Virginia
Tilley
19 February 2012
Responding
to bizarre statements always risks magnifying their exposure and importance.
Hence I wouldn’t normally respond to Norman Finkelstein’s startling 32-minute video
attack on the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against
Israel, which was recently posted on YouTube to considerable fanfare by Zionist
blogs. Some other good writers have taken him on, like Sean O'Neill,
so I could leave it there. But having watched the whole video-taped
interview as well as the 5-minute version that someone cobbled together
of its
“highlights”, I’m sufficiently irritated to respond. Partly I'm
concerned to counter some fallacies he promotes that are floating around
more widely, but I also feel obliged to challenge people who use the
worst conceits of the academy—“it’s science!” “it’s law!”—to
trash people’s work while abusing the real rigor and subtlety of
academe. In
fact, some of Finkelstein’s points are flat wrong, others partly wrong,
some partly right and others flat right. I’ll start with
the wrong ones.
First,
it’s seriously irritating that Finkelstein goes on about international law in
ways that reduce international law to a parody of itself. You can’t take some
law and not all law, he says, as though law is a fixed box set. For one thing,
he cherry-picks law with abandon himself, as I'll discuss later. But mainly,
international law isn’t a frozen set of rules. Like any law, it’s a moving target. Rules
and norms develop incrementally, and are interpreted and reinterpreted over
time, as conditions and needs change. For example, when the United Nations
voted for partitioning Palestine in 1947, apartheid in South Africa hadn’t yet
been invented. Within a few more years, South Africa’s first apartheid laws were
on the books, yet it was another decade before the UN began to react seriously against
it and 1973 before the UN made apartheid a crime against humanity. Today, the
prohibition of apartheid is codified in the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court and what Israel is doing can be defined and denounced in terms
that did not exist a half-century ago.
This
is why Finkelstein botches international law in holding that, because “Israel
is a state,” no one has a jot to say about the situation of Arab citizens
inside Israel. Even when he talks about the 1947 partition resolution of the
UN, Resolution 181, which recommended partitioning Mandate Palestine into a
Jewish state and an Arab state, he gets it wrong. He forgets that Resolution
181 specified plainly that neither state could discriminate on the basis of
religion or race. When the General Assembly admitted Israel as a member of
the UN in 1949, on the basis of this history, its members relied (gullibly) on
Israel’s hints that it would not discriminate against Arabs inside the state.
So Israel’s discriminatory laws flew in the face of international opinion even
in 1949, let alone sixty-plus years later, when human rights law has gained so
much more strength in prohibiting racial discrimination and apartheid. Today, no
state anywhere in the world today has a “right” to discriminate among its
citizens on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic or national origin. Israel
has signed onto the international conventions which explicitly prohibit such
discrimination and is bound by its obligations on this score.
So
if Finkelstein and others try to rely on diplomatic recognition of Israel to
argue that international law has nothing to say about discrimination against
Arabs in Israel, they are flat wrong, because it is flatly prohibited. Yes,
Israel is recognized as a state, but so is South Africa, and that didn’t stop
the entire world from slamming apartheid as the racist abomination it was and
insisting that the apartheid regime be dismantled.
Finkelstein
is also flat wrong on another historical point: that the international
legal framework for resolving the conflict has always been partition
into two states.
For evidence, he mentions that when Arafat—that legendary legal mind—
proposed
two states in 1989, he invoked the 1947 partition resolution as
unfinished
business of the conflict. Yes, Arafat did cite this, but his point was
precisely to jump back over four decades during which the opposite was
true.
From 1947 to 1989, Israel flatly rejected creation of a Palestinian
state
anywhere in Mandate Palestine as an intolerable threat to Israel. The
formal
public position of the PLO from its creation until 1988 was also one
state. Since 1967, Israel has made deadly clear—in rhetoric, laws, maps,
settlement
construction, military rule and anything else we might care to check—its
intention is to keep all of Mandate Palestine under its supreme control.
And in all that time, the UN Security Council said nothing about two
states or even about Palestinian national rights. That’s
precisely why the Oslo Accords manifested to naive international public
as a
“historic compromise”, blah blah.
Finkelstein
calls for us to stick with this “historic compromise”. He dresses down the BDS
movement for not doing so and for seeking instead, if implicitly, to “eliminate” or
“abolish Israel”. We are all so sick of this language that I couldn’t normally
find energy to write this sentence, except that he extends the point to
delegitimizing the BDS organizers by saying that they “don’t want Israel to
exist”. So let’s go through it one more time: this old Zionist chestnut makes
open hash of international law by deliberately confusing two things—Israel as a
modern territorial state and Israel as a Jewish state. Finkelstein’s critique
of BDS doctrine is sort of right: yes, taken as a whole (as I agree with him we
should take it), the comprehensive effect of the BDS agenda would “abolish
Israel” as a Jewish state.
