Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Imperialist austerity posted by Richard Seymour
You'll remember Dov Weisglass's 'quip' about putting the Palestinians on a diet. As he put it:“It’s like a meeting with a dietitian. We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death.”
Now the cold calculus of Israeli near-starvation policy has been exposed in detail:
After a three-and-a-half-year legal battle waged by the Gisha human rights organization, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has finally released a 2008 document that detailed its "red lines" for "food consumption in the Gaza Strip."
The document calculates the minimum number of calories necessary, in COGAT's view, to keep Gaza residents from malnutrition at a time when Israel was tightening its restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip, including food products and raw materials. The document states that Health Ministry officials were involved in drafting it, and the calculations were based on "a model formulated by the Ministry of Health ... according to average Israeli consumption," though the figures were then "adjusted to culture and experience" in Gaza.
....
In September 2007, the cabinet, then headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, decided to tighten restrictions on the movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip. The "red lines" document was written about four months afterward.
The cabinet decision stated that "the movement of goods into the Gaza Strip will be restricted; the supply of gas and electricity will be reduced; and restrictions will be imposed on the movement of people from the Strip and to it." In addition, exports from Gaza would be forbidden entirely. However, the resolution added, the restrictions should be tailored to avoid a "humanitarian crisis."
...
The "red lines" document calculates the minimum number of calories needed by every age and gender group in Gaza, then uses this to determine the quantity of staple foods that must be allowed into the Strip every day, as well as the number of trucks needed to carry this quantity. On average, the minimum worked out to 2,279 calories per person per day, which could be supplied by 1,836 grams of food, or 2,575.5 tons of food for the entire population of Gaza.
Bringing this quantity into the Strip would require 170.4 truckloads per day, five days a week.
From this quantity, the document's authors then deducted 68.6 truckloads to account for the food produced locally in Gaza mainly vegetables, fruit, milk and meat. The documents note that the Health Ministry's data about various products includes the weight of the package (about 1 to 5 percent of the total weight) and that "The total amount of food takes into consideration 'sampling' by toddlers under the age of 2 (adds 34 tons per day to the general population)."
From this total, 13 truckloads were deducted to adjust for the "culture and experience" of food consumption in Gaza, though the document does not explain how this deduction was calculated.
While this adjustment actually led to a higher figure for sugar (five truckloads, compared to only 2.6 under the Health Ministry's original model),
it reduced the quantity of fruits and vegetables (18 truckloads, compared to 28.5), milk (12 truckloads instead of 21.1), and meat and poultry (14 instead of 17.2).
Labels: free palestine, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, imperialism, Israel, palestine, zionism
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Finkelstein on BDS posted by Richard Seymour
Labels: Israel, norman finkelstein, palestine, zionism
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The case of the Nazi drinking game posted by Richard Seymour
Labels: antisemitism, chauvinism, class, fascism, gaza, imperialism, nationalism, nazism, palestine, racism, west bank
Friday, September 23, 2011
Yemen's revolution and declining US power posted by Richard Seymour
I am sorry not have to kept up to date with the inspiring resistance in Syria and Yemen. I note that David Cameron's speech at the UN used the example of Libya to argue for more interventions, citing both these countries as being in need of 'reform'. For what it's worth, it presently seems unlikely that Britain will be able to drive further military interventions, as the conditions that made a relatively low cost and low commitment intervention in Libya possible aren't likely to be replicated elsewhere. However, the adoption of the language of 'reform' is very interesting, and signals that the strategy of the dominant states has shifted from simply backing the ancient regimes to looking for a managed transition to more liberal societies. The spirit of this was, I think, summed up in Blair's panicked remarks upon the Egyptian revolution:"All over that region, there is essentially one issue, which is how do they evolve and modernise, both in terms of their economy, their society and their politics.
"All I'm saying is that, in the case of Egypt and in the case in Yemen, because there are other factors in this – not least those who would use any vacuum in order to foment extremism – that you do this in what I would call a stable and ordered way."
Blair said the west should engage with countries such as Egypt in the process of change "so that you weren't left with what is actually the most dangerous problem in the Middle East, which is that an elite that has an open minded attitude but it's out of touch with popular opinion, and popular opinion that can often – because it has not been given popular expression in its politics – end up frankly with the wrong idea and a closed idea."
Cameron would not be as crude as Blair, since he is an opportunist while the latter is an out and out bampot, but I think he shares essentially the same idea. As regards Yemen, it's been obvious for a while now that despite Washington's backing for repression and involvement in killing opposition leaders dubbed 'Al Qaeda', they're no longer content to leave Saleh in charge. The scale and endurance of the resistance, coming as it does from fractured sources and with different motives, combined with internal plotting against Saleh, has forced Washington to change tack (see Obama's UN speech). As Sheila Carapico points out in MERIP, they have done so reluctantly, and with a clear lack of sympathy for the protesters. In April, when they thought a face-saving deal might be reached, the US embassy in Sanaa issued a press release urging "'Yemeni citizens' to show good faith by 'avoiding all provocative demonstrations, marches and speeches in the coming days'."
