If Israel’s war on Gaza was a rugby match…

If Israel’s war on Gaza was a rugby match, it would be like the All Blacks playing a small provincial team from one of the poorer Pacific Islands – after kidnapping them, rendering them to New Zealand, and forcing them to play at gunpoint. This small, amateur provincial team would have had no equipment or fields to train on for the past few years, the players would be malnourished, and they would have no coaches, no reserves, no uniforms, and no team doctor. During the enforced game, the All Blacks would be allowed sixteen players, while the provincial team would be allowed five. The referee and linesmen would all be former All Black coaches, and the match would be played in Auckland: while there would be a small number of Pacific supporters in the crowd, most of the people watching would be cheering on the All Blacks. The referee would allow the All Blacks to spear tackle the opposition players and ruck them viciously when they were on the ground; and the all-too frequent punches thrown by All Black players would be overlooked. However, if one of the unfortunate provincial Islander players objected to the brutality and punched an All Black in retaliation, all sixteen All Blacks would wade in and beat the provincial players to a bloody pulp. The referee would then send off the provincial player who threw the first punch. The All Black supporters would cheer the match despite its gross unevenness, and would happily assert that its one-sided outcome was an important victory nonetheless. The other test-playing nations would applaud the All Black’s victory and defend the right of their players to fight back against uncivilized players from a lesser nation. The nation’s sports writers would also focus their analysis on the ill-disciplined behavior of the opposition, highlighting their propensity to hit out when roughed up a little, and calling on the IRB to ban them all from competitive rugby for life.

Of course, the war in Gaza is much more uneven than this absurd scenario. Israel is a nuclear armed state, and has one of the most powerful military machines in the world; it has a military advantage over Gaza that’s probably more like several hundred to one. The Israeli air force has complete air superiority and can bomb anywhere in Gaza, at any time, and as many times as they like – all with powerful laser-guided bombs of immense destructive power. They could in fact, drop a nuclear bomb on them if they wanted to (this is how secure Israel is in contrast to Gaza). They also have a massive, highly trained and well equipped military force kitted out with every bit of modern weaponry. And they surround Gaza on all sides, able to attack from all directions at once. In addition, they have had the tiny enclave of Gaza under blockade for years in order to prevent any major importation of weapons, and have a state-of-the-art missile defence system. Externally, Israel is backed by the United States, the most powerful military in the world, a nation which provides them with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and economic assistance every year. Partly as a consequence, most states in Europe and the world tacitly and openly support Israel’s actions against Gaza. Israel also has a global network of publicists and media officers to influence public opinion and shape global coverage of the conflict. Perhaps most importantly, previous wars have shown that Israel can smash and pulverize the tiny, impoverished territory of Gaza without any serious political or economic consequences; they can get away with any amount of disproportionate violence against the Palestinians.

In contrast, facing one of the most powerful militaries in the world, a few thousand Gaza militants have some assault rifles, some hand-guns, some improvised explosive devices, and thousands of homemade rockets without any guidance systems. They have no air force, no navy, no anti-aircraft systems, no artillery, no tanks or mechanized armor, and probably not even an effective military communication system. They are trapped in a densely populated piece of land, surrounded on all sides, unable to conduct training exercises and under constant surveillance from drones and satellites. They have a comparatively weak media network, few powerful allies, and little real sympathy from Western governments. No one calls for the Responsibility to Protect or intervention by NATO when Israeli forces start to kill Palestinian civilians, or when Palestinians are not even allowed to flee the besieged enclave from the fighting but are turned back at the border.