But is this logical implication—based entirely on international human rights law, by the way—illegitimate? I’d say, damn straight, Israel as a Jewish state must be abolished, just as white South Africa had to be “abolished”, and for the same reason—because ethnic states simply can’t exist without discrimination and oppression. But does this mean abolishing Israel as a modern territorial state? Of course not, just as South Africa was not “abolished” in this sense. So language about “eliminating Israel” is just pointless sophistry—scare-mongering, rhetorical sabotage—as Finkelstein well knows. Indeed, accepting his claim to senior experience of this conflict, we must assume he knows all about this manipulative language and his using it therefore can only mirror his accusations of hypocrisy back on himself.
But is this logical implication—based entirely on international human rights law, by the way—illegitimate? I’d say, damn straight, Israel as a Jewish state must be abolished, just as white South Africa had to be “abolished”, and for the same reason—because ethnic states simply can’t exist without discrimination and oppression. But does this mean abolishing Israel as a modern territorial state? Of course not, just as South Africa was not “abolished” in this sense. So language about “eliminating Israel” is just pointless sophistry—scare-mongering, rhetorical sabotage—as Finkelstein well knows. Indeed, accepting his claim to senior experience of this conflict, we must assume he knows all about this manipulative language and his using it therefore can only mirror his accusations of hypocrisy back on himself.
Indeed,
it is Finkelstein himself who avoids being honest—just saying straight
out that
he wants Israel to remain a Jewish state and won’t accept as
"reasonable" any
program that disagrees. Instead, he cites “international law”
selectively and
thinly as a cover for this. He also claims that the BDS movement
contradicts “international
law,” such as UN Security Council resolutions which call for creating
two
states. Yet here again, he cherry picks, and hoists himself on his own
petard.
He cites Resolution 1515 of 2003, which calls for two states, as
“international
law” yet then disparages Resolution 194, which calls for return of
Palestinian
refugees, as “indefensible”. Here more sophistry infuses his objection
that mass
return of millions of Palestinian refugees to Palestine would be
entirely "unreasonable". For one thing, at least one study has found
that the number of Palestinians actually wanting to return would be in
the hundreds of thousands, not millions. But, in any case, defending the
principle of Palestinian return hardly
precludes sensible policies to manage the pragmatic realities of it, and
activists firing questions from audiences in Finkelstein's talks (his
example) hardly define the range
of negotiation that must go into such questions. The very complexity of
resolutions, diplomatic initiatives and contradictory clauses in the
full
history of the conflict precludes table-thumping about any one of them.
All are
necessarily subject to the diplomatic process, power politics, real politik,
geographic constraints and evolving international views. Taking bits and pieces
in isolation to call some “unreasonable” and others “international law” is
meaningless.
It
is indeed by viewing all this as a whole process, contradictions and all, that
the “compromise” suggested by the Oslo Accords is revealed as a sham. Not
least, Finkelstein ignores the glaring fact, hardly irrelevant to his claims
about international consensus, that Israel itself has never agreed to a
two–state solution. Aside from one sentence in a letter by Ariel Sharon, which
was never formally endorsed by the Israeli Cabinet, Israel has never signed
onto any document in any way that actually commits its government to create two
states. Nor has it ever recognized the Palestinian people as a people or
endorsed the Palestinian right to self-determination. The BDS movement might
usefully address this farce and open discussions toward accepting that
"Israel" now embraces all of Mandate Palestine and therefore must be
reconceived as a secular-democratic state. But until that happens, the BDS
movement can't be criticized for standing silent on a geographic version of
Israel that Israel refuses to hold for itself. Here Finkelstein's citing the
International Court of Justice on the question of where Israel's exists is only more cherry-picking: a mountain of
international diplomacy confirms that Israel's final borders have not been set
and the question remains a "final status" issue.
Finkelstein
claims that BDS organisers will not admit to the true goals of BDS (the
elimination of Israel) because they don’t want to split the movement. This
isn’t a fact so much as an interpretation, but it’s easy to agree with him.
