Re: More on Ted Honderich

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 7:04 AM -0400 10/18/03, Jim Farmelant wrote:
> The Canadian/British philosopher, Ted Honderich is to deliver a
> lecture, "Palestinian terrorism, morality, and Germany," at the
> University of Leipzig, October 19-20, 2003.
>
> In this lecture, which can be found online at
> (www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/palestinegermanyfull.html and in
> summary form at:
> www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/palestinegermanysummary.html),

Jim, why is your post titled "More on Ted Honderich"?  Was there
another posting on the philosopher here recently?  If so, I missed it.

Anyhow, I finally got around to reading the essay by Honderich, and I
hope that I've understood his main arguments well enough to make a
sensible reply to it.  It is certainly possible to assert and defend
the moral right to use of force "with a political and social end"
within the philosophical system in which Honderich works, based on
what he calls the Principle of Humanity: "we must take actually
rational steps, which is to say actually effective and also
unwasteful ones, to get or keep people out of wretched and otherwise
bad lives."  The problem, for me, is that Honderich defines terrorism
as "violence with a political and social end, whether or not intended
to put people in general in fear" -- very far from my definition of
terrorism: deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the
main effect of which is to terrorize the civilian population.  Many
Palestinian actions that would fall into the category of terrorism
according to Honderich's very broad definition are legitimate use of
force, in my opinion.  Therefore, I agree with Honderich that the use
of force with a political and social end is justifiable according to
a consequential morality like the Principle of Humanity, but I do not
agree that a consequential morality can justify the use of terrorism
in a modern liberation movement (be it liberation from colonialism or
capitalism), as terrorists' refusal to make a distinction between
legitimate and illegitimate targets by nature entails excess and
waste.

I also take issue with Honderich's reduction of available political
alternatives to negotiation and (his definition of) terrorism:

*****   Negotiation and Futility

Of the rest of what can be said on Palestinian terrorism and hence on
the general question of a right to terrorism, let me remark only on
the matters of negotiation and futility.

There are, you can think, two ways for a people to get and keep
things, these being violence and negotiation. It has been said at
every stage of the conflict in Palestine that the Palestinians must
give up violence and negotiate. That is typically to forget
something. Negotiation is the means for getting and keeping things of
the party whose position and ultimate power is stronger. Violence is
the means of the other party, the party with no other means. It is in
the interest of each party and their supporters to condemn or resist
the means of the other. It is the responsibility of moral thinking to
try to see what is right.

There are men and women of my outlook, in effect supporters of the
Principle of Humanity, who say Palestinian terrorism is futile. They
are to be sharply distinguished, of course, from those very different
persons who are influenced in saying this sort of thing by a kind of
toleration of neo-Zionism. Some want the terrible acts of accusation
to stop.

It needs to be allowed again, to other supporters of the Principle of
Humanity, that the factual question of the eventual outcome of
Palestinian is the hardest question. But it is possible to hold to
the view, as I do, that this course of action, and only this course
of action, will secure the freedom and power of a people in their
homeland. It is only wretched bantustans, or rather only the promise
of them, that can now be offered by the advocates of negotiation.
They were also on offer, no doubt along with guarantees by the United
States, to the people of South Africa and Nelson Mandela.

To this can be added something else. Jews in the Warsaw ghetto fought
to the end -- hopelessly, it was said. They bring to mind that there
can be a realism in what is hopeless. You can fight, not for yourself
or your time, but for those who come after you.6 The Palestinians can
do so.

<http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/palestinegermanyfull.html>   *****

It is certainly possible that the only course open to Palestinians
may in the near future be reduced to what Honderich calls "a realism
in what is hopeless": to fight, "not for yourself or your time, but
for those who come after you."  The Warsaw uprising is a good example
of that, and so is the Easter uprising of 1916.  If the Palestinian
condition indeed came to that, I would be the first one to honor it.

Our duty as solidarity activists, however, is not to prematurely
decide that the Palestinian condition today offers no hope other than
"a realism in what is hopeless," but to work hard to help open a path
to the future, a path that is beyond the TINA of futile terrorism and
impotent negotiation.

First, the question of two parties, one weak, the other powerful,
confronting each other by violence or through negotiation.  One of
the tasks of solidarity activists is to change the real and imaginary
political boundaries of two parties, by working with Israeli leftists
to the left of the Labor Party (such as Jeff Halper and Tanya
Reinhardt) to turn potential fault lines in Israeli politics into
actual ones.

Second, it doesn't seem to occur to Honderich that there is an
alternative to both use of force that includes terrorism (=
deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians to strike terror)
and one-sided negotiation which merely facilitates the imposition of
the political will of the party with superior military might.  The
alternative in question is a mass movement, defended with judicious
use of force when necessary.  In other words, what is desirable is a
mass movement in which armed militants play a subordinate role --
subordinate to activists involved in mass actions -- rather than
taking the center stage as they have in the second intifada; a mass
movement in which the use of force is limited to self defense,
defense of non-combatants, and attacks on the weakest link in Israeli
politics -- namely IDF soldiers, armed settlers, military
installations, etc. -- that send a clear political message unlike
indiscriminate attacks on civilians inside the Green Line.

Last but most important for subscribers to this listserv, solidarity
activists have an essential role to play in efforts to create the
aforementioned alternative, for instance, by working closely with
Palestinian activists, such as Palestinian labor and environmental
activists, who are trying to break out of the TINA of Oslo and
Islamist tactics.  Help Palestinian activists create human
connections between themselves and US activists involved in a wide
variety of struggles, especially in Black communities and the labor
movement.  Unless we succeed in making the solidarity movement grow
beyond usual suspects and become capable of actually ending US
support for Israel, we'll never be able to help Palestinians overcome
TINA.
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>


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