If this asymmetry was not enough, Gaza, along with the rest of Palestine, has endured a highly restrictive boycott and blockade for years which has sapped the economic base and morale of the population. They have watched the continual building of settlements and land encroachment on their territories, and endured a set of laws and security procedures that international jurists have said amounts to an apartheid system (see my earlier blog on ‘If Wales was the West Bank’). More importantly, they have watched while the ‘peace process’ fails to deliver even the tiniest positive benefit year after year, all while settlements on Palestinian land continue to expand. Far from a ‘war’ between two relatively equal forces then, this is in fact, a smashing, a crushing, a mighty pulverizing of one of the tiniest nations in the world by one of the strongest. But then again, it’s always been this way in Palestine, boys with slingshots firing their stones at tanks and helicopters, or homemade rockets fired off against guided missiles, bombers and drones. The Palestinians are fighting a behemoth, a giant military and political machine which has sucked out all light and hope for a Palestinian future, but which continues to insist that it is the one under attack, it is the victim of these poorest of the poor.

In this situation of extreme asymmetry, there is a compelling moral argument that the one with the preponderance of power, the one who holds virtually all the cards and who can most afford to take a risk because they have the means to defend themselves and to re-engage in devastating attack any time they like, carries the greatest responsibility to break the cycle of violence. Israel has the real power to end this conflict, to take a small risk and attempt diplomacy and dialogue rather than persisting with military force. Not only that, it’s directly in their interests to do so; in reality, they cannot hope to stop Palestinian militant attacks by might alone, no matter how many bombs they drop. Otherwise, in a few years’ time, when there’s another forthcoming election or a newly inaugurated American president, we’ll all be watching Israel trying to smash Gaza all over again.

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Reflections on a Pointless war

I can barely bring myself to check the internet or watch the news because it’s so painful to watch this utterly pointless war, to see the inhumanity of it, its loud, dazzling suffering broadcast to the whole world. In this particular bout of strategy-less, tit-for-tat blood-letting, it is small children, their pale, quiet corpses filled with hot shards of metal, that have come to symbolize the inherent inhumanity of war and the madness of believing that security comes from superior killing power. Everyone watching knows that neither side is going to win this nasty little war; instead, both sides will eventually claim victory, bury their dead and then begin preparation for the next inevitable killing spree. This makes it strategically purposeless violence, almost entirely devoid of rational calculation or historical understanding. It’s a war waged in no one’s name (despite what politicians claim) and it will benefit no civilians in either territory. Only the shareholders of arms producing companies will directly profit from this orgy of mutual terror.

The Israelis have never won any real or long-lasting security through military operations like this, only world-wide vilification and a new generation of Palestinian militants seeking revenge. They are attacking Gaza today because the attack on Gaza four years ago was a total failure and patently counter-productive: it strengthened Hamas’s position in Gaza, hurt Israel’s reputation and led to Palestinian re-armament and a new determination to fight back. That was a war without purpose, as this one is. The real tragedy is that not one single lesson was learned and the same mistake is now being repeated. Either that or it is an exercise in sheer cynicism by Israel’s leaders, and the real point of killing Palestinians is to convince Israeli voters, punish the Palestinian population for its obstinacy, and/or test a new American president.

Hamas militants have likewise never won any concessions from Israel or advanced their cause through the firing of rockets into Israel; they’ve only ever garnered moral condemnation for their lack of concern for Israeli civilian casualties and provoked ever greater levels of bloody revenge from the vastly superior Israeli military machine. The leaders of both sides, it seems, exist in a moral void where they do not care how many people they kill, how many of their own people they sacrifice or what suffering they create, only that they’re seen to flex their military strength. In this respect, this war is a form of politician-led ritualized violence without strategy or rational purpose, and it will only result in suffering and further insecurity for both sides. They might as well shoot themselves for all the effect it will have. From this perspective, it’s a perfect demonstration that the spirit of World War I which we so recently remembered on Armistice Day lives on. Then, as now, we are at the mercy of vainglorious, warmongering, stupid politicians who are perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of others for the sake of facile gestures.

