Martin ShawAll 57 minutes of my recent talk ‘The Problem of Genocide (In War and Terrorism)’ at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews, can be listened to here.
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Response to claims of ‘bias’ in genocide research
Posted: October 28, 2016 in anti-semitism and racism, genocide, Israel / PalestineTags: Israel Charny, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, Journal of Genocide Research
I have coauthored the following article:
Goldberg, Amos; Kehoe, Thomas J.; Moses, A. Dirk; Segal, Raz; Shaw, Martin; and Wolf, Gerhard (2016) “Israel Charny’s Attack on the Journal of Genocide Research and its Authors: A Response,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 10: Iss. 2: 3-22. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.10.2.1436. Available at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol10/iss2/4. View article here
Abstract: Israel Charny has published an article, “Holocaust Minimization, Anti-Israel Themes, and Antisemitism: Bias at the Journal of Genocide Research” (JGR) in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. His specific allegations are bundled together in a single sentence: “minimization of the Holocaust, delegitimization of the State of Israel, and repeat[ing] common themes of contemporary antisemitism”. We write as the authors of articles and contributors to the JGR attacked by Charny. His allegations are false and we reject them. This article shows how they are based on distortions, misquotations, and falsifications of our work.
We need to talk about Devon
Posted: September 23, 2016 in BritainTags: Devon, Devon County Council, East Devon Alliance, Independents
What do anti-Tory voters do where Conservatives have a more or less complete grip on all levels of government, despite only getting a minority of the votes? Where has Labour’s abandonment of its local voters – by failing to reform the electoral system, a failure that neither Corbyn nor Smith is really concerned about – left them? My account of the Devon situation is up on openDemocracy.
The Conservative hold on power in Britain is stronger than its majority of only 17 in the 650-seat House of Commons implies. Labour, the only alternative governing party, needs to gain around 100 seats even before the impact of the newly announced boundary changes is taken into account – or else forge an agreement with the Scottish National Party which looks no more possible than in 2015. As the Labour leadership contest draws to a close, the party’s road to power, whoever wins, is extremely difficult to forsee.
The Tory elective dictatorship rests on an almost complete dominance in southern England (outside large cities and university towns), which was also the principal area of support for Brexit. In the 2015 General Election, the Tores’ targeted wipeout of the Liberal Democrats across the South West delivered their unexpected majority. South and west of Bristol there is only one non-Tory MP (Labour’s Ben Bradshaw in Exeter). Even more than in the much-discussed case of Scotland under the SNP, the South West has become a virtual one-party state.
Some outside the region have speculated that a Liberal Democrat recovery might help enable a ‘progressive alliance’ as an alternative to Theresa May’s Tories. However a recovery to pre-2015 levels would not only be insufficient to offset Labour’s deficits in Scotland as elsewhere, but it ignores the extent to which the Tories have concentrated power to make it difficult for any opposition party to change the regional balance.
The situation in the region’s largest county, Devon, shows the depth of the problem. But at the same time, it is where local activists are devising new ways of doing politics that are challenging Tory control.
A microcosm of Tory power
The Tory monopoly in Devon is even more complete than in neighbouring Cornwall and Somerset. Conservatives have overwhelming control of local government (both unitary authorities, the County Council and almost all the districts). In the urban areas, the general election results were close and Labour (Plymouth, as well as Exeter where they recently consolidated their control of the City Council) and the Lib Dems (Torbay) remain in contention. But in the rural areas and small towns, the majority of the county, Tory dominance is almost absolute at every level – barring some town and parish councils where politics is less partisan.
Some rural areas have never had a non-Tory MP. The Tories had six of the seven non-urban Devon seats even in 2010. At least one council, East Devon, has been Tory since it was created in 1973. In semi-rural Devon, even an unlikely Lib Dem revival would make little difference. How then can things ever change?
Minority rule
It is important to understand that Conservative rule is based neither on majority support or extensive party membership. In 2015, the party gained under 45 per cent of all votes. Even in the seven non-urban seats, the 2015 increase in Tory support brought them only up to a 49 per cent average; in the urban seats they squeaked in on the same 37 per cent that gave them their national majority. Yet the non-Conservative majority are virtually unrepresented.
