Barbelith Underground > Switchboard > Marketing, Movements and Nations

Elsewhere, in the middle of a discussion about the Keffiyeh, a discussion of Hamas broke out, and the relative merits of (and note this, because it gets interesting later) Hamas/Al Qaeda/Palestine and Israel. Flyboy opined:

Worth noting that there have been several threads about Israel and Palestine before here - in some of them I'm sure the issue of what a nation state is, and therefore what is meant by "the state of Israel". One thing that a state is not is synonymous with a population: a good example of this is the fact that the Palestinians do not have a nation state that is recognised legally by the state of Israel or, for example, the United States of America, and yet a Palestinian population clearly exists. It's strange that apologists for the state of Israel always focus on the issue of the recognition of the state of Israel when the reality is that that issue is far more pressing for the Palestinians - mind you, the same is true of issues such as the killing of civilians, so I guess that's hardly surprising.

Now, keep an eye on the last sentence there, it will come up again later. Phex states that Hamas is:

an organization which is committed to wiping out or enslaving a race of people (see the line in their charter about getting to the 'next round' with the Jews after they're done in Israel), believes that all other religions should live 'under the shadow' of Islam (Article Thrity-one), claims that women have 'no lesser role than men in the war of liberation' (Articles 17-18) yet defines their duties as making babies and cleaning the house and believes that the Elders of Zion, Freemasons and Rotary clubs control the world. To broadly support a group with these views one would have to agree with some or all of them, be ignorant of them or automatically support any group whose military doesn't have uniforms that look comfortably like those of our own military. If, for example, somebody on this board professed a 'broad support' for the BNP, an organization in many ways more moral than Hamas (they haven't yet killed anybody for instance), would you expect a polite reaction? Of course not, but because of the past association of the Palestinian cause with the political Left (the KGB's funding of various groups etc.) and the ongoing association of Israel with the political Right (American aid, Evangelical Christianity's weird love affair with the Jews etc.) it is perfectly acceptable for people on this board and elsewhere to profess support for violent, racist, misogynistic and intolerant organizations providing they meet one single criteria: that the Fa$$cest AmeriKKKan Corpocracy doesn't like them.

And adds:

Bringing the discussion back onto keffiyeh, the above is why I wouldn't wear one nor have much respect for somebody who chooses to. Privileging the Palestinian side of the current conflict over the other smacks of the kind of blinkered world view where international politics is as easy to understand as the Star Wars franchise: there's a rich and powerfully-armed empire fighting a rag-tag band of rebels; the first is absolutely evil, the second absolutely good. This is of course bullshit, and so is the reverse- there's not a country on Earth with a spotless track record, so expressing solidarity with any one nation (and Palestine is a nation), even through one's choice of clothes is always going to be problematic, and in the case of the Israel/Palestine conflict so much so that I can't see why any rational person would want to do so.

Now, a couple of things are interesting here. One of these is that it is always problematic to express solidarity with a nation - so, to express solidarity with Israel or Palestine is problematic, if one assumes that both are nations (as Flyboy has noted, the nation of Palestine is not recognised by the US or Israel, although by turnabout the nation of Israel is not recognised by various other nations). It is possible, though, to looks at political organisations and determine whether they are more or less moral than others. So, the BNP can be said to be more moral than Hamas. The missing point in this triangle, I think, is the presence of any comparable Israeli organisation to stand in moral comparison with Hamas or the BNP, when the nation of Israel cannot be included, by dint of being a nation, with the problematic qualities that creates moving it into a different realm. So, one could look at the Kadima party, say, as an example.

Of course, we are already in trouble there, since Hamas, the BNP and Kadima occupy very different places in the world. Hamas holds a simple majority in an assembly that lacks a few things to make it the equivalent of the Knesset - a seat in the United Nations, control of its borders, an army. Kadima holds the largest single grouping of seats in the Knesset, but that constitutes only a quarter of the actual seats. However, it does get access to the United Nations, control its border, have an army and, PS, nukes. The BNP holds no majority in Parliament, and it seems is unlikely to in the future.

