This week is the 8th annual Israeli Apartheid Week, celebrating the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement. Here is a statement from the organisers:
The 8th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place in a record number of campuses across the UK from February 20 to 24. IAW is an annual international series of events, which last year reached more than 100 cities across the globe. The week will feature lectures, film screenings, cultural activities, and creative actions aimed at raising awareness about Israel’s system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid toward Palestinians. Importantly, IAW will build support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign launched in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organisations. The demands of the BDS movement are: full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands, and the protection of Palestinian refugees’ right to return.
In an open letter dated October 21-2011, Palestinian students wrote to their counterparts around the world: “we hope you put BDS at the forefront of your campaigns and join together for Israeli Apartheid Week, the pinnacle of action across universities worldwide”. Layla Auer one of many IAW organizers in London explains, “IAW activities this year are a direct response to this call from Palestinian students and in solidarity with the youth movements across the Arab World as they have inspired us with their commitment to struggle for freedom, justice and equality”.
Previous participants in IAW have included Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti and Ronnie Kasrils among other prominent supporters of Palestinian rights. The program in the UK this year is youth focused and features well-known film director Eyal Sivan, and students from South Africa and Palestine, as well as performances by hip-hop artist Lowkey and spoken-word poet Rafeef Ziadah.
For further information and full schedules for each city please visit www.apartheidweek.org or contact media@apartheidweek.org.
Our friends at Red Pepper and openDemocracy both have voluntary editorial positions going. Here are the ads:
Website editor wanted to join Red Pepper volunteer editorial team
Red Pepper's website is becoming an increasingly important part of the way our magazine works. We're now looking for a volunteer editor to be the driving force behind making it a real resource for the left. You would join our existing collective of five volunteer editors, but with specific responsibility for the website. If you have a thoughtful approach to left politics, some experience of writing, editing or journalism, a passion for changing the world and experience of organising to bring that about, we want to hear from you.
The position is one of real responsibility, with the opportunity to help shape the future of Red Pepper. We would like to particularly encourage women and those from ethnic minority backgrounds to apply. Closing date, Monday 19 March.
To find out more, download the job description and person specification (pdf).
*****
OurKingdom Volunteer Role
OurKingdom, the UK section of openDemocracy, is seeking a volunteer to help support our editorial team. We are looking for someone who wants to combine editorial and organising skill to help transform the democratic and constitional culture of the UK.
You would support the editorial team, with the chance to develop your commissioning, editing, publishing and writing skills. You would receive training throughout the placement. Supported by Co-Editor Niki Seth-Smith, you would be given the freedom to use your initiative, oversee your own projects and write posts. This is an opportunity to build relationships with politicians, journalists, academics and activists at the forefront of thinking on Britain today, while developing your own ideas and building a voice.
It is possible to work remotely, or from our London offices in Dalston. We are able to pay travel expenses and lunch money.
Please apply to "niki.sethsmith@opendemocracy.net" with:
- CV plus covering letter
- Three commissioning ideas
Please write VOLUNTEER OURKINGDOM in caps in the subject line.
A guest post by Houman Barekat*
Impasse. The people of Greece continue to resist; the markets, media and politicians continue to insist that there is no alternative. Something will have to give. Whatever the solution, electoral democracy will have very little to do with it. When the country’s erstwhile leader, Mr Papandreou, mooted a referendum on austerity measures, the idea was universally dismissed as manifestly untenable. Markets and media alike responded with genuine alarm: it was the talk of a dangerous lunatic; Mr Papandreou had to go. This tells us all we need to know about the prospects for representative democracy at such a time.
Not so long ago the UK had its own version of the Greek crisis. In 1976, with the economy crippled by debt, the then Labour government was forced to impose a devastating austerity budget in return for a desperately needed IMF loan. The measures resulted in the Winter of Discontent, and the Tories swept into power on a wave of anti-union sentiment. It took Labour almost two decades to recover; the British left has arguably never recovered. On that occasion, pragmatism won the day. Anything less would have been unthinkable, and the radical alternative proposed at the time by Tony Benn - that Britain should reject the IMF, nationalise the North Sea oil and effectively ‘go it alone’ - would have turned Britain into an international pariah, a veritable ‘rogue state’. Fresh from dismantling democracy in Chile, Dr Kissinger would have had his work cut out once more.
