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

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Somehow, I don't think Zimbabwe is particularly democratic at the moment...

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Careful, you'll be accused of being anti-semitic, which seems to be the standard tactic (and a very effective one) of the "Israel right or wrong" crowd.

It seems weird to me, that as Israel's behaviour becomes more and more fascist and genocidal, it's the people who criticise the regime who get labelled as "Nazis".

[robotar.livejournal.com]

Yes!!!

[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]

Oh well, there go my Eno albums.
BYE!

Shame, I really liked him.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Sssh, you're bothering everyone with your logic.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

PS: Gosh, yes, life in South Africa is so great. It didn't go from life being ruled by racism to life being ruled by corruption, AIDS and wide-spread rape at all! Also, the racism is totally gone!

[(Anonymous)]

Jews are a money-hungry race, and always will be. They steal land and resources. I propose we take this a step further and punch any Jewish people we see out walking on the streets. They are not going to budge until we take extreme measures.

[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."

[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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If you punch Jewish people, you'll likely be punching many of the Jewish and Israeli signatories to this letter, people who support its goals, and people within Israel the boycott is designed to encourage. Let me quote John Berger's statement:

"The boycott is an active protest against two forms of exclusion which have persisted, despite many other forms of protestations, for over sixty years - for almost three generations.

"During this period the state of Israel has consistently excluded itself from any international obligation to heed UN resolutions or the judgement of any international court. To date, it has defied 246 Security Council Resolutions!

"As a direct consequence seven million Palestinians have been excluded from the right to live as they wish on land internationally acknowledged to be theirs; and now increasingly, with every week that passes, they are being excluded from their right to any future at all as a nation.

"As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances."

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I think you're right. I think this boycott is a plot cooked up by a small set of Jewish investors. Once the Palestinians get their land back and start to establish their own country, these Jews will be the first to set up money lending businesses at exorbitant rates like they've done all throughout the world at various times.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If you're burning your Eno records, you might like to throw your Bible on the fire too, since it's full of similarly unpalatable liberal shit like "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself".

[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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Mwkay, caller, thank you, we have others waiting on the line, we have to move on now.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Yes, and the very liberal stuff about eyes for eyes and sins that shall be visited upon the sons for seven generations, and about burning witches. And how you should marry the widow of your brother. I mean, if you're going to drag the Bible into it, you can use it to prove nearly everything you want. And the New Testament is even worse because the Greek is so vague.

I just don't see the point of choosing sides in a conflict where both sides are acting like spoilt brats who cannot share. But everyone makes mistakes and I forgive him, I guess. I forgive you, too. Not that you care.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The eye for an eye stuff is less liberal, of course, but even that proposes a one-to-one ratio, which would be a step forward from the casualty rates we're seeing now.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

You can be as militant as you want, I'll still forgive you.

[arpad.livejournal.com]

I can make lots of arguments here. But I won't.

Still it is kinda funny that pushing imperialists out of your country and getting freedom is considered a noble deed till they white, but suddenly become evil when they are of Arab origin.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Sweet old Jimmy Carter (http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Peace-Apartheid-Jimmy-Carter/dp/0743285026) must be a dangerous firebrand agitator in your world!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Palestinians have an empire? Who knew!

simulacrud

[fascicle.livejournal.com]

When did Berger start growing into playwright Beckett's skin?

[arpad.livejournal.com]

The Palestinians were part of the Muslim Ottoman empire. And part of Arab world. And they still see themselves so. They democratically elect fighters, not negotiators. For last fifteen years I watched by my own eyes how PA consistently fail every chance to get freedom and state of their own. Finally, I understood that these arguments of freedom and state were just political tools in dialog with the West. But real political drive beneath was a dream of Arab world - being faithful, strong and respected as a whole. Unfortunately, today that dream includes making Jews enslaved again.