Berger and Eno propose a cultural boycott of Israel

[imomus]

"And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him," commands Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 33. "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." In case there's any doubt about whose advice this is, verse 34 has a signature: "I am the LORD your God."

Perhaps the Israeli state is attempting to respect this advice by building a security barrier which ensures that the Palestinian "stranger" will never dwell with the Israeli people, and thus never have to be treated as equal to Israelis, and never loved as the Israelis love one another. It's one possible interpretation, anyway -- the most charitable we can muster. Others simply call Israel's treatment of the Palestinian "strangers-in-their-own-land" a new form of apartheid.

We saw earlier in the year how the young Gordon Brown (Britain's next prime minister) battled, as student rector of Edinburgh University back in the 1970s, to boycott cultural and intellectual exchanges between African apartheid states and the UK. When the more cautious University Secretary (the university's head official) found Brown's stance on excluding all Rhodesians from an Edinburgh University conference -- blaming liberal academics for their government's racialist stance -- a bit unfair, Brown replied:

"The argument for the continued contacts between South African and Rhodesian "liberals" and ourselves is based on the assumption that efforts of these University liberals will help the fight against apartheid, which seems to us dubious... Isolation -- rather than contact -- will stimulate fundamental change. The liberal dialogue... has failed."

Thirty years later, with apartheid defeated, in part, by exactly such outside pressures, including cultural ones, Brown's stance seems much more reasonable and orthodox than it may have done at the time. Bans and boycotts may have stymied Rhodesian liberal dialogue, but they contributed to the creation of democratic republics in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Despite their imperfections, both are better than what went before. Hard-line white settler minorities were displaced from the centres of power.

There's an increasing sense that something similar must happen in Israel, and that even artists might have a role to play. Last week a long-time hero of mine, the writer John Berger, wrote a letter to The Guardian newspaper calling for a cultural boycott of Israel. The letter was signed by about 90 artists, musicians, writers, film directors and intellectuals including another hero of mine, Brian Eno, the artist Cornelia Parker, the writer Arundhati Roy, and many others.

Berger explained that for him the boycott involved refusing to let his novels be published by Israeli publishing houses until the Palestinian question is satisfactorily resolved. Film director Ken Loach said he'd keep his films out of state-sponsored Israeli film festivals. "It could be a factor in Israeli policy changing," Berger said. "Of course its effects will not be gigantic but it is a way of not staying silent. It is a very personal call ... a way of encouraging the very courageous Israelis who oppose their government and an encouragement to Palestinians to somehow go on surviving."

As an article on American site Alternet points out, "surviving" is currently the best the Palestinians can hope for.

"The bleakness of life for Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, is a mystery only to us. In the current Israeli campaign in Gaza, now sealed off from the outside world, almost 500 Palestinians, most unarmed, have been killed. Sanctions, demanded by Israel and imposed by the international community after the Hamas victory last January in what were universally acknowledged to be free and fair elections, have led to the collapse of civil society in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as widespread malnutrition. And Palestinians in the West Bank are being encased, in open violation of international law, in a series of podlike militarized ghettos with Israel's massive $2 billion project to build a "security barrier." This barrier will gobble up at least 10 percent of the West Bank, including most of the precious aquifers and at least 40,000 acres of Palestinian farmland. The project is being financed in large part through $9 billion in American loan guarantees, although when Congress approved the legislation in April 2003, Israel was told that the loans could be used "only to support activities in the geographic areas which were subject to the administration of the Government of Israel prior to June 5, 1967."

"But it is in Gaza that conditions are currently reaching a full-blown humanitarian crisis. "Gaza is in its worst condition ever," Gideon Levy wrote recently in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz. "The Israel Defense Forces have been rampaging through Gaza -- there's no other word to describe it -- killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately. ... How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about 'the end of the occupation' and 'partitioning the land' now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before. ... This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment."

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Effective because true.