In the Cold War era, the totalising logic of global capitalism was given a veneer of political legitimacy: democracies were undermined, juntas tolerated and authoritarian regimes condoned, all in the name of protecting the world from the menace of the Soviet Union. But what happens today if someone won’t play the game? It is by no means certain that the men who torched libraries and cinemas in Athens on Monday night were necessarily leftists, and we know that the markets would sooner wink at a dictatorship in Greece than allow its people a say in the running of the economy. You have incurred a debt, they say, and you must pay it back. But the debt was incurred by the capitalist class, and yet repayment is being sought from the people as a whole. The contradiction is evident to even the most uneducated person - you need a degree in Economics in order not to see it.
The Greek catastrophe is only an extreme version of the political crises facing many countries during the current downturn. Across Europe, the economic crisis has precipitated a new era of unrepresentative government. At the healthier end of the spectrum you have a country like Britain, with a coalition government carefully bulldozing large swathes of the country’s social infrastructure in the name of deficit reduction. The radicalism of Mr Cameron’s reform programme is inversely proportional to the strength of his government’s popular mandate, but what does it matter? The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has already declared that a Labour government would adopt a similar policy. Our so-called ‘squeezed middle’ is hanging in there; in Greece, middle class professionals are forming bread lines. But we have one thing in common: a paralysing and portentous sense of powerlessness.
*Houman Barekat is editor of Review 31.
Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring, edited by Houman Barekat and Mike Gonzalez, is forthcoming from Pluto Press.
There has been a lot of nonsense written about Norman Finkelstein's position on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions written over the past 24 hours. 'Nonsense', not because it is stupid, or insincere, but because it doesn't represent his position correctly, and therefore fails to address the substance of his critique. Since I think the critique is an important one, this reaction is a shame, because it means the serious issues it raises aren't being given the careful consideration they warrant.
For people wanting a clearer picture of what Norman's argument is, and what his responses are to several of the criticisms that are being bandied about at this point, I recommend watching the Q&A session after his recent talk in Edinburgh. Among the many confusions addressed: that Finkelstein fetishises the law; that he is overriding Palestinians' own preferences in a colonial or paternalistic manner; that he opposes BDS. The Q&As start around 1h50mins in:
Norman Finkelstein in Edinburgh from Stuart Platt on Vimeo
For more background to Norman's arguments here, see my interview with him from last year.
Samuel Grove* reviews The Actuality of Communism by Bruno Bosteels (Verso, 2011)
"For about two centuries (from Babeuf's 'community of equals' to the 1980s) the word 'communism' was the most important name of an Idea located in a field of emancipatory, or revolutionary politics” (Alain Badiou). Since the 1980s the term has lain dormant. Recently however there are signs of the Idea’s re-awakening. Bruno Bosteels’ The Actuality of Communism is a fervent defence of the Idea as well as philosophy’s role within it. That being said the book consists less of an argument and more of an incitement to think. Springing from the first question—‘is it possible to be a young communist today without being either an ignoramus (of history) or an ingénue (of morality)?'—and assuming the reader’s answer to this question is ‘yes’; there follows a cascade of further questions posed by Bosteels and an assortment of contemporary critical thinkers he calls upon: What is the relation of the [eternal] idea of communism to its [contingent] history? Is communism synonymous with generic ideas of justice or the specific form of emancipation from capitalism? Can one be a communist without being a Marxist? What is the role of the State (if any) in a revolutionary process? What is the a role for the militant subject in such a process? Does communism have a specific endgame or does it really stand for a politics of insurrection? If so, where does this leave us in terms of particular organisations and concrete policies?
This is a book not to be digested, but to be periodically consulted, for many of these questions don’t have an answer; rather their resolution resides in their dialectical relation. Readers should be warned that Bosteels’ prose is at times (and as is characteristic of much of critical theory) exasperatingly opaque. If this book is to be read as a manual then it can be read as a guide as to how to ask critical and complex questions towards a simple and compelling idea without losing one’s militant fidelity both to the Idea and—here Bosteels should take note—its simplicity.
*Samuel Grove is an independent researcher and journalist. See his work on NLP here.
Really this ought to be saved for Halloween, but for those leftists who complacently argue that our leaders need to be challenged more forcefully, this interview with former PM Tony Blair should make them a bit a more careful about what they wish for and a bit more grateful for the cosy, softly softly stlye, of Andrew Marr et al. It turns out though that Blair's biographer (obviously a fan of the horror genre) John Rentoul is evidently made of sterner stuff than the rest of us as he has written a glowing piece for the Independent extolling Blair's performance. Incidentally I strongly recommend readers to also have a look at Rentoul's impassioned and moving reaction to Tony Blair's resignation in 2007.
