Sunday 13 July 2014

Response to Tom Suarez's article entitled "Chomsky and BDS"


This article is a slightly modified version of a Facebook comment previously made by me[1] in response to a Facebook post from the journalist and blogger Jonathan Cook.[2] In that Facebook post, Cook offers an article by Tom Suarez in Mondoweiss[3] as being, in Cook's eyes, a good starting point for criticisms of Chomsky's position on the one-state/two-state debate that has been elucidated in multiple fora, for example in a recent article for The Nation[4], and in a 2010 interview.[5]

Unfortunately, there is a mismatch in my view between Suarez's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and that of Chomsky. Chomsky is arguing on the level of tactics, strategy, and pragmatism in order to find the best way to reduce immediate suffering on the part of the Palestinian people. Suarez exhibits an interesting ability to simultaneously recognise and yet not recognise this, as he seeks to respond 'courageously', using absolute principles of justice, to what he views as Chomsky's cop-out position. I believe this is an inappropriate stance for Suarez to take, both from the point of view of Palestinians, as well as from an intellectual integrity standpoint.

It is easy to ridicule suggestions of pragmatic Palestinian strategy, one can appear much more heroic by advocating a completely principled demand for all applicable rights. To be precise, it is easy to do so when one is not actually in the firing line and directly suffering repression, wherein the small victories that may be gained by continued pragmatic struggle start to seem quite crucial.

Assuming his absolutist stance, Suarez declares that the "Right of Return is an individual right that cannot be bargained away on someone’s behalf." No doubt this is true. But the question is whether Palestinians should bargain in such a way on their own behalf as an intermediate step in an act of self-sacrifice, and as a show of reasonableness, in order to humiliate Israel into a politically untenable position, such that the occupation and state of siege on the West Bank and Gaza would be mitigated. The principle of the right of return being owed to the Palestinians is not being abdicated and neither is the possibility of an eventual binational Arab-Jewish state in the former British Mandatory Palestine. The only change is on the question of strategy: choosing when and how to make one's demands for maximum effect both among global public opinion and within international institutions of authortiy.

Suarez maintains that it is farcical for "Chomsky [to argue] . . . that Israel regularly violates even the Security Council resolutions that are binding, and therefore one is asking for something that will not happen [by asking for full implementation of the right of return]". In Suarez's view, Chomsky is thus conceding that "all international law by definition becomes irrelevant, because non-compliance becomes self-justifying." There is a quite unfounded leap in logic here — the supposed "irrelevan[ce]" of "international law" is a conclusion that Suarez arrives at prematurely, not something that Chomsky himself states. Non-compliance with an ill-considered proposal (one-state solution/right of return) that is likely to give false hope to a desperate people (Palestinians) is self-justifying. Some laws are unjust, others are just. The laws that grant Israel the same status and sovereignty as any other nation state are just, and non-compliance with acts that seek to undermine Israel's sovereignty (full implementation of the right of return would have drastic demographic consequences) is self-justifying. No other state would be prepared to accept such an imposition, so it would be a bad strategy to call for Israel to accept it. We can certainly quibble with Chomsky's strategical opinions and judgements, but we must be open about how we are doing it and what we alternatives we are offering. Suarez is prepared to prolong Palestinian suffering in order to take a courageous and principled stand against Israel. I am not being facetious, this seems to be the calculus.

Suarez attempts to link the reasoning of "relative badness" to the, in his eyes, logically connected position that "no injustice could ever be targeted except the one that is (according to criteria of one’s choosing) the absolute most egregious on the planet. All others need simply point the finger downward." Presumably, Suarez's implication here is that the occupation imposed by Israel may be causing more short-term harm than the failure to implement the right of return, or the failure to attend to the civil rights of Arabs within Israel proper, but that does not mean we should let Israel off for the latter two failures. Suarez does not explain what would be so bad about prioritising issues according to how egregious they are and dealing with them accordingly.

Furthermore, Suarez glosses over Chomsky's core principle of "elementary morality". Chomsky is fond of saying that values and principles should be consistent on both sides of the border between "us" and "them". And if those principles lead us to find something wrong with what "we" do (e.g. Harvard University being complicit in the American imperial project) then we should prioritise activist strategies that seek to right those (i.e. our) wrongs first, rather than, say, the wrongs of their institutions.