The ongoing UN negotiations over a power transfer concern the terms of Saleh's departure, and constitute an effort by the US to engineer a settlement it can live with. Meanwhile, as the regime continues to use live rounds, tear gas, sewage water cannons, artillery and tanks to suppress the opposition, it is so important that the opposition has not been demobilised as the Obama administration would like it to be. This is a mass rally in Yemen today following a week of repression:
This suggests that, despite the very intelligent, cautious and successful intervention in Libya, US power has still taken a very significant regional knock, and its ability to control events is in question. Look at what's happening with Palestine. Egypt relaxing Rafah crossing restrictions, and supporting Fatah-Hamas peace talks, the Israeli embassy beseiged, Turkey continuing its historic break with Israel, and now the Palestinian statehood bid which, with all caveats noted, has left the Israeli leadership manifestly rattled. Obama has just sent Israel more weapons, and he will almost certainly instruct his ambassador to the UN to veto the bid. Susan Rice, the administration's uber-humanitarian-interventionist, threatened the UN with the withdrawal of US funding if member states backed Palestinian statehood. Still, a majority of states may approve the bid, and that would be a defeat for the US and Israel. As importantly, the Palestinian leadership has decided to sidestep America as the key mediator in the process. Both the US and Israel insist that there can be no talk of statehood outside the 'peace process'. But Mahmoud Abbas, after all these years, is acting as if he knows that the 'peace process' is intended to suffocate the very possibility of Palestinian statehood, which is not a small thing.
Labels: gaza, Israel, libya, middle east, palestine, revolution, US imperialism, yemen
Friday, August 05, 2011
The choice for Israeli protests posted by Richard Seymour
The New York Times, of all publications, puts it bluntly:But there is one issue conspicuously missing from the protests: Israel’s 44-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, which exacts a heavy price on the state budget and is directly related to the lack of affordable housing within Israel proper.
According to a report published by the activist group Peace Now, the Israeli government is using over 15 percent of its public construction budget to expand West Bank settlements, which house only 4 percent of Israeli citizens. According to the Adva Center, a research institute, Israel spends twice as much on a settlement resident as it spends on other Israelis.
Indeed, much of the lack of affordable housing in Israeli cities can be traced back to the 1990s, when the availability of public housing in Israel was severely curtailed while subsidies in the settlements increased, driving many lower-middle-class and working-class Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza Strip — along with many new immigrants.
Israel today is facing the consequences of a policy that favors sustaining the occupation and expanding settlements over protecting the interests of the broader population. The annual cost of maintaining control over Palestinian land is estimated at over $700 million.
Labels: capitalism, class struggle, colonialism, gaza, imperialism, Israel, palestine, west bank, working class, zionism
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Bahrain, and the Anglo-American oil frontier posted by Richard Seymour
Bahrain, off the eastern shore of the Saudi Kingdom, had been subject to many of the same basic forms of state and market formation as the Saudi monarchy itself. Its commercial markets were first penetrated by British capitalism when East India company adventurers first arrived in the eighteenth century. It became a British 'protectorate', courtesy of gunboat diplomacy, in 1861. When I say 'gunboat diplomacy', I am being quite literal. The British had first imposed a 'General Treaty of Peace' on Gulf states, signalling their subordination to British power in the 1820s. This stated that Bahrain was not permitted to dispose of its territory except to the United Kingdom, or get involved in a relationship with any government without British consent. It was a way of keeping competing European powers out of the Gulf. The British later imposed their own 'Resident in the Persian Gulf' to manage their growing paramountcy in the region through a series of local advisors in Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. All of this was supported and maintained by a large naval squadron. In return Britain promised to support the rule of Shaikh Al Khalifa, which established the UK's tradition of supporting Sunni dynastic rule over a largely Shia population. This system of rule was later centred on the British Raj, which maintained a Shaikhdom in Bahrain, and used the islands-state as a base for defending its regional interests, particularly during WWI.
Until the discovery and use of oil, Bahrain's major trades had included pearling, but throughout the 19th Century it diversified sufficiently for Manama to become the dominant trading city in the Gulf region, overtaking Basra and Kuwait. When oil was discovered in 1932, however, and Bahrain began exporting in 1934, it was just as traditional industries were suffering a severe decline amid global Depression. Unemployment had been soaring, and the pearl industry sinking. The sudden availability of oil revenues, a third of which were nominally controlled by the Shaikdom, paid for state-led capitalist development. Bahrain became what some social scientists call a 'rentier state', inasmuch as it depended by far on revenues derived from the sale of its oil on international markets than from the productive efforts of the society as a whole. The modern state of Saudi Arabia was formed under King Abdul Aziz bin Saud with British support in 1932, and it too began to export oil, with the industry taking off in 1938. This is when the current ties with the Saudi kingdom and US capital were first forged.