The video can't be embedded (as far as I can tell), but here is the link again. And here's a screenshot of what's in store:
We are always on the look out for good new progressive content here at NLP, so we were very pleased to see the launch of a new leftist review site - Review 31. Below is a brief interview with the editor Houman Barekat.
Can you tell our readers what Review 31 is and what kind of content you will be carrying?
Review 31 is an online literary magazine; we publish reviews of the latest non-fiction titles. The principal focus is on politics and history, as well as art & culture. It’s - broadly speaking - a politically progressive review.
Why do you think there is a need for a site like Review 31? What is it offering that you feel is lacking elsewhere?
I’m a huge fan of the London Review of Books. It’s elegant, topical and critically engaged. But the essay-length review can be problematic for online reading - my eyes just can’t take the glare for long enough to read 4,000 words in one sitting. So what I wanted to do was produce something that combined the intelligence and flair of the LRB with a format better suited to the internet age. I should emphasise that we’re not talking about soundbites - our reviews are between 800 and 1600 words long - just something slightly more compact. The design of the site is very user-friendly, very clean and easy on the eye.
I suppose the other thing that distinguishes us is the types of books that we’re choosing to highlight. We review titles from the major academic presses, of course, but we also look to give extra attention to the lists of the smaller independent presses. They’re publishing fresh, exciting books that often don’t get anything like the exposure they deserve.
What are your aims and hopes for the site?
In the medium term we hope to establish Review 31 as one of the leading online reviews. There are some other people doing a similar sort of thing - the Los Angeles Review of Books, edited by Tom Lutz, looks very promising. It’s currently in development - their site is in ‘preview mode’ but it already looks great.
It’s early days yet - we only launched three months ago. But the initial feedback from readers has been very positive. We’ve got a really interesting range of contributors - a good mix of scholars and journalists; some really excellent writers.
Houman Barekat is editor of Review 31 and co-editor, with Mike Gonzalez, of Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring (forthcoming from Pluto Press).
Is it antisemitic to accuse someone of being an "Israel firster"? For the past few weeks some of the most prominent American liberal commentators and Jeffrey Goldberg have been shouting at each other about this, after former AIPAC-er Josh Block orchestrated a smear campaign against two liberal think-tanks on the basis that writers associated with them had made use of the phrase. The political agenda behind the attacks was transparent: both the targeted organisations – the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM) – have been prominent in pushing against US support for Israel's occupation and against an attack on Iran. But it provoked a minor split among liberal commentators, some of whom reacted by defending CAP and MM, and some of whom agreed that the phrase 'Israel Firster' is indeed "toxic".
The debate, which has now simmered down, is interesting mainly for what it reveals about where liberal American discourse on Israel is currently at, and where it might be going.
First, it is another indication of Israel's long-term secular decline in popularity among US liberals generally, and American Jews in particular. The fact that the debate is even happening indicates how far the ideological terrain has shifted. Fifteen years ago mainstream columnists would not have criticised Israel, and if they did would not have used the term "Israel Firsters" to do so, and if they had would not have been defended by other mainstream commentators. Times have changed.
The initial reaction to Block's smear further illustrates the point: usual suspects aside, it went nowhere. Even Lanny Davis, Block's business partner and himself a frequent apologist for Israel's occupation, criticised it, while two other prominent Washington think tanks threatened to sever ties with him, and Block was forced to stage a partial climbdown. Glenn Greenwald is right to note that "the only reason this has become such a problem for Block is because he made the over-reaching mistake of targeting an organization that is extremely well-connected". But more significant is that an establishment liberal organisation like CAP took such a critical line on Israel in the first place.
I say 'initial' reaction because, while MM dismissed the smears, CAP does appear to have censored its writers' criticism of Israel in the wake of the incident. This is presumably due mainly to CAP's association with the Democratic Party, which has an eye on the election and on Republican efforts to cast the Obama administration as hostile to Israel and/or Jews. But it also reflects the fact that even if criticism of Israel's occupation can no longer be credibly dismissed as 'antisemitic', "Israel Firster", with its resemblance to the charge of "dual loyalty" that has long dogged Jews, is more difficult to defend. A tactical corollary is that those commentators wishing to push back against attempts to police the discourse on Israel-Palestine ought not, perhaps, make their stand here.
