oppression depends, first, on an ideological system that tries to make people believe capitalism is good or at least inevitable, and second, on using violence or the threat of violence to deter challenges to the power of the powerful.

The police are the enforcers of the capitalist system. No need to tell them to do their jobs – they’re already doing them, and they’ll keep on doing them as long as capitalism survives.

Labels: Police, The State.

Radical Digressions

Notebook #6

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Samplings

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Radical Digressions Ulli Diemer's Notebook #6

Small countries, big crimes

January 10, 2009 - #

The shining beacon of democracy

January 13, 2009 - #

‘Free speech’ – as long as it doesn’t offend anyone

January 2009 - #

Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour

December 27, 2009 - #

Are the police doing their job?

July 6, 2010 - #

I blog therefore I am.

Radical Digressions
Ulli Diemer's Notebook #6

Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’
as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour