Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

• Smadar Lavie’s lesson on global neoliberal restructuring, Israeli style
• Exile and the Prophetic: Who speaks for ‘palestine’?
• Video shows Palestinian father confronting Israeli soldier who beat his 7-year-old son
• J Street sells its soul, completes evolution to AIPAC lite

Smadar Lavie’s lesson on global neoliberal restructuring, Israeli style
Oct 14, 2012
Annie Robbins

Smadar Lavie

Smadar Lavie is an Israeli anthropologist and a visiting scholar at Berkeley. She’s written an important manuscript,The Knafo Chronicles : Marching on Jerusalem With Israel’s Silent Majority, about Israel’s social justice movement viewed thru the sociopolitical context of single mothers from Negev towns used by the Israeli government in the 1950s as a dumping ground for Mizrahim.
But on closer examination it opens an important window into understanding how global neoliberal restructuring takes place utilizing a state’s disenfranchised citizens as pawns furthering geopolitical goals. It’s a jarring read implicating state facilitated or initiated terrorism as a means of stifling dissent, shutting down protest movements, and creating unity around nationalism.
In an email exchange with Mondoweiss Lavie explains:
“International media has thus far glossed over or completely ignored this link. With the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran, it is imperative that this relationship be exposed so that the public can finally understand the rationale of the decision-makers at the highest levels of the Israeli state.”
AFFILIA, the Journal of Women and Social Work (pdf):

On February 21, 2005, I attended a convening of the Israeli Women’s Parliament. The day’s topic was ‘‘Minimum Wage: A Woman’s Perspective.’’ Dr. Linda `Efroni, a brilliant Iraqi economist and labor attorney, was a speaker. She is a prominent consultant for Israel’s major labor unions on issues concerning income and working conditions and a member of the Israeli Council of Higher Education. Yet, she has been only an adjunct at Tel Aviv University. In the discussion after the speeches, she told the following story:

Around 2001, I was invited by the Israeli College of National Security, where military officers are groomed to become generals, to give a lecture at Haifa University. Haifa University regularly hosts events of the college. The audience was made up of students in the special program, but also senior members of the SHABAK—Israel’s FBI—military intelligence, the Israeli police force, and other senior officials in the national security apparatus. There were about 40 people in all sitting around a large conference table.
This was around the time of the social unrest following the collapse of the Argentinian economy. They wanted to know if similar unrest was possible in Israel because of socioeconomic gaps, and how these gaps could be minimized. I offered my analysis. We have problems with security and with borders. These transcend socio-economic protests. It would take a miracle for any social protest to succeed.
If social unrest appeared in the news, I would not be surprised to hear about Hezbollah Katyusha rockets falling on Kiryat Shmona the next day. This would immediately shift public discourse back to security. I could not rule out that the Katyushas on Kiryat Shmona were a response to the IDF Air Force provocation of their fighter jets crossing the border deep into Lebanon. I told them that I didn’t have the knowledge, but my intuition as an analyst told me that.
Everyone was quiet. Everyone was quiet. No one said a thing. And then we broke for a buffet lunch.
At the buffet, a corpulent man approached me. He said, ‘‘Shalom, my name is XY. I was a media adviser for the minister of defense. This is exactly what we did.’’

On October 9, 2010, I called Dr. `Efroni from Minneapolis to verify the quote. She said:

Yes, this is exactly what I said. And this is what he said. He didn’t say that it was off the record. As for Vicky and the end of the hudna, I was in a meeting with Bibi in Jerusalem. She wanted me to join her. The man was very stressed. He sweated a lot. Very stressed. In hindsight, even in the Finance Ministry, they didn’t believe it was going to be so easy. Hok HaHesderim nullifies the legislature. Israel is not a democracy. In the 2003 amendment, they saved 5 billion NIS.
They transferred the money to the upper echelons in the form of a tax refund. They could have done other things with this money. They were so surprised at how easy the transfer was. I think it is not impossible that they let the suicide bomber slip through.”

