Bill Templer’s push for thinking beyond the usual one-state/two-state framework comes at a good time for me as I begin to plan my next Israel/Palestine trip. His wide-ranging anarchist food for thought in Monthly Review is worth reading.
Technorati Tags: critical psychology, anarchism, Israel, one-state solution, Palestine, two-state solution
At the end of October, the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme will host its 5th international conference, “Siege and Mental Health: Walls vs. Bridges.” I plan to present a paper, described in this abstract:
Palestinians Under Siege: A Critical Psychology Perspective on Barriers to Mental Health and Justice The drastic mental health consequences of living under siege are well-known. Although specific outcomes vary according to local conditions, besieged communities around the globe experience lethal combinations of restricted movement, physical violence, hunger and disease, and disruptions to schools, hospitals, welfare support systems, and other public and community institutions. In whatever combination these and other factors arise, the common result is widespread mental distress. This paper addresses two primary points from a critical psychology perspective. First, the ordinary assistance that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other therapeutic professionals offer distressed individuals runs into an obvious problem under siege conditions: individual therapy and similar supports are scarcely sufficient to deal with a situation that requires the restoration of justice. This commonsense observation, which critical psychology applies more generally to the work of mental health workers even under more ordinary circumstances, takes on added significance when injustice transforms healing and recovery from an individual concern to a community effort. Second, a number of politically relevant social-psychological factors interfere with both the development of empathy and the recognition of injustice. These factors dampen global pressure to end the siege and hold Israel to international human rights standards. Two factors are of special importance: the dominant discourse, especially in Israel and the United States, which dismisses Palestinian suffering as self-induced and politically justified; and the corresponding reliance on conflict resolution methods such as dialogue and negotiation that maintain a stance of academic and political neutrality. Ending the siege and the broader conflict require pressing for approaches that acknowledge the existing imbalance of power and suffering as well as the historical and continuing responsibility for injustice.
Buried under too many academic, political, and personal projects and adjustments over the past few months to pay much attention to this blog, lots of email has piled up as well. But I will try to post more regularly in connection with my planned six-week trip to Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank, and I expect to add photos along the way as well. I’d like to write about a few other topics as well when I can find the time.It’s not clear if Israel will allow conference attendees into Gaza. Permits are tricky, so it looks like there may be some teleconferencing from elsewhere in the area. In the meantime, once again I’m trying to brush up on my Arabic as I get ready for my third visit to to Palestine and Israel in the past four years.
Technorati Tags: critical psychology, dialogue, Gaza, Israel, neutrality, Palestine, Reconciliation, social psychology
Julia Chaitin, who I met during my stay at Ben Gurion University in 2006, is an American who’s lived in Israel for many years. As she notes, she lives and works right next to Gaza where Palestinians from various factions have been sending missiles a few miles into Israel (she teaches at Sapir College). Opposed to violence from either side, she expresses her opposition to demands by many of her neighbors to penalize Gaza’s civilians. Here are excerpts from her longer statement:
…… All forms of non-violent protest on our part - directed against the decision makers on both sides of the border - are legitimate. In recent weeks, some residents of the area have been gathering near the borders to prevent the transfer of supplies, food and medicines to people in Gaza, who are living under conditions that are much worse and much more dangerous than the conditions under which we Israelis live. Their reasoning: As long as the rocket attacks continue, we will prevent the people in Gaza from having access to needed supplies.
This is both an unjustified and immoral act. Preventing the transfer of supplies that are necessary for the sustaining of life is collective punishment - and it constitutes widespread and indiscriminate violence on our part against innocent people on the other side. Neither the children in Sderot and Otef Aza, nor the children in the Gaza Strip, are responsible for the violent conflict that exists between Israel and the Palestinians. …..
Our protest against this impossible violent situation needs to be grounded in respect for human life - ours and that of the population in Gaza. We cannot allow ourselves to be convinced into believing that supporting, and even worse, encouraging collective punishments, that directly harm the basic rights of the people, is a legitimate form of protest. In the end, such forms of protest and punishment will become a deadly boomerang. If we adopt non-violent measures that are rooted in demanding human and civil rights for all peoples in Israel and the Gaza Strip, we will not only be fighting for the rights to live securely in our home, but for the true honor and morality of this home.
Julia will surely meet criticism for statement, distributed in Israel in Hebrew. She has courage. Whether appeals to morality will make much difference remains to be seen, but it is good to see them. The latest cease fire announcement may put an end to this problem for a while, but I doubt any cease fire will hold for long in the absence of progress toward a more comprehensive justice-based solution.
Technorati Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestine
Last weekend I took part for the first time in an annual local event, Brookline Artists’ Open Studios. My BAOS blurb said this: “Photography from abstracts to photojournalism, recent Israel/Palestine focus.” In addition to the more-typical art-lovers who wandered by, a number of visitors told me they were drawn by the Israel/Palestine mention. Some of them stayed a long time, talking about the politics behind the photos, asking about my impressions, and watching parts of a slideshow I set up alongside some of the prints. Those who stuck around seemed pretty much on my political wavelength.
Even those who came without Israel/Palestine in mind seemed to take the photojournalism in stride. I wasn’t sure how this would go, here in heavily-Jewish liberal Brookline where, as I’ve noted over the years, Israel’s faults just aren’t on most town residents’ radar. Indeed, a few BAOS visitors left quickly after glancing at my wall. Israeli soldiers tear-gassing nonviolent Bil’in protestors wasn’t what they were looking for.
I showed other photos, too, in somewhat separate spaces - abstracts, portraits, landscapes. Listening to two days of positive feedback about these was very exciting, especially since I’ve never shown my non-I/P work like this before. I even sold a few prints and photobooks, tempting me to try to do more so I can upgrade my camera equipment and software before my next Middle East visit.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine, photography, photojournalism
I left the hyperbolic “First International Academic Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Pathways to Peace” halfway through its second day. The conference had its positive moments. I met a few interesting people, but only a couple whose political take on things left them as frustrated as I was. For the most part my previously discussed hesitations about whether to participate proved to be on target. Maybe someday I’ll learn to trust my instincts and stop trying to manufacture optimism.
