Last night I went to hear a panel discussion featuring Noam Chomsky, Stephen Walt, Irene Gendzier, and Duncan Kennedy at Boston University’s Law School. The central topic was the US role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. All four panelists are critical of US support for Israel; the moderator told us that academics on the other side who had been invited to attend had all refused.
The auditorium was pretty full, and at the end lots of people lined up to ask questions. Most were supporters of Israel incensed at what they tried to portray as one-sided inaccuracies. Several made points that would have been worth pursuing, but there was too much pro-Israel shouting and ranting to enable much actual discussion. The way this went added to my thinking that these sorts of panels with longish presentations and little time for actual back-and-forth discussion bring little clarity. I’ve been to enough similar talks to know that the structure makes actual communication secondary regardless of which side the speakers are on.
Of the speakers, the one I had never met was Duncan Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor and critical legal studies scholar. When I was teaching legal studies I used a classic piece of his on how law schools are essentially training in hierarchy. I had only learned recently that Kennedy has become outspoken on Israel/Palestine, and is now teaching a course on related legal issues. A quick web search found a lot of his work. Here, he begins a short piece last month about Gaza in the Harvard Crimson by referring to a point he made in somewhat different fashion last night, that too many otherwise progressive academics would rather avoid the subject:
When I told a friend, a former section leader in a large Harvard College course, that I had been offered a chance to do an op-ed for The Harvard Crimson on Gaza, she identified two fairly common, understandable undergraduate attitudes: “The situation is too complicated and I can’t make up my mind about it;” and “This is controversial and there are differences of opinion. No side is ‘right.’’”
I hope that the recent war, occurring at the beginning of the Obama presidency, will lead to enough discussion of Israel and Palestine in the Harvard community so that more of us feel able to take positions. With that in mind, I will use my space to present a factual picture one would think controversial, but which surprisingly is a matter of consensus of “informed observers.”
The bulk of the column presents an account that will probably strike some as less consensual than Kennedy suggests, though I think disputes would mostly be a matter of emphasis and tone. I especially appreciate his penultimate context:
Numerous observers have charged Israel with committing war crimes during the war. Without downplaying that aspect, I think it is important to understand the 1,300 Palestinian casualties, including 400 children as well as many, many women, versus 13 Israeli casualties, as typical of a particular kind of “police action” that Western colonial powers and Western “ethno-cratic settler regimes” like ours in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Serbia and particularly apartheid South Africa, have historically undertaken to convince resisting native populations that unless they stop resisting they will suffer unbearable death and deprivation. Not just in 1947 and 1948, but also in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, Israel used similar tactics.
Causing horrific civilian deaths is often perfectly defensible under the laws of war, which favor conventional over unconventional forces in asymmetric warfare. The outright “crimes,” like the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, or Russian massacres in Afghanistan and then in Chechnya, are less important for the civilian victims than the daily tactics of air assault, bombardment, and brutal door-to-door sweeps, meant to draw fire from the resisters that will justify leveling houses and the people in them.
Kennedy’s final paragraph makes sense to me, too:
Can this picture be right? If so, what is to be done? If not, what is to be done? If you are not already clear about what you think, it is crucial to try to find out for yourself. If the situation is as bad as I have painted, you might consider some small step, perhaps just a contribution to humanitarian relief for Gaza, or e-mailing the White House, or something more, like advocating for Harvard to divest.
Technorati Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Duncan Kennedy, war crime
I went to demonstrations every week end for the first time in my life when the attack on Gaza got underway. I think it’s because of what happened in S. Lebanon in 2006 and we watched in horror the massacre of people on their own land by surpise! NOT! Israel. I fully expected some sort of international justice as a consequence. An accusation, a court, a trial? I waited and waited! By now I understand the “1984″ reality of our society. And again in 2008 I watched the U.S. government sit silent as Israel (our ally?!) massacre a population on their own land…and do nothing! Only to see President elect Obama at the AIPAC alter praising Israel and vowing to defend this terrorist (illegal) state! I’m disheartened, as what must be typical when one’s rose colored glasses gets slapped off one’s face. But I think I understand now that “we the people” have to fight this 1984 effect and get out there for demonstrations and all the other legal methods of dissent to let the government know that we CARE, we are WATCHING and we will not fall under the desensitization spell!
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