In the Israel/Palestine debate, there’s a trap that both sides fall into, repeatedly – and I’m no exception – which makes it more of a mud-slinging event than a discussion.  In a nutshell, the trap is claiming the other side has a hidden agenda.

I propose we all try to avoid this trap, for everyone’s sake.  To make that possible, let’s take a quick look at what it is, and how to avoid it.

The ‘what’

The trap takes many forms.  A typical way it looks when me and other lefties fall into it is “you’re only saying that to distract from the occupation and help Israel maintain it.”  A typical right-wing version is “you’re only saying that to de-legitimize Israel and lead to its destruction.”

It may be right, or they may actually believe what they’re saying.  Either way, what it does to the debate is to change the subject.  Worse still, it’s an attack on the person you’re debating, which puts them on the defensive, and that’s usually enough to make sure they won’t change their mind even a tiny bit.  In the end, we all get angry and shit all over each other and nobody’s any wiser for it.

The ‘how’

One way to avoid the trap is to just disengage when someone makes a dangerous claim.  Just say “okay, bye.”  I don’t believe in doing that, but it’s a way.

Another way is to re-state your position and demand a response to it.

Let’s say I claim there’s apartheid in the West Bank; let’s also say you think I’m wrong and that what I’m saying endangers human lives.  What you should do is explain why you think there isn’t apartheid, and/or demand that I explain my outrageous claim.  There’s a chance I’ll change my mind, or at least that other people will learn to see things your way from watching the discussion unfold.  If you just call me a terrorist, I’ll think you’re crazy, and I’ll still believe – and tell people – that there’s an apartheid regime on the West Bank.

It’s the same the other way around.  Let’s say someone – call her Jane – attacks International Solidarity Movement activists, claiming they’re agents provocateurs and terrorists; let’s also say that you believe they’re truly working to make the world a better place.  Explain why you believe what they’re doing is good, and demand that Jane explain her accusation.  Don’t fall into the trap of accusing her of distracting from the point – even if what she’s doing is exactly falling into the trap.  Also don’t fall into the trap of defending their motivations.  Just focus on what’s actually going on.

Now let’s say you posted something about some protest you support, and Jane fell into the trap, exactly like I just described. You can engage her, even though what she’s doing is counterproductive and distracts from your original point.  It’s still better than slinging mud right back at her.  Or you can just refuse to be side-tracked, explain (again) why you support the protest, and ask her if she has anything to say about the actual issue.

Finally, you can always link to this post and ask the person you’re debating to read it.  It’s short, and here’s a shortlink you can use: http://wp.me/p1gOTH-y6

Chris Hedges: Murder is not an Anomaly in War (TruthDig)

A Hebrew translation, along with some discussion, is available over at Idan Landau’s blog (his post alerted me to the existence of this piece. H/t.)

Meta comment: I haven’t been posting lately – these link posts don’t count – not for lack of ideas or words, but mainly because I’m spending a very big chunk of my waking hours in (academic) writing and having a hard time finding the time to properly formulate blog posts. I hope and assume that I’ll get posting again at some point soon, but no promises.

I just talked with my mother about a certain Israeli-Palestinians protest movement which people she knows are involved in but she has decided not to take part in. Like many such discussions, it came down to a general question of what the goal of non-violent protest is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be about changing the minds of the Israeli public? Is it about informing people about wrongs being done in their name? Is it about giving the world an alternative to the official narrative? Is it just about generally getting the authorities to overreact so as to draw attention to their abusive behavior?

I think this is an important debate to have, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of actually doing something. My thinking in the past months has been that one very important goal is indeed re-education of anyone who’s willing to listen. Israelis are taught that we have a highly moral army used only for defense; it took me years to realize how inaccurate that is. Most people accept the occupation as a necessary evil without knowing quite how ridiculous, abusive and petty it has become. A lot can be achieved by just making sure concrete, current examples of this are out there. Many who accept the occupation might change their mind once they realize what it has made Israel become.

But there are problems with focussing on the ills of the occupation. First of all, it’s a hard thing to sustain. Following these abuses eventually just gets you down. What’s worse, many Israelis are disinclined to believe it when lefties report this kind of thing. They are distrustful and take us for dupes under hostile foreign influence. So if any change is to happen, the left certainly has to do a better job of creating public debate, and we have to be more convincing to average Israeli nationalists.

I don’t know. What do you think? Comments are open.

Image via Wikipedia

This excellent TED talk goes along the lines of what I’ve been thinking lately regarding Israeli politics and Israel/Palestine politics. Talking to the other sides is crucial in all conflicts, on whatever scale, internal or external — in a school, in a town, in a state, or between states. “Otherizing”, as Lesser calls it, is the seed of continued conflict and violence.

The Enlightenment achieved many things, some good, some bad. About a year ago, in a conversation, I realized that one of the good things was eliminating the role of religion in public discourse and policy in Europe. One of the bad things, perhaps, is stigmatizing spirituality in the personal sphere, an unfortunate side-effect of its elimination from the public sphere.

You see, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with people having faith in something supernatural, so long as they know their belief is their own business. In Israel, the Jewish religious establishment tied in with the state has never internalized the Enlightenment. The establishment, and the mainstream Judaism to which the secular majority belongs (together with some of the orthodox minorities) rejects the Enlightenment outright, denouncing it as “Hellenizing” and foreign.¹

This is no accident, of course, as religion provides some of the classic arguments for the Zionist project and the resulting existence of the state. And indeed, when one views Israel through a naive Judeochristian lens, it’s really pretty amazing that a Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem exists today. This fact, particularly in isolation, has tremendous emotional power, and the state clearly cannot afford to shut up about that kind of thing.

The problem is that religion-oriented political discourse has been losing currency in the developed world for a couple of centuries now. In most of Europe it’s a thing of wacky backwards foreigners and the crazy past. That the United States re-elected George W. Bush seven years ago is evidence that in America this is still a divisive issue.

Israel is swimming backwards in this current. Where the founding generation’s Judaism was a secular nationalism with some religious symbols, religion has been creeping into politics for decades. In recent months it’s been getting positively scary. As such, it’s probably too much to hope that Israel will realize sometime soon that in today’s world, you sound like a crazy person when you claim the Bible as an authority in your favor in a dispute over land.²

And as long as hasbara goes back and forth from sounding like an attempt to change the subject to sounding like the politics of a time predating the invention of the airplane, Israel will not convince the world of anything.

I remember there used to be a load of public outcry amongst the Israeli secular and reform regarding religious coercion (kfiya datit). What ever happened to that? Is that simply a battle we’ve already lost?

Footnotes

1. Ironically, certain well-known European fascists called the Enlightenment a Jewish plot. All nationalist projects need an outside force to associate universalism and humanism with, so that they may be rejected. One cannot see all human beings as equal and at the same time consider one’s own nation especially important.
2. Consciously or not, this is using an excuse that has little direct bearing on most people’s current reality but is used to justify gross injustice towards large groups of people. As such, it is morally reprehensible and should be rejected outright.