The Tory party is hollowed out and probably has far fewer members than Labour. The party could only take Torbay and North Devon from the Lib Dems with the aid of the notorious ‘battle bus’ activists, whose costs their Torbay agent, Alison Hernandez – like many others – failed to declare. Even after Channel 4 broke the scandal in 2016, Hernandez was narrowly elected as Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner, but refused to stand aside as she was investigated (the case was transferred to another force and is still pending).
As ever where one-party rule is so entrenched, corruption is not far away. Revelations like those in 2013, when East Devon Tory councillor Graham Brown was forced to resign after telling a journalist he could obtain planning permission in return for cash, fuel widespread cynicism about local power which make the ruling party vulnerable.
The flexibility of local Tory MPs over Brexit – ‘pro-Remain’ Neil Parish MP, Chair of the parliamentary Environment committee, quickly backed Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom in quick succession for the leadership and now describes Brexit as a ‘glorious opportunity’ – is likely to create a new constituency for opposition.
Failure of the opposition parties
The situation in which non-Tory votes largely fail to count is also because Labour and even Lib Dem leaders have failed to reform the electoral system for Westminster and councils. Tony Blair’s government never held the referendum on Proportional Representation to which its 1997 manifesto committed it. Current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has never campaigned for PR during his 33 years in Parliament, and together with his rival Owen Smith continues to fudge the issue in recent responses to the Electoral Reform Society.
Nick Clegg abandoned the Lib Dems’ longstanding committment to PR to obtain office in 2010, settling for the promise of a referendum on the weaker Alternative Vote without even securing government support for change. In the South West, the Lib Dems’ collective political suicide through the Coalition has broken the residual credibility of the first-past-the-post system.
Failing services
Because Tory dominance is so extensive, the party has largely taken voters for granted. Devon is suffering sharply from the general underfunding, Balkanisation and creeping part-privatisation of public services. The NHS trust running the flagship Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital has been forced from a healthy surplus into deep deficit. The NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, also in chronic deficit, tried to bar some patients from routine operations until obliged by public pressure to abandon its plans. Local Community Hospitals have lost beds and have been handed over to NHS Property Services, which can put up rents or, worse, sell off the sites.
Devon is a region of heavy immigration, mainly of retirees from other English regions (although with some international migrants, concentrated in its cities). As in the NHS, the gap between funding and need threatens adult social care. Child protection services are deemed inadequate. Since Tory Devon retains grammar schools, there are concerns about the effects of Theresa May’s proposed expansion of these schools on the excluded majority of children.
Phoney devolution
Devon Tories’ unaccountability is also evident in how they have embraced the half-baked, patchwork ‘devolution’ launched by George Osborne, which offers limited ‘additional’ money – while core government funding for local services is pared down or eliminated. Although Devon is a much larger and more populous county than neighbouring Cornwall which has a sole devolution deal, Devon is being forced into a merger with Somerset in a new brand, an affront to local identities, ‘Heart of the South West’.
The principal rationale for the linkage seems to be to create a larger base for the anachronistic and hyper-expensive Hinckley C nuclear project. Any benefits, if they materialise, will be overwhelmingly for the neighbouring county. The proposed devolution, with a hyper-aspirational prospectus which bears comparison to Vote Leave’s notorious offer, is being run through the Local Economic Partnership, dominated by unelected business leaders.
County election challenge
Devon County Council comes up for reelection in May 2017. In 2013, the Tories won 38 of the 62 seats on a mere 35 per cent of the vote. Under first past the post, the divided Lib Dems, Labour, Greens and Independents between them won only 20 seats for 41 per cent of the vote. (UKIP, which polled 23 per cent, won 4 seats.)
It is obvious that none of the three centre and left opposition parties can win a majority in 2017. The Lib Dems may keep some strongholds, but they are still picking themselves up from their 2015 battering, and elsewhere local activists are thin on the ground.
Despite a deep conflict between Bradshaw and pro-Corbyn Momentum activists, Labour will probably keep its Exeter seats, but is unlikely to win in the rural areas and small towns. Rural Labour parties have seen the Corbyn surge in membership but with modest benefits for local activism – a constituency party which has trebled its membership to 500 may still only get about 15 people to its meetings. Members vote for their preferred leader, but have too little scope to change things locally. Even if it advances, Labour is starting from a very low base, and the Greens are smaller.
New politics?
