What follows below is a letter of concern that a member of our local (cupe 3903) wrote in
response to the cupe resolution. It should be mentioned that it was members of our local
which crafted and motivated the motion.
tfast.
--------------------------------
I have had reason to feel proud of many of the past CUPE motions with regards Israeli state policy. However,
while I support a strategic boycott of some Israeli institutions as well as
those who invest in Israel, I am concerned with the language of resolution
50 passed recently by CUPE Ontario. To be honest, I am conflicted and
confused by the choice of language used in the resolution and I believe that
this is a substantive issue that gives one reason to pause and ask what,
indeed, is the motivation, overt and otherwise, behind the resolution.
My problem with the motion is the way it equivocates Israeli state policy
with the policies stemming from both the British and Dutch colonial
interests in Southern Africa. In my mind, the Israeli state is many things,
but the South African apartheid state it is not. To call one the other is to
misunderstand the effects of European colonial policy in South Africa and it
is to obscure the ways Israeli state policy has come to affect Palestinians.
As Amira points out, it seems that such name calling may allow for a
political stink bomb but it hardly begs one to take a serious political
position towards Israeli policy or the history of the Israeli state.
To be sure, current Israeli and Middle Eastern self understanding are part of a
political process whose roots lie very much with British colonial policies
in the Middle-East, yet what is fascinating about the present equivocation
CUPE Ontario makes between Apartheid and Israeli policy is that it uses
language that inadvertently refuses to look at the real, historical and
political processes that have produced the current Israeli and Palestinian
situation.
My own family is, broadly speaking, from the Middle Eastern region, my
Ethopian mother growing up in Jerusalem and my Ethopian father growing up in Cairo. Both were
also caught up in the process of state formation that the region underwent
in the period following the Second World War. Yet, for me, and for anyone
who seriously studies the legacy of the end of the British and French
empire, an area of investigation that remains important is the manner in
which the demise of said empires forced people to articulate and reproduce,
in the guise of nationalism and self-determination, highly racialized and
ethnicized notions of citizenship and belonging--identities that would
inevitably force formerly colonized and dominated peoples to be at
loggerheads with each other. What becomes important here is, how, in carving
out modern nation-states, the British and the French empires were able to
craft political identities that would have a lasting effect for the
generation immediately following the dissolution of these empire.
In my mind we are living the consequences of this in Darfur as much as we
are in Israel, and, I find it equally unhelpful to equivocate Israeli policy
with Southern African colonial policy as I find calling the Darfur situation
a catastrophe of Arab racism. This is not to deny the atrocities facing the
Fur people. My problem is that, in both cases, people find it easier to call
something racist, rather than find out how societies are constituted. This
of course is not to deny that the foundations of some socities are
race--South Africa under colonial rule is one such example. However, it
seems important to emphasize that what lies at the heart of the new states
of the Middle East is a nationalism based on an identity that in many cases
was carved out by the "Native authority" in the colonies, as well as the
denial that these new states were constituted in very deliberate ways that
left certain groups purposefully disenfranchised. But, this is why internal
critiques of the constitution of the complicated topographies of these
societies cannot be emphasized enough.
Clearly, today, nationalists in the region have convinced nearly a whole
generation of young people that their identity formation has neither a
history, nor a political-economy, but rather, is something carved in an
ancient stone--a previous generation, at least had a living memory of
something else. Indeed, the cosmopolitan world that my parents once lived
in, only sixty years ago is probably unimaginable for most people in the
region today. But then, this proves that the current mystification around
identity formation is actually part of the political process in areas
formerly dominated by colonial powers. Thus, in my mind a serious political
discussion around current Israeli policy would entail a constant effort to
excavate this story. I also believe that evading history through political
equivocation is very much part of the problem when it comes to excavating
this story.
I guess, ultimately, that is why I find the CUPE resolution not
only unhelpful, but also divisive--it repeats and takes for granted
political identities that need to be exploded. Perhaps this is to much
history for a union to take on, but I must say that some key intellectuals
in the Darfur debate have managed to shift the language surrounding that
crises to a less racialized one and thus corrected the kinds of
interventions people were once proposing. Perhaps this can be true of Israel
as well, even if the regime there likes to pretend they are in Europe and
not right next to the Sinai. Lastly, given that in my mind the CUPE Ontario
resolution uses language that reduces history to good guys and bad guys, how
can I not feel that this inevitably feeds into historical prejudice, whether
or not people intended it to do so? This, too, is unhelpful.
Sincerely
Elleni Centime Zeleke
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060607/f089bdd1/attachment.htm>