There is one matter of ambiguity in the exchanges. In his response to my first post he wrote:
"It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for the Palestinians to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried), but the tendency of the Palestinians to substitute rhetoric for organization and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions."
It is ambiguous whether or not he is ascribing a tendency to "suicide bombings" to the Palestinians, but it is clear that he is ascribing a general tendency to "substitute rhetoric for organization." I repeat my original charge: that is as contemptible as such phrases as "the tendency of blacks to love watermelon" or "the tendency of 'orientals' to be inscrutable." By my understanding of syntax, the passage _also_ ascribes to the Palestinians a tendency to substitute "suicide bombings for more effective actions." If he did not mean this, he should rephrase it, not accuse me of making false charges.
Carrol ==========
DOCUMENT 01. McReynold's Original Post (Fwd LBO by Pugliese)
From: <davidmcr at aol.com> To: <Awaskow at aol.com>; <asdnet at igc.topica.com>; <socialistsunmoderated at debs.pinko.net>; <SP-campaign at egroups.com> Cc: <Enbee77 at aol.com> Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 6:08 PM Subject: [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
Just a note to say I agree with Art Waskow's position on this. David McReynolds
<< Subj: [SC1] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
Date: 6/3/01 10:48:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: awaskow at aol.com (R. Arthur Waskow)
Reply-to: awaskow at aol.com
Dear Friends,
For the last several months, there has been an important debate going on in semi-private among various organizers of the emerging and rebirthing movements, Jewish and otherwise, for a just peace in the Middle East..
The debate has included disagreement over whether those movements should criticize the violence that is being used by some Palestinians, including terrorist attacks on unarmed civilians, as well as criticizing the violence inherent in the Israeli occupation of the proto-Palestine of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
In the wake of the Tel Aviv terrorist bombing, and as we are on the verge of the June 8 world-wide vigils against the occupation, I think this debate needs to be public.
My own position (and that of Break the Silence, as expressed in one of the points of our OLIVE TREES FOR PEACE statement) is that a movement for peace and justice needs to criticize violence by Palestinians, especially terrorism, and to urge all Palestinians to heed those Palestinian voices that are calling for the use of vigorous nonviolent resistance to the occupation, instead of violence.
Before explaining my own views, let me first give as adequate an account as I can of the arguments of those who oppose doing this, or who mute the criticism of Palestinian violence almost beneath audibility.
The main argument is that the relationship between Israel and Palestine is not symmetrical. Israel has overwhelming power and is using it:
ÿ Israel has cut the Palestinian territories into small enclaves, separated by corridors of Israeli settlements and soldiers and military checkpoints.
ÿ Israel is besieging and blockading Palestinian towns and villages.
ÿ Israel has shattered the Palestinian economy, shuttered many of its schools.
None of these is true in reverse: Israel is not under occupation, siege, or blockade, its schools are open and its economy is working, there are no armed Palestinian settlers swaggering down Israeli streets, forcing curfews on Israeli towns, etc.
As facts, I think all of this is accurate.
And I think this situation is unjust, and anti-peace, and deserves to be criticized, protested, and (nonviolently) resisted, by Palestinians, by Jews, and by anyone else. We need to say that ending the occupation and the extra-territorial Israeli settlements will not only serve justice and peace, but will save Israeli lives – the lives of soldiers and settlers – as well as Palestinian lives.
The question is whether this asymmetry justifies terrorism, and whether it requires silence about terrorism from a movement for peace and justice.
I think not. And I think it is legitimate for me, and people who agree with me, to insist that actions against the Israeli occupation (like the June 8 vigils) also speak out against Palestinian terrorism, at the same time making clear that the power relationship between the people is not symmetrical.
Why do I think this?
First , because from every ethical standpoint the murder of unarmed civilians is vile.
I have been told that ethics is a world different from politics, and that from a political standpoint one should focus on the asymmetry of power and not address the ethical vileness of this terrorism.
But there are two things wrong with this view:
1. I think we all have seen that a politics that is severed from ethics becomes an unethical, anti-ethical, brutal, destructive, dehumanizing, tyrannical politics.