The 2015 elections saw important steps forward for a different kind of politics in semi-rural East Devon. From a standing start, Independent candidate Claire Wright leapfrogged UKIP, Labour and the Lib Dems to take second place in the East Devon parliamentary constituency of Hugo Swire, a ‘Cameron croney’ since knighted in his resignation honours. It was the only Independent second place anywhere in England, after a grassroots campaign typically ignored by the national press.
In parallel, the East Devon Alliance, formed in 2013 out of revulsion at the Brown case and East Devon’s pro-developer bias, put up over 30 district council candidates and succeeded, despite the simultaneous Tory general election victory, in taking ten seats from the Tories (this writer was an unsuccessful candidate). Independents led by EDA replaced the Lib Dems as the official opposition.
An investigative blog, East Devon Watch, has played an important informational role in the new politics, now matched by a South Devon Watch site. An Independent group successfully challenged for control of Buckfastleigh Town Council, in the Teinbridge district, at the same time as the better-known ‘flatpack democracy’ of Frome in Somerset. A loose Independent network is emerging across the South West, including Cornwall.
Although social media played an important part in these campaigns, many relied heavily on old-fashioned doorstep campaigning. A new campaign to influence the County Council elections, Devon United, is perhaps the first – certainly the most ambitious – initiative to be actually launched through social media. Its first meeting in October will be addressed by Paul Hilder, co-founder of OpenDemocracy.net and CrowdPac and former global campaigns director for Avaaz and Change.org.
I have written recently about the limitations of the national progressive crowdsourcing campaign organisation, 38 Degrees, during and after the Brexit vote. It remains to be seen what happens when crowdsourced politics meets local electioneering, and how the division of the anti-Tory vote will be overcome. But this initiative shows that the new politics is alive and kicking in a county where the old politics has so manifestly failed.
38 Degrees of Brexit
Posted: September 9, 2016 in BritainTags: 38 Degrees, Andrew Chadwick, David Babbs, DIY Brexit
The progressive crowdsourcing campaign organisation 38 Degrees, which was neutral during the EU referendum, has been carrying out a consultation on to devise the terms of a ‘people-powered Brexit’ (or ‘DIY Brexit’). In a debate on openDemocracy with 38 Degrees’ David Babbs, I have criticised the group’s original neutrality, its quick switch to an embrace of Brexit, and its choice to exclude the most progressive option for Brexit (maintaining freedom of movement in Europe for British citizens and workers as well as for EU citizens in the UK) from the scope of its consultation.
David Babbs of 38 Degrees has replied admitting some failings, and I have come back both to acknowledge his engagement with my criticisms and to suggest that the flaws have deeper roots in the way 38 Degrees and crowdsourced politics in general works.
In my reply I welcomed the fact that 38 Degrees had sent out additional questions on its DIY Brexit plan, including about freedom of movement, partly in response to my criticisms. I now note that these are not included in the preliminary results of the consultation, suggesting that not enough members backed them – although the detailed voting results are not given.
UPDATE 4.11.16 – HOWEVER, 38 Degrees still do not include freedom of movement/membership of the Single Market in their DIY Brexit, and are now urging members to canvass their MPs for a flawed plan which excludes the most progressive options.
Meanwhile, I’ve come across this academic verdict which expands my analysis of how 38 Degrees’ core team leads: ‘The 38 Degrees central staff perform important filtering and gatekeeping roles, and their influence over the design of actions enables them to exercise significant power. … The central team uses its power to provide structure to the inchoate, individualised and often affective responses of the members to matters of public concern. Given the diversity of campaigns.’ (Andrew Chadwick and James Dennis, ‘Social Media, Professional Media and Mobilisation in Contemporary Britain: Explaining the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Citizens’ Movement 38 Degrees’, Political Studies 2016, 1-19. DOI: 10.1177/0032321716631350)
Chadwick and Dennis quote Paolo Gerbaudo: ‘the essence of digitally mediated activism is “choreographical leadership”, which he says relies on “scene-setting” and “scripting” by “influential Facebook admins and activist tweeps”. They conclude: ’38 Degrees’ central staff might be seen as ‘choreographers’ who set the scene by organising and struc- turing action while trying to minimise their influence on the wills of individual members.’