Watching what’s happening, seeing this madness, I know I have to write something about it. In part, it’s because of the images I’ve seen from this war already: the small bodies of babies pulled from the rubble, the faces of ordinary people contorted in terror, the grief of a father holding his murdered child. You can’t see such things and keep your emotions locked up inside; you’ve got to let the grief out somehow lest it poison you from within. I know there are many other similar conflicts I could write about today: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Kashmir, Tibet, West Papua. There are children dying there too, and in many cases, brutality on an even greater scale.

But this war seems to pull me in somehow; its visceral images seem to demand a response from me. Maybe it’s also because this situation is connected to me in ways that some of these other conflicts are not. After all, Israeli products are on the shelves of many stores in Western countries; the European Union gives Israel preferential terms of trade. I’ve probably bought things in the last year that were made in Israel, or maybe even grown on the West Bank by illegal settlers. In this respect, I am there, in the middle of that fight. Israel also wants to be a Western democracy and its most powerful ally and supporter is the United States, the most important ally of my own country. My national media most often treats Israel as one of ‘us’, a modern, civilized democracy. But it forgets that Israel and New Zealand are both settler colonies struggling to overcome a legacy of invasion, land appropriation and mistreatment of the indigenous people of the land. Despite this history, my government has been more inclined to offer words of support for Israel than to stand up for the rights of Palestinians.

However, these reasons are not that important compared to the fact that I personally know people from Gaza and Israel. I know people in Israel who are suffering tremendous anxiety at this very moment, fearing the roar of rockets about to fall on them or someone they know, and worried about whether the conflict will escalate and lead to a wider war which will result in a general call-up of reservists and put the whole country on a war-footing. I also know that they will be concerned about what this state-sanctioned violence is doing to their own country, to their politics and collective sense of morality and justice. They’ll be wondering what this will mean for the upcoming elections, whether it will play into the hands of the extremist groups who will insist on making things worse for Palestinians, thereby prolonging the conflict and insecurity which they have endured for so long.

I also know people in Gaza, huddling as I write, listening to Israeli planes overhead and then bracing for the next bomb, wondering if their house will be next to be smashed to smithereens. Their sense of vulnerability, impotent rage and helplessness will be suffocating them. They will see the broken bodies of their friends and neighbors and it will traumatize them for years to come, maybe even radicalize them. I remember a former student from Gaza, a young woman who was a member of Hamas but who had come to study conflict resolution with me so that she could try and persuade the Hamas leadership to switch tactics to nonviolent resistance instead. I wonder if she’s been targeted by Israel because she’s a member of what they call a terrorist group, and they don’t care that she’s a nonviolent activist trying to bring about the end of violent resistance. I wonder if years of bombardment and violent attack by Israel have changed her mind and transformed her ideals into militancy.

But what to write in a situation like this? What could I possibly say that would make any difference? Is there any point in giving another potted history of the conflict, a genealogy of how the two parties got to this point? I doubt it; everyone knows what the facts are, even if they have their own interpretation of what it means. Would it help to point out that violence hasn’t worked for either side, that violence has been tried for more than fifty years without any positive benefit, and that alternatives to violence exist if leaders are courageous enough to take a small risk? Would it make me an anti-Semite if I pointed out that trapping so many people in a tiny enclave and then subjecting them to a crushing blockade, assassinating their elected leaders, and refusing to negotiate on the future is likely to lead to the kind of rage and despair that then results in a barrage of rockets, that crushing people for so long and in so many ways leads more often to violent resistance than surrender? On the other hand, would it make me a privileged liberal to suggest that the Palestinians just accept all that oppression and violence and not try and fight back violently, but respond instead with nonviolence and moral force? Or would it just make me naïve to think that nonviolent resistance might have slowed the take-over of Palestinian land more than violent resistance has?