As Martin Buber wrote in "Recollection of a Death" (in Pointing the Way, p. 118):
"I cannot conceive of anything real corresponding to the saying that 'the end 'sanctifies' the means; but I mean something which is real in the highest sense of the term when I say that the means profane, actually make meaningless, the end, that is, its realization!
"What is realized is the farther from the goal that was set, the more out of accord with it is the method by which it was realized."
Buber was writing this in 1921 or thereabouts, in regard to the Leninist use of the "Red Terror."
AND – it applies with great power today, to both Israel and the nascent Palestine. The use by either of them of terror, torture, bombings, demolition of homes, sieges, assassinations, etc becomes part of the fabric of the society.
Those who are committed to a Jewish state, to a free Palestine, to a just and peaceful world, should condemn such actions for what they create politically, as well as for their ethical corruption.
2. Terrorism is itself a political act.
Read this from Uri Avneri, one of the most stalwart of Israelis committed to peace and justice, an opponent of the occupation from practically the instant of its beginning in 1967:
"When the al-Aksa intifada broke out and many Palestinians withdrew from open contacts with Israelis, Faisal [Husseini] did not retreat one step.
"We met several times at the Orient House and we held a big public meeting there. A week before his death he suddenly appeared, without prior notice, at an Israel-Palestinian press conference for the international press, in which we expressed our unshakable belief in peace between the two peoples.
"This spirit was prevalent at yesterday’s funeral, too. The few Israelis who came to tender their condolences were received with open arms in the courtyard where thousands were crammed, hundreds came to shake our hands. One of the Israelis was invited to speak.
"In my heart I treated Faisal as a brother. For me, the frontline does not pass between Israelis and Palestinians, but between the Israeli and Palestinian peace lovers on one side and the war-mongers of both peoples on the other.
"Less than six hours after the Palestinian people united around Faisal’s coffin, the war camp hit back.
"The suicide bomber who blew himself up among the boys and girls at the Dophinarium discotheque on the sea-shore of Tel-Aviv did a great service to the settlers, who are trying to convince the Israeli public that it is not because of them that the rivers of blood are flowing and that there is no difference between the settlements and Tel-Aviv.
"The collaboration between the Islamic fanatics and the extreme right-wing in Israel is a fact of life, as is the cooperation between the likes of Faisal and the Israeli peace activists.
"The Israeli government does not belong – to put it mildly - to the peace front. If not stopped by international forces, it will choose escalation. In the ping-pong game between Rehavam Ze’evi and Sheikh Yassin, Hizbullah and the settlers, the ball is a human skull.
"The heart of Faisal Husseini stopped beating when we need him more than ever."
Then why should a movement for peace and justice refrain from condemning a political act that is vile in its ethics and destructive in its politics? An article by Henry Lowi (excerpt just below) makes this same point even more colorfully. As Lowi wrote:
". . .those who sent [ the Tel Aviv bomber] should be branded as criminals to the cause of a Free Palestine.
"There is no need to remind readers that, among Tel Aviv discotheque revellers one can find opponents of the occupation, enemies of Zionism, army resisters and deserters, and just plain folks who want to escape from the madness and relax.
"By targetting them, what message does one send? Does one send a message of despair; i.e. look at how desperate I am, understand me, sympathize with me, embrace me?
"No way. One sends the following message:
"Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, we will get you. Our enemy is not the settlers. Our enemy is not the army. Our enemy is not racism. Our enemy is not colonialism. Our enemy is you, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing.
"This is exactly the message that Sharon, and Katzav, and their allies, and their predecessors, want Israelis to get. . . . The media spin, in support of Israeli violence against Palestinians, has now received an amazing boost. The spin will clearly be that the Israelis are the victims of Palestinian racist violence.
"Thus, the beneficiaries of Palestinian suicide bombings are not the Palestinian people, but the Israeli racists."
This leaves a question: If we oppose and criticize terrorism, what can we say about how to prevent it?
The official answer of the Israeli government has been – with more violence.
But we have already seen that draconic blockades, sieges, bombings, etc. etc. all fail to stop such vile actions as the Tel Aviv bombing.
Given that all life is a gamble, how?
