solidarity via acronyms

It is itself a kind of paternalism to assume that oppressed people speak with one voice, whereas in our own communities that is never the case.  Of course you want to express solidarity in the struggle for self-determination of any people.  And it is indeed problematic to sit in a position of privilege and dictate to an oppressed person how they should be doing things.  On the other hand, you might actually know something they don't about, say, the political climate in your own community.

I am most effective when I recognize how my own struggle and your struggle are one and the same.  That is the real meaning of solidarity.  Practically speaking, dividing the world into oppressed and oppressor is not that empowering to anyone.  Let's call each other on it when we fail to account for privilege and cause actual harm.  But let's not pretend that's not an inevitable possibility regardless of the ways in which we choose to engage.  Convincing yourself that you are just following the lead of oppressed people does not make you immune from behaving in problematic ways, and it's not useful to pretend otherwise.

So, say I want to have solidarity with my Palestinian peers.  I want them to know that they aren't alone, that people - including American Jews! - are with them, and doing what we can to help.  I think that targeting my own society and government is more relevant than targeting the Israeli state as the source of all the problems.  It does seem hypocritical, as Noam Chomsky points out, to target Israel for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) and not our own government which is culpable in so many problems in the world, including this one.

And don't we have more responsibility for the actions of our own government?  Israel may act in my name, as a Jew, but it is not my country.  I don't vote for its leaders, I've never lived there, I don't speak the language, I have little in common with its inhabitants except a shared religious/ethnic background with the Ashkenazi sub-set of the population.

Not all of us need to work within the American Jewish community.  Some Jews on the left do feel a profound sense of alienation from Jewish organizations here at home.  The gatherings of the farther left are far more populated by the otherwise marginalized among Jews.  It's more female. It's more queer.  It's not surprising.  Why work within a community that doesn't necessarily respect you anyway?

And then there's the issue of working within the system versus people power.  Some of us find it disempowering to focus on convincing members of Congress to adopt a slightly less reactionary right-wing position, buying into a corrupt system of campaign finance and lobbyists in the process.  BDS* is something we can support and feel like we're doing something tangible with a clear conscience.

While it feels nice to take direct action, and it feels nice to have the genuine appreciation of Palestinian peers, it's important not to kid ourselves about how much of an impact our BDS efforts can really have.  The other good point that Chomsky makes in that link above is about the South Africa analogy.  By the time that the boycott movement really got going, there had been a couple of decades of educational work on the ground, building popular opinion against apartheid, so it was natural for a boycott movement to find wide support.  That hasn't been done in this case.  Supporters of the full boycott, while hoping to be vindicated by history, simply marginalize themselves in the short-term... which doesn't make for the same level of effectiveness.

Some supporters and opponents of BDS* have questioned whether the distinction between "full" BDS against all Israeli society and targeted BDS against the occupation is a bit too academic.  I don't think so.  People get the distinction if you sit down and talk to them.  It is actually possible to convince a liberal sympathizer with Israel that targeted boycott of the occupation is justifiable.  Those folks will never be won over to a full boycott.  They are immediately suspicious of the motives of its proponents.  And frankly, I often am as well.  It's one thing for Palestinians to call for it.  Good for them.  They are striving for self-determination and embracing non-violent tactics.  But the self-righteous American activists who confuse tactic with moral authority too often in this struggle do give me pause.

Some American activists seem more concerned with purity of moral conscience than many Palestinians.  Plenty of Palestinians would like the BDS movement to enjoy broad support, but they are happy for any support that they can tell is motivated out of genuine concern for them, human rights, and our shared future, rather than cynical Zionist attempts to end the occupation for the sake of maintaining a Jewish-majority state.  And even that last type of movement might be better than nothing.

So, yes, BDS* is legitimate.  It is ridiculous to call it anti-Semitic.  I won't work against it.  But I'm not convinced it's the most effective way to make a difference right here, right now.

I'll focus on political campaigns that target the occupation.  I think that talking about social justice issues within Israeli society can also provide a useful opening for critical discourse.  And for targeting our own government, it would be nice to have a JStreet that was more conscience-driven than cynically political.  (It's not an inherently sell-out thing to lobby members of Congress, as long as you're not lobbying against what you ostensibly support, e.g. a Palestinian state**).



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*note to readers: BDS = boycott, divestment, and sanctions.  Apologies for excessive acronym usage.