As I watch what’s happening, I feel quite helpless. I feel that I don’t really know anything, and I can’t really say anything without sounding ignorant or arrogant. I am just a human being watching the suffering of others from a great distance. I know it’s selfish and I have no right, but I just wish they’d stop so we don’t have to see any more bodies of little children, any more grieving parents, terrified residents. And I know they could stop if they wanted to, if they had an ounce of humanity, because killing is a choice not a destiny. Especially war; war doesn’t just happen; it’s a decision made by leaders. To end a war like this one just takes a little moral courage from leaders, and from the people who voted for them. It entails a modicum of willingness to admit that violence has failed and that dialogue and peaceful methods ought to be given an equal chance of succeeding. It begins with the recognition that your enemy is a person who suffers too.

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If Wales was the West Bank…

If Wales was the West Bank, domestic law covering the whole of the UK would codify English as the preferred identity, and English people would have full collective and civil rights, while all other people, including the Welsh, Scottish and Irish, would lack the right to a full national life anywhere in the UK. All state resources would be declared as being for the exclusive benefit of English people, and would be administered by a special English Agency. Wales would be divided into reserves in which residence and entry was determined by identity. This situation would be enforced by a massive military presence.

If Wales was the West Bank, over 50% of Welsh land would have been appropriated for the exclusive benefit of English people, including English settlements, special security zones, a security wall separating Wales from England which took in 10% of Welsh land, English agricultural settlements, closed military zones, English-only roads and highways, and nature preserves. Welsh people would be prohibited from using or crossing English-only roads and territory, while English people would be face no such restrictions in travel. In all, there would be 699 restrictions on Welsh movements, and 38 statutes which the English authorities could use to appropriate Welsh land.

If Wales was the West Bank, there would be two separate bodies of law in operation: one set of military laws which applied to all native Welsh people, and English domestic law which covered all English settlers living in Wales.

If Wales was the West Bank, the municipal boundaries of Welsh towns and cities would be frozen, Welsh people would be denied the right to build new houses outside of municipal boundaries, and thousands of houses built without a permit would be routinely demolished by UK authorities. Welsh communities would soon face major problems of overcrowding and pressure on services.

If Wales was the West Bank, English settlers would be encouraged to come and settle on Welsh territory. Even if they had lived overseas for generations in places like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they would get automatic English citizenship upon settling in Wales. They would also receive grants to cover the costs of moving there, permanent exemption from real estate and employment taxes, free education, and special grants for rent and utilities. Welsh inhabitants would not receive any such benefits.

If Wales was the West Bank, any Welsh person who moved to another country would immediately lose their right to return to live in Wales. English settlers would be allowed to reside or hold citizenship in another country without losing their right to reside in Wales.

If Wales was the West Bank, Welsh people would not have the right to citizenship in the UK, nor to citizenship in Wales, as Wales would not be recognized as a country. In contrast, English people anywhere in the world would have the automatic right to UK citizenship and access to assistance to return and settle there. There would be more than half a million English settlers in 120 settlements and outposts across Wales, taking up half of all Welsh land.

If Wales was the West Bank, Welsh people would have to suffer a burdensome permit system which required them to get a permit for almost everything, from repairing their home, making a deposit in their bank account, planting fruit trees, and which fields they might use their tractor in. English settlers would not face the same permit system.

If Wales was the West Bank, Welsh people would have to obtain permits to grow crops; permits would be granted on the basis of whether they competed with English agricultural production or not. In particular, Welsh farmers would need to get a special permit to grow onions (as a means of restricting their use as a palliative for the effects of teargas). No Welsh person would be allowed to establish a business which employed more than 10 people.

If Wales was the West Bank, all Welsh newspapers would have to get a permit and all publications would have to be approved by an English military censor.

If Wales was the West Bank, 87% of water supplies would be diverted to England and English settlers, while 13% would be distributed back to the Welsh population. Welsh people would pay from 4 to 20 times more for their water than English settlers, and would be restricted to 10 to 60 litres of water per day (less than the 100 litres per day minimum standard set by the World Health Organisation). English settlers would enjoy 274 to 450 litres per day, and every single English settlement would be connected to a running water network, while more than 200 Welsh communities would have no running water.