When Socal and Texaco initially combined in 1936 to form Aramco, the subsidiary was intended to run the oil concessions in both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Aramco, we know from Robert Vitalis, simultaneously created a public identity for itself as a partner in development and modernization, and reproduced the Jim Crow labour market structures then prevalent in the United States. The racial hierarchies maintained in the labour force, with white American workers at the apex and migrant workers from southern Asia at the bottom, still have operative effects in Bahrain's political system today. But the PR efforts, which involved paying a platoon of journalists, writers and scholars, building up research centres. Writers like Wallace Stegner took the 'myth of the frontier' elaborated by Frederick Jackson Turner, in which America's rugged democratic experiment was held to depend on the restless advance westward as hardy American citizens settled and improved otherwise empty land (oh yeah), and applied it to the oil frontiers. There, the oil companies were the pioneering heroes of civilization, the natives barely registering except as grateful recipients of racial uplift. At the same time, the British established more bases on the islands to entrench its control.
In partnership with British imperialism, represented in the person of 'advisor' Charles Belgrave, the oil firms helped construct forms of governance, geographies of accumulation, and market structures that guaranteed that this miraculous substance of myriad uses, this black gold, this vital source of industrialisation and advancement, would be controlled and directed by the 'West'. Bahrain, along with other Gulf states, was controlled from British India until 1947. In the postwar era, Britain maintained its 'informal' empire in the Gulf through a system of local advisors and client regimes backed by military force. Modernisation projects, such as the creation of a national education system, were built under British imperial tutelage. Challenges to the regime were assisted by British weaponry, as during the suppression of anti-British riots in the immediate post-war years, the containment of strikes by the left-wing National Union Committee, the crushing of pro-Egyptian demonstrations in 1956, and the putting down of the pro-independence March Intifada in 1965.
Until 1971, then, the British provided the security and patronage framework within which US oil capital operated. Under the banner of 'guided development', the British ruling class cultivated sterling-based networks of regional clients, and developed internal security apparati (mukhabarat) to sustain regimes which would operate only minimally within the integument of formal sovereignty. This model could occasionally conflict with US strategy. If American planners were not keen for rapid decolonization, fearing not just the exclusion of US investors but also the emergence of a worldwide systemic alternative to capitalism, they nonetheless had a conception of geographical accumulation, based substantially on the work of geographer Isaiah Bowman and other social scientists in light of their own experiments in direct colonial rule, which did not necessarily depend on direct territorial control. A global hierarchy of sovereign states operating an 'open door' policy was in principle compatible with US imperial hegemony, provided there was no revolutionary challenge to that hegemony. As such, the US had not initially worried overly about the Free Officers taking over Egypt in 1952, or Iraq in 1958. The real worry came later, in the 1960s, when Arab nationalism took a radical leftist turn. And though one context of Britain's declaration of withdrawal from its 'East of Suez' engagements was a traumatic defeat for Arab nationalism, there was still no certainty that ensuing movements and regimes would provide favourable territories for continued US capital accumulation. Britain's retreat from its imperial commitments 'East of Suez reflected defeat of a similar kind to that being inflicted on the US in Vietnam - this despite often brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaysia and Aden (Yemen). Because of the growing political and economic costs of these commitments for a crisis-hit British capitalism, the Conservatives pledged to honour Wilson's withdrawal plans.
The US strategy in the Gulf was thus to engage in a Metternichian 'power-balancing' strategy. This involved strengthening its ally, the Shah, who asserted an Iranian claim to Bahrain, while also working to bolster the opposing Ba'athist regime in Iraq. With respect to Bahrain, a US naval squadron took up where the British navy departed. The formally independent emirate of Bahrain maintained its cosy relationship with Anglo-American power. Despite the creation of a parliament elected solely by male voters in 1973, the monarch retained the ability to impose laws by decree, such as the highly repressive State Security Law. Surging oil revenues in the 1970s contributed to the restoration of relative political stability, and attracted waves of migrant workers from civil war struck Lebanon and from southern Asia. The decline of the Left and of Arab nationalism in the same period opened the field of dissent to Islamists inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain attempted a coup in 1981. In this context, the Anglo-American archipelago became an important counter-weight to the Islamic Republic, as its hosting of the US Navy's 'Fifth Fleet' provided a basis for the US military to threaten and contain Iran while Saddam Hussein mounted his invasion.
The ties with the Saudi kingdom, which was engaged in a region-wide struggle to prevent the influence of the Iranian revolution from spreading, were crucial in helping the Bahrain monarch defeat the Islamist challenge. In 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council was forged to coordinate economic and political strategies among six key Gulf states, under Saudi hegemony. Economic associations were created to avoid the duplication of outlay. The Saudi-Kuwaiti-Bahraini Petrochemicals Company (Gulf Petrochemicals Company) was also formed. The Saudi-Bahrain connection was even rendered manifest by the King Fahd Causeway, a World Bank supported white elephant which has connected the Aramco city of Dahran to the refineries of Bahrain since completion in 1986. When oil prices collapsed in the 1990s, unemployment protests culminated in a wave of uprisings took place lasting from 1994 to 2000. The challenge to the monarchy united leftists, Islamists and liberals, and was met with much the same forms of indiscriminate violence by Saudi-backed security forces as we have witnessed recently. In fact, 'indiscriminate' may not be quite the word I'm looking for - the attacks were clearly targeted at Shi'ite areas. The uprising only ended when a new emir promised a series of liberalising political reforms specified in the National Action Charter, which - while carefully conserving private property and the market - included some promises of social justice, the defence of public property, and the extension of democracy. The official state of emergency imposed since 1975 was dropped, and women were permitted to vote for the first time in 2002. This reform was intended to do what repression had not succeeded in doing, conserving the power of the ruling clan. And it was supported by over 98% of the population in a nationwide referendum.
