THE WAR IN CONTEXT:: Iraq, the War on Terrorism, and the Middle East Conflict

Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives

We must speak out
By John Berger, The Guardian, December 14, 2006

Today I am supporting a world-wide appeal to teachers, intellectuals and artists to join the cultural boycott of the state of Israel, as called for by over a hundred Palestinian academics and artists, and - very importantly - also by a number of Israeli public figures, who outspokenly oppose their country's illegal occupation of the Palestine territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Their call, printed in the Guardian today, can be read here. A full list of signatories can be found here.

The boycott is an active protest against two forms of exclusion which have persisted, despite many other forms of protestations, for over 60 years - for almost three generations. During this period the state of Israel has consistently excluded itself from any international obligation to heed UN resolutions or the judgement of any international court. To date, it has defied 246 Security Council Resolutions.

As a direct consequence seven million Palestinians have been excluded from the right to live as they wish on land internationally acknowledged to be theirs; and now increasingly, with every week that passes, they are being excluded from their right to any future at all as a nation. As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way. [complete article]

Comment -- While people such as Michael Kinsley struggle to understand why Israel is being accused of applying a discriminatory system worse than apartheid, he and others who think like him might ask themselves this: Which is the worse offence? To hear the words "Israel" and "apartheid" linked in the same sentence, or, in an area smaller than Delaware, to have ones freedom of movement obstructed at over 500 locations for no other reason than that one is a Palestinian?

The call from John Berger (and co-signatories of this letter) to impose a cultural boycott on Israel will draw support from across Europe and much of the world, yet it is likely to fall on deaf ears in the United States. It will fall on deaf ears firstly because the call will dutifully be ignored by the media. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it will be ignored because the treatment of the Palestinians does not resonate clearly with parallels in the American experience.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 1970's and '80's in the U.S. can be seen in part, as an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement. Any liberal-minded American couldn't fail to see the parallels between the segregated South and the treatment of blacks in apartheid South Africa. Indeed, any indifference among white Americans to the plight of black South Africans carried with it the suggestion of a lacklustre concern about the rights of African Americans.

In contrast, liberals such as Michael Kinsley run little risk of being criticized for showing a callous disregard about the injustices resulting from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Why? Because his indifference does not translate into a recognizable disregard for a parallel, highly visible, and sizeable American minority.

Kinsley expresses a sentiment shared by many Americans and Israelis when he writes that:

...[after sixty years,] the one full new idea in the Israel-Arab conflict came from Ariel Sharon, of all people. This oafish former general, who supervised the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon back in 1982, as prime minister more recently took up the philosophy in that Robert Frost poem: "Good fences make good neighbors." Rather than wait a few million years for evolution to purge Israelis and Arabs of their animosity, just keep them apart with a fence or a wall and related rules. Yes, of course, the walls and the rules favored Israel and were a far greater burden on Arabs than Israelis. But that is the kind of thing you can negotiate.

But on the contrary, the wall (or "security fence") is by its very nature non-negotiable. It follows a unilaterally chosen path, folding Jewish settlements into an expanded Israel as it physically and metaphorically attempts to shut out "the Palestinian problem." This problem, Kinsley and others would have us believe, has its roots not in the theft of property, the appropriation of land, and the abuse of human rights, but in an intractable animosity between Jews and Arabs. To pursue a just resolution is wishful thinking. The best solution is separation (but don't mention words like "apartheid" or "ethnic cleansing").

Just as many Israelis still hope they can simply wall themselves off from unfriendly neighbors and an unsolvable conflict, many Americans would just as gladly shut out the Middle East and much of a world fraught with seemingly incomprehensible and intractable problems.

It doesn't work. We neither are nor can become truly self-sufficient. Our fate is inseparable from the fate of a world we have done as much to shape as it has done to provoke our fear.