I'm as against Israeli intrasigence as anyone. But where are the complaints about Palestinian intrasigence? Why is the democratic election of a Palestinian government (a minority government, by the way -- which is one reason for the Israeli government not to blame the Palestinian people) of more moment than the democratic election of an Israeli government? And why are the English, in particular, so much more concerned with Israeli behavior than, say, with even more brutal behavior on the part of many other states -- states not in existential danger, as Israel is? Hating Israel is feelgood politics. I think almost everything Israel does is wrong, and that its brutality is coarsening and corrupting it. I might almost wish now that it had never been created. Almost. But I despise the English bien-pensant anti-semitism that takes as the banner of its righteousness its refusal to be intimidated by the moral claims of a people whose state doesn't strike them as good enough to its enemies. As has often been pointed out, the ratio of Palestinian dead to Israeli dead in the low-intensity warfare between them, something like 5-1, is remarkably low when compared to that in almost any other similar situation, including Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland. I hate what Israel is doing, but there's a reason it feels embattled and alone in the world, and this kind of boycott is another bit of that reason. As to "the most charitable interpretation" of the wall? I'm not charitable about it, but a more charitable interpretation is that it's supposed to make it harder for bombers seeking to provoke, by the indiscriminate slaughterof civilians, world-revulsing counterattachs (and the attendant one-sided condemnation of Israel) to sneak in.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Sssh, you're bothering everyone with your logic.

[srk1.livejournal.com]

As has often been pointed out, the ratio of Palestinian dead to Israeli dead in the low-intensity warfare between them, something like 5-1, is remarkably low when compared to that in almost any other similar situation, including Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland.

I don't know what this claim relates to. Around 3,000 deaths are attributed to the Troubles, of which Republican paramilitaries were responsible for about 60%. Do you mean the ratio of IRA members killed by British security forces to members of British security forces killed by IRA members?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

At the time I wrote my Man equals man (http://imomus.livejournal.com/211724.html) piece the ratios looked more like this:

"The ratios are interesting. As Mary Ann Sieghart pointed out in yesterday's Times, the ratio of Lebanese to Israeli deaths in the current conflict has been a fairly consistent 10:1. "There were 80 such raids in the early hours of yesterday alone. By late afternoon, some 327 civilians had died in Lebanon, compared with 34 Israelis." In the Gaza conflict, it's 100:1: "Since Israel began its hostilities there, three weeks ago, some 110 Palestinians have lost their lives and countless more have been injured, while just one Israeli has died."

"If this is a proportionate response," says Sieghart, "I’m a satsuma."

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I think everyone agrees Lebanon was a moronic, vicious, hideous mistake -- a weak and spineless prime minister pushed into it by the most reactionary forces of the military. Lebanon is not the occupation of Palestinian land though. Of course the conflict last summer was disproportionate. I don't think anyone reasonable doubts that. It's what makes it possible that Barak will be (re-)elected (as opposed to the genuinely fascist Lieberman, who has forced his way into Olmert's government). That re-election is the best hope for peace right now. Boycotting Israel and playing into the hands of the hardliners is the worst hope. Israel is not South Africa or Rhodesia. But if it's treated like South Africa or Rhodesia people like Lieberman are strengthened. They want boycotts. They actually want an end to American aid, since they think that they could get tough if they could be independent. Whether they get power or not is a question of Israeli politics. The easy and totalizing contempt that the booycotters show for anything that might happen by political means within Israel is...unhelpful in the extreme. In the U.S. it's led to the rise of neo-Conservatism and the migration of Jewish political opinion here to far less sympathy for the Palestinian cause than it used to have. None of this is helpful, righteous though it might make you feel.

Other hopes for peace would involve Arab governments guaranteeing their support. Why don't you all boycott the Saudis, who could actually make a difference if they accepted peace? Or the Iranians? Or the appalling Syrians? The conflict is multi-lateral; Israel of course has to do more, but so does everyone else. And no one else is facing an existential crisis.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Almost all of the Arab governments have already guaranteed their support. (Click here for a wikipedia entry about the "Arab Peace Initiative.") (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative) (Only 14 out of the 20 signed, but Syria publicly expressed support, and only Libya and Iraq refused it).

The reason I harp on Israel more than Libya, Sudan, or Turkmenistan is because Israel holds itself to different principles. Israel is a post-industrial country that officially believes in equality and freedom. Those other countries are outright nasty states. Israel shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Zimbabwe, Iran or China.

The larger claim of "anti-semitism" is, from what I've seen, bullshit. Everyone I've met who is angry with Israel agrees that Palestinian suicide bombings are beyond disgusting. However, as someone who claims to respect the "rights of man" (something Palestine does NOT claim), Israel should do the right thing (which is remove the settlers and give up the occupied territories).

