Citizen student

[imomus]

The photo below (Anja Niedringhaus, AP) shows a classroom in Jebaliya, Gaza. The name cards represent pupils of the Fakhoura School killed by Israeli army shells last month.



But Israel's actions in Gaza have affected classrooms elsewhere. "We are a group of students concerned about the university's continuing support for Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank," University of Plymouth students say on their occupation blog, "indicated by the university's investments with BAE Systems who have sold 236 F-16 fighter planes to the Israeli state, and its silence over the recent atrocities and human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip."



"As a result we have occupied room 202 in the Smeaton Building in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to directly protest against the university's complicity in Israeli war crimes.... The occupying students would be keen for lectures to continue in this room without interruption. We are willing for a small group to remain unobtrusively at the back of the room, as a symbolic presence."

Cue obligatory flip references to Citizen Smith, the counter-revolutionary UK sitcom from 1977 in which "a young Marxist urban revolutionary living in Tooting, South London, is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the Tooting Popular Front (in reality a small bunch of his friends) the goals of which are "Power to the People" and "Freedom for Tooting". In reality, he is an unemployed dreamer and petty criminal whose plans fall through due to laziness and disorganisation."

But in this case it isn't just a "small bunch of friends". The UK, over the past month, has seen an extraordinary (and under-reported, though The Guardian did post an article) series of student occupations. There are or have been occupations at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Goldsmiths, Sheffield, the University of East Anglia, Cambridge, Bradford, the London School of Economics, Queen Mary, King's College, SOAS, Byam Shaw and Leeds, each with its own occupation blog (click the links for heartening photos of "revolting students" strumming guitars, preparing vegan food, picketing, pamphleteering and generally acting as if it were 1968 all over again).



Many students have been demanding -- and getting -- scholarships at their universities for Palestinian students; another way classrooms in Gaza and classrooms in the UK are now being linked, and a vindication of the occupations in itself. In some colleges the protests have widened into issues about budget cuts and a streamlined "Education PLC" attitude.

The Gaza shelling may now be over but, as Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today, many (including Hillary Clinton) are extremely frustrated by the attitude of the Israeli authorities to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

"When Senator John Kerry visited the Strip, he learned that many trucks loaded with pasta were not permitted in. When the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee inquired as to the reason for the delay, he was told by United Nations aid officials that "Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid - only rice shipments." Kerry asked Barak about the logic behind this restriction, and only after the senior U.S. official's intervention did the defense minister allow the pasta into the Strip. The U.S. senator updated colleagues at the Senate and other senior officials in Washington of the details of his visit.

"The issue of humanitarian aid is central to a major debate between Israel's foreign and defense ministries. The former supports broadening the amount and types of aid, while the defense ministry opposes anything it considers "concessions" to Hamas. A senior source dealing with humanitarian aid issues on the Israeli side said that Gilad has prepared a list of "humanitarian aid items" and refuses to broaden it. "Authority is in the hands of one person, and he is not willing to help," the source said. "This is outrageous. Why should a senior American official issue a protest on pasta in order for us to recognize that we need to allow it into the Gaza Strip?"

Comments

[arpad.livejournal.com]

Such people like you never worry about classrooms of Sderot that your Palestinian pals shelled for years.

It is time to throw you out of my reading and out of my mind.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Is there a place where you can block out not just my voice, but the voice of the current US administration, all aid organisations, the UN, Haaretz, the Pope, and the vast majority of world opinion, Arpad? Is there an iPod loud enough to drown all that out?

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

There's always a prick like you around whenever this topic is debated, isn't there?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

There have been occupations like this in the US as well (The New School and NYU, most recently). As usual, I appreciate a limited portion of the sentiments expressed at/by these protests, but find myself generally repulsed by the scent of bourgeois tourism and retro necro stylization that permeates them. Like it or not, the "personality" of this type of event is just as important as the causes it takes up, and when 95% of the participants seem to be dabblers there for the adrenaline rush and the sense of self-importance the attention gives them (the New School and NYU "occupations" were widely covered on Gawker and other popular news sites), it really taints the whole operation.

[arpad.livejournal.com]

The place is called future. That people and ideas I stand for have. And yours - don't.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Seems a bit odd - they were getting humanitarian pasta in April 2008.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2008/Humanitarian+assistance+transferred+to+Gaza+4-Mar-2008.htm

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

In other words, these "protests" are populated by moral criminals.

[mizzar.livejournal.com]

But you know, A million flies cannot be wrong.
Gigantic print on your sky says "Don't think".
Israeli are terrorists and Hamas just fighting for freedom. Come on, it's all propoganda.

[(Anonymous)]

The painfully trendy students at the Edinburgh George Square lecture theatre "occupation" have been keeping themselves occupied with drum circles. Much of their incentive to protest appears to be founded on their own self-image.

Is it fair to effectively blackmail an academic institution into adopting a political position?

Why occupy a lecture theatre and not Holyrood?

[(Anonymous)]

Who cares about Gaza. There's way worse going on in the world, and there's only one reason people focus on Israel so much. One reason. Out of all the infinitely more horrifying and unjust things going on in the world, it seems really, really strange why people focus on Israel so much.

Of course there's a very easy explanation. About why people are so concerned with Israel. You don't have to admit it here, and you probably won't admit it to yourself, but just wonder for a minute.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Umm, perhaps. Somehow the word "moral" doesn't seem to fit.