If Wales was the West Bank, Welsh people would be subject to military law, and would be tried by military tribunals in which there was no presumption of innocence, defendants would not be informed of charges until the first hearing, court decisions would often be based on secret evidence, the average hearing would last 3 minutes and 4 seconds, the military could hold defendants for six months without charge or trial (the six months could be renewed indefinitely), and acquittals would be obtained in only 0.29% of cases. Welsh children would be prosecuted as adults at age 12, while English settler children would not be prosecuted as adults until age 18.

If Wales was the West Bank, over 40% of the Welsh male population would have been imprisoned at some point, and 45 members of the Welsh Assembly would be in prison for belonging to a political party deemed a threat to the UK. Most Welsh political parties would be declared ‘terrorist organisations’, and any charitable, educational or cultural organisations deemed to be connected directly or indirectly to a political party would be subject to closure, destruction, and military attacks.

If Wales was the West Bank, Welsh public gatherings of more than 10 people would be forbidden unless the military authorities were given advance notice and the names of all attendees. English military forces would use live ammunition, tear gas, sounds bombs, rubber bullets and physical violence against public gatherings and demonstrations.

If you think this sounds far-fetched, check out the report, ‘Is Israel an Apartheid State?’ What is described above is only a small fraction of the restrictions and burdens currently on Palestinians.

My question is: can Israel really claim to be a democracy when it operates such a system? This situation is not only a crime against Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states ‘the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies’; it is also a real injustice against ordinary Palestinians and a major source of insecurity and violence, as apartheid in South Africa before it was. When will our politicians take it seriously and make a meaningful effort to resolve it? Why does America continue to openly support such a gross and open injustice? Why does the EU allow Israel a unique and special exemption from human rights obligations in order to trade?

It is time to stand up for Palestine, for justice and for peace.

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How I Came to Support the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign against Israel

When I was a teenager, I believed that the boycott of South Africa was the wrong way to oppose apartheid. I thought it would hurt the wrong people, close down dialogue and result in a siege mentality that would prolong the conflict. My mind changed, in good part, after hitch-hiking around the country in 1984, meeting a wide array of people, and experiencing the inhumanity of the system first-hand. The day a very tired and elderly African lady coming home from a long day at work was ordered by the bus driver to vacate her seat for me, a young man perfectly capable of standing, was a potent experience. Ashamed of how I benefited from the system (and simultaneously harmed another) simply by virtue of looking Caucasian was a transformative, radicalizing moment. Hearing from activists and ordinary Africans that they supported the boycott, even though they knew they would suffer for it, as well as listening to government officials assert that they would never give into the ANC, was also very important. I knew then that sustained nonviolent action was required to try and bring about real change and pressure the Afrikaner government to negotiate a just settlement for all people in the country. A couple of years later, I was in the manager’s office at Barclays Bank closing down my account and writing on the form that it was in protest at their investment in South Africa. A few years after that, Nelson Mandela was released.

I have been on a similar transformative journey in regards to the current Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Initially skeptical for very similar reasons to my youthful opposition to the apartheid regime, I have come to realize that every one of my objections is no longer defensible and the campaign represents arguably the best option – morally and pragmatically – for promoting a genuine peace process.

For example, it is simply not the case that such a campaign would have the effect of closing down debate and dialogue. In fact, it is my own (and many other’s) experience that even suggesting or mentioning the boycott generates a great deal more debate and discussion about Israel and the peace process than has occurred for many years now. As a consequence of this proposed campaign, there is now a whole series of new conversations taking place across a great many different domains. It is also the case that the Israeli state has gradually been making dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis more and more difficult through travel restrictions, restrictions on free speech, and the building of the separation wall. It is today increasingly difficult to get Israelis and Palestinians to meet together in Israel or the Occupied Territories, even when they want to come together to discuss peace and reconciliation. In other words, dialogue and discussion has been declining and diminishing anyway for years. The boycott is actually a way to reignite and facilitate a more engaged and intensive dialogue that brings in a wide array of groups and actors around the world.