While these reforms did not turn Bahrain into a democracy, they did permit previously covert opposition groups to emerge into the open. Nationwide protests and strikes favouring real democracy and opposing the demeaning, racist treatment of migrant workers, have been a regular occurrence since, often defying official protest bans. These have combined the Shi'ite opposition with leftist and Arab nationalist opposition currents. Official racism, not only discriminating against and repressing the majority Shia population, who are deprived of all military-oriented jobs as well as roles in strategically important government positions, but also attempting to 'reclaim' Manama 'for Bahrainis' has been part of the conservative response to these protests. In the 2000s, the al-Wefaq (Islamic National Accord) party has been the major political vehicle through which the Shi'ite majority has attempted to resist discrimination. Though they boycotted the 2002 elections in protest at the dominance of royal-appointed placemen in the upper chamber, their participation in the 2006 elections saw 16 of their 17 candidates for a 40-seat lower chamber get elected. Al-Wefaq's support for greater democracy, the decentralisation of power and the redistribution of wealth and resources has always posed at least a latent challenge to the ruling royals. In place of governorates, it aims to transfer considerable power to municipal councils which would be controlled by the Shia majority. In place of a royal-dominated upper chamber, it seeks to place legislative power decisively in the hands of the elected majority and will work with other opposition parties to this end. Meanwhile its socially conservative 'morality' campaigns challenge the avowedly secular culture of the regime. Its emergence and support in the mosques is significant given the traditionally quietist role of religious authorities schooled in the conservative Akhbari Shia tradition. The biggest leftist bloc is National Democratic Action, which also boycotted the 2002 elections and has participated in the major protest movements. It is rooted in workers movements and womens' associations. In terms of members and votes, it is smaller than al-Wefaq, but both have been willing to work together in parliamentary and extra-parliamentary battles. The 'Democratic Bloc', formerly the Communist Party of Bahrain, did stand in the 2002 elections and received a decent share of the vote. There are also Sunni Islamist and salafist groups which are occasionally oppositional, and a relatively large liberal-right parliamentary group called the 'Economists Bloc' which supports the status quo.
The uprising in Bahrain began on the 10th anniversary of the National Action Charter being passed by referendum. The accumulated grievances over the lack of democracy, discrimination against the Shia, the use of torture and repression, and the lack of workers' rights were already producing a serious challenge to the monarchy. But then, Tunisia. Then, Egypt. As protests were prepared for 14th February, the regime panicked. The kingdom ordered that every family be given 1000 Bahraini dinars (equivalent to $2,600) to celebrate the anniversary of the National Action Charter. But the bribe didn't work. Nor did the King's gesture of releasing 450 political prisoners. The police used tear gas and rubber bullets on 14th February. On 15th, they fired on the funeral of a protester killed the previous day. Protesters took control of the Pearl Roundabout in Manama. On 16th, the protests grew larger. On 17th, hundreds were injured and dozens killed as police attacked the occupation of Pearl Square. The government imposed a state of emergency. Yesterday, security forces crackdowns included the murder of paramedics tending to injured protesters. Today, weapons from Britain and the US sustain Bahrain's crackdown, and the Saudi kingdom is reported to be supporting the repression in Bahrain. So, as in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Middle East - above all Palestine - what the rebels are up against is not just their own state but a global configuration of power predicated on oil flows that stands behind it. It is that system of power based on neoliberal accumulation and oil capital If the Bahrain monarchy falls, then the crisis of US imperialism is intensified. The country may cease to host the US Navy. Saudi Arabia may no longer have its junior ally, and its own population, not least the Shia majority, may start to build on the protests already in evidence. At some point, the US will have to up its ante. But what will it do? Invade? Let Israel off the leash? And if it does either of these things, what are the chances that it may just radicalise and spread the revolution further still?
Labels: bahrain, british empire, dictatorship, Israel, middle east, oil, palestine, Saudi Arabia, US imperialism
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Egypt solidarity rally posted by Richard Seymour
Amnesty International and the Stop the War Coalition in London today.
Labels: dictatorship, egypt, middle east, mubarak, neoliberalism, palestine, revolution, socialism, US imperialism
Friday, February 11, 2011
Mubarak is gone posted by Richard Seymour
Update: found this at Socialist Unity. Watch as the crowd suddenly roars:
Labels: capitalism, dictatorship, egypt, middle east, palestine, revolution, socialism, US imperialism
Friday, January 28, 2011
Israel rallies to Mubarak posted by Richard Seymour
The official says the Jewish state has faith in the security apparatus of its most formidable Arab neighbor, Egypt, to suppress the street demonstrations that threaten the dictatorial rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The harder question is what comes next."We believe that Egypt is going to overcome the current wave of demonstrations, but we have to look to the future," says the minister in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel enjoys diplomatic relations and security cooperation with both Egypt and Jordan, the only neighboring states that have signed treaties with the Jewish state. But while it may be more efficient to deal in with a strongman in Cairo — Mubarak has ruled for 30 years — and a king in Amman, democracies make better neighbors, "because democracies do not initiate wars," he says.
