[lbo-talk] On Chomsky's remark about Israeli society

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Fri Sep 30 21:15:39 PDT 2011


I agree with most of what's been said here, and will try to flesh some of it out a little bit.

The main shift I think has occurred in both Palestinian civil society and the solidarity movement supporting it is away from "statehood" as a focus and towards the prioritization of "rights." Of course the BDS call only mentions rights, never statehood, which I think reflects a broader reorientation - it's simply the Palestinian consensus in a way that questions of state no longer are, if indeed they ever were. Abbas, who's something of the laggard in this regard, has meticulously clarified at every point that his UN bid entails no sacrifice of the rights to return, equality, and self-determination. Hamas, who like many others isn't convinced, has indicated that it would support the effort only if it more firmly enshrined a continued struggle for rights.

This distinction becomes particularly visible in debates, for example, between SA and myself: I talk about rights, which are consensual, and he responds by citing the positions of various Palestinian figures on statehood, which is contentious. Of course the full exercise of Palestinian rights could result in one state, two states (it's not as if many other borders in this part of the world make a great deal of sense either), or 500 squabbling city-states. I certainly have opinions about which of these outcomes would be more efficient and likely, but at the end of the day, it's simply not my concern in the same way as the denial of Palestinian rights itself. I oppose Chomsky's use of the two-state fetish to oppose the rights of Palestinians. If he advocated two states and Palestinian rights (like all those politicians with whom SA claims to be so taken), I might think he was tilting at windmills, but wouldn't bother arguing against him.

The problem I see with analogies between occupied Palestine and South Africa is just that - they're analogies. Accusations of Zionist apartheid are, on the contrary, accusations of a crime under a specific body of international law (the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, Addition Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court). Of course the situation in Palestine is different - and worse, by most accounts - but that doesn't change the nature of the beast. But calling it an analogy just reduces the gravity of the thing - one could draw analogies between LBO-Talk and the French National Assembly.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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