Corbyn’s Brexit failure, Labour’s crisis
Posted: August 4, 2016 in BritainTags: Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Owen Smith
Labour’s crisis has become existential. Jeremy Corbyn’s election last year galvanised an expanded membership to participate in the party’s affairs, but has had only a very modest wider impact. Although the sabotage of some on Labour’s right is partly to blame, Corbyn has not responded well to the huge challenges of leading the party. I see this failure as both political (his narrow leftist politics – conservative with a small ‘c’) and personal (that he is not really a leader has become obvious even to some of his friends).
Given the failure of the alternative candidates, I supported his election in 2015, but noted at the time that the only way he – or any other leader – could win would be to move out of Labour’s comfort zone. I have to say that Corbyn has dismally failed to do so, and his unwillingness to campaign in the media against Brexit confirmed my fear that he is incapable of facing up to the huge constitutional challenges which currently dominate UK politics. However many tens of thousands of new supporters he brings into the Labour Party, ‘workers’s rights’, however necessary in themselves, are no answer to these issues.
A month ago I published the article below on openDemocracy (which I failed to post on this blog at the time). I don’t have too much to add, except to note that that Theresa May, with her ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and authoritarian instincts, has committed herself to the anti-immigration interpretation of the Brexit vote. As I warned in June, ‘the temptation to capitalise electorally on the xenophobia of the Leave campaign – rather as Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP capitalised on the rather different nationalism of the Scottish referendum – will be strong.’ The Tories really have little else to rely on, as their economic credibility is in shreds, and they need to win big before the full mess of Brexit is revealed.
This situation represents an extraordinary danger for Labour (and for the progressive side of British politics), as divided and incoherent it could collapse under a nationalist Tory tide. But it is also an opportunity to revive its position, if (a) the party can hang together and (b) it can formulate a coherent response to Brexit, xenophobia and the free movement of labour. I have come to the conclusion that it can do neither under Corbyn.
As I argued after the 2015 election, Labour faces an almost impossible challenge under any leader, and Labour’s renewal must be about more than leadership. However the current choice matters. I am waiting to be convinced that Owen Smith can do better: his best stab so far seems to be here.
Labour must fight for our European rights
Neither Corbyn nor his opponents have got the response to the crisis right. 4 July 2016
It is becoming clear that Labour faces a potentially fatal dilemma over its response to the Brexit vote, and above all to the question of the free movement of people across borders. The deadly standoff between Jeremy Corbyn and the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party is supposed to be about this issue, but sadly neither side offers a clear way forward.
Out of this hour of abject Tory failure will either come a prime minister who supports Brexit (Michael Gove or Andrea Leadsom) or more likely one who failed to campaign against it and opposes the European Convention on Human Rights (Theresa May). There is a huge opportunity for Labour if it does what oppositions should do: oppose.
The 48 per cent who voted to stay in the EU – more if we count disillusioned Leavers – are looking for leadership. The last thing they want is a precipitate triggering of Article 50, as Jeremy Corbyn suggested. They want Parliament to do its job and secure the best European relationship possible.
The free movement dilemma
Labour has to get free movement right or face probably critical losses among either Remainers or Leavers – or both.
If it does not accept the implication of Leave’s success that free movement should be restricted, at least in respect of incoming labour, Labour risks alienating the minority (37 per cent according to the Ashworth poll) of its current supporters who backed Brexit – as well as driving ex-Labour voters in its heartlands even more firmly towards UKIP.
However by failing to support free movement, Labour risks alienating the majority (63 per cent) of its current voting base and also the centrist voters – repelled by Tory irresponsibility over the referendum – who could give it the boost it needs to return it to power. A suddenly reinvigorated Liberal Democrats stand ready to siphon off Labour’s support in this direction.
Corbyn’s weak support for Remain
Corbyn failed during the campaign, letting down the very people who voted him in. My charge sheet would be as follows:
- He failed to articulate a broad internationalist case for the European Union, restricting his support mainly to the narrow ground of ‘workers’ rights’.
- He presented the threat in terms of how the Tories would take advantage of Brexit to get rid of EU-guaranteed rights like maternity leave, not in terms of the very clear and present threat of Brexit itself to the free movement of people – one of the most precious rights of all for UK workers, students, pensioners and others, as well as for other EU citizens.
- He failed to react strongly to the outrageous racism of the official Leave campaign as well as UKIP. Surely despite his ambivalence over the EU, he could have led on this.