[ed note: Hok HaHesderim (Arrangement Law) is the Israeli version of the U.S. Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985—a ‘‘Reaganomics’’ initiative to deregulate government, reduce public spending, decrease taxation of the upper class, and ease inflation through monetary control.]
In summer 2011, tens of thousands of young Israelis, priced out of their rental leases or foreclosed upon, protested the state’s slashing of public services, echoing the Single Mothers’ Protest of 2003, but on a larger scale. The protesters referred to this as ‘‘Tel Aviv’s Tahrir,’’ after the Tahrir Square demonstrations in Cairo, Egypt, that toppled the Mubarak neoliberal regime.
………..
Thanks to a lull in the Israel–Palestine conflict in summer 2011, the protest succeeded in getting international media attention. On August 18, 2011, a suicide attack by Sinai Bedouin guerrillas struck an Israeli bus. This attack prompted the IDF to bombard Palestinian civilian populations in Gaza. Hamas responded by bombarding civilian populations in Israel’s South. The Israeli regime used this attack to divert attention from the protest. But the protest has not completely died as of this writing. So any in-depth analysis of it would be premature. Major mainstream Hebrew media outlets have reported that SHABAK and the IDF both had intelligence on the date, time, and place the bombing would occur. Netanyahu instructed them to shut up when the Knesset inquired about their lack of preventive measures (Azoulay, 2011; Melman, 2011; Pepper, 2011).

Back to our email exchange:
Just last week Netanyahu called for a dismissal of the Knesset in the next couple of weeks, and for early elections closely following the inauguration of the new (or incumbent) U.S. president. The reason for the parliament and government dismissal is the gridlock in the Knesset over Netanyahu’s draconian national budget for 2013. But, conveniently for the regime, the call for elections also defuses the threat of more social protests not only on the budget, but also ever-increasing rent, food, and gas prices. I don’t think the present protest Dafny Leef is organizing will lead anywhere. Presently, due to Bibi’s tough stance toward Iran, he is the leading candidate for the prime-ministership after the next elections. His hope is to once again deflate any social protest movement that could threaten that position.
Moreover, the timing of Netanyahu’s call for new elections is ominous. In 2008, in the months between Obama’s election and his inauguration in early 2009, Israel conducted the bloody military actions of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The Israeli regime took advantage of George W. Bush’s lame duck presidency to get away with actions that may otherwise be stopped by Israel’s biggest ally, the U.S.
Israel follows the same script over and over again, as my research data shows, and as Dr. Linda `Efroni states outright at the final chapter of the manuscript.
Lastly, my favorite part of The Knafo Chronicles is Lavie’s unveiling thru the diary of a scholar trapped inside the life of a welfare mother. All politics is personal and this is Lavie’s story all the way thru. She offers us a vivid feminist view of the racist misogynistic dismal conditions of Israel’s underbelly scholars rarely expose, probably because few have lived it or if they have, they haven’t written about it or if they did, no one published it. Thanks to the author and a prestigious feminist social work academic journal, we’re afforded a glimpse.

So you avoid me. You make valiant efforts to set yourselves apart from the regime as feminists and pacifists. How long can you keep your lies going? There’s a boycott going on. Academics and NGOs now document your compliance. Never mind that you have cultivated your precious Mizrahi and Palestinian academic pets.
The Education Ministry may surveil your syllabi. But the Propaganda Ministry sends you across the Atlantic to universities that dare let students have an Israel Apartheid Week. The ministry pays your honoraria to entice their cash-strapped Mideast Centers to place you on their speakers’ lists (Traubmann, 2006). But you will not acknowledge that you are willing participants in the Nicer Face of Israel’s antiboycott campaign.
You prattle on in English about transnational feminist alliances. With whom? Your donors? At your conferences abroad, when you schmooze with editors of academic journals to get your papers published? And for whom? Not moms in the ‘hoods. These mothers graduate from underfunded slum schools barely proficient in standard Hebrew. Proper English is not even on the menu. From the podium, you quote Frankenberg (1993), but do you ever contemplate creating a support group to undo your own intra-Jewish apartheid?

A must read.
(Hap tip Karen Platt.
 