**e.g. the "Two State Summer" goal of making a vote on Palestinian statehood in the UN "unnecessary."  Please.

Happy Pride

Jewish identity in America

Last week, Jonathan Sarna gave a couple of lectures at the UW on the history of American Judaism.  He has a framework for thinking about involvement in Jewish religious life as cyclical, and mirroring larger cyclical trends in American religious observance.  In his view, sometimes upswings mirror larger trends or are controlled by outside world events, and other times they are a result of new practices instituted by young people which later become mainstream.

While history is certainly cyclical, cycles operate on a variety of time frames, and can be overlaid on long-term trends as well.  I think that in support of his view of a cyclical nature of American Jewish life Sarna confuses moments of revolution in Jewish life with reform of a less substantive nature.

The break from orthodoxy of the genesis of modern liberal Judaism was revolutionary.  The modern synagogue model that followed also constituted a new framework, for people who no longer lived in closed Jewish communities to center their Jewish life in one institution.

But the innovations of the Havurah movement that were later incorporated by mainstream congregations constitute more of a reform of an existing system.  Seeing their contribution as responsible for an upswing propagates the illusion that reforming the synagogue model will solve its problems of relevance to a new generation.

Most troubling was a response to a question at the end of the talk.  Sarna said that for the next upswing to happen we need a new galvanizing issue to get people connected to their Jewish identity.  Apparently social justice won't do it, because Louis Brandeis had a social justice-oriented daughter who married a non-Jew.  Social justice, it seems, is not uniquely Jewish enough.

What does he think motivated all those prior galvanizing movements that he references?  Fighting anti-Semitism, Zionism, saving Soviet Jewry... were all justified in a social justice context, rightly or wrongly.  What is the end goal?  Not to perpetuate Judaism just to perpetuate it, but rather because it contains something of value.  Social justice has always been a huge part of it.

Maybe we have a unique perspective or maybe not.  Of course identity is problematic, of course it is a construct anyway, but if there is nothing fundamental of value underneath it all, then forget it.  I am not the only one to note the cynicism in Sarna's call and critically reflect on the point of Jewish peoplehood.

I will suggest that many young folks already have a sense of identity that is modern and not terribly different from that of many immigrant communities in the United States.  The way to be relevant is to be modern.  The things that keep me away are backwards-thinking politics on Israel, non-queer friendly spaces, and a racist middle-class hegemony.  It's the fact that organizations avoid working on politically-controversial social-justice solidarity within their own local communities.

The things that attract me are educational activities that help me explore the Jewish identity that I already have: substance about history and culture that has shaped my own family and community.  The social justice stuff is nice too, but Sarna is right that I don't need a Jewish community to find that.  But when I do find it, I feel more comfortable and at home.

There is no magic bullet.  Just be progressive and modern and open.  (We can tell when it's for real and fundamental to how you do everything and when it is just a ruse.)

And if we create our own communities instead where half of us can marry non-Jews but still stay involved, if we focus on universal themes like social-justice, if we create a more radical shift in what Jewish community looks like in America, that would not be a failure.

Obama's speech fails

So many reassuring things in the first part of Obama's speech today.  We heard praise for peaceful revolution in the Arab world, criticism even of American allies.  There was even something about debt forgiveness for Egypt, in the midst of a section on economic development.  (I do still get nervous when Americans start threatening to get the IMF and World Bank to "help".)

One sentiment that I liked:

The United States supports a set of universal rights. And these rights include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders -– whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.

I wanted to hear him add, "Ramallah or Tel Aviv" to that list.  I waited and waited to hear about Israel/Palestine, and the remarks were saved for the end.  It was like a different speech tacked onto the first one about hope for the Arab world.

The Israel/Palestine part was full of the usual platitudes.  It's important to engage the issue, the parties need to negotiate, America supports two states.  There was nothing to back this up though.  No promises or threats of specific American actions.

In the spirit of the first part of the speech, imagine if Obama would have invoked the young Israelis and Palestinians who march every week for universal rights for residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.  What a fine indirect rebuke to Bibi's plans to increase settlement activity just announced.

While it's true that he handed Bibi Netanyahu a policy victory, I'm not even primarily frustrated that there was no shift in American policy to be more aggressive on the issue.  Obama said basically what Dennis Ross said at the JStreet meeting, and didn't stick around to hear the response to.  No surprises. 

I think that Obama missed an opportunity to reframe the whole Israel/Palestine conflict in the context of the Arab Spring - to make it about human dignity, youth, freedom and human rights.  Of course Israelis and Palestinians all have the right not to live in fear.  But as a separate matter, Palestinians also have a right to be citizens of some state that treats them as equal citizens under the law.  Here, in the litany of Arab people struggling for freedom, might have been inserted mention of Palestinian rights without "balancing" it with a mention of Israeli security as though fundamental freedoms should be conditional on a political resolution to the larger conflict. 