Mazin Qumsiyeh attended the first day. He and I both tried to raise critical points about the underlying even-handed, equal-victimization assumptions. Except for our own presentations to smaller groups, though, we could only ask questions at the end of keynote talks. The schedule left no time for the entire group to address what we both thought central: the implications of forging ahead without considering whether their basic framework made sense. We asked our questions, and were met with polite interest, but no follow-up.
One thing that did surprise me - to show my own naiveté - was the lack of Palestinian participation. The conference was billed as co-sponsored by JANIP, the Jewish-American Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and ATFP, the American Task Force on Palestine. And the featured speakers included almost as many Palestinian or other Arab academics as Jewish (Israeli and American). I knew the motivating force was Moises Salinas, whose book on the psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve reviewed critically. And I knew the conference theme — working toward something like the Geneva Initiative - was more attuned to Israeli perspectives than Palestinian. But despite this I did think they’d have actual Palestinians more or less on their wavelength in the room. But I was wrong. The actual conference program reveals the paucity of Arab names.
When I asked about this disjunction during a lunch-time announcement break (since there was no time scheduled for this sort of discussion), the response was predictable. We tried to get more Palestinians, but they didn’t come. The ATFP is not an academic organization, and so doesn’t have JANIP’s connections. But although there were regrets about this, there was zero discussion of whether this Palestinian absence was one more sign that the underlying assumptions were, by their very even-handedness, tilted toward Israeli interests.
Many of the Jewish attendees were affiliated with JANIP and/or Meretz-USA, an affiliate of Israel’s left-Zionist Meretz party. There were a lot of members of the campus-based Union of Progressive Zionism. The conference was, in reality, a strategy session of these inter-connected political groups rather than a serious scholarly effort to get at the root of the problem.
Mazin Q, a geneticist by training, pointed out in his talk that the group was focusing on symptoms and moving to treatment without having come up with an adequate diagnosis. I made much the same point using other terminology (Academic Objectivity, Political Neutrality, and Other Barriers to Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation). Thinking about this as I drove home yesterday, I boiled it down to this: In approaching an issue such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, academics claiming objectivity should begin with no preconceived notions about either the cause of the underlying problem or the preferred solution. This conference, though, explicitly rejects the usefulness of looking at history and responsibility, and aims explicitly for a particular outcome. These assumptions make the scholarly garb pretty feeble. They also demonstrate a main point of my presentation, that the pose of objectivity more often than not supports a status quo in which those with power stay in power.
As I’ve reiterated endlessly here, proper diagnosis should take into account how existing injustices came about. Polls that show majority Palestinian support for a two-state solution, which the conference stalwarts rely on heavily, don’t really get to whether Israel would possibly agree to the kind of two-state solution most Palestinians think fair. My own sense is that, in addition to a viable state, Palestinians want Israeli acknowledgment of its responsibility for Palestinian oppression and some method of making up for that past to the extent feasible. Some people at the conference agreed this is reasonable, but the more formal presentations and suggestions made it clear that Israel should not be expected to delve into the past.
There was a lot of conference talk about generalizations and stereotypes, a lot of psychologizing about people on both “extremes” who don’t quite see things as they really are, who don’t understand their own cognitive biases. This got pretty thick, but not once did I hear a presenter speculate about whether their own analyses might fall into the same trap.
I was reminded, as I had feared, of my experience last summer at the Minneapolis Dialogue on the Wall panel discussion, another public event that became a Jewish-centric forum where the polite search for peace and reconciliation meant an even-handed process that excluded reference to justice, human rights, and law. It just astonishes me, over and over, that so many people claiming progressive motivation can dismiss these concerns as irrelevant, not even worth talking about.
Technorati Tags: critical psychology, dialogue, international law, Israel, Jewish State, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Moises Salinas, neutrality, Palestine, Reconciliation, social psychology
Presented at the “First International Academic Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Pathways to Peace” - New Britain, Connecticut, March 2008.
I have previously discussed my hesitations about whether to attend this conference. The next posting describes my post-conference frustrations.
This paper is also posted on my website.
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Academic Objectivity, Political Neutrality, and Other Barriers to Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation
The declared goal of this conference is to “highlight the contribution that social scientific and humanistic research and scholarship can bring towards peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians” in order to achieve a “just and equitable solution.” That sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, I come here today skeptical that traditional academic research and scholarship will bring a lasting solution that is also just and equitable. Before turning to Israel and Palestine, though, I want to make three brief points about the relevance of academic assumptions and practices to political issues more generally, and then a word about underlying assumptions in conflict resolution.
Academic Assumptions and Practices
First, academic research is not as objective and value-free as traditionally imagined. Even in the hard sciences, our personal, professional, and political biases inevitably come into play, from the choice of theoretical model and framing of research questions to the scramble for funding and selection of methodology to the analysis and presentation of findings and policy recommendations (Rein, 1976). Most significantly, the pose of objectivity and ethical neutrality that often masks personal preferences and institutional inertia favors the powerful at the expense of others. This point may seem obvious to those of you in disciplines where critical approaches have received significant attention, such as sociology (Levine, 2004) and anthropology (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997), law (Kairys, 1998; Unger, 1986), pedagogy (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985; Freire, 1970; Illich, 1971), and maybe even geography (Mitchell, 2000). But in my own field of psychology, which is central to much of this conference, endorsement of traditional values, assumptions, and practices remains particularly strong despite abundant activist, feminist, radical, and postmodern critiques (Brown, 1973; Fox & Prilleltensky, 1997; Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009; Martín-Baró, 1994; Sarason, 1981; Tolman, 1994; Wilkinson, 1986).
Technorati Tags: dialogue, international law, Israel, Jewish State, Moises Salinas, one-state solution, Palestine, Reconciliation, social psychology, two-state solution
In a piece in Haaretz on factionalization among Israel’s religious parties, Avirama Golan touches on the Jewish State/democratic state issue:
This rift is reflected in a key issue that has sharpened since the disengagement, but whose roots go back to Gush Emunim: respect for the state. Growing segments of the religious community are abandoning the idea of a democratic state. Young settlement residents despise the idea, rabbis split hairs to explain that western democracy is a flawed product, and political leaders declare that a state that has betrayed its citizens does not deserve their loyalty.