This distinction between 'our' wrongs and 'their' wrongs is a real one for any activist strategy that seeks to undermine powerful elite institutions perpetuating unjust policies, contrary to what Cook may suggest.[6] The state has domestic tools that can be used to aid this public attack against those institutions, and to the extent that we can exert greater influence on our state to offer this aid, the responsibility is ours. Israeli-Palestinian social justice activists and Western social justice activists have clearly distinct responsibilities: firstly, and most importantly, to organise on their respective home fronts against the institutions that are accountable to them directly, and secondly, to organise and contribute to the international solidarity movement that strides across continents and which seeks to deconstruct international corporations and power relations that are not directly accountable to any one populace, but which stand on the shoulders of those domestic institutions that have the Achilles' heel of democratic accountability. The ever-passing-buck scenario envisioned by Suarez can therefore easily be addressed; we should focus primarily on our crimes, and they (Iranians, Israelis, Venezuelans, Russians, etc.) focus primarily on theirs. Western activists cannot then pass the buck by choosing to focus more on repression of Palestinians by Israeli institutions rather than complicit Western institutions.

Suarez sneaks in a feel-good misrepresentation attack on Chomsky when he says, "[t]he cumulative wealth of documentation and activism [leading up to the BDS movement's call to action] is extraordinary. Yet Professor Chomsky dismisses the movement for justice in Israel-Palestine as not having done its homework?" It is elementary to demonstrate that no one here is dismissing "the movement for justice in Israel-Palestine".

Suarez ends with a supposedly new and scandalous discovery. Apparently, because Chomsky recognises the truism that "[t]here is no reason to expect a settler nation to accept the people whose land it took [into the land it took from them]”, he has ceased to be "the same Noam Chomsky whose [books] Manufacturing Consent and Fateful Triangle sit on [Suarez's] bookshelf". Well, Suarez does not care to mention any specific points of departure between the two versions of Chomsky that he sees, or produce any quotes that highlight this supposed shift in Chomsky's position. Suarez might like to consider the following quote that he may indeed find in his copy of Fateful Triangle, and rethink his dramatic discovery:

"Within the international consensus, there has been little discussion of whether such a settlement - henceforth, a 'two-state settlement' - reflects higher demands of abstract justice; rather, it has been taken to be a politically realistic solution that would maximize the chances for peace and security for the inhabitants of the former Palestine, for the region, and for the world, and that satisfies the valid claims of the two major parties as well as is possible under existing conditions. One can imagine various subsequent developments through peaceful means and mutual consent towards a form of federation or other arrangements."[7] (all emphases are mine)

Suarez says that, with Chomsky, "[e]verything is framed in terms of what Israel wants, or what Israel will or will not agree to." He relies on the readers' leftist ego, and distaste of letting the Israeli establishment get the 'upper hand' anywhere on anything, to do his analysis for him. Palestinian suffering can fall by the wayside apparently, we just cannot let Israel win this war of words, frames, and activist egos.

NOTES

[1] Jeevathol, A. Comment on Facebook post. [Online] 8th July 2014. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Cook.journalist/posts/556998841075434?comment_id=557038291071489&offset=0&total_comments=23 [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[2] Cook, J. Facebook post. [Online] 8th July 2014. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Cook.journalist/posts/556998841075434 [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[3] Suarez, T. Chomsky and BDS. Mondoweiss. [Online] 6th July 2014. Available from: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/chomsky-and-bds.html [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[4] Chomsky, N. On Israel-Palestine and BDS. The Nation. [Online] 2nd July 2014. Available from: http://www.thenation.com/article/180492/israel-palestine-and-bds [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[5] Chomsky, N. Interviewed by Barat, F. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2nd September 2010. For a video recording of the interview, see Films of Conscience, Noam Chomsky on Palestine & Israel, [Video; time reference: 02m16s] 2012, Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRu2mUcFXpg&t=2m16s [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[6] Cook, J. Comment on Facebook post. [Online] 8th July 2014. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Cook.journalist/posts/556998841075434?comment_id=557081131067205&offset=0&total_comments=23 [Accessed 13th July 2014].

[7] Chomsky, N. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians. [Paperback] Updated ed. London, Pluto Press; 1999. p. 42.

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