Re: "Read Edward Said" Re: ADC Mourns Passing of Prof. Edward Said

["LouPaulsen" <LouPaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>

> At 7:58 PM -0500 10/17/03, LouPaulsen wrote:
> >Attempting to use my words on the occasion of Dr. Said's death to
> >score some points
>
> Lou, I just have to wonder why you think about discussion here in
> terms of scoring points.

Because the post to which I was responding made me wonder if the author of
that post was primarily interested in 'scoring points'.  It would have been
one thing if the author of that post had merely cited Dr. Said as an
authority.  Instead I found my spontaneous utterances on Dr. Said's death
being tossed back at me as a brickbat.  I support efforts to keep things on
a less personal level.  Since we are talking at the moment, I will withdraw
the reference to you as a 'liberal'.  The sentence in question was an
emotional one, and had originally been conceived in feelings of rage about
the fact that Christopher Hitchens had the gall to write Dr. Said's obit for
the Guardian.

> >On the other hand, a recent poll indicated that 75% of the population of
the West Bank and Gaza approved of the Haifa bombing. < <

> You mean the poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and
Survey Research, which was reported in the _Jerusalem Post_: <

'Suicide bombers' have been getting similarly high approval ratings in those
polls for nearly two years.

> More interesting information is in the second and third paragraphs of the
same article:

> *****   78% of Palestinians believe the US roadmap for peace is dead, yet
a vast majority (85%) want a mutual ceasefire, according to a new opinion
poll released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR)
in Ramallah. <

> If the two sides agree on a mutual cessation of violence, 59%  (compared
to 50% last June) would support taking measures by the PA to prevent attacks
on Israelis. <

But what does this have to do with the discussion?  You posted a January,
2002 article by Dr. Said who quoted polls saying that in earlier polls a
minority supported "Hamas's violence".  I cited data to the effect that in
reality the use of the "suicide-bombing" tactic has majority support today.
You then "counter" by saying that a high majority would like to see a
'mutual cease-fire'.  Why would that be a contradiction?  How does this
counter it at all?  Military tactics are not intended for the purpose of
having an unending war.  They are intended for the purpose of determining
the nature of the eventual "peace".

You then to on to try to explain away the 75% as "most likely based on
sympathies for tragic suicides and their loved ones, as well as defiance of
hypocritical Israeli demands for Palestinian non-violence".  As to the
second part, I believe it is in fact good politics for Palestinians
answering pollsters to defy hypocritical US/Israeli demands for Palestinian
non-violence.  I believe we should practice such politics here.  As to the
first part, is it really OK to accept the parts of the poll you like as good
coin and then try to partially explain away the parts you don't like as
being influenced by emotion and "sympathies"?

You sum up the poll results by saying that

> Palestinians in the occupied territories are clearly tired of an
escalating spiral of violence and counter-violence, which has not brought
them any measurable victories, even symbolic ones, unlike in Iraq. <

This has to be broken down into several parts:

(1) Are Palestinians tired of the violence?  Yes, of course they are.  They
suffer from it daily.  Their lives are miserable.  Anyone would be tired of
it.

(2) What do Palestinians believe to be the CAUSE of the violence of which
they are tired?  Do they believe, as you do, that it is the fault of bad,
cynical leaders and "organizers of violence" who have no strategy and are
just feeding the best of their youth into the meat grinder?  I don't see any
evidence of this.  I suggest that the Palestinians believe that the violence
has been forced upon them by Sharon.

(3) Do Palestinians agree with you that the use of violence by the active
forces in the second intifada has been "indiscriminate", and do they agree
with you that it is time to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, stop actions
inside the Green Line, and so on?  I think all the evidence is the other
way.  You point to the low marks of the Palestine Authority; well, the
Palestine Authority is out there condemning the violent actions that the
Palestinian public supports!   Of course they are under heavy pressure to do
so, but how do the data support the idea that the Palestinians want the kind
of change in course that you want?

(4) If Palestinians in fact disagree with you about point (3), is this
because they (a) are evil, savage people (this is the position of the
pro-Zionist right, as well as Lt. Gen. Boykin who explains that their "god
is an idol"), who have never learned right from wrong and do not know that
they "have to" adhere to the Geneva Convention, or perversely defy this
tenet; (b) are dupes of cynical organizers or fanatical religious leaders;
(c) are carried away by sentiment; or (d) have a different understanding of
the situation on the ground from yours?  I vote for (d).

They may, in fact, believe, with regard to the tactical mix of the second
intifada as a whole, that it (i) has imposed serious costs on Israel, has
damaged Israel's economy, caused capital flight, impacted on the life of the
ordinary Israeli who supports Sharon but has to worry about riding the bus,
etc., and, THUS, (ii) has made it more likely that they will get a peace
which will be livable instead of the crap they got out of the Oslo process,
since in the real world the kind of agreement you can get with your enemy is
related to the costs you can impose on the enemy if they don't make an
agreement.  They may also believe (iii) that counter-civilian actions have
served as reprisals for Israel's truly indiscriminate violence against
civilians (The Beit Yisrael attack of March 2, 2002, for example, was a
reprisal for the attacks on the Jenin and Balata camps of March 1 which
caused many civilian casualties including children), and are thus (iv)
morally justified as retribution in kind and (v) possibly even, in the
medium run, cause the Sharon government to be less indiscriminate in their
own use of violence.