- He avoided a prominent place in the TV coverage of the referendum, failing to get major interviews (except for a late one on Sky) or a role in one of the big debates. He simply did not lead in the mass media, which is where the crucial exchanges were happening, but preferred to speak to Labour rallies.
- After the results, he was too quick to accept Brexit and urge the triggering of Article 50, instead of pressing for time for Parliament to define what the UK needs to aim for in negotiations with the EU.
Corbyn’s grassroot supporters – the Labour members and supporters who voted him in – were strongly for Remain and many are genuinely disoriented by his failure. John McDonnell is widely perceived to have performed better, but his recent comment that free movement is over is also ringing alarm bells.
A general Labour failure
This may seem to offer the way forward for the ‘coup’ now being organised against Corbyn, but he has not been the only one to let Labour down. There were some stirring Labour performances, for example by Sadiq Khan and Frances O’Grady against Boris Johnson and co. on ITV. But Labour often came over weakly – as in the unconfident and uninspiring contribution of new leadership aspirant Angela Eagle – thereby allowing others to make a stronger case.
The Labour IN campaign was drab and directed too much at trade union activists, not the wider public. Deputy leader Tom Watson was virtually invisible. Former deputy leader Harriet Harman trailed David Cameron almost as closely as the unctuous Gisela Stuart trailed Boris Johnson, failing to make a strong independent case.
In a revealing moment, Harman joked with Cameron about Tory responsibility for the NHS crisis, instead of pressing the point home in a way that would have underlined the falsity of Leave’s claim to give £350 million a weak to the NHS.
Overall, Labour – Corbyn and others – may have made enough noise to reinforce the inclination of most existing Labour voters to back Remain. Certainly the fact that SNP voters split for Remain by an almost identical 64:36, despite a much more coherent campaign, suggests that Labour’s weakness did not lose a lot of votes.
However we shall never know whether a strong, assertive, united Labour campaign might have swung more voters Remain’s way.
The PLP appeases UKIP voters
Worst of all, in the aftermath of the vote, Labour politicians have fallen over themselves to imply that we need restrictions on migration, which would mean abandoning the free movement of people. It is supremely ironic that many Blairite and Brownite MPs, who criticise Corbyn for failing to reach out to the middle ground, seem mainly concerned with protecting the UKIP flank.
Leading figures across the board appear to be rushing to appease anti-migrant ex-Labour voters, but offer little to the upset, frustrated and angry 48 per cent. As anyone who has talked to Remainers knows, there are many who have previously voted Tory and Lib Dem who are desperate for leadership.
This is probably the first opportunity since Blair’s disastrous Iraq venture fractured Labour’s support for Labour to reconstruct the alliance of left and centre which Blairites reminisce about. Many Remainers are so eager for someone to rally around that any Labour leader – even Corbyn – who stepped up would command attention. It is incredible that Labour should hand this opportunity to the Lib Dems.
Putting a positive case to Leave voters
Labour does need, of course, to address its Leave voters and ex-voters, especially in the North, Midlands and Wales. But as the assassinated MP Jo Cox knew, it will not do this in a race to the bottom which UKIP will always win. Labour has a real UKIP problem, but it will deal with it by fighting UKIP, not following it.
Labour needs to show that it has real answers to Leavers’ concerns. It needs to say that migration is not a numbers game, but about real people with families. It needs to put forward strong proposals for extra NHS, school, housing and other resources for communities most affected by immigration (Corbyn rightly made the point that the Tories had cut the special funding for these communities, but the case needs to be made strongly and positively).
Labour needs also to point out to non-racist Leavers, and even soft racists, the shocking racist abuse and violence that the Tory and UKIP Leave campaigns have created.
Solving the Labour crisis
It is clear that in our first-past-the post electoral system, Labour needs to remain a coalition of left and centre-left if it is to ever win an election again. A split would let the Tories off the serious hook on which they have impaled themselves and could wreck Labour for decades – or even for good.
It would be grossly irresponsible of either Corbyn and his supporters or the PLP majority not to look for genuine compromise, possibly along the lines of the deal apparently discussed last week. Labour’s leader cannot lose most of his MPs, but nor can the MPs afford to alienate the hundreds of thousands of new members and supporters who will be the key to Labour’s revival as a party.