One more sign of things to come.
Technorati Tags: Israel, religious right, Jewish State, theocracy
I submitted this to the Brookline TAB in response to Skip Sesling’s attack on my column last week about Joel Kovel’s talk. The editor declined to publish it. So here it is.
——————
Skip Sesling’s op-ed last week recycles old personal attacks about my efforts to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, he’s not alone. Some of the comments under my recent column on the TAB website also resort to character assassination, stereotype, and smug sefl-assurance. I don’t mind criticism of what I actually write, but it seems unfair to attack me for things I didn’t say and don’t believe.
Sesling is right about one thing, though. I no longer think the state of Israel can ever be both officially Jewish and substantively democratic. This painful awareness, which began to nag at me even when I was a young Zionist four decades ago, was central to my seminar at Ben Gurion University in 2006, when my students described with much regret their country’s inability to make democracy meaningful.
It is a very big leap, however, from my pessimism about Israeli democracy to Sesling’s absurd insistence that “Fox rejects all that is Jewish, which he calls self-enlightenment.” There is nothing in my column or anything else I’ve ever written to justify this mocking claim.
There is also nothing to justify his statement that “the one state Fox advocates is strictly a Muslim Arab state.” I would object to any outcome legitimizing official supremacy of one religion over another or denying the legitimate rights of Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The most mystifying part of Sesling’s column is his accusation that “Fox finds that Israel, Jews, Judaism and Zionism are all one entity.” He continues: “He should know better. Instead, he chooses to paint everyone who does not agree with his anti-Israel views as evil.”
Sesling has it backwards here: It is the Zionist movement that insistently conflates Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, as illustrated by the title of his own op-ed, “Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism.” Zionists repeatedly claim that the Israeli state is an essential aspect of Judaism and that its actions are carried out in the name of the Jewish people. Indeed, Israel, which defines itself as the nation of the Jews, does not even recognize “Israeli” as a nationality.
In contrast, it is Israel’s critics, especially perhaps its Jewish critics, who insist that Jewishness and Zionism are not identical. Whether Jewish identity, Jewish culture, and Jewish safety are inextricably linked to Jewish statehood is an important question deserving discussion rather than dogma.
Sesling is also wrong when he says I paint those who disagree with me as evil. I rarely ascribe evil motivation or character just because someone sees the world differently than I do. Perhaps reflecting my training in social psychology, generally I think most people try to do the right thing given their understanding of the world and the circumstances in which they find themselves. The problem is that sometimes we’re wrong.
Our motives and assumptions do not always stem from the sources we ascribe them to. We find ways to justify beliefs and actions that neutral outsiders might think are erroneous or simplistic. We may distort or overlook even the meaning of words to avoid obvious inconsistencies. How else could we call Israel democratic despite the Jewish state’s refusal to endorse the principle of legal equality for all citizens? What does democracy mean, as my Israeli students understood, if not that?
And, sometimes, even decent motivations and accurate perceptons lead to bad outcomes. Israel’s domination of Palestinians is a bad outcome.
Although Sesling’s personal nastiness is annoying, more troubling is that his latest historical account is no more accurate than his similar attacks several years ago. That’s when he ridiculed my proposal that Brookline residents with differing viewpoints meet to talk things over. If you don’t share Sesling’s distaste for learning about alternative views, you can easily find lots of sources. One place to start is this Q&A: html://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/101conflict.shtml.
My column two weeks ago urged Brookline residents to hear what Joel Kovel had to say. From what I could tell, few who protested outside the Coolidge Corner Theatre bothered to go inside. That did not surprise me. But Kovel’s articles are available online. You might find his analysis interesting. You might not. But please — don’t let Skip Sesling tell you what’s worth thinking about.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Joel Kovel, Skip Sesling, social psychology, Zionism
I spent my time on the subway to this afternoon’s demonstration in opposition to the closure of Gaza reading about the toppling of the wall separating Gaza’s Rafah from Egypt’s Rafah. This has gotten a lot of coverage since Hamas, apparently, decided to unilaterally devise a way for Gaza’s increasingly desperate residents to shop for food, clothing, cement, and other necessities. As Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, put it in a widely distributed piece yesterday,
I am not a Palestinian; I am not one of the oppressed. I only hope I can use my privilege in an effective way in order to redeem the gift the people of Gaza have given all of us: the realization that the people do have power and can prevail even in the face of overwhelming power.
Despite the euphoria of Gaza’s residents at their unexpected opportunity to stock up, there’s no guarantee the breach in the wall will remain. Israel might act at any moment to stop the shopping spree, as might Egyptian officials if they feel threats of destabilization at home. Under the circumstances, opposition to Israel’s closure policy remains important.
Today’s small demonstration, sponsored by Jews for Human Rights in Gaza, ewish Voice For Peace Boston, and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, took place outside the Israeli Consulate in cold downtown Boston.
We tried to bring medical and other supplies inside, to give to the consulate to pass along.
Didn’t get very far.
So we just kept walking around.
Listened to a pep-talk.
Held signs.
Another demonstration is planned for Saturday across the river in Harvard Square. This will be in solidarity with Saturday’s planned convoy of Israeli peace activists and others who will try to bring in carloads of supplies through Gaza’s Erez Crossing.
Technorati Tags: Gaza, Rafah, Israel, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine
Today’s Brookline TAB has a couple of letters to the editor blasting my op-ed last week about Joel Kovel’s planned talk at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. There’s also a column by former Brookline Selectman Skip Sesling, which has begun to generate its own comments, all supportive of him so far, on the TAB website.
I may submit a longer response to Sesling to the TAB, or at least a letter to the editor, but in the meantime I can point you to this response I wrote after he blasted me a few years ago on the same topic. His latest effort shows he continues to misquote and misinterpret at will.