Second, the debate prompts the question: is the spectre of "dual loyalty" being revived? This would be a significant development if so. Jews have historically been haunted by accusations of disloyalty, and American Jews have in the past been particularly careful to proclaim their loyalty to the US rather than Israel. Israel, in claiming to act in the name of Jews worldwide, threatened to give canards about Jewish 'dual loyalty' credibility, and as a result most American Jews for many decades distanced themselves from it. Norman Finkelstein's forthcoming book documents that before Israel became an American 'strategic asset' by crushing Nasser in 1967, most American Jewish elites – including those who advocated most vociferously for a US-Israeli alliance after '67 – were indifferent or actively hostile to it. More generally, "[fearful] of the 'dual loyalty' charge", American Jews have "drawn away from Israel whenever bilateral relations at the state level have been tenuous and drawn closer when they have overlapped".
If the current low-level grumbling among American elites about Israel's service or lack thereof to US interests escalates – and it may not – anti-Israel and anti-occupation sentiment could well be increasingly articulated in the language of 'national interests', and criticism of those who support US backing of Israel's occupation could increasingly take the form of accusations of dual loyalty or disloyalty to the US. This could in turn reinforce the abandonment of Israel by American Jews that is already underway.
--
On the substantive issue in dispute – the legitimacy of the phrase "Israel Firster" – both sides are wrong. Glenn Greenwald, MJ Rosenberg, Phil Weiss and Andrew Sullivan are correct to argue that there is nothing in principle antisemitic about accusing individuals of placing "Israel's" interests above "American" ones. Nor is it "gross" to point out that the American media's go-to guy on Israel-Palestine, Jeffrey Goldberg, served as a prison guard in the Israeli army. Amusingly, Goldberg now denies he was a prison guard, insisting that he was merely a "military policeman" and "counsellor" who took care of "the culinary, hygiene and medical needs of the prisoners". This is odd because in his memoir Goldberg explicitly says that he wasn't, whatever his formal job title, merely a counsellor:
"I was a 'prisoner counselor,' a job title that did not accurately reflect my duties in the related fields of discipline and punishment..." [Prisoners, p. 28]
Which seems fair enough, since counsellors don't generally assist in the abuse of prisoners, as Goldberg admits he did. Goldberg's strange denial appears to have convinced Ackerman, at least, which is encouraging insofar as it suggests that people who say they like Jeffrey Goldberg have never read Jeffrey Goldberg.
More importantly, if it is the case that people increasingly perceive US policy towards Israel to be a decisively shaped by de facto agents of the Israeli state, the issue should be subject to honest and frank debate. Silencing the above-ground conversation is likely to promote the less savoury lines of discussion within it.
All that said, "Israel Firsters" rhetoric is seriously problematic:
- It is not, contra Greenwald and Sullivan, "plainly true" that many prominent apologists for Israel are "Israel Firsters". As noted above, virtually all of these supposedly principled devotees of the Jewish state were completely silent on or else actively critical of Israel before it became a 'strategic asset' of the US establishment. As Finkelstein observes, after '67 Israel also effectively became "a 'strategic asset' of American Jews":
"[joining] the Zionist club was a prudent career move for Jewish communal leaders who could then play the role of key interlocutors between the U.S. and its strategic asset. Israel’s alleged existential vulnerability served as a useful pretext for politically ambitious Jews to champion American military power on which Israel’s survival supposedly hinged."
Charging these "Me Firsters" with principled loyalty to Israel drastically overestimates them. The record suggests that they are, as a rule, in it squarely for themselves. This confusion is significant, for example because a more realistic appreciation of the interests driving the Israel lobby and its sympathisers would draw attention to the ways in which support for Israeli militarism benefits and speaks to elite interests in the US, rather than just in Israel.
- The use of "Israel Firster", while not necessarily antisemitic, is not innocuous either. Accusations of "Israel Firster" do imply some ugly politics. "Israel Firster" is, after all, being opposed implicitly to "US Firster", with the tacit assumption that it is a Bad Thing to support a "foreign" state or people over one's "own". But why should that be so? If I am moved by images of famine in Somalia and decide to vote, in Britain, according to who I think would do the most to alleviate the effects and causes of that famine, am I being "dually loyal"? More to the point, if I am, is that a bad thing? It is particularly strange that liberals, who tend to take very seriously the idea that there are universal moral principles whose value transcends the claims of any particular state, would treat "dual loyalty" as a serious criticism.
I suspect Greenwald would reply that he rarely uses the term "Israel Firster", that his aim in this debate is to defend its legitimacy against accusations of antisemitism rather than to positively endorse it, and that when he does use it, it is either as a rhetorical device to highlight others' hypocrisy or as a normatively neutral description, rather than a criticism. In his case, this is generally true. But if we look at the emerging discourse more broadly, "Israel Firster" is typically used as a pejorative, which implies a set of assumptions that Sullivan, despite his dislike of the phrase, encapsulates quite well:
"[when] an American sides with a foreign government against his own president in a foreign country, what does one call that? Apart, that is, from disgusting."