These variations in power are, I think, interesting. For example, one can certainly look at Hamas and see an organisation that is batshit loopy. Indeed, there is a theory most often seen among Communists that it was precisely this batshit loopiness that attracted Israel to the idea of Hamas in the first place. On the other hand, even with a Hamas Prime Minister in the Palestinian Authority, is its ability to deliver on its charter actually in any way greater? I think probably not. To the best of my understanding, Hamas is not capable of destroying the nation of Israel, or creating an Islamic state in the land it currently occupies. I would go so far as to say that Hamas will never be able to achieve those aims. Does that mean that it is acceptable for Hamas to express a desire to achieve them in the terms set out in their charter? I would probably say no, personally, but. But I am not convinced that one can look at this basically unattainable set of aims and consider them to be the most important thing about Hamas or, indeed, about Palestine - which is where we get back to the equation in which there is no Israeli comparator for Hamas, only a British version (the BNP). What would the equivalent be? What is the dominant force in Israel's administration, with no power to exert its stated aims? Is the ideology of Hamas the Palestinian authority's equivalent of the military force available to Israel's Knesset - the thing which acts to check the goals of the other, without actually having the power to resolve the situation?

Which brings us back, in a roundabout way, to Flyboy's:

mind you, the same is true of issues such as the killing of civilians, so I guess that's hardly surprising.

It's very hard to get good comparative data for the casualties of the situation among both Israelis and Palestinians, in particular since a number of causes might or might not be ruled in or out, such as poverty, poor sanitation and so on. The UNCHR report "Question of the Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, including Palestine" says:

Since the start of the second intifada in
September 2000, over 2,755 Palestinians and over 830 Israelis have been killed
and 28,000 Palestinians and 5,600 Israelis have been injured. Most have been civilians.
Five hundred and fifty children have been killed, of whom 460 were Palestinians and 90 Israelis.
The number of Palestinian children killed, mainly in air and ground attacks, has increased
in 2003. Within Israel, most deaths have been caused by suicide bombers.

The last couple of sentences are interesting, there. The Palestinians are killed in more progressive ways, and it might be worth thinking, taking that into account, about how these ways change our perception of the way the casualties are presented. Dragon, who was admittedly a nasty piece of work, argued when Israel and Hizbollah had their last set-to, that "people" (Muslims) who employed suicide bombing clearly placed a lower value on human life than other people who launched distance attacks - the extension of the argument being that the Palestinian civilians sort of don't mind as much about being killed. It's an interesting way to look at it.

Moving a little sideways from that, we note that it is unlikely that all of those Palestinian deaths were members of Hamas. So, presumably, a degree of killing of unattached personnel is permissable in the broader pursuit of one's political objectives. Phex mentioned in the Kheffiyeh thread that 76% of the population of Israel is Jewish (I'm not sure what he is counting as "Israel" there, of coure, but there are more Jewish Israelis than Palestinians in the area of Israel and the Occupied Territories, certainly), and, since Palestinian:Israeli attrition seems according to the UN to be running at about 3-4:1, mathematically the situation might eventually resolve itself, but at that rate it will take millennia. However, in terms of those statistics, again I become interested in how the method of attack becomes an aesthetic question, and the results a statistica one. Put simply, if there were a way to reduce the number one one side to zero, would the other side also be reduced to zero? Speaking personally, that seems to be an unreal question, as unreal, in fact, as "should the state of Israel cease to exist", because it simply will not happen with other conditions unchanged. Bloodshed is not a problem of the Occupied Territories but a condition. That condition can be tipped one way or the other - more foreign workers in Israel means les Palestinian border traffic, means fewer bombing opportunities but greater poverty. Long-range shooting changes the mix of casualties - but it remains as an issue that needs to be addressed and presented.

This has functioned as a somewhat untidy set of ruminations so far, but I think we are coming back to the question of what it means to "support the Palestinian cause". Is it possible to demonstrate an acceptable level of solidarity for a nation, rather than a political party? Does the disparity in lethality of the methods adopted by Israeli armed forces and by Palestinian terrorists offset the more civilised and familiar methods used by Israel? How would one approach branding the struggle, and what positive effect would that branding be aimed at? There are other directions or side-conversations that it might be useful to look at, also - such as the PR and marketing impact of the unilateral withdrawal plans, and for that matter the different approaches of factions within Israel and the Palestinians.