Among the many reasons why I believe that we should respect the tactical and
strategic decisions of Palestinians in Palestine, one important one is that
I think they are likely to have a better sense of the actual war situation
and the actual results of their actions than we do here.

You write that the Palestinians are tired of 'an escalating spiral of
violence'.  Is it really a spiral? Is it not possibly a curve of some other
shape?  Is there not more back-and-forth, ebb-and-flow to it?  The geometric
metaphor of the 'spiral' embodies a host of assumptions which I for one
don't automatically share.  For that matter, if it is truly a 'spiral', then
you are saying something like that 'if the Palestinians kill more civilians,
the IDF will get angry and kill more civilians.'  Isn't that in conflict
with your statement, in your response to Danielle, that "they [the Israeli
right] don't care about the mounting Israeli casualties of the intifada"?
Another possibility is that maybe the Israeli right DOES care about being
perceived as getting nothing out of their war policy but a high civilian
death toll, and that high Israeli civilian casualties might function as a
whack on the nose to them, which would perhaps spark an immediate violent
response followed by a subsequent lull.  I haven't run the numbers on it and
I doubt that you have either.

(5) Your belief that the achievements of the second Intifada don't come up
to the 'symbolic victories' of the Iraqi resistance, who are composed in
part of Islamists and Ba'athists, use suicide bombings, have attacked
civilian and diplomatic targets, have organized a lower percentage of the
Iraqi masses than the Palestinian forces have, and have not yet driven the
US out of Iraq, completely baffles me.  I hope it's clear that I am not
dissing the Iraqi resistance here, but I can't imagine how it works out that
someone can recognize ITS "symbolic victories" and yet be so dismissive of
the al-Aqsa intifada.  How come you don't complain that the Iraqi resistance
has to adhere to Geneva Convention?  How come the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
don't get credit for developing mines that will destroy the 'indestructible'
Merkava tank?

Finally, on the subject of solidarity-movement-building, you write:

>>  Edward Said ... didn't think that solidarity activists who are _already
involved_ in organizing against the occupation -- including refuseniks and
Israeli intellectuals -- should remain uncritical of the strategies and
tactics of _all_  Palestinian factions.  If he had, he could not and would
not have made any actual and symbolic alliances with Israeli refuseniks and
intellectuals, American Jewish voices for peace, etc. <<

I don't see how that follows at all.  Leaving aside what Edward Said might
have thought, I myself, who think that the solidarity movement should in
fact unconditionally support the Palestinian struggle, am entirely willing
to make actual and symbolic alliances with people who disagree with me.  In
the same tone, you write:

>> In contrast, you are arguing that only uncritical and unconditional
acceptance of _all_ strategies and tactics of _all_ Palestinian factions --
including Islamists -- would count as true opposition to the Israeli
occupation.  Such a demand makes coalition-building beyond a very narrow
circle impossible. <<

But I don't think it's a question of 'true opposition' vs. 'fake
opposition'.  I think it's a question of the right of self-determination,
and also on some level of materialism vs. idealist pacifism.  Naturally I am
going to argume that the solidarity movement must, to quote point 5 of the
Rutgers statement, 'not dictate' tactics or strategy to the Palestinian
struggle.  I agree with the statement (which I am told was made by Elias
Rashmawi to the Rutgers Conference) that if the solidarity movement starts
making such dictates, it ceases to be a solidarity movement and in fact is
positioning itself as a 'neutral observer'.  Nevertheless, there are a lot
of people who have not agreed with me but who will protest the occupation
and educate people about it and so on.  Am I going to argue that only people
who agree with me should plan joint actions, attend conferences, come to
demonstrations, engage in discussion, and so on?  That would really be
lunacy.  This is not the time for any of us to read any of the rest of us
out of the movement, shun each other, leave the room when the other walks
in, etc. (as David Carville said we should do to Nader).

In any case, though, I will repeat on this point exactly what I said about
both Gulf Wars and the Yugoslavia war, and which I thought YOU agreed with
me on in those cases:  If you are in favor of a large coalition, you will be
against any proposal that the coalition start condemning one section or
another of the Palestine movement.  Speaking generally for a moment, the
correct principle of unity, and the one that brings in the most people, is
(1) "We oppose the occupation."  NOT (2) "We oppose the occupation and also
condemn suicide bombings", or (3) "We oppose the occupation and reject
Islamism", or (4) "We oppose the occupation and condemn the Palestine
Authority as corrupt", or (5) "We oppose the occupation and fight for a
socialist federation of the Middle East."  It seems obvious to me that
statement (1) must be able to bring in more people who can agree with it
than any of the possible alternatives.  What sometimes happens, though, is
that some people come along and say "We oppose the occupation, but we also
have another agenda of condemnations that you have to adapt to if you want
us to stay in the coalition."  But why is this legitimate?  And why give in
to it?

Lou Paulsen
Chicago


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