The most mystifying part of his response is this accusation:
Fox finds that Israel, Jews, Judaism and Zionism are all one entity. He should know better. Instead, he chooses to paint everyone who does not agree with his anti-Israel views as evil.
Sesling has it backwards here: It is the Zionist movement that conflates Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, as in the title of his own op-ed: “Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism.” Hard-core Zionists repeatedly insist that the Israeli state is an inherent and essential aspect of Judaism. Israel repeatedly claims its actions are carried out “in the name of the Jewish people.” It is those of us who no longer consider ourselves Zionists who believe Jewishness and Zionism are, or should be, two different things.
More another time.
Technorati Tags: Skip Sesling, Israel, Joel Kovel, Zionism
Joel Kovel’s talk last night at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre mostly filled the 200+ person upper theater. Seeing his name and the title of his book on the marquee - Overcoming Zionism - must have really annoyed many town residents here in the heart of town.
The entrance is to the right of the marquee. Those of us heading to the ticket booth passed by a couple of dozen anti-Kovel protestors from a variety of local Zionist groups, with signs and leaflets.
Prominent were Chuck Morse, a local conservative talk-show host and perennial Republican candidate trying to unseat Barney Frank. In his blog last week he blasted Kovel, and me in passing.
Also on hand was HIllel Stavis, who shows up everywhere trying to drown out anti-Zionists. Here he has just a still camera, but usually he’s videotaping.
So far as I could tell, the protesters complaining about Kovel didn’t bother to come inside to hear what he had to say and maybe even engage in some dialogue. I heard one say he wouldn’t give the organizers $5. So the audience that did come inside was mostly at least sympathetic to some of Kovel’s views and in many cases in full agreement.One questioner at the end asked a few pointed questions, which for the most part Kovel had dealt with in some detail in his book.Throughout Kovel’s talk I could hear the woman behind me tsk-tsking and muttering under her breath to the man. I was hoping she’d ask questions, but they just left when the Q&A began.Kovel’s presentation covered a lot of ground, but didn’t get into some of the earlier parts of his book where he dissects ancient Jewish history and Biblical texts. I think these portions of the book most likely accounted for some of the intense criticism he’s received. Worth reading.During the talk, I sat with an old friend from my Zionist days. She noted that there was a time we would have been outside with the protesters instead. People do change. Reaching out still makes sense.
Technorati Tags: Chuck Morse, Hillel Stavis, Israel, Joel Kovel, one-state solution, Overcoming Zionism, Palestine, Zionism
My posting the other day about Joel Kovel’s impending talk in Brookline, Massachusetts, generated several emails, all but one from appreciative friends. Two critical readers responded on the website of the Brookline TAB, where my op-ed was posted. Rather than repeat all the TAB comments, you can read them here.
The primary theme running through the comments is that, as history shows, Jews need a state of their own to be safe. On the TAB site, Steven Feinstein puts it this way:
Zionism is essentially “affirmative action” for the Jewish people. After centuries of persecution in Arab countries, and pogroms and then the holocaust in Europe, the Jewish people need and deserve a country of their own…This might seem unjust to some, but it is necessary and just, given the circumstances.
I don’t think the treatment Jews received in Arab countries is really comparable to European pogroms and the Holocaust, but even if it were true, that does not mean the Jews “deserve” a country of their own. Zionism developed as one of several historical options, and in hindsight it doesn’t look to me like the right option. By moving to the US instead of to Palestine, for example, my European grandparents set in motion generations of Jewish Americans living reasonably equal and even relatively charmed lives. The safety of American Jews is a lot more certain than the safety of Israeli Jews, especially if Israel remains a Jewish-priority state at Palestinian expense. Ultimately, improved equality and safety — for Jews as well as for non-Jews — depends more on reinforcing equality and democracy throughout the world and opening all states to those victimized elsewhere than on creating isolating pockets offering false hopes of protection.
The affirmative action analogy has some initial appeal, but it fails because statehood and affirmative action have different purposes. Affirmative action, designed in its clumsy way to counter individual discrimination and institutional inequality, is not applicable to national sovereignty. Groups have no fundamental right to statehood the way individuals have a right to equality. Indeed, thousands of national and tribal societies around the world lack states. I’d be glad to see every cultural and geographic group have more sovereignty and to eliminate the nation-state entirely, but in the meantime those who run the nation-state system will not tolerate thousands of mini-states. I’m not sure Jews have more claim to a state than the Kurds, the Druze, the Iroquois, or any other group.
Feinstein continues:
…you know very well that the Arab world has much more serious problems than the State of Israel. Arab leaders, just like countless dictators and despots before them, point their fingers at the Jews to distract their long-suffering people from their real problems. And you are complicit. More people die from malnutrition in the world each year than have ever lived in Palestine. Is dismantling the State of Israel the most pressing concern…?
Again, I think this is beside the point. That Israel is not the primary source of global oppression does not let its supporters off the hook. Unlike most other countries in this category, Israel claims to be a democracy, thus raising the standard, and its actions are made possible by US tax dollars. My own interest in this issue stems as well from my Jewish identity, which makes me recoil when Israel does things I disapprove of “in the name of the Jewish people.”
Palestinian victims may be outnumbered by victims elsewhere in the world, but victims are victims. At a time when Israel’s closure of the Gaza checkpoints causes hunger and tragedy for hundreds of thousands of civilians, it seems to me immoral to minimize the pain as well as the responsibility.
The second TAB commenter, Cheryl Mavrikos, ends with this:
Those who share your point of view have unfortunately learned very little from history and utterly fail to understand the political dynamics of the Arab world. What is more tragic is that those who view the conflict one-dimensionally proselytize as “political awareness” that which basically amounts to a personal failure of character.
Mavrikos attributes disagreement to either failure to understand or failure of character. Our differences seem to me instead to reflect different priorities. For all these commenters on my posting, the priority is what is best for the Jewish people. I understand that urge, but my priority is to do what justice requires, taking into account both universally applicable principles and an effort to balance individual circumstances.