"Having said that, I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process."
Labels: dictatorship, egypt, Israel, middle east, mubarak, palestine, revolution, US imperialism
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Egyptian revolt posted by Richard Seymour
After Tunisia, they kept asking, where next? Algeria? Jordan? Albania, even? All of those places, yes, but the crown jewel of America's regional comprador oligarchy is in Cairo. Protesters planned that today would be a day of wrath, a day of revolution. The state warned that there would be arrests and worse if anyone dared to make good on this threat. The protesters, undeterred, have showed up in number - perhaps not unvanquishable number, but hardly cowed either. Armed police have resorted to every weapon in their arsenal from shock-sticks to "more potent weapons", but they look decidedly on the defensive in some of the footage. Portraits and posters of the dictator Mubarak have been torn down in public. As ever, check in at Arabawy for updates and links on this.Update: apparently, bullets are being fired at protesters in downtown Cairo.
Jack Shenker reports:
Downtown Cairo is a war zone tonight – as reports come in of massive occupations by protesters in towns across Egypt, the centre of the capital is awash with running street battles. Along with hundreds of others I've just been teargassed outside the parliament building, where some youths were smashing up the pavement to obtain rocks to throw at police.
We've withdrawn back to the main square now were thousands more demonstrators are waiting and a huge billboard advertising the ruling NDP party has just been torn down. Security forces are continuing to use sound bombs and teargas to disperse the crowd, but so far to no avail.
Labels: anti-imperialism, capitalist crisis, egypt, middle east, palestine, socialism, US imperialism
Monday, January 24, 2011
The end of the Palestinian Authority? posted by Richard Seymour
Most of the Arab world’s anger so far has been directed not at the Israeli government but at the PA. This makes sense: Arabs take Israeli rejectionism for granted. Unlike many liberals in Europe and America, they cannot afford the luxury of delusions about our ally’s role in the region. The PA’s collaboration has also long been clear, but the extent of the betrayal revealed in the documents is nauseating. They record Abbas greeting Condoleeza “birth pangs” Rice with, “[y]ou bring back life to the region when you come.” “I would vote for you”, senior negotiator Ahmed Qureia told Livni; Ariel Sharon was my “friend”, Abbas enthused. We already knew about the PA’s collaboration with the US and Israel to overthrow Hamas; its support for the Gaza siege; its close cooperation with the Israeli military; and its diplomatic manoeuvres to bury the UN inquiry into the 2008-9 Gaza massacre. These new leaks promise to reveal how PA “leaders were privately tipped off” in advance about the Gaza massacre – something previous leaks have already confirmed.
Again, none of this should come as a surprise. The PA is a product of the Oslo process, which was designed, as former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami put it, to groom a Palestinian leadership class to act as “Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the [first] intifada and… [cut] short what was clearly an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence”. The aim, another Israeli minister explained, “was to find a strong dictator to ... keep the Palestinians under control.” The PA is “almost wholly dependent upon American, European and Arab political and financial support, as well as security and economic cooperation with Israel” and so can only operate within limits dictated by Israel and its international backers. This was dramatically illustrated when Palestinians elected a government that didn’t enjoy the backing of their occupiers in 2006. The US, Europe and Israel responded by starving it of funds, isolating it diplomatically, kidnapping a third of the cabinet, killing hundreds of Palestinians, destroying Gaza’s only power station, and training and arming Fatah militias to overthrow it. It is a mistake, then, to focus overly on the corruption and venality of Abbas, Erekat, et al. The more important point is that the PA is structurally incapable of serving as an instrument of Palestinian liberation. Our takeaway lesson from the documents should be the need to end our government’s support for Israel’s occupation and Abbas’s quasi-police state in the West Bank.
The PA’s strategy as revealed in the documents is delusional, on the (perhaps unreasonable) assumption that its objective is to secure a negotiated settlement to the conflict. It appears to be under the impression that if it just offers Israel one more concession, cedes one more bit of territory, compromises on one more basic Palestinian right, then the U.S. will force Israel to accept a settlement. The reality of the American role hardly needs elaborating here; it is encapsulated well enough in Rice’s response to the ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948: “Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time.” The gaping yawn wasn’t transcribed. When Palestinian negotiators objected to Israel’s insistence on annexing yet more Palestinian territory, Rice was blunt: “You won’t have a state… your children’s children will not have an agreement.”
It is still too early to predict how reaction to the leaks will play out. The PA is denying everything on the grounds that, paraphrasing Erekat, ‘we can’t have offered Israel virtually all of East Jerusalem, because if we had then obviously Israel would have accepted it’. What is the Arabic for ‘facepalm’? “We don’t hide anything from our brothers”, Abbas insisted as the PA threatened to shut down Al Jazeera. Abbas has accused Al Jazeera of declaring “war” on the Palestinians – Erekat is presumably drawing up an agreement to cede East Jerusalem to Riz Khan.