The EU referendum and its aftermath has shown that Corbyn is a weak leader, but it has also shown much of the PLP in a poor light. Labour needs to find a way of moving on without splitting, so that it can defend all that is best in our European Union membership as a Conservative government with a very shaky majority begins to deal with the mess that its leaders – Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Gove and May – have created.
Why I’m not discussing genocide in Jerusalem
Posted: June 24, 2016 in anti-semitism and racism, Israel / PalestineTags: genocide, INOGS, International Network of Genocide Scholars, Israel Charny, Jerusalem
New on openDemocracy
The International Network of Genocide Scholars (INOGS) is holding a conference in Jerusalem this weekend. The initiative has attracted an attack by Israel Charny in the Jerusalem Post under the lurid heading, ‘Genocide scholars who minimize the Holocaust – and some who are coming to town’. This summarised his article published in the pseudo-academic Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, reporting a flawed survey of his friends and acquaintances interested in genocide about their attitudes to the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR), the premier journal in the field which is sponsored by INOGS.
Charny charges JGR and the authors of seven articles (including this writer) with ‘minimization of the Holocaust, delegitimization of the State of Israel, and repeat[ing] common themes of contemporary antisemitism’, and then reports how many of his respondents agreed with each of these charges in relation to each of the papers and the journal as a whole. The exercise is a travesty of social research because Charny personally selected the participants, prejudiced the survey by feeding them his own views and distorted summaries of the papers (rather than the papers themselves or their abstracts), and by using loaded terms like ‘Holocaust minimisation’ and above all ‘antisemitism’.
The ‘boycott’ petition against the conference
At the same time, however, for simply holding the conference in Jerusalem INOGS has come under fire from 270 academics and others who have signed a petition calling on it to respect the academic boycott of Israel, called by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The petition points to the ‘hypocrisy’ of having the conference in Israel at a time when Israel’s actions are ‘increasingly being viewed through lenses of ethnic cleansing and genocide linked to settler colonialism’, as well as calling the location ‘Jerusalem, Israel’, when the city’s eastern part has been illegally annexed.
The irony of the petition’s first charge is that this is also the core reason why Charny objects to JGR. Seeing Zionism romantically as a ‘heroic nationalism’ rooted solely in Jewish victimisation, he is incensed by the mere suggestion that Israel’s founding through the removal of most of Palestine’s Arab population could be analysed through a ‘genocide’ lens. I proposed this idea in a 2010 debate in JGR following a fuller article in the Journal of Holy Land Studies (the paper was earlier presented at an INOGS conference). It was not an original insight: JGR’s most heavily downloaded paper is one by Patrick Wolfe which, inter alia, linked the Israeli case to the wider problem of genocide in settler colonialism.
It typifies Charny’s intellectual sloppiness that he doesn’t seem to have read my original article before condemning me, but it also reflects poorly on the petition organisers that they don’t seem to have been aware of INOGS and JGR’s pioneering roles in promoting discussion of colonial genocide and broaching the subject (very sensitive because of the twin centrality of the Holocaust to genocide studies and to much Jewish identity) of the genocidal dimenstions of the Nakba. Nor do they seem to have picked up on the fact that INOGS was founded partly because of dissatisfaction with the way in which the existing, US-based International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) had been politicised by pro-Israeli scholars, most notoriously in a 2006 resolution echoing Israeli propaganda charges that then-President Ahmadinejad of Iran was threatening a new genocide against Jews.
INOGS’ opposition to politicising genocide studies
I left IAGS after that (although I should mention that in recent years a new, younger leadership has avoided further provocations of this kind). I supported, and still support, INOGS’s opposing stance that it is not helpful for the disciiplinary organisations of academics in a sensitive field like genocide to take political positions on what counts as genocide or a threat of genocide. All scholars in the genocide field have moral commitments, of course, and we should expect individuals to take political positions. But if we are to have professional communities which promote academic rigour and serious scholarly debate on the cases of genocide, then these cases cannot be foreclosed by majority votes on a website.
It is in this spirit, I assume, that my friend Juergen Zimmerer, the INOGS President, and other colleagues on its board have approached the Jerusalem conference. Israel is, naturally, one of the major countries in which the Holocaust is studied and there are key intellectual debates, including the relationship of Holocaust to wider study of genocide (the latter category is subversive in Israel since Holocaust-centrism is hegemonic) and indeed about how the Holocaust itself should be studied, broached in JGR, which it is especially appropriate to take forward in an Israeli setting. There are, after all, many serious genocide scholars in Israel, such as the veteran historian Yehuda Bauer who defended the conference in the Jerusalem Post, as well as ideologues like Charny.