Jewish suffering cannot justify oppressing Palestinians. I do think intense need requires solutions. No group of people should be dispensable. But the solution cannot ultimately mean a state for every group, especially states where non-preferred groups are subjected to institutional discrimination and repression. I’m not yet persuaded a single state for Israelis and Palestinians will ever become possible, but I am persuaded that any state based on supremacy of one group over another does not deserve support.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Joel Kovel, one-state solution, Overcoming Zionism, Palestine, two-state solution, Zionism
Op-Ed in Today’s Brookline TAB, titled “Is Brookline Ready to Rethink Israel-Palestine?”
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Here in Brookline we love controversy. From Town Meeting to the weekly TAB to school classrooms, we disagree publicly, and usually respectfully enough, about issues large and small — parking rules and sidewalk snow, high-stakes testing and racial profiling, presidential power and the war in Iraq. Next Tuesday, though, the town’s tolerance will be tested when Joel Kovel challenges conventional thinking about Brookline’s one undebatable topic: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Kovel, a former psychiatrist, is both an academic and an activist. A Bard College professor of social studies, he was the New York Green Party’s senatorial candidate in 1998 and lost his bid to be the Greens’ 2000 presidential candidate to Ralph Nader. He writes frequently in journals that Brookline’s liberal and left-of-liberal residents are likely to read. During his Boston visit he’ll speak elsewhere about topics such as ecosocialism.
It’s Kovel’s new book, however, that’s aroused the pro-Israel forces’ ire. In Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, Kovel explores in dizzying detail a broad array of themes certain to discomfort Israel’s supporters. His appearance will likely raise the same tired objections facing Mazin Qumsiyeh, who spoke at Brookline High School last September despite frantic efforts to pressure school officials to ban him.
Kovel’s critics did briefly persuade the University of Michigan Press to stop distributing his book, which is published by Pluto Press, a small publisher in the United Kingdom. Michigan soon backed down and resumed distribution, but Kovel’s critics have not given up. One of the things I learned during the years I wrote a regular TAB column was the lengths to which some of Israel’s supporters will go to keep the public ignorant about Middle East realities.
I like to think I was a bit more open-minded when I was a teenage Zionist myself. According to the left-humanist Zionism I had internalized, Israel’s manifestly unjust policies toward its own Arab citizens, obvious even before the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, would someday give way to a humanist, socialist society in which Jews and Arabs would live as equals. At least that’s what I thought when I moved to Israel for what I intended to be the rest of my life.
When I returned to the US in 1973 I was no longer a Zionist. Some combination of growing political awareness, nagging logical questions, and personal transformation had turned me away from what had been the primary focus of my life. But actively rejecting the very rationale for a Jewish state was just too big a leap.
In 2002, my TAB column addressed the questionable arrest a year earlier of Amer Jubran during a Coolidge Corner protest against Israel Independence Day. For a while I tread cautiously and somewhat inconsistently. I tried to spark discussion in Brookline while catching up on the political landscape and then, in two visits to Israel and the West Bank, the physical and personal landscape. My explorations, which included re-connecting with old friends and meeting Israeli and Palestinian students, professors, activists, and others, confirmed my long-time suspicion that Israel’s identity as a Jewish state — at Palestinian expense — fails the test of justice.
Despite its sharp clarity, Joel Kovel’s book was not an easy read. His careful critique of just about everything the Zionist movement taught me four decades ago was painfully direct. Although neither Brookline Booksmith nor the Brookline Public Library carries the book despite the attention it’s received, several essays on his website provide a good sense of Kovel’s position. Kovel will talk about the book on January 22 at 7 pm, unless his critics pressure the Coolidge Corner Theatre to cancel.
Kovel addresses the dilemma of liberal and left Zionists who still imagine, as I no longer can, that a Jewish-but-democratic state is possible. Along the way he enumerates universal principles of justice to support his thesis that Zionism’s logic could only lead to a state built on inequality and expulsion. Dropping my own Zionist identity meant rejecting the position that what matters most is what’s good for the Jews. Along with Kovel and a growing number of other Jewish Americans willing to rethink long-held assumptions, it seems clear to me today that justice is the appropriate bottom line.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Overcoming Zionism, one-state solution, Palestine, Joel Kovel, Zionism
It’s been a while since posting here, mostly because of other priorities, but also because my blogging software tells me this in my 500th entry since beginning to blog in 2004 and I figured I should say something more or less profound. Nothing profound occurs to me, though, so I’ll just mark the passage and move on, as inconsistently as usual.
In the past week or so I’ve added a dozen galleries of this year’s images to my photo site. Collections range from the Boston Sabeel Conference, Zionist counterprotest, and local anti-war rallies to less political subjects, including people, abstracts and macros, hummingbirds, and travel to Colorado, Vancouver and Denman Islands, and even Niagara Falls.
And these ants:
Technorati Tags: ants, photography
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is quoted in Haaretz again on the Israeli-Palestinian future:
“The choice, both 60 years ago and today, is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel,” the prime minister continued. “That is the choice we are faced with today — the existence of two nation-states, Israel and Palestine, in the Land of Israel.”
It looks like the momentum toward a quicker pace of negotiations will continue as Israel looks to celebrate its 60th anniversary this spring. Olmert refers to the one-state/two-state issue as a “choice,” but I doubt he really intends it that way. Combined with his comment last week about the risk of Israel becoming an apartheid state, however, the real question is whether or not Israel effectively killed the two-state option by its decades-long creation of all those facts on the ground.
At a talk last week by Boston-area Workmen’s Circle members who had toured Israel and the West Bank, one participant noted that although activists they met with insisted Palestinian opinion had shifted away from the two-state option, polls showed continued support for it. He took this as a sign of hope for a workable two states. I wonder, though, just what the polls mean.
My suspicion is that most Palestinians, especially older ones, would accept a two-state solution if the Palestinian state was viable and if it met the clear bottom-line Palestinian concerns: Israel’s return to the pre-1967 border (including in Jerusalem), the removal of Jewish settlements, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, and recognition of the Palestinian right of return even if not that many acted on the right. If negotiations lead to this outcome, I suspect most Palestinians will accept it. Thus the polls.