Exile and the Prophetic: Who speaks for ‘palestine’?
Oct 14, 2012
Marc H. Ellis
This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit thearchive page.
These last days have seen a serious discussion about the leadership of the Free Gaza movement. Charges of anti-Semitism have been made. Statements condemning anti-Semitism have been issued. I don’t believe what happened in the Free Gaza upper echelons should diminish Jewish commitment to justice for Palestinians – this is not what the discussion is about. I do believe anti-Semitism makes it more difficult to address Israel/Palestine in a mature and bold way.
The difficulty isn’t only that charges of anti-Semitism are used as a bulwark for Israel. The main drawback is that anti-Semitism still exists.
Historically, Jews maintain a special place in the West. Jews are featured prominently in the world religions of Christianity and Islam. Thus, feelings and speech about Jews are global. Anti-Semitism can exist even where Jews don’t.
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s distinction between “Jews” and ‘jews” remains in place. In Lyotard’s understanding, “Jews” are real Jews while “jews” are what Jews represent to others. Sometimes that representation is positive, other time negative. I use Jews/jews to point out that Jews are real and iconic. After this long history it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the two.
If it was just Jews/jews to deal with the Israel/Palestine issue would be controversial enough. However, Palestine is iconic, too. As with Jews and Israel, real “Palestinians” sometimes get in the way of conceptual “palestinians.” When Palestinians march to their own drummer, they, too, are expendable.
I have written about the division between real “Jews” and “jews” and its relation to the real “Israel” and “israel.” Jews and Israel when capitalized is the real thing. Lowercase jews and israel are the conceptual baggage that each represents. Recently, I have been thinking about the differentiation of “Palestinians” and “palestinians” and its consequences for the fate of the Palestinian people.
The most obvious division is in the West, with “palestinians” predominating over “Palestinians.” On the whole, the conceptual baggage of “palestinians” has been negative. The resultant consequences are obvious. “palestinians” have been seen as anti-Semitic, inheritors of the Nazi vendetta against Jews and as terrorist warriors against the West.
For the most part this Palestine/palestine division is in Europe and America, and no doubt that is the reason that the Russell Tribunal on Palestine held three of its four sessions there. Self-correction of this stereotype is crucial. However, there is another side of the Palestine coin – the positive sense of the world importance of “palestinians.”
I remember making a presentation in a South African mosque during the transition to the new South Africa. I was greeted warmly by some. I was yelled down by others. At the conclusion of my presentation, one person shouted that soon he, with others, would be marching to free Palestine of the Jewish invaders. Fearing for my safety, my hosts hustled me off the stage into a waiting car.
Sitting in the speeding vehicle, I imagined the global march to free Palestine of Jews. Soon blood was flowing in the streets. My first thought wasn’t about Jews. Rather it was about my Palestinian friends. One by one, I saw them slaughtered in the “liberation” of Palestine. Rather than Israelis committing the slaughter, it was the “liberating” forces. “palestine” rather than Palestinians was their issue.
This story is anecdotal yet it also resonates with other experiences I’ve had. Even the anti-Semitism I’ve encountered in Israel/Palestine debates is almost exclusively indebted to the conceptual framework of “palestinians.” Palestinian dissidents I’ve encountered know full well the differentiation between the “Holocaust” and the “holocaust.” They also distinguish ably between “Jews” and “jews.” It seems that often the same people who use “jews” in a negative light use “palestinians” for their own purposes.
Every oppressed community needs all friends it can get. The enemy of my enemy is a friend. I have found it remarkable how Palestinian dissidents have struggled against being associated with such “friends.” The question I pose goes beyond the issue of anti-Semitism. It is the question of whether Palestinians can be liberated as long as iconic “palestine” remains in force.
Obviously, “palestine” will remain. Icons are a force unto themselves. They are more powerful than the real thing. Once captured as an image, icons don’t disappoint. Reality is always mixed. Why trade in an icon for real life?
Like Jews, Palestinians have to negotiate their own image. But since “jews” and “israel” are so important in the war of icons – perhaps the most important global icon – being associated with them is, iconically speaking, upward mobility. If not for “jews/israel,” Palestine would be relegated to the backwaters of world conflicts. This, too, would be true of Israel. Without its iconic status and its link with ‘jews,” where would Israel be on the global power map? Israel might not even exist.
At the Russell Tribunal on Palestine a curious exchange played out this iconic status of “palestinians.” This came from a supporter of Palestinian rights. Or was it the right of “palestinians?” Nonetheless it was telling.
At the podium was Saleh Hamayel. To say the least he has paid his dues. Hamayel joined the Palestinian national movement in 1968 and was imprisoned three times by Israeli authorities without trial. Active in the PLO, he was also an early critic of Yasser Arafat. As a student at Cairo University, Hamayael was active in both the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Egyptian student movement. For this he was repeatedly imprisoned. Since 1981, he has been a Professor of History and Political Science at Birzeit University and served as Director of Birzeit’s Research Center from 1994–97. Among others, he has written, The Israeli Assassination Policy in the Aqsa Intifada (2001) andPalestinians and the Historiography of the 1948 War(2005).
One of the terms Hamayel emphasizes when referring to Israeli policies in Jerusalem and the West Bank is “sociocide,” especially referring to the pressures of destruction, Judaization, and expulsion imposed on the Palestinian people. One of the terms he doesn’t employ as readily as the Russell Tribunal on Palestine would like is apartheid. This resulted in a sharp exchange with one of the jurists, Michael Mansfield who, among other things, is Professor of Law at London’s City University.
I tuned in late and the live-streaming had some glitches so I missed most of Hamayel’s presentation. I did capture his interaction with Mansfield in the question and answer session. Their interaction was telling. Because Hamayel had deemphasized apartheid, especially the Palestinian situation with regard to apartheid South Africa, Mansfield was furious. Not only did Mansfield challenge Hamayel, he bullied him. There was no way that Hamayel would be allowed to undercut Mansfield’s sense that Israel was practicing apartheid.
At stake was the legal definition of apartheid. Under International Law apartheid is not subsumed by the specific way apartheid was practiced in South Africa. Hamayel either didn’t get Mansfield’s point or had another issue in mind, first and foremost communicating the suffering, survival and flourishing of his people in his own framework. Mansfield’s mission was to hold Israel’s feet to the fire.
I was stunned watching this exchange but hardly surprised. Hamayel’s voice was considered redundant if he didn’t obey guidelines set in advance and by others. In the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, highlighting Palestinian particularity was forbidden.
Other jurists felt Mansfield was too sharp. A white South African jurist intervened and gently massaged Hamayel, thanking him for his passion and patiently explaining the differences Mansfield had demanded. Paternalism rather than dismissal was his course of action.
Do you remember when some Palestinians (correctly) accused Progressive Jews of attempting to manage and thus limit Palestinian voices? It can happen, too, in international tribunals where non-Jews run the show.
Iconic “palestine.” You know it when Palestinians are allowed to speak only when they tell the story that others want to hear.
So, then, who speaks for Palestinians and Palestine?
 