It seems to me that what would ENHANCE the chances of stopping terrorism --without a guarantee -- -- is a serious peace, because it would redirect energy into society-building instead of rage and hatred. (But it might for a brief period also bring about a burst of terrorist attempts just as agreement is near, as has happened in the past, for the precise purpose of preventing agreement.)
And within its own boundaries, Israel would certainly be correct in taking the measures any state would take to prevent terrorism.
Finally, let me repeat: I think all of us who are committed to justice, to peace, to the safety and freedom of Israel as well as the emerging Palestine, ought to insist on incorporating this perspective into actions for peace – including June 8. Where we vigil and what our signs say and what message is given the media are important.
Shalom, Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director
The Shalom Center
www.shalomctr.org
>>
==========
DOCUMENT 02: Cox's First Post
Subject: Re: Fw; [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 12:23:18 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Michael Pugliese forwarded:
>
>
> Subject: [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
>
The question is not really interesting. It's like asking if we should
criticize the weather. The premises of the question (I am treating it as
a question raised in the u.s. for activists in the u.s.) are simply all
wrong.
Such a question would have made sense within the anti-war movement in the 1960s as a way of introducing a critique of two of the more destructive currents in the movement: (1) Principled (as opposed to tactical) non-violence and (2) Principled (as opposed to tactical) violence, represented by the weatherman current. Principled Non-Violence is always the twin of terrorism. You can't get rid of one without getting rid of the other.
But note that the question (or a variant of it) made sense as a question _within_ a (somewhat) organized movement about that movement's own strategy, tactics, and principles. There was a context in which it could be argued out in a way that might make an actual difference in practice, and it was not a stupidly and offensively moralistic question about what other people in other circumstances should be doing.
Next note that the question contains an outright lie by omission. It pretends to be a question about "Terrorism" -- one would presume from that that it must be referring to the polcies of the primary agents of Terror in the world today: The U.S., Israel, Germany, France, Turkey, etc. These are the _only_ organized terrorist agents. But actually, of course, Art Waskow, David McReynolds & Co. are not raising a question about terrorism, they are raising a question about the utterly disorganized response of miscellaneous 'forces' in Palestine to the burgeoning final solution being imposed on them by the Zionist terrorists. There is not and there cannot be in Palestine a center of decision making on such topics as the use of violence or of the appropriate and inappropriate use of violence. There is no such center because the core of U.S. and Israeli policy for 50 years has been to make sure that there cannot be such a center.
So the question is utterly meaningless as applied to Palestine. It can have no honest meaning. So given that its apparent or claimed meaning is incoherent, what material content should we give to it.
My suggestion:
"Should we beautiful people in the 'peace movement' in the United States keep ourselves pure and above the struggle in Palestine?"
Carrol
=========== DOCUMENT 03: McReynold's First Reply (to Carrol) (Fwd by Pugliese?)
From: <davidmcr at aol.com> To: <asdnet at igc.topica.com> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 2:10 PM Subject: Re: Fw; [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
I don't know who Carrol is, but since he/she starts with a basic assumption that the two key problems facing us are people who believe in nonviolence and those who don't, it does simplify reality in a charming way!
Of course the terrorism of the Palestinians is no different from that of the Stern Gang, of the foundes of Likkud, etc. and since that terrorism should have been condemned, and was, I don't see why one should hesitate to make clear we are apalled at suicide bombers who target civilians.
However I'd also make it clear, as I have many times, that Israelis air strikes are terrorist by nature, they are not precise, they are often collective punishment - an odious tactic - and should be as sharply condemned as any other form of terrorism. (And what is one to say of the recent Israeli attack on a Palestinian police outpost in which, without any provocation, they shot and killed four Palestinian police?).
The real problem here is with Carrol, who too easily exempts the Palestinians from effective organization, an effective center. The PLO isn't behind these terror bombings - or I greatly doubt it - but the PLO itself isn't very much in charge of things. It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for the Palestinians to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried), but the tendency of the Palestinians to substitute rhetoric for organization and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions.
