Never mind the bombs, here are the poets – Freedom and #Flotilla

The case of Palestine seems to become more and more central to the global justice movement. In a 2007 article in Middle East Critique John Collins wrote:

that Palestine also may be conceptualized in monadic terms; that is, as a kernel of truth onto which is inscribed the ongoing history of an entire global system. In viewing Palestine in this way, I am drawing on Benjamin’s notion that each work of art is monadic in relation to the larger idea of Art in much the same way as a cell contains the genetic coding of the larger body. Elsewhere Benjamin uses the same concept to articulate an anti-historicist view of memory, arguing that ‘a remembered event is infinite, because it is only a key to everything that happened before it and after it. In Palestine, where memory is a central arena of struggle, such an approach is especially appropriate.

With this temporal metaphor in mind, this article uses the work of Paul Virilio to explore Palestine as a kind of geopolitical hinge that opens both forward and backward in time, marking a dynamic collision point for multiple pasts and multiple futures. Looking to the past, the continuing state of emergency in Palestine bears the traces of a range of global historical processes: the horrors of total war, culminating in Auschwitz and Hiroshima; the post-Second World War decades of decolonization, nuclear deterrence and violent superpower proxy wars waged throughout the Global South; and the gradual emergence of a global machine of ‘pure war.’ Yet for all of the history weighing it down, Palestine also contains many images of the future. In particular, and in an especially intense and immediate way, Palestinians are now living the relationship between speed and confinement that is so central to Virilio’s prophetic work. They also are living at the center of a global effort to create new bonds of solidarity as an antidote to the atomizing effects of a global corporate-military complex.

Much of the attention of the public goes out to the violent resistance of Hamas and other insurgent groups and we do not hear much about non-violent resistance, or to use John Collins reference to Virilio: ‘Where are the poets?’ There are. We can think about rap group DAM but also the recent events with the Flotilla can be put under the label of poets: Palestiniann and international activists who seek creative, non-violent ways and global mobilization to struggle against Israeli occupation and, in this case, the blockade of Gaza. And in that sense Israel was ‘right’ it was not just a mission with humanitarian aid, it was also a political mission. Since non-violent resistance does not make as much noise as violent resistance, they rely upon media coverage to make their noise in order to make the public aware of their mission. What they wanted to make clear to the public is the reality of the blockade of Gaza and its consequences: a humanitarian crises in Gaza. At the night of the raid, I tweeted that I was somewhat surprised about the lack of coverage in Dutch media. Only after the raid all tv and radio stations and newspapers mentioned the Flotilla. Of course the people of the Flotilla did not set out to get killed but they wanted to make their point. They only partly succeeded however since the attention in the media mostly focuses on the question if the Israelis had the right to do what they did and the way they did it. A legal question, not a question about the everyday oppression in the Gaza strip that in fact hardly challenges Israels media spin in which their right to defend themselves against threats from terrorists is central. It is therefore not surprising that the clash between Israel and pro-Palestinian activists partly rages in the digital world.

In Dutch media a lot of attention has been paid to two Dutch participants of Flotilla. One of them is Amin Abou Rashed, who according to the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf is a ‘Dutch Hamas leader‘ (of course, as if in that case Israel would let him go). Rashed is from Palestine and is accused of having worked for the Al Aksa Foundation: a, now forbidden, fundraising organisation for Palestine and he still appears to be an activist for the cause of the Palestinians. If this is really true, and the same would go for the alleged Al Qaeda link, wouldn’t that be great news: Hamas and Al Qaeda using non-violent tactics? Radio Netherlands calls Rashed a human rights activist. He was welcomed at the airport today by his family members and also by imam Fawaz, imam at the Dutch As Soennah mosque (one of the mosques ‘following the Salafi manhaj’ as they claim).

The second Dutch participant was fellow anthropologist Anne de Jong working at SOAS in London. She is a PhD student there with a very topical research:
Ms Anne de Jong : SOAS

In order to arrive at a three-dimensional picture of joint Israeli Palestinian nonviolent initiatives, this study explores the daily experience of oppression and violence which creates, shapes and to a large degree determines the activities, models of organization and political discourse/imagination of my research subjects.

Building on a two-year Master research, and based on a fifteen month participant observation orientated fieldwork period in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories combined with an in-depth literature study, this research came to focus on the relation between violence and opposition, unequal power relations among and between Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activists and the ideological as well as practical complications of alternative, popular nonviolent resistance in the political and social setting of Occupation.

In line with scholars such as Philippe Bourgois, Caroline Nordstrom, Lila Abu-Lughod and Iris Jean-Klein, this research aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on violence, oppression and resistance as well as to in-depth, region specific ethnographies on everyday life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.

Studies on nonviolent resistance often focus either on the visible direct actions of action groups or solely on the ideological motivations that may lay behind them and thereby effectively disconnect nonviolent resistance from its surroundings. This research argues that both violence and nonviolence are deeply rooted in, and intertwined with day-to-day life in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As such, this study holds the potential to provide additional insights on the oppressive mechanisms which enable and sustain this ‘violence as the status quo’ surroundings as well as how, under which conditions and with which implications individuals choose to omit themselves from participating in it.

In an area where militarism, armed resistance, oppression and domination are perceived to be the ‘only’ and even desired option, in-depth scholarly attention to joint Palestinian Israeli nonviolent resistance is not just worthy but indeed crucial.

Her study attempts to bring the context of everyday life back into the analysis of nonviolent resistance. A recent article in Cultural Anthropology sheds some more light on that attempt I think. In that article, Getting by the occupation, Lori Allen tries to explain how violence became a normal state of affairs and routine during the Second Palestinian Intifada by exploring the spatial and social practices by which ‘reorientation and adaptation to violence occurred’: “Ta’wwudna” – we’ve gotten used to it – was the constant refrain of the second intifada.’ That, and not resistance to occupation or the power of the PA or nationalism, was the most important form of agency but the practices whereby people made themselves getting used to the violence in order to manage, get by, and adapt. What De Jong does may shed some light on an important question in social movement theory (as stated by anthropologists) how and when does do everyday practices materialize in more organized forms of collective action.

Her participation in the Flotilla also brings about another issue important for anthropologists. What are the ethical boundaries for anthropologists for this kind of participation; would we mind to go campaigning with groups we do not like as well? It is certainly not unusual for anthropologist to go on campaign or whatever with the group they study. Her involvement in this Flotilla should be seen in that particular light but probably also because of her apparent identification with the cause of the Palestinians. Therefore I do not disapprove of her participation, on the contrary, but I do think we should reflect on the issue. Escobar for example asks the following questions: How do anthropologists negotiate their participation in a movement? What does it mean to become involved with a political movement? What constitutes your ‘community’ and how is fieldwork to be approached? On the other hand, as mentioned above, it is in particular violent resistance that seems to receive most of the attention. Anthropological research with its ethnographic focus on micro-politics and everyday circumstances by observation and participation is very well equipped to first all breakdown the to a certain extent artificial separation between Israelis and Palestinians and to let the nonviolent voices be heard. Engaged anthropology is then an attempt to let people be heard and to link daily life to larger issues such as human rights and freedom. In the next video you can see Anne de Jong explaining herself prior to her participation with the Flotilla.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeN8PHBX9kU]
For accounts of other survivors of the Israeli raid you can go to Gaza Flotilla Survivors. For reactions in the Middle East blogosphere see for example Global Voices Online,