Video shows Palestinian father confronting Israeli soldier who beat his 7-year-old son
Oct 14, 2012
Today in Palestine
 
Land Theft & Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Restriction of Movement / Apartheid & Occupation
WATCH: IDF declares Palestinian grazing lands closed military zone
Last Saturday, a group of Ta’ayush activists traveled to the South Hebron Hills to provide support to Palestinian shepherds seeking to take their livestock out for grazing. Soon after they reached their destination, a group of IDF soldiers arrived to declare the area a closed military zone. Watch the confrontation transpire. By Israel Social TV.
link to 972mag.com

 

Comment on this article >
     
J Street sells its soul, completes evolution to AIPAC lite
Oct 14, 2012 09:18 am | M.J. Rosenberg
It was inevitable. Constantly under pressure from the Jewish center-right (Reform rabbis, for instance), J Street has thrown in the towel. Read its document of surrender. 
In response to the letter from Christian denominations urging that aid to Israel be compliant with U.S. law, J Street has joined Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation league and the half-million a year hacks that run the other Jewish organizations to blast the Christians. (See Foxman letter).
J Street agrees with them that aid to Israel is an entitlement. It must never be questioned unless you also add ” criticism of Israel’s behavior with appropriate criticism of, for instance, rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas.” You must also  ”put the present situation into a historical or political context that might provide a fuller appreciation for the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over many decades. “
Blah, blah, AIPAC, blah. The church letter is about the $2.5 billion aid package to Israel. As far as I know, the U.S. does  not provide the rockets fired from Gaza. As for putting the current situation in a context that “ might provide a fuller appreciation for the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over many decades,” I say tell that to the people of Gaza, including the 1400 civilians (300 kids) who heard all about that context in 2009-2010.

I have no doubt that the people who run J Street fought the rabbis and donors to avoid having to put out this statement. They always fight. They always give in. (I hear that Rabbi David Saperstein of the Reform movement threatens to pull “my rabbis” out if J Street strays too far from AIPAC. He’s the lobby’s enforcer)

So I feel sorry for J Street. But I do not see any reason to support it. It is, at the end of the day — in fact, long before the end of the day — just another Jewish organization that lacks the courage of its supposed convictions.
If Israel attacks Iran, I am sure Saperstein will demand that J Street will go along with that too. It will only stand tall when it has permission.
J Street: Epic Fail.