The use of the term "Israel Firster" reflects a broader trend which chooses to frame opposition to Israeli policies, and US support for them, in terms of defending or protecting US "national interests", and which appears increasingly disposed to criticising apologists for Israeli occupation on the grounds that they are being disloyal to these "national interests", rather than on the grounds that they are enabling a profound injustice. I suspect that this in turn reflects an influx of liberals into the solidarity movement – in this sense the watering down and degeneration of the latter might well be a consequence of its own success – and a desire by some activists to align the movement, in an attempt to gain political influence, with those American elites who are concerned that Israel's occupation is harming US imperial interests (cf. Walt and Mearsheimer).
In either case, the strategy is dangerous. First, it relies on the gap among US elites over the wisdom of support for Israeli occupation widening, which may not happen to a sufficient degree. Second, its effect is to essentially whitewash the former. And third, it risks abandoning a principled opposition to Israel's occupation grounded in broadly appealing progressive values – it is wrong to demolish people's houses; it is wrong to torture children; it is wrong to shell schools and hospitals with white phosphorus; it is wrong to violently prevent a people from exercising self-determination in violation of international law; etc . – in favour of a critique based on parochial, unappealing and potentially quite vicious insinuations about people's – mainly Jews' – "loyalty". This isn't antisemitism. But it isn't the way to win the struggle, and nor should it be how we'd want to win it.
Al Jazeera has done us all a big favour and streamed the entire version of American Radical, the superb documentary on Norman Finkelstein. Highly recommended:
Part 1
Part 2
For more on Finkelstein, see my interviews with him on NLP: 'How to End the Israel-Palestine Conflict' | 'God helps those who help themselves': Parts 1 & 2
What was distinctive about the social movements that made 2011 the 'year of the protestor'? What links Occupy, the Arab revolts and the British student movement? Was 2011 the year the Hierarchy was defeated by the Network? Will the revolution be retweeted?
If you're interested in any or all of these questions, you're in luck.
This Thursday, 2 Feb at the Southbank Centre in London, Verso, in association with New Left Project, will launch Paul Mason's new book on contemporary popular movements, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere.
Paul, the author of Meltdown and the best thing about BBC Newsnight, spent much of the past two years reporting from Spain, Greece, Wisconsin, London and elsewhere on the surge in popular protest as the effects of the financial crisis, and of the bailouts and austerity measures that followed, made themselves felt. Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere brings that remarkable reportage together and interprets the geographically disparate struggles as locally variant, but in crucial respects similar, responses to a common crisis: the collapse of the pre-2007 model of economic globalisation. If you're interested in thinking further about last year's really quite remarkable developments - the speed at which Occupy spread and its success in changing the political agenda, for example, was surely unprecedented in recent history - this is an excellent place to start.
On Thursday we'll stage two panels, one on Paul's book and the other on the Arab revolts, featuring Paul Mason, Ewa Jasiewicz, Mark Fisher, Dan Hancox, and other assorted luminaries:
Panel 1, 7-8.15pm:
An evening with Paul Mason and guests will start in the Purcell Room with a conversation between Paul, economist Costas Lapavitsas, journalist and union organiser Ewa Jasiewicz and author and theorist Mark Fisher. Katharine Viner, deputy editor of the Guardian, will be chairing this discussion.
This part of the evening has sold out but can be screened into the foyer where Part 2 will take place.
Panel 2, 8.30-9.30pm:
The second session will involve two conversations, one focusing on protest and the other on the Arab Spring and women.
Talking about protest will be journalist Dan Hancox, author of Kettled Youth, writer James Butler and Mark Fisher. Chaired by writer and campaigner Eleanor Mae O'Hagan.
Meanwhile Paul Mason will be in conversation with academic Emma Dowling and journalist Rachel Shabi. Chaired by Bidisha, author of the forthcoming Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine
Note that the second panel is free, and while tickets for the first panel have sold out, you'll be able to watch it live via video link for free in the foyer next door.
To accompany the launch we'll also be running a series of articles and interviews here on NLP that respond to Paul's book, or which expand on some of the issues it raises. We'll kick off this week with a review of the book by NLP co-editor David Wearing and an in-depth interview with Paul himself. So keep your eyes peeled, and follow us on twitter and Facebook for updates.
Hope to see you Thursday.
| Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License