He’s flat right that the three-tier goals of the BDS movement—end the
occupation, return of refugees, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of
Israel—would “eliminate Israel” as a Jewish state. I’ve pointed this out
myself, and am convinced for several reasons that the BDS organizers are fully
aware of it. And I too have been bothered by the elision, but on reasoning
opposite to Finkelstein’s. I think that a strategic fuzziness on this point
deprives the BDS movement of its greatest potential, which is the unassailable
moral force gained by clearly rejecting discrimination in all its forms and
fighting for creation of a non-racial state, as in South Africa.
Finkelstein,
by contrast, denounces the campaign’s silence on this point as
deceptive, and failing to accept
the inevitable. In doing so, he tramples all over principles of
political
activism as freely as he abuses international law. His first fallacy is
to
deride the BDS movement’s fogginess on its ultimate vision of one
secular-democratic
state as “childish” and “silly.” In this view, he is strangely naive,
for a political scientist, about the politics of liberation movements.
It’s a very old and time-honoured
method in building mass movements to tread lightly around issues that
divide
people until consensus and trust build to the point where more difficult
internal differences can be productively debated. The Zionist movement
itself
has done this from its earliest years, in skirting deep internal
divisions
about Judaism and Jewish social values, but we can spot the same
manoeuvring in
any liberation movement over the past few centuries. So it’s hardly
"hypocritical" that the BDS leadership is treading gently by not
confronting its
constituency with divisive issues until the time has matured for some
respectful internal debate about what “eliminating Israel” will actually
mean
to the future and well-being of the Jewish national home in Palestine.
Perhaps
it’s time for those discussions to be opened, but meanwhile it’s truly
silly to
call the delay “dishonest”. (Perhaps Finkelstein’s sensitivity on this
score
traces to Maoism, to which, by his own account, he was loyal for decades
longer
than most people. Once in a cult, always see cults?)
Finkelstein’s
second fallacy about BDS is in disparaging its few “successes”. Here he fails
to grasp the essential character of a BDS campaign. Although any such campaign
naturally seeks and celebrates landmark victories, its true success is not
measured by the number of companies pulling out of contracts but by the
incremental growth of world public opinion. Let’s get this straight: the
primary purpose of BDS is public education. This is mostly an intangible or
qualitative matter, yet of immense importance, as Israel knows full well: hence
Israeli state rhetoric these days barely mentions “terror” and focuses almost
exclusively on “delegitimation”. I’d suggest it’s a far better indication of
the BDS movement’s success that Israeli ambassadors, meeting in Israel over the
New Year's break, reported that they had never before felt their diplomatic
environments so chilly. Sean O'Neall has observed the same constraints
confronting the stumbling Birthright Israel program, and other observers attest
similarly.
Finkelstein’s
third fallacy regarding activism is to protest that, if it’s honest about its
“eliminate Israel” goals, the BDS will never reach a “mainstream public”. This
objection about mainstream opinion, which he repeats several times, is bizarre
on its face. Since when do human rights campaigns adjust their arguments to
please mainstream opinion? Changing mainstream opinion is their
very task. If activists took mainstream opinion as the proper guide
to moral action,
we would never have had the anti-slavery abolition movement, or the
women’s
suffrage movement, and apartheid would flourish in South Africa to this
day. Indeed, we wouldn’t have most human rights campaigns.
The toughest ones, which are often the greatest ones, must often start
small and grow
slowly.
Still,
maybe Finkelstein is unintentionally helpful in drawing our attention to a
seamier camp of human rights activism, by publicly positioning himself in it:
some activists do tune their positions to what they think the majority wants to
hear, eschewing stands that “lack support”. They may believe themselves pragmatic, but I call these folks “human
rights entrepreneurs”, as they are essentially market-oriented. Like courtiers,
they position themselves just behind the cutting edge, with a keen eye for
trends, so they can surf a wave they didn’t actually have the courage or
insight to create themselves. In other words, they are not guided by the moral
principles of human rights but by how the rhetoric “sells”—how a human-rights
posture gets them into the "club", invited to conferences and onto
speaker circuits, and draws funds to their NGOs (although I make no assertion
about Finkelstein on the money question). I don’t work that way, and I’d submit
that the great human rights campaigns of human history have never built that
way. They build on principle, and the greatest movements, like the campaigns to
end slavery and apartheid, hammered away for decades through fog and darkness,
eventually succeeding when moral authority and changing conditions finally
synced. So were these all “cults” during those dark years? If so, call me a
cultist.