On the other hand, if negotiations leave intact the settlement blocs, the separation wall and bypass roads, and all the rest of those on-the-ground facts, if East Jerusalem is sealed off from the West Bank, if Israel continues to reject responsibility for the Nakba, then my guess is Palestinian support plummets and the two-state solution becomes merely a temporary stop-gap rather than a sustainable peace.
I’d like to see polling tease apart these different scenarios.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Olmert, Palestine, Nakba, one-state solution, two-state solution, Workmen’s Circle
Another proposal I’m involved in is for the August conference of the American Psychological Association. Since I’m mostly outside institutionalized academia these days, I don’t often go to APA, but this summer’s conference will be right here in Boston. With a few friends certain to show up, doing a session together might even be fun.
Thomas Teo, Isaac Prilleltensky, and I are proposing a Conversation Hour on the topic Critical Psychology Issues. Instead of a formal panel to read prepared papers, the conversation format is designed to generate discussion with whoever shows up. Here’s our proposal:
Critical psychology has generated an increasing number of books, journals, conferences, and other components of academic respectability. However, despite a general critique of mainstream psychology and a concern for social justice, it remains difficult to define critical psychology by consensus and to identify the principles its various approaches share. Two participants in this conversation hour — Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky — have just co-edited (with Stephanie Austin) the second edition of Critical Psychology: An Introduction; and Thomas Teo has recently published a book on the history and theory of the critique of psychology.
From these vantage points, the participants seek to raise and discuss a number of questions, including the following:
(a) Allegiances: Are critical psychologists primarily psychologists interested in theoretical rigor, advocating political goals only because they happen to be compatible with critical theory? Or, are we motivated by sources outside psychology such as Marxism, feminism, or anarchism and are we primarily activists interested in social change, using psychology’s theory and methods only when they happen to coincide with our politics?
(b) Methods: Should critical psychologists use traditional positivist methods to expose inequality and injustice and foster political and institutional reform, or should we reject methods that strengthen mainstream claims to legitimacy? Are qualitative methods more appropriate for critical psychology?
(c) Legitimacy: Should critical psychologists claim special expertise as psychologists to advocate social change, or does rejecting positivist methods reduce our rationale for doing so?
(d) Moral relativism: Can we advocate politically preferred values such as equality and empowerment or must we abandon all value preferences as culturally determined?
(e) Audience, style, and diversity: In our writing, conferencing, and teaching can we escape the conventional boundaries of academic life or should we adhere to academic norms? Is it at all important to answer these questions?
The three of us bring to this conversation hour a variety of perspectives on these and other issues within critical and radical psychology. I’ve worked with Isaac Prilleltensky, now Dean of the School of Education at the University of Miami, for about 15 years. Together we co-edited the first edition of Critical Psychology: An Introduction in 1997 and, as noted above, we’re now working on the second edition with Stephanie Austin, a former student of both Isaac and Thomas. We also co-founded RadPsyNet (Radical Psychology Network) in 1993 and have worked on a number of other projects. Thomas Teo is a professor at York University in Toronto, in the History and Theory of Psychology section. His 2005 book is The Critique of Psychology: From Kant to Postcolonial Theory. He is also writing a key chapter for our new critical psychology book describing the development of, and trends within, critical psychology.
The new edition of Critical Psychology, to be published in 2009, will address more directly the dilemmas critical psychologists confront. For my own approach to some of these issues, see my website.
Technorati Tags: American Psychological Association, critical psychology, Isaac Prilleltensky, positivism, social psychology, Stephanie Austin, Thomas Teo, RadPsyNet
In September I noted here a planned academic conference in Connecticut next March on Israeli/Palestinian “Pathways to Peace.” I also described my hesitations about its focus, which seems much in line with the book Planting Hatred, Sowing Pain: The Psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Moises F. Salinas, which I reviewed here.
Despite my cautions, I tried to arouse interest in collaborating on a panel discussion on any of several relevant issues. No luck. But in the end I decided to submit a presentation proposal on my own. Here’s the proposal. Reflecting several themes I’ve touched on previously, it’s titled “Academic Objectivity, Political Neutrality, and Other Barriers to Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation”.
It is not self-evident that academic research can help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A traditional academic stance often promises more than it delivers. Conventional norms highlight approaches adaptable to status quo requirements while relegating to the sidelines scholarship that challenges underlying assumptions. Efforts to extend boundaries are routinely dismissed as impractical or irrelevant.
Norms demanding the appearance of objectivity mask the passion that drives researchers into contentous fields to begin with while over-emphasizing rock-no-boats approaches. They also reinforce the ideological belief that significant social problems derive from poor data rather than conflicting values and access to power. The combination of academic objectivity, political neutrality, and the language and styles of even-handed mediation and dialogue should be treated cautiously precisely because it is so powerful. When it gets things wrong, the damage can be significant.
In this paper I will apply these considerations to various approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, although this conference’s Call for Proposals “encourage[s] researchers from all sides of the conflict to send their proposals,” the primary sponsors all seek a two-state solution representing what many consider to be an international consensus. it is not clear if this underlying goal will be open to reassessment.
Similarly, assuming an equivalence of perception and victimization, depoliticized models based on neutrality-based negotiation, mediation, and dialogue often discount appropriate external standards. Approaching issues initially as a neutral can help identify complex issues for further exploration, but a primary research goal should be to sort through complexity as a means of assessing responsibility. That does not mean taking sides. It does mean using reasonable principles and standards regardless of which side benefits more. Scholarship that reinforces inaccurate perceptions is unlikely to lead to stable outcomes.
I’ll let you know if they accept the proposal.
Technorati Tags: academic objectivity, dialogue, Israel, Moises Salinas, Palestine, Planting Hatred, Sowing Pain, Reconciliation, social psychology, Zionism
Ehud Olmert’s much-discussed comment after the Annapolis conference was reported this way in The Guardian:
Israel’s prime minister issued a rare warning yesterday that his nation risked being compared to apartheid-era South Africa if it failed to agree an independent state for the Palestinians. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was “finished” if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights.