The academic boycott of Israel
Thus far, I am sympathetic to the ambitions for this conference. Its programme is impressive. My absence, however, is not accidental. It is one thing to avoid political commitments, as INOGS has managed to do up to now. It is another, when holding an event in a site of conflict, to accept the position advocated by one side and to reject the position adopted by the other. Whether INOGS likes it or not, the academic boycott of Israel is part of this conflict. The boycott is not directed at individual scholars: many academics who support the boycott regularly have contact with Israeli scholars. It is directed at universities as Israeli institutions, which like many others are to a greater or lesser extent complicit in the oppression of Palestinians, as my late colleague Stan Cohen argued in a memorable paper (Hebrew here).
I don’t criticise the specific Israeli institutions which have sponsored the conference, which may well be acting laudibly within the oppressive Israeli climate of which Charny’s attacks are a symptom. It is significant that a West Bank-based institution is also among the sponsors, and Al Quds University was apparently approached to co-host but declined. There is a plenary roundtable, What Does It Mean to Study the Holocaust and Genocide in Israel/Palestine, A Site of Conflict?, in which one of the speakers is Palestinian, as well as other occasions to reflect on Israel-Palestine issues. This will probably a stimulating gathering, and at one level I am sorry to be missing it.
However I don’t see these as good enough reasons to avoid the boycott question. The boycott as a whole (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions, BDS, to give it its proper name) is emerging to the centre of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It offers Palestinians the means of applying peaceful international pressure to Israel to reach an equitable settlement, as an alternative to the violence of Hamas and others. It has been the focus of a huge official and unofficial Israeli counteroffensive, including bans on BDS campaigns in the USA, which has smeared boycotters as antisemitic.
It was unnecessary for INOGS to endorse the boycott; it could clearly have simply avoided the whole issue, in line with its previous position, by holding its conference somewhere else. But by holding a conference in Jerusalem, INOGS has taken a position against the boycott, and it is not one I can support.
I would have respected INOGS’ board more if it had responded publicly to the criticisms of the boycotters, and indeed I made several attempts to encourage it to articulate its position, so that this debate, instead of being brought together in this piece, would have taken place between INOGS and those academics who thought it should not go to Jerusalem.
There is a further irony in that INOGS and JGR have been smeared as ‘delegitimising the State of Israel’, and even antisemitic, despite this decision. No doubt the Charnys of this world will be quick to heap further ignominy on me for the views I am expressing, and will throw in INOGS for good measure.
‘Delegitimising’ Israel
I explained my decision to support the boycott at the time of Israel’s last large-scale massacres in Gaza in 2014, and there is no need to repeat all the arguments here. I will make clear, however, in the light of recent controversies in the UK, that my position on Israel-Palestine has not fundamentally changed since I was commissioned to write on it in 2009 (after the first Gaza massacres) by the editor of Democratiya, Alan Johnson. (Charny should note that Johnson now works for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, BICOM, and was never one to publish an antisemitic post.)
Any reader of these articles will see that I do not oppose the existence of the State of Israel. That is also true of my academic writing referred to above. Charny is unable to engage with the Palestinian genocide proposition (or even Ilan Pappe’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ perspective) in conceptual or historical terms, but only through the starkly political lens of the ‘delegitimisation’ of the state. Yet as Jonathan Freedland has argued, ‘As for the notion that Israel’s right to exist is voided by the fact that it was born in what Palestinians mourn as the Naqba [sic] – their dispossession in 1948 – one does not have to be in denial of that fact to point out that the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and countless others were hardly born through acts of immaculate conception. Those nations were forged in great bloodshed.’
However the corollary of recognising that there is no necessary connection between the crimes of Israel’s foundation and its right to exist today is that the Nakba deserves the same academic attention as the other cases that Freedland mentions, which are increasingly discussed in the colonial genocide literature that JGR has done so much to develop. If research on Israel-Palestine is to advance, it will have to overcome the idea that deep historical criticism of Israel necessarily implies the dismantling of its state and society.