I'm not saying Finkelstein
is a money-grubber. On the contrary, he is clearly saying what he truly
thinks,
and, setting aside his unnecessarily rude and insulting language, I
respect his independence of mind. But his position is still
entrepreneurial in
approaching human rights audiences as markets, in the guise of being
pragmatic. If he remains dedicated to this approach, perhaps he can remember the power of
marketing: persuading people that they want something. That’s how the ANC did
it, anyway, eventually selling its idea of a shared state to what looked for many decades like unassailable white rejection.
In
stark contrast to Finkelstein's argument, human rights campaigns must indeed
assume, as a premise essential to their work, that public opinion—here, Jewish-Israeli
opinion and Palestinian public opinion—is not fixed, but responds to
persuasion, events and conditions. Especially, it responds to messages from the
other side. A clarion call by the ANC for a shared state is what tipped South
African apartheid leaders, once their world crumbled, to give up apartheid.
When Palestinians decide collectively that their future is a reunited and
shared Palestine, in which all citizens are equal in dignity and rights, the
political chemistry of the entire conflict will change. By creating a
“mainstream public” for themselves, they will ultimately create it for all.
This
brings us to the question of leadership. One point I think Finkelstein did get
right, and perhaps it was time to break ground by saying it. He decried the BDS
Council for presuming to direct solidarity activities elsewhere. He mentions
its squashing his own initiative in Gaza, which was a scandal, but also its
claiming authority over initiatives by solidarity people anywhere in the world.
I have to agree with him on this one: I’ve never seen anything like it,
either—not with the Vietnamese, the ANC, Sandinistas, the Mayas, the PLO, East Timor, or
any liberation movement I’ve ever supported or communicated with. The BDS
Council is an able body of activists promoting an international campaign, but
Finkelstein is right: it’s no more than an unelected, unrepresentative bunch of
volunteers, and it has zip to say about what anybody else does, ever, anywhere,
in support of the Palestinian people. Its only legitimate role is to serve as a
resource, not an authority. Language I’ve heard by international activists on
this score—that “proposals” for activity this or that must be “brought to the
BDS Council” for “deliberation” and decisions about whether they should go
forward—is gobsmacking and raises my political-alarm antennae. The same ugly
impression was gained by AdamSchatz in the London Review of Books:
The idea of living with Jews—a central tenet of large
sections of the Palestinian movement during the First Intifada—gave way to a
vision of struggle against a faceless coloniser. When Israel began to build the
wall, Palestinians retreated in pride and defiance behind a separation wall of
their own. Many now refuse to associate even with those Israelis who are in
sympathy with the Palestinian struggle. Amira Hass, the great left-wing Israeli
journalist for Haaretz, who is based in Ramallah, was prevented from studying
Arabic at Birzeit; Daniel Barenboim has been vilified by some leaders of the
boycott movement on the grounds that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the
Arab-Israeli youth orchestra he created with Edward Said, is promoting
“normalisation” with the Zionist state. One BDS leader told me with eerie
self-assurance that Said would have shut down the orchestra in line with BDS
demands. There was even a debate within BDS about whether the Bilin
protests ought to be boycotted because of the participation of Israeli Jews who
might call themselves Zionists. ‘These people don’t go to Bilin, [Palestinian
lawyer Diana] Buttu said. ‘They prefer to issue fatwas from their laptops, and
if you question the logic behind the fatwas, you get called a traitor.
[emphasis added]’
Who
the flippin’ hell is the BDS Council to shut down the Barenboim
orchestra, or
turn away Amira Hass or anyone else from Birzeit University, or—god help
us—presume to assert that Edward Said, of all people, would kow-tow to
its
puerile diktat? What random NGO coalition is authorized to silence
dissent by denouncing people as traitors? This is not just arrogance but
dangerous arrogance,
ringing of proto-fascism—centralisation by authoritarian
personalities, claiming doctrinal and strategic control over a
liberation
movement in the name of ideological purity with racist overtones,
although
they have no popular mandate whatever, not even the democratic figleaf
provided by the (long-defunct) Palestine National Council. The dangers of this
distortion must not be underestimated and further submission to its
intimidation tactics is unwise. Perhaps Finkelstein has done the solidarity
movement a service, after all, by throwing open a window for true Palestinian
democrats to confront this tendency and nip it in the bud. Sometimes a bull in
a china shop does create an opportunity to sweep out the place.
Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, author of The One-State Solution and
many articles and essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
editor of a comprehensive study of international human rights law in
Israel-Palestine that is coming out with Pluto Press later in 2012. She
can be reached at virginia.tilley(at)gmail.com <http://gmail.com> .