If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”. Israel’s supporters abroad would quickly turn against such a state, he said.
Whether the terminology of apartheid is applicable to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in occupied territories as well as inside Israel has become an increasingly intense issue. I noted here last month the Boston Sabeel Conference on that very theme. What strikes as potentially useful about Olmert’s comment is that it will now be harder for Israel’s Jewish-community supporters to attack anyone who uses the term as an anti-Semite. Ehud Olmert is no Jimmy Carter.
Olmert went on to say this about the role of those Jewish supporters:
“The Jewish organisations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents,” he said.
Maybe so. Israel institutionalization of apartheid-like policies would make many American Jews uncomfortable, and for some might have an Emperor-has-no-clothes effect. Others, though, would no doubt buy into the expected new line: Israel’s Jewish character and its role as haven for persecuted Jews worldwide are more important than democracy and equality. That’s already the line of people like Benny Morris, and the more Jews feel put-upon, the more likely many of them will turn toward hard-nosed tribalism.
A few nights ago I went to a report-back session from a Workmen’s Circle delegation to Israel and the West Bank last summer. I know a few of the people who went, and was curious to hear more about their experiences. Here in Brookline, many WC members are in either Brit Tzedek, which advocates a two-state solution partially on the grounds that this is what’s best for Israel, or Jewish Voice for Peace, which is open to a one-state solution or any other solution that yields justice (I belong to JVP). The tone of much of the discussion was two-state focused, with some people pushing the Geneva Accord.
A few years ago I still thought a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state was possible, even if unlikely. Since then, partly as a result of my two visits to the region where I could see for myself the impact of four decades of Israel’s “facts on the ground,” and as the Separation Wall added a new level of concreteness to institutionalizing those facts, it’s become clear to me that a viable Palestinian state is no longer possible. Israel’s effort over four decades to make that impossible has succeeded.
So Olmert’s warning seems to me to be a couple of decades too late.
Technorati Tags: apartheid, Israel, Olmert, Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Workmen’s Circle
In a new posting on Subtopia, a fascinating blog exploring in part architecture’s political implications, Bryan Finoki interviews Jay Isenberg, the architect/artist who organized the Dialogue on the Wall multimedia art installation at Form and Content Gallery in Minneapolis last August. I’ve described here before my experience participating in the panel discussion related to the exhibit, which included some of my photos of Israel and Palestine.
Jay says much of interest about his work, the preparation for the exhibit, the politics of architecture, and more. I like Jay and respect his efforts to tackle this difficult subject. He took on a huge project, despite opposiiton. Where I differ from him, though, is his commitment to a form of neutrality that is more likely to be a barrier than an aid to justice-based solutions.
In the interview, Jay explains his stance this way: “My natural viewpoint is as a neutral and from there I navigate through issues.” I think this stance leads many astray. It may be useful in Jay’s own work as a mediator in architecture-related disputes, but I don’t think the dynamics work the same for more complex issues such as Israel and Palestine and even at times in more mundane but troubling settings such as divorce mediation.
Approaching issues as a neutral can help a newcomer, a mediator, a helping professional identify issues to explore further. It can help make sense of complexity. It can prevent premature commitment to one side or the other. But that initial neutral stance is less justified once there is enough information to assess responsibility for right and wrong. That does not mean taking sides. It does mean using reasonable principles or standards regardless of which side benefits more. It is both wrong and dangerous to make believe both sides have equal power and responsibility, to act as if the perceptions of the batterer are as valid as those of the battered.
Responding to a comment of mine on his blog, Bryan seems to agree that the dialogue approach is now “seemingly such an exhausted model” and asks “how might we explore new formats for discussion?”
By coincidence, today I received a link to this column by Tom Pessah, a young Israeli coming to terms with the knowledge that his Tel Aviv home was buit on land belonging to a Palestinian village destroyed and erased from the map at Israel’s birth. The portions most relevant to the Dialogue approach include this:
The meeting between Israeli and Palestinian college students was organized by Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, a community that tries to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Unlike other groups, their idea wasn’t to help us find friends, to realize the “Other” wasn’t so bad, to create a shared belief in some kind of vague peace, tame and apolitical. It was quite the opposite: they tried to push us to confront some of the hardest issues, without guaranteeing any agreement would be found.
Pessah later realizes this:
It seems much simpler to me now: Palestine/Israel isn’t mine to give; Palestinians have as much of a right to it as I do. The former inhabitants of Sumeil don’t need my big-hearted generosity: they need my recognition of the injustice committed towards them when they were expelled from their homes in 1948. They need me to remind people that most of Israel is built upon land that belonged to Palestinians. They need me to invite them and their children to come and live with us.
Like Pessah, I think even-handed approaches based on a refusal to assess responsibility cannot possibly help. Insisting that each side’s perspective is equally valid makes some sense if the goal is understanding psychological motivation. It is mostly irrelevant, though, if the goal is an outcome based even partially on justice.
In other words, it is undeniably true that people on different sides have different perspectives and assumptions. That’s one factor that extends the conflict, though not the only factor (I’m setting aside for the moment those who fully understand and accept their role as oppressors, such as Benny Morris and others — going back at least to Vladimir Jabotinsky — who accept as simply necessary Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians and the destruction of villages such as the one Pessah’s house stands upon). But the role of outsiders not inherently committed to one side or the other is not to make believe all positions are equally valid but to assess the situation based on available universal, external principles and to urge resolution based on those principles. The proper stance is not to be “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine” but “pro-justice.” When justice points the blame at one side more than the other, neutrality is no longer a morally acceptable stance. It simply reassures the guilty that their actions are justified.
It took me a long time to reach the point of looking at all this from the perspective of universally applicable principles of justice and fairness instead of from a primary concern with what’s best for Israel or the Jewish people — the perspective I absorbed in the 1960s as a teenage Zionist in Brooklyn. The appeals of nationalism and ethnic identity and in-group culture that seemed so obvious 40 years ago now seem unjust and regressive. If we are to get to a future where nationalist, religious, ethnic, and other tribe-like identities no longer justify oppression and repression and no longer risk plunging us all into technologically out-of-control conflagration, the only reasonable principles are universal rather than specific.