The popular legitimacy of the PA, already damaged, is surely now destroyed. In the long-term – possibly sooner - this could spell its demise. Certainly Palestinians will not achieve their liberation under its auspices.
Labels: colonialism, east jerusalem, gaza, Israel, israeli terrorism, palestine, US imperialism, west bank, zionism
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
This is Zionism. posted by Richard Seymour
"The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.
"The manner of Iman's killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died."
Labels: gaza, Israel, murder, palestine, war crimes, west bank, zionism
Friday, July 23, 2010
Lynching posted by Richard Seymour
Ramifications of the criminal conspiracy discussed below:'Arab man attacked for talking to Jewish girl'
Twenty-three year old rushed to hospital unconscious after being beaten with heavy metal object at Tiberias gas station, sustaining serious injuries. Suspect yet to be apprehended.
Labels: colonialism, imperial feminism, jim crow, palestine, patriarchy, racism, segregation, zionism
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Racist patriarchy in Israel posted by Richard Seymour
"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls."
Are you getting it yet? Sex with an Arab constitutes a violation of the sanctity of body and soul - an "unbearable price". This is not a freakish opinion in Israeli society. For example, half of Israeli Jews believe intermarriage between Arabs and Jews is equivalent to national treason (that demographic 'timebomb', you see). Some are determined to enforce this sexual separation through violence or policy. Gangs of men in a Jerusalem neighbourhood roam around, behaving as a de facto vice and virtue squad, to 'protect' young Jewish girls from Arabs. One local authority has set up a squad of counsellors and psychiatrists to 'rescue' Jewish girls who are dating Arabs.
Hostility to inter-marriage and cross-ethnic dating pervades Zionist culture, and is reproduced at structural and institutional levels from the cradle to the grave. There has been a raft of legislative measures since 1948 that are designed to frustrate socialisation between Jews and Arabs, and the existing structures of segregation in education and housing ensure that intermarriage is already very rare. Jonathan Cook, quoting the Israeli sociologist Dr Yuval Yonay, points out that Israel's education system, designed to inculcate Zionist principles in Israeli Jews, largely succeeds in foreclosing Jewish-Arab relationships. The Israeli far right has long wished to enforce the stigma on such relationships with legislation. Meir Kahane, before he was thrown out of the Knesset in the 1980s, attempted to do just that. The current political climate in Israel, with the most racist Knesset of all time and a host of discriminatory measures in the pipeline, will tend to compound this trend.
The woman who filed the charge can hardly be burdened with most of the responsibility. Who knows what pressures she was under? Perhaps no pressures other than the racist ideology that she will have internalised if she is a normal product of the Israeli education system. But perhaps it was put to her that her honour as an Israeli Jewish woman, and that of her family, had been sullied by her treasonous intercourse with an Arab from East Jerusalem and that, if she wished to expiate her crime, she should say that she had been raped. Whatever the case, without the backing of the forces of racist patriarchy her complaint would not have resulted in a conviction. It's not as if it's easy for women to get their complaint heard and a conviction obtained when a rape really has occurred. It's not as if the criminal justice system throws its weight behind women every time they experience domestic violence, harrassment, or sexual violation. This was a complaint that, with its obvious paucity of evidence of any kind of violation or assault, could easily have been dealt with outside of the courts. Instead, they devoted their considerable resources to keeping this man in lockdown - he was under house arrest for almost two years while the case was brought to trial - and so loading the scales against him that even when no evidence of rape emerged, he still ended up 'guilty'.
The court has therefore come down on the side of racist patriarchy, effectively joining those vice and virtue squads in 'protecting' Jewish women from any desire they may have to have sex and romance with Arab men, conserving the sanctity of the Jewish body and soul, and ensuring that the female body is strictly harnessed to the urgent task of perpetually regenerating the race. The criminal justice system itself, from the police to the prosecution and the judges, conspired to deliberately frame a consensual sex act as a violation. The fact that the verdict was secured with a plea bargain suggests that the defence also participated in this charade, intimidating and gaslighting Kashur so thoroughly that he ultimately 'confessed' to having committed a 'crime' and officially expressed a desire to be reformed. This is a calculated deterrence of inter-racial love, sex and solidarity. Perhaps it was seen as a necessary move due to the disproportionate presence of women among the Israeli peace movement, and the fear that their fraternising with the enemy is undermining militarist-nationalist morale. More likely, I think, such judgments are a logical corollary of founding a polity on the creation and maintenance of a demographically preponderant oppressor group through sheer military violence. A militarised colonial state, even one with a thin liberal democratic veneer, is necessarily a racially supremacist patriarchy, and would be so even without outlandish stunts like this conviction.