The BDS campaign is also supported fully by the Palestinians themselves, and by a great many peace groups working within Israel. To me, this is a powerful argument: if Palestinians and Israeli peace activists support this campaign and are asking for it (as Africans were in South Africa in the 1980s), then their wishes should be respected. In a sense, the BDS campaign is a way for those of us on the outside working for peace and justice to join in their struggle, rather than to continue to impose our own strategies and tactics on them from the outside. Too often, activists outside of the Occupied Territories have assumed that they know what is best for the Palestinians, rather than carefully listening to what they want.

I also feel that it is one of the last remaining options in the face of a failed peace process in which, as the Wikileak Palestinian Papers showed, the Palestinian Authority made tremendous concessions to no avail. If Israel is simply unwilling to make any real concessions or to stop its settlement programme aimed at creating future non-negotiable ‘facts on the ground’, then what else is there apart from violent struggle? The point is, those who argue against the BDS campaign must provide an alternative strategy which will make Israel concede and negotiate honestly. I, for one, cannot see what else will make Israel engage seriously in the peace process – apart, perhaps, from massive US pressure in the form of withdrawal of military, diplomatic and economic support (which is highly unlikely given domestic politics in the US). The BDS campaign therefore represents the only real alternative to violence or doing nothing that I can perceive at the present time.

The BDS campaign is one of the last nonviolent methods left to us that may be really effective in putting pressure on Israel for a just settlement. Certainly, sixty years of violence and diplomatic initiatives have failed; the Palestinians are today in a worse situation than at any time in their history and a real peace settlement is as far off as it ever was. Israel continues to swallow up Palestinian land, extend its settlements and strangle the lives and movements of Palestinians, and its American and EU backers continue to provide military, diplomatic and economic support for its relentless land-grabbing policies, rather than pressure for meaningful negotiations.

Moreover, there is no longer any real argument that to all intents and purposes, Israel operates a colonial system akin to apartheid in which Palestinians, particularly those in the Occupied Territories, live under a separate system of laws, are subject to a permit system, and face discrimination based on their identity in employment, education, housing, travel, resource allocation, justice, civil liberties, and numerous other areas. The US, EU and Israel keep haranguing the Palestinians for not using nonviolent means in their struggle, but then when they do – as in the BDS campaign, the UN bid for statehood, and many other nonviolent actions – they are nonetheless still condemned for it. This sends the message to Palestinians that there is nothing they can do except to accept their subordinate position and oppression, and let the annexation of East Jerusalem and the gradual settlement of all their land continue unopposed. The BDS campaign represents a nonviolent, ethically-based response within a limited set of options to an increasingly unbearable and unjust situation.

Unlike the UN bid for statehood which will most likely benefit Israel more than the Palestinians, which has both pros and cons, and which may or may not lead to more fruitful talks, the BDS campaign has the genuine possibility of actually being effective, as the Israeli state is so fearful of a boycott that it has made even the discussion of a boycott a crime within Israel. Israel really wants to be accepted as a democratic liberal nation. The BDS campaign threatens this carefully maintained image and could therefore exert real pressure on Israel’s political class to negotiate meaningfully.

In the end, as with the apartheid situation twenty years ago, I believe that Israel will never be safe, never be free from living behind its self-imprisoning wall, never get the respect it wants from other nations, and never enjoy the security it really desires, until it has settled justly with the Palestinians and learned to live peacefully together with them. Peace and justice cannot be separated, as without real justice there can be no real peace. The BDS campaign may be our best hope for helping Israel and Palestine take a small step towards a more peaceful future. I support it because I want to see both Israel and Palestine living in peace.

Check out the following site for more information on the BDS campaign and consider supporting it.

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