That the suicide bombings are NOT a result of PLO decisions seems clear to me - they are undermining the PLO, they are aimed against the peace process, they are welcome by precisely those within Israel who, jointly with the extremists in the Palestinian community, want the peace process to fail - though with two quite different goals in mind.
Alas, if the peace process fails, the settlers will not win, nor will the Palestinians. The suicide bombings are not an effective part of a political process but an evasion of it.
David McReynolds
========== DOCUMENT 04: Yoshie's Response to McReynolds
Re: Fw; [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
From: Yoshie Furuhashi (furuhashi.1 at osu.edu) Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 18:07:35 EDT
David McReynolds wrote:
>Of course the terrorism of the Palestinians is no different from that of the
>Stern Gang, of the foundes of Likkud, etc. and since that terrorism should
>have been condemned, and was, I don't see why one should hesitate to make
>clear we are apalled at suicide bombers who target civilians.
Anyone in "peace movements" is free to condemn Palestinian terrors to his heart's content, but condemnation will be completely ignored by suicide bombers who don't belong to any "peace movement."
>The real problem here is with Carrol, who too easily exempts the Palestinians
>from effective organization, an effective center. The PLO isn't behind these
>terror bombings - or I greatly doubt it - but the PLO itself isn't very much
>in charge of things. It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for
>the Palestinians to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried),
>but the tendency of the Palestinians to substitute rhetoric for organization
>and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions.
If condemnation of Palestinian terrors isn't a substitution of rhetoric for organization & effective action, what is?
Yoshie ==============
DOCUMENT 05. Carrol's Response to McReynolds
Subject: Re: Fw; [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 15:25:14 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> David McReynolds wrote:
>
> >
> >The real problem here is with Carrol, who too easily exempts the
> >Palestinians > >from effective organization, an effective center.
I find it hard to believe that any one as knowledgeable as David McReynolds could very seriously doubt my point here. Only the blindness of a dogmatic clinging to non-violence as a metaphysical principle could explain this rejection of the obvious.
> > The PLO isn't behind these terror bombings
Of course it isn't. It isn't behind anything except bowing and scraping to the Zionists and its paymasters among reactionary Arab regimes. Discussions of Palestinian reality have to ignore the PLO, except to note how great a barrier it is to any actual formation of an "effective organization, an effective center" of the Palestinian people.
> > - or I greatly doubt it - but the PLO itself isn't very much
> > in charge of things. It is not the Israelis who have made it
> > impossible for the Palestinians to organize a "center" (though
> ? certainly they have tried), but the tendency of the Palestinians
This is unworthy of anyone who claims a left position. It's a subject rhyme with the tendency of African Americans to love watermelon, with the tendency of "orientals" to be inscrutable, with the tendency of Jews to be usurers. The only tendency of the Palestinians is to be people. Beyond that any comment on events in Palestine must be based on analysis of their actual situation and the possibilities of action within that situation.
>> to substitute rhetoric for organization
This is obscene. What in the hell are we doing on maillists but substitute rhetoric for organization. That's what everyone necessarily does when the possibilities of action are cut off.
> >and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions.
I see no "tendency" on the part of Palestinians to "suicide bombings." It is McReynold's burden to prove the raw racism of a identifying their tendencies as a people as an explanation of the actions of a few individuals.
The assumption, until proved otherwise, must be that the Palestinians, like the Jews, Romani, communists, etc. in Hitler's death camps, have been reduced to the point where any sort of organized and premeditated collective action is simply out of the question. But they must act, and accordingly, must act as individuals or as very small groups operating clandestinely against a ruthless occupying force. Those suicide bombings are not in the least terrorist actions. They are the ordinary reactions of a resistnce toa brutal foreign occupation of one's land.
And incidentally, the Settlers are not Settlers -- settlements of that sort are opposed to all international law. So Palestinians can rightly treat a Settler family as though it were (and which in fact it is) an illegal military force in their midst.
[Yoshie comments:]
>
> If condemnation of Palestinian terrors isn't a substitution of
> rhetoric for organization & effective action, what is?
Oh Yoshie, but you misunderstand David McReynolds -- he _is organizing_: he is organizing a force of U.S. liberals to oppose solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
Carrol
[Continued]