Labels: colonialism, imperial feminism, Israel, misogyny, palestine, palestinians, patriarchy, racism, rape, sexism, zionism
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Chutzpah and hasbara posted by Richard Seymour
You know how it is. For days, it's been impossible to log on to Twitter without some frantic Israeli apologists urgently messaging you to say - no, look, it's really clear, these so-called 'humanitarians' attacked Israeli soldiers who merely responded, yadda yadda yadda. They lynched those servicemen... Or, better still - peace activists don't carry weapons, they were there to get themselves killed... Rarely has such a toxic mixture of the desperate, the cowardly and the callous been compressed into 140 characters or less, and almost all of it is directly inspired by the carefully crafted tweets of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Anyone who doubts the Israeli government's online virtuosity should check out what they can do with Flickr).Israel, as noted before, never has any agency in any of this. Not one of Israel's apologists can contemplate for a second that the IDF, and the commando outfit Unit 13 that perpetrated the massacres, made a choice at every step leading to the murder of those aid workers - each of whom was deliberately executed with several bullets from close range. Their solidarity with the murderers is complete: "We are all Unit 13", as the Israeli protesters have reportedly taken to chanting. This is a pretty pathetic position to be in. Just as well Max Blumenthal has taken the trouble of trawling through the Israeli media's build-up to the attack, and documented that the attack was planned down to every detail, and that the use of lethal force was planned on the pretext that the flotilla's occupants were "terrorists".
Now, the 'Rachel Corrie' has also been hijacked, though as yet the Israelis haven't got round to murdering anyone on board. Predictably, it has been vilified as a jihadi vessel with links to global terrorism. The hasbara merchants have been out in force again, demanding to know why the aid workers didn't accept Israel's "offer" to dock at Ashdod port. Well, as before, it's very simple. The Israeli blockade has wilfully destroyed the Gazan economy. Destroying the power generation systems, and the sewage and other vital infrastructure that depended on it, the blockade has resulted in a process of de-development. The blockade, restricting Gaza's ships to operation within three nautical miles, has also destroyed the fishing industry. It has put almost half of agricultural land out of productive use. Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, described how Gaza's "whole civilisation has been destroyed" by the blockade, though in fact Gazans are more resilient than this diagnosis would allow. But people are dying in large numbers. Poor nutrition, hardly any medicines, and lack of sewage processing means that Gazans are dying from preventable and treatable diseases. Diarrhoea alone is responsible for 12% of young deaths.
And here's the punchline. The blockade has left most Gazans wholly or partially dependent on food aid. However, the blockade has also placed a stranglehold on the amount of aid actually getting to Gaza. The amount entering Gaza in mid-2009 was 25% of that entering in 2007. This has resulted in nine out of ten residents living below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Even such aid as is devoted to Gaza can't be spent because of the blockade, according to Amnesty and the ICRC. Israel has consistently blocked food shipments, only allowing them through when it became an embarrassing political incident. It has held up medicines until they have expired. 80% of all imports to Gaza come through the tunnels. Israel has deliberately turned Gaza into a ghettoised economy, dependent on smuggling from outside fences, walls, and boundaries enforced by military violence. The tunnels, of course, are routinely attacked by aerial bombardment, on the pretext that they are being used to smuggle weapons - because Gaza, this tiny land mass with no navy or standing army, might get a few guns to defend itself the next time Israel decides to invade.
So, going through Israel is not an option. Attempting to get aid through the port at Ashdod means that little if any of the aid will reach the intended recipients. Israel has proved this time and again. The blockade is a premeditated act of savagery and sadism, and Israel does not intend to allow international aid to disrupt its calculated cruelty. Israel insists on its 'right' to hijack vessels in international waters that might actually disrupt this barbarism-by-design. Now it insists that if activists resist such hijack efforts, even with the most elementary, non-lethal weapons, as is their right, it can murder them with impunity. The Israeli state has thus proven, not only in its actions, but in the audacious, brazen propaganda campaign it has since initiated (a truly disgusting example of which), that it is not susceptible to reasoning or moral pleading. In addition to this, Israel's pied-noirs broadly approve of these colonial atrocities, differing only with the far right foreign affairs minister Avigdor Lieberman on the precise method for maintaining the stranglehold. So, relying on persuasion and heartfelt humanitarian appeals with a population that has been complicit in the colonial project from the start, and is displaying signs of rapid moral and political degeneration, is a complete waste of time. There is no alternative but to forcibly break the blockade. Israel's apologists bleat about a few knives and sticks found aboard the hijacked vessels, but if it were not tactically suicidal, it would be perfectly reasonable and appropriate for any future flotilla to proceed fully armed.
Labels: colonialism, flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, propaganda, war crimes, zionism
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Interview with flotilla survivor posted by Richard Seymour
Kevin Ovenden explains:"At 4.25am the attack began. The warship had neared and commandoes were lowering themselves onto the deck from helicopters. There were two motorised dinghies, carrying 14-20 commandoes, on either side of the boat.
"It was clear they were armed – it was the equivalent to an SAS raid. They were all wearing paramilitary style balaclavas.
"The first soldiers landed on the roof of the ship, people responded instinctively with their bare hands and things you would find on a ship – pieces of wood and piping and so on. No sharp objects were used.
Two soldiers were overpowered and pushed below deck. They were disarmed to prevent further injury or death.
"The attack opened with percussion grenades.