The 'official' death toll, according to B'Tselem (http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp) (which they admit is conservative) is 4,677 to 650, which is roughly 7:1.

Lastly, it's a different argument, but the best thing the U.S. could do is withdraw financial support. As Sharon showed, eventually everyone realizes that things can not go forward as is, and that the best solution for Israel is to disconnect itself from Palestine. But that's a different argument that would take us pages to get into.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree with much of this.

In particular I agree with your saying "Israel shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Zimbabwe, Iran or China." But that's just what people are doing, or worse: "Bans and boycotts may have stymied Rhodesian liberal dialogue, but they contributed to the creation of democratic republics in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Despite their imperfections, both are better than what went before." This is what I was objecting to.

I'm glad you haven't met any antisemites. I am as appalled by Israeli policy as you are; am against Sharon's bullshit figleaf unilateralism, and despise the settlers. But the o.p. was supporting a stance that I think is feel good antisemitism. A stance, in his paraphrase, stronger than the letter to the Guardian, by the way, since the letter called for boycotting state-sponsored cultural activities, and not the whole country. I might be willing to sign on to that (I have to think about it, but am inclined to). But the LRB, for example, and the boycott of Israeli academics, go much farther.

[srk1.livejournal.com]

re the above, here's a full tally of fatalities (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Status_Summary.html) from the Troubles. As you can see, the ratio of British security forces killed to Republican paramiliataries killed is almost 3:1.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that -- I think I was misremembering, and that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was described as comparable to the troubles -- the only two that were an order of magnitude or two lower than others.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

There's always something queasifying about the practicality of comparison. Sure, those people over there are doing something more awful. But there's always people over there doing something more awful.

It's just a special kind of hell, being victimized by offenders who are somehow arguably preferable to other offenders.

No matter how justifiable the argument is, a shading of it is always this: the reality of the suffering disappears. If you're homeless in California you're not really homeless. If you were beaten by people who fed you you weren't really beaten. Etc. All you have to do is be more appealing than that other asshole and what you do DISAPPEARS. It's a magic act that works on adults, man. No wonder it stirs so much horror.

Wanting acts not to disappear through the sleight of hand of practicality is not a political argument. It's an emotional argument of schoolyard passion. But lacking recognition it just gets bigger. Its acknowledgment alongside its dismissal, as above, always feels like condescending brush-off. And then it feels like practically is the enemy of moral recognition (and -- isn't it? as a tool in use, isn't that what it does?), which is always repugnant.

Below, where you talk about what current actions are intended to do, and where Israeli politicians are written as adults with plans, whose practicality links to actions and there's no need to redraw killers in the slopey shapes of Peanuts characters, I find my brain stays more in control as I read.

We can have these arguments more profitably, is all, I think. The most practical thing may be to figure how to account for these emotional reponses, or even just to avoid calling them up without need.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I don't think I disagree with what you're saying; but I also don't think I merit the rebuke. Who knows? Maybe I do. But I wasn't defending Israel's actions; I was objecting to a widespread version of European, particularly British, antisemitism.

My objection was to the fact that for two thousand years or more anti-semitism has been an easy, feelgood mode of political righteousness. Want to feel that you're on the side of the angels? Antisemitism will almost always work. It's amazing that way. People just get to feel so morally good for being against Jews. And they still do.

I'm not defending the Israeli government or its policies, which I think are appalling. One reason I posted on my own journal, a day or two ago, a mention of David Grossman's speech at the Raban memorial, was just to underscore that.

So what can people outside of Israel do? I have ideas, not particularly original or good ones, but still some ideas. They involve getting a workable agreement between Israel and Palestine for a two-state solution. And the only way that's going to happen is if the liberals in Israeli society are strengthened. Everything depends on the fact that Israel indeed "holds itself to different principles," as uberdionysus justly says. Well, push those principles, then. One way to do that is to acknowledge those who are committed to the principles, not to treat them with scare-quote contempt as "liberals." Because if Israel abandons these principles -- as it has begun to, as the United States has begun to -- then things will only get a lot worse.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a rebuke.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I'm glad.