I guess I have a major problem with somebody who would have their parents shell out $40,000 a year for an undergraduate education suddenly trying to tell me about injustice and oppression. The two occupations I mentioned were only related in the most tangential way to "Palestinian solidarity." You know, it's just another reason to live out a 1960/70s-style countercultural moment, in a culture that has already swallowed up and added that form of dissent to its fat deposits.

Here's a video of the end of the NYU occupation (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2426264673933994555&ei=02WlSdKyJZOwwgOJ3ci4Cw&q=nyu+occupation&hl=en&emb=1) that gets directly at what I'm talking about.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Umm, because many of Israel's official actions and stances seem to contradict the historical conditions from which the nation arose?

[silenceinspades.livejournal.com]

it's like you're saying only the poor should be protesting. or maybe only the people effected? like the palestinians? i'm pretty sure they've been doing that.

i'm sure these rich kids aren't cool, and have terrible taste in music, but the end result is that they're doing something good.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, I know, it's because I'm an anti-semite, one of those people who doesn't support the Israeli state whatever the hell it does. And who reads Haaretz.

[(Anonymous)]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Gaza, the fact is that Momus's mild anti-semitism is documented elsewhere on the Net. On this thread, for instance:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=26797

Choice Momus quote:
"I like the idea that the Jews are making amends for giving us silly commandments about graven idols"

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not staying that at all. Protest is great, in theory. But these kids are protesting in ways that are least likely to create actual change, and I think they're well aware of this.

When hundreds of thousands of people converge on World Bank/WTO meetings in order to voice disapproval and outrage at neo-colonial policies, I feel like those people are gathering in a way that can create actual change. They're at the locus of the event, and they are there with a largely unified goal, as far as public exposure is concerned.

The likely effect of a few students occupying a dining hall at NYU is to, what, ensure that other students won't be able to take meals there for a few days? And the real, actual goals are what? To stand in "solidarity" with the people of Gaza? What can NYU honestly do about that? Okay, fine. They can give a dozen scholarships to Palestinians. Cool. But what beyond that? It is nowhere near being the locus of anything they're seeking to confront. "Standing in solidarity" is just a cheap way of saying "Hey, thanks for giving us a reason to get all activisty, beautiful brown people of Gaza!"

The reason why it pisses me off is because it's more an activism test-bed than a site of real activism. And the vast majority of these privileged kids will be done with this phase once they graduate and move on to bourgeois upper-middle class lifestyles. It doesn't do society a bit of good to let these idiots off thinking that they've done something special. We have enough empty activism as it is. There's no reason to promote it with positive reinforcement.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Chosen quote about chosen people indeed! You could also have quoted me, from the same piece (http://imomus.livejournal.com/14606.html), making the very philosemitic statement that "Light comes to benighted Angrael in the form of liberal jews and gays".

Actually, one of the interesting things about the new US administration is that the unit I was calling "Angrael" is cracking up before our eyes. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066821.html) And with it I hope will go this utterly ridiculous meme that you're anti-semitic if you don't support whatever the Israeli government does.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Also, how about at least finishing the quote correctly: "I like the idea that the Jews are making amends for giving us silly commandments about graven idols by teaching us to cook."

[silenceinspades.livejournal.com]

i get what you're saying, but it comes across as 'these kids aren't cool enough to join my cool activist club.' which they probably aren't, but not letting people eat lunch or whatever for a couple of days, if that leads to one scholarship or makes one person think about this topic that wouldn't have otherwise, it seems easily worth it to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Whatever. The fact that you think the "Jews" - not the Israelis, not Jewish extremists, not the IDF, not settlers, but simply "the Jews" - have to make amends for anything I find slightly dodgy. What, as a white male Scot, do you feel you have to make amends for?

[(Anonymous)]

Also, if you reread the thread I linked to, you'll find various people - presumably Jewish, but probably neither right-wing nor pro-Israel, given the nature of that forum - who find your comments offensive.

[(Anonymous)]

Boring Kilt jokes maybe ?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

I'm not part of any club, at least not that I'm aware of. I don't recall commenting on these peoples' clothes, or taste in music. I did comment on their social class, because I think that's an important part of why they're at NYU, and therefore why they're at this occupation in the first place. I do think that this kind of tourist activism--more often than not merely a short phase in the person's life--has a deleterious effect on activism in general. The reason I make this argument is because this type of activism seems to emerge primarily from social guilt, and serves the purpose of justifying the subject's reintegration with the upper-middle class modes of living upon transition back into the "straight world." Upon engaging in this tourist activism, a person can assert that he/she "made a difference," that he/she is down with the cause of social justice and whatever else, while indirectly feeding into the system of excess that, in part, makes social injustice inevitable.

I've never understood why people, especially people in America, think that any consideration of a person's social class in this kind of critique is a low blow. The ways in which upper-middle class people come to justify the lifestyles for which they feel--at one discrete point in their lives--legitimate guilt, are important to examine, I think.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's a really tedious diversionary tactic, this business of tarring anyone who utters criticisms of Israel with the brush of anti-semitism. Saying that failure to support something like the recent Gaza incursion makes one "anti-semitic" is completely self-defeating, because the statement itself is the worst piece of anti-semitism imaginable: the implication is that Jews are inherently murderous.

Also, what does "presumably Jewish" mean? I find that phrase slightly dodgy, Anon.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Out of all the protesting on in the world, it seems really, really strange why people focus on protesting against Israel so much.

http://thehasbarabuster.blogspot.com/2009/02/singling-out-raised-to-power-of-two.html