I will admit that I succumbed to the admonition to write to Obama ahead of his speech.  I told him that I voted for him and not Netanyahu.  I didn't even mention the other stuff that I'm pissed at him for: all the Bush war crimes he's made his own, the war against whistle-blowers and continued invasions of our privacy.  I just asked him to see the Palestinian struggle in the context of other uprisings in the region that we supposedly support, before it is too late for two states.

Why is it that I keep wanting to hope Obama will be different and do the right thing, even after evidence mounts that is not a reasonable expectation?

What is Nakba day?

This sums up the problem pretty well.  According to the Guardian:

...Nakba, or "catastrophe", the term used by Palestinians to describe the uprooting they suffered at the time of Israel's founding on 15 May 1948...

And according to Ha'aretz:

Nakba Day is a Palestinian day to mourn the creation of the State of Israel.

According to the first view it's about Palestinian victimhood.  According to the second view it's all Israeli victimhood - being hated apparently for no reason, just because that's how it always is.  It's fatalistic and it's harder and harder to apologize for the legitimate fears of the old-timers that are the root of the second view.

People throughout the Arab world are standing up for their freedom.  Why should Palestinians be different?  Peaceful protesters march.  Whether the tear gas proceeds the stones or vice versa, there must be a better way to respond than with bullets and more fear-mongering. 

Can no one try for once to recognize that there are multiple conflicting narratives of this history?  The way we see ourselves is so different from how we see the Other.  It's getting old.

a new sciency blog

I've created a separate blog to share my upcoming trip to Svalbard.  This way my fans can read about science and adventures without having to wade through rants on Israel/Palestine.  If you're only interested in intractable politics, then feel free to ignore this link.  Although I can't promise that no disheartening mentions of climate change will be made in the context of my Arctic research sojourn.

"Some arguments you don't have in order that you will win"

Perhaps a sign of the effectiveness of Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question as literature, it dealt with controversial issues without making it abundantly clear what were the author's own politics.  With all the ambiguity, I was left searching for hints.  Clearly the "ASHamed Jews", an anti-Zionist group of Jewish Brits, is something of a parody.  But, it seems it is not so much their politics that is being parodied.

"Criticise Israel all you like. It depends, as everything depends, on the temperature of your rhetoric and so on. But the 'ASHamed Jews' for me are a parody of people who are sanctimonious about their beliefs." he is quoted in the Independent.

In the end, you get the feeling that Jacobson identifies with the confused, frustrated state in which he leaves Sam Finkler: disillusioned with the ashamed Jews, concerned about a rising tide of anti-Semitism.  Despite continuing to disagree with Israeli policy, he is too concerned with the perceived anti-Semitism of all the others who make a fuss about it to continue speaking out.  He comes to have more respect for his late wife's observations: why should he feel responsible or ashamed over what is done by others in some other country that is not his own, just because it is being done by other Jews?  Why should he hold them to a higher standard?

His earlier eagerness to speak out is portrayed as overly simplistic and vanity-driven.  Although not young when he gets involved, it takes the exaggerated ill-informed arguments of his college-age son to help him see the youthful foolishness, nay dangerousness, of making a cause of justice for Palestinians: if it doesn't spring from anti-Semitism, it easily leads there.

Howard Jacobson is pessimistic about youth in general as it turns out.  He seems to think we are all rather ignorant and untrustworthy.  No wonder that the Finkler Question is not a hopeful novel.  Though it made me laugh aloud on many occasions, its humor is of a certain dry, existential variety.  It's done well because it helps to illustrate realities of the human condition we prefer to ignore.

I'm not saying he need have found hope in the younger generation; anyone would do.  There is not a character in the book without a serious failing of ethics or imagination.  Everyone thinks about their own interests, or worse they think tribally.  No one is motivated by the universalizing humanism which might figure in a more optimistic exploration of Jewish identity. 

For that matter, no one models a healthy relationship, romantic or platonic.  And no one is ever satisfied with their life.  Of course happy, well-adjusted people are boring to read about, but so are disaffected caricatures.  Luckily, it is ideas and not characters (nor plot) that drive this novel.  It should be read because it tackles uncomfortable and controversial aspects of Jewish identity, among other things.  I look forward to discussing it with my book group because I look forward to delving into those arguments.  Rather Finklerish of me I know.