Under those principles — whether it’s international law, which I’m not a particular fan of, or simple commonsense notions that it’s wrong to bully the weak no matter how much you’ve been bullied in the past — any effort to portray Israelis and Palestinians as equal victims and perpetrators is morally wrong as well as counterproductive. Dialogue groups and similar processes that assume equivalence can only strengthen support for Israel’s intransigence, prevent justice for Palestinians, and extend the conflict into the future.
Given this, I don’t have a good answer to Bryan’s question about new formats for discussion. I understand the importance of settings and formats and fair process. But these are meaningless if justice is left out, and sometimes they hinder getting to the real issues. I’ve touched on this elsewhere, recently in criticizing Moises Salinas’s book on the psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for its determined focus on low-level negotiation issues and the like rather than on history, justice, law, and other factors apparently irrelevant to those who just want people to get along. I’d like people to get along too, but the reasons they don’t are not likely to be resolved if they are smoothed over with talk, even if the talk come with smiles, hugs, and tea.
Technorati Tags: co-existence, mediation, dialogue group, international law, Israel, Jay Isenberg, Moises Salinas, Palestine, social psychology, Zionism
Kobi Snitz from Anarchists Against the Wall and Rateb Abu Rahma from the Bil’in village organizing committee have been speaking at colleges around the northeastern US for the past couple of weeks. They stayed at my place when they were in Boston, and I went with them to talks at Brandeis and Harvard. Their tour was hosted by FFIPP, Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the group that organized the delegation I went to Israel and Palestine with almost three years ago.
As noted in my last posting, I don’t have time now to say much, but I wanted to link to Bil’in’s struggle against the Separation Wall, or fence in this case, a topic I’ve written about many times. Bil’in’s very useful website has lots of photos, video, news releases, and more. The village has been fighting the wall for years, and the weekly non-violent demonstrations have gone on for almost three years. Rateb and Kobi’s’ slideshow did a great job showing the varied creative efforts to dramatize the Wall’s impact on Palestinian life. These photos and more are on the Bil’in village website. I was glad to saw a few of my own photos there, like this one from January 2005 showing village committee members pointing out the barrier’s route just before construction started (I have many more on my photo site):
Although the tour’s primary focus wasn’t fund-raising, the Bil’in committee and Anarchists Against the Wall have huge legal bills. The village is in constant litigation against the fence in Israeli courts. Although they recently won a partial victory, there’s much more to go.
Anarchists Against the Wall has continuing legal expenses for Israelis arrested during the weekly Bil’in protests. If you can, please donate.
Technorati Tags: Anarchists Against the Wall, Bil’in, FFIPP, Israel, Palestine
It’s been busy, and things won’t really ease up until sometime next week. All I can do now is list things I haven’t had time to blog about, and throw in a few photos to replace a few thousand words.
1. Across the street from last weekend’s Sabeel Conference at Boston’s Old South Church were Zionist counter-protestors organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council and other groups. Some recognized and harangued Jeff Halper of Israel Committee Against House Demolitions when he went to see what they were up to. The guy with the camera in the second and third photos is Hillel Stavis. He was pretty obnoxious, even cutting off people on his own side, who he clearly doesn’t think know as much as he thinks he knows.
2. Inside the conference, Halper spoke, as did Noam Chomsky, Archibishop Desmond Tutu, and others. I don’t relate well to religious worldviews, but the strong opposition to Israeli occupation policy was good to see. There’s already been a lot written about the conference, so I’m not going to go into any detail.
When I have more time I will try to mull over the pragmatics of the apartheid terminology. It does seem clear that the occupation is worse than apartheid in many ways. In response to a question, Halper said Israel is “on its way to apartheid,” while others thought the term is already accurate. Halper says it may become accurate if the Annapolis peace conference formalizes a powerless Palestinian state, which seems to be the US and Israeli plan.
On a personal note, I was glad to see 8 or 9 my photos used in this display set up by the Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights:
3. The Sabeel conference’s anti-occupation agenda didn’t go far enough for another set of protestors, who I think are among those who consider any acceptance of a two-state solution to be a Zionist plot:
The cops separated the two sets of counter-protestors from each other and from the conference:
One of the Zionist protestors (I think that’s this guy’s crowd) took my picture.
4. As the conference ended, Desmond Tutu led us to the anti-Occupation demonstration organized by Jewish Voice for Peace.
4. A few minutes later, the larger anti-war demo that had rallied on the Boston Common marched around Copley Square, led by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Impressive. And sad.
Some people drew connections:
During World Series week, some drew other connections:
Technorati Tags: Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights, Desmond Tutu, Hillel Stavis, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Israel, JCRC, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine, Red Sox, Sabeel, Zionism
When I was in Israel last year I wrote several postings about Rahat, the Bedouin city a few miles to the north of where I was staying in Beer Sheva. Later, I described a new film by Uri Rosenwaks about the film class he taught to black Bedouin women. A really intriguing film about an aspect of Bedouin life getting just about no attention elsewhere.
Film Class will show this Sunday afternoon at the Boston Jewish Film Festival, at the great Coolidge Corner Theatre. Here’s the film’s series information:
The Film Class
Hachug Lekolnoa
Director: Uri Rosenwaks
Country: Israel
Released 2006
Duration: 53 min.
Language: Arabic / Hebrew w/ subtitlesDirector Uri Rosenwaks went to Rahat, a town in the Negev desert, to teach beginning filmmaking to a class of Afro-Bedouin women. When he learns that the Afro-Bedouins were enslaved by the white Bedouins as recently as 50 years ago, he accompanies his students on an astounding and unforgettable journey of discovery that leads back to Africa.
Earlier on Sunday, Rosenwaks will be part of a panel discussion on Israeli film. What makes an Israeli film “Israeli”? What makes an Israeli film about Bedouin fit into a Jewish Film Festival? Should be an interesting panel.
Technorati Tags: Rahat, Bedouin, Israel, Uri Rosenwaks