"These don’t just make a noise but send shockwaves of heavy vibration. They were trying to create terror and panic.
"They also used rubber coated bullets in the earlier stage. But very quickly they turned to live rounds and we were taking heavy casualties.
"Niki Enchmarch was on the top deck standing next to a Turkish man who was holding a camera. An Israeli soldier shot him in the middle of the forehead. It blew off the back of his skull and he died.
"I was on the second deck. A man standing a metre in front of me was shot in the leg, the man to the right of me in the abdomen. There was pandemonium and terror.
"The youngest person on the ship was not yet a year old, the eldest 88. The crew included German and Egyptian parliamentarians, NGO workers and representatives from various charities. This is who Israel was targeting.
"While they opened fire we struggled in our defence and to limit the massacre.
"They attacked with lethal force to terrorise the movement for the end of the siege of Gaza and the wider movement of solidarity with Palestine. They used violence to instill terror for political ends. This is the definition of terrorism."
Labels: blockade, flotilla, free gaza, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, zionism
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Israel: marionette or schlemiel posted by Richard Seymour
Don't get me wrong. I think the attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla was an insane adventurist provocation that may turn out very badly for Israel. But there are two narratives developing in the media, and among the commentariat, in which Israel is either a bungling, Frank Spencer-style dolt, well-meaning but overly eager, or a sort of mannequin with no animus of its own, pushed into action exclusively by external forces. The former narrative is most popular. Note the ubiquity of the phrase "botched raid" in the reporting. As if Netanyahu's cabinet didn't send the notoriously violent Masada unit (whose crimes against humanity usually take place in the locus of one of Israel's political jails, or in the vicinity of a peaceful Palestinian protest) to storm the Mavi Marmara on purpose. As if the whole thing wasn't planned for weeks in advance, in detail, from inception to denouement. As if the probability of murders wasn't accounted for.The second narrative, the marionette tale, is more specialised fare, and it is perhaps telling that two of Israel's liberal "critics" should purvey it in different versions. Example one: Turkish Islamists used humanitarians as bait to "lure Israel into a trap, precisely because it knew how Israel would react, knew how Israel is destined and compelled, like a puppet on a string, to react the way it did." Example two: Israel had "no choice" but to murder the aid workers because they had "issued threat after threat against the IDF in the days building up to this morning's clash" and on the day used "iron bars and other weapons to assault the troops and giving the IDF carte blanche to respond with force against them". The aid workers compelled Israeli troops to kill them, gave them no options. Their every action was pre-determined from start to finish, and even if the results are regrettable, and even if Israel initiated the aggression and pulled the trigger, it bears no responsibility.
It has a venerable history, this idea. Golda Meir expressed it most pithily when she said that she would never forgive the Arabs for making Israel kill their children. In whatever variant it takes, it is surely revealing that the best defence (or least worst criticism) of Israel that such people can muster is that Israel is not a responsible agent.
Labels: flotilla, free gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, massacre, palestine, zionism
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Israel: the cost posted by Richard Seymour
In addition to being a singularly brutal act, Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla may well constitute its most reckless, idiotic gambit to date. It has done irreparable damage to its relationship with one of longest standing regional allies, resulting in Turkey's decision to send armed naval ships along with future aid convoys to the Gaza strip. It has led Egypt to re-open the Rafah crossing indefinitely, thus effectively breaking the blockade. The opinion of Quartet leaders, whose assistance in enforcing the barricades and normalising Israel's behaviour, would appear to have been shifted pragmatically against continuing with the blockade policy. Tony Blair, the grotesque representative of the Quartet in the Middle East, has allowed that Israel must surely find a "better" way to "help" the people of Gaza. Now, it seems that Israel has been forced to agree to release all foreigners kidnapped from the flotilla by its armed forces. I have to suppose that this attack was supposed to terrorise pro-Palestinian activists, deter aid to Gaza, and deliver a rather unsubtle slap in the face to the Turkish leadership for having taken to criticising some of Israel's policies, notably Cast Lead. It was intended, I guess, to remind people who was boss. It would appear to have achieved just the opposite, and given the people of Gaza a potential breathing space.Labels: blockade, flotilla, gaza, Israel, palestine, rafah, war crimes, zionism
Israelis celebrate state terrorism posted by Richard Seymour
Looks like a sizeable contingent of jubilant Israelis turned up outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv to party down after Israel's assault on the aid flotilla:How sad for them that they didn't have the opportunity to watch the assault from afar, perched on deckchairs, binoculars in hand, as some of their compatriots did during Cast Lead.
Labels: flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, zionism
Monday, May 31, 2010
Gaza Freedom Protest pictures posted by Richard Seymour
Some pictures from today's protest, which - given that people only have this morning to organise over it - was extraordinarily large, and raucous. There weren't very many coppers about, which is probably more due to its being a bank holiday than to the ConDem government's concern for civil liberties. I have to apologise for having failed to get a picture of the only Liberal Democrat I saw at the protest, that being Craig Murray. But he did deliver an incredible speech, second only to Lowkey in the reception he received from the crowd.Labels: blockade, flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, viva palestina, zionism