The reason why we have not got to this ‘normal’ stage is Israel’s continuous expansion in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which even more than its failure to address historic Palestinian grievances means that Israel itself has not achieved a stable state. The world has recognised Israel within its 1948 borders, but Israel itself is unsatisfied with these borders. Its internationally illegitimate expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, endorsed in some degree by all mainstream parties in the Knesset, makes it impossible to unequivocally endorse the state.
Conceptual and normative aspects of forced removal
At the heart of my conceptual position is the proposition that the forced removal of populations is one of the key means through which genocide, the destruction of population groups and societies, is carried out. Corresponding to this, I take a normative position: whole groups and societies should not be forcibly uprooted.
I apply this principle retrospectively to the forced removal of the majority of Palestinians from Israeli territory in 1948, a removal which was partially deliberate at the time and wholly deliberate in the Israeli refusal to allow Palestinians to return after the war.
I apply this prospectively to any proposal for the forced removal of the Jewish population of Israel, and I recognise that the Jewish population needs a state in which it has confidence to protect it. A stable state structure in Israel-Palestine, whether one state or two, needs Jewish as well as Palestinian consent.
However I also apply this principle now to the ongoing forced removal of the Palestinian population from their homes in many parts of the Occupied Territories, and their replacement by Jewish settlers.
Jerusalem: where ‘genocide’ questions are still live
Jerusalem is not just a site of ‘conflict’, in the euphemistic terminology of the INOGS conference programme. It is a site of what many, almost as euphemistically, call ‘ethnic cleansing’, as Palestinians are forced out of their longstanding homes in the occupied east of the city. It is a site in which questions of ‘genocide’, the deliberate destruction of communities, are all too live.
‘Genocide’, wrote Raphael Lemkin, ‘has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization by the oppressor’s own nationals.’
It is true that current dispossession is piecemeal, often legal in the Israeli understanding (although Israel’s domestic law does not genuinely apply when the occupation is illegal under international law), and mostly accompanied by only localised coercion or violence. In these senses it is different from the wholesale removal of a large population, without a shred of legality and with extensive violence, which occurred in 1948.
However it seems to me unarguable that the present dispossession is an extension of the historic destruction of Palestinian society. In the midst of this crisis, genocide scholars cannot ignore the call for boycotting Israel which comes, not from those ‘singling out’ or ‘demonising’ Israel (as BDS’s critics claim), let alone from antisemites, but from those Palestinian organisations which see it as a more potent weapon for justice than rockets, bombs or knives which harm innocent civilians.
This is why I am not in Jerusalem.
BREXIT: The R is for Racism
Posted: June 10, 2016 in Britain, racismTags: Boris Johnson, Brexit, racism
My latest post on openDemocracy: If the B in Brexit stands for Boris and his overweening ambition, the R is for Racism, the method through which Vote Leave aims to achieve the political upset of the century.
In ITV’s two-hour debate, Johnson waffled on about democracy and an ‘Australian-style points system’, his latest migration-management wheeze (courtesy, like so much else, of Nigel Farage).
But down in the engine room of Vote Leave, they are not bothered about debate. Earlier the same evening, they mounted another 5-minute broadcast that would have made Goebbels proud. An old British woman, in tears, was forced to wait in A&E while anonymous aliens edged ahead. A huge number of additional sundry foreigners, including 78 million Turks, were on their way. ‘NHS” flashed across the map of the UK.
Vote Leave’s propaganda comes from the same stable as that Tory classic from 1964, ‘If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour’. But this is the 21st Century, so Leave doesn’t racially insult Turks and Albanians. In any case, the audience, Sun and Star readers, don’t need that. As always with racism, a heavy hint is quite sufficient.
What is this nasty drivel doing on our public television? Vote Leave was made the official ‘Out’ campaign, elbowing out Farage, because mainstream Tories like Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and Johnson were in charge.
Now we know that why. UKIP would have been scared to go so low and dirty for fear of the backlash. But Vote Leave has cabinet backing: it can act with impunity.
Vote Leave is Vote Lie. And not just any old lie: a big racist one. If David Cameron had any principles, he’d tell the Brexit ministers to resign. If broadcasters didn’t fear the Brexiteers deciding their funding, they would surely protest. But Leave are going to get away with it.
Like Trump, Johnson has now alienated his party’s establishment, which is lining up to attack him. He can only come to power by stirring up base racism in the electorate – and in the ancient Tory membership who will choose our next ruler.