This has functioned as a somewhat untidy set of ruminations so far, but I think we are coming back to the question of what it means to "support the Palestinian cause". Is it possible to demonstrate an acceptable level of solidarity for a nation, rather than a political party? Does the disparity in lethality of the methods adopted by Israeli armed forces and by Palestinian terrorists offset the more civilised and familiar methods used by Israel? How would one approach branding the struggle, and what positive effect would that branding be aimed at?

I also questioned the meaning of 'supporting the Palestinian cause' in the other thread, though less vocally than Phex. The problem I have with notions like this is their vagueness. There's a tendency to simplify the political topology of the region, so that support for 'the Palestinians' = support for a Palestinian State = support for the political parties demanding and claiming to represent such a state, which is how we end up with posters 'broadly supporting' Hamas in the other thread.

I've got two main concerns here:

a) As I keep insisting, the Palestinians are not a homogenous group, and reducing the complex, daunting and frustrating history of the region to Palestine (good) vs. Israel (bad) is a monstrous distortion. Not because the relative merits of either side need to be more evenly balanced (e.g. by claiming that Israeli state terrorism is in fact legitimate, or that Israel is a nice liberal capitalist state, so they deserve a bit of the 'good' which the left only attach to Palestine). Rather because there are a whole mess of conflicting interests within both 'sides' of that dichotomy (power relations, I suppose, with all the local conflicts and oppressions they bring with them), which really shouldn't be passed over.

I linked to this article by Aufheben in the other thread. I know its rather long, but I think it does a very good job of outlining the history of the Intifadas and the region in general, and the role played by various factions and groups within that. It certainly shows the way beyond Palestinians=oppressed/Israel=oppressors.

b) to deal with Hamas itself: its a militantly nationalist and Islamicist group, with a history of policing and suppressing elements of working-class unrest among Palestinians (though admittedly encouraging others). This is one of the reason Israel supported its growth in the mid to late 80s; the other was its desire to compete with the P.L.O. to be the ruling class of the new Palestinian state - more on this below, but its stated aim is to found an Islamic state based on the leadership's particular conception of Islam.

Hamas also has a history of using and encouraging suicide bombers against Israeli targets. I'm not particulary interested in the relative moral legitimacy of Israeli state terrorism and the actions of Palestinian groups. I am, however, interested in why a particular organisation encourages suicide bombings, and which targets they direct them against. Historically, I think its fairly clear that Hamas have used them to undermine the authority of the P.L.O. and to rival its claim to represent the interests of the Palestinian people. Given that both groups seek the establishment of a Palestinian state, the rivalry between them amounts to a struggle for power within this nascent state and influence over its eventual form and character (the P.L.O. being secular where Hamas are Islamic). If people don't mind the term, they are a would-be bourgoisie, a ruling class within the new Palestine. I think its really important to see how suicide bombings are caught up within this intra-Palestinian dynamic, and not a pure expression of desperation on the part of lone individuals whose sole focus is the oppressive Israeli state. They were not always a feature of this conflict, and they are encouraged and facilitated by the leadership of particular groups with particular aims, aims which are much more complicated than 'support for the Palestinian people'. Obviously Hamas aren't completely cut off from the concerns of the wider Palestinian milieu, but when they act its always in a manner in keeping with their own specific ideology and aims. For what its worth, suicide bombers tend to be picked from the Palestinian working-class (they certainly aren't the leaders of Hamas!), and tend to target and most affect the Israeli working-class, who are the least well-defended sector of the Israeli state.

Haus, in a different context [working out the legitimacy of comparing the BNP to Hamas], said:

To the best of my understanding, Hamas is not capable of destroying the nation of Israel, or creating an Islamic state in the land it currently occupies. I would go so far as to say that Hamas will never be able to achieve those aims. Does that mean that it is acceptable for Hamas to express a desire to achieve them in the terms set out in their charter? I would probably say no, personally, but. But I am not convinced that one can look at this basically unattainable set of aims and consider them to be the most important thing about Hamas or, indeed, about Palestine

While the first few points may be true right now, I don't think that Hamas' current impotence means that their stated aims and the actions they have used in an attempt to acheive them ought to be seen as irrelevant, or even secondary, in the way we view them. I agree that they're not the most important thing about Palestine, but then why even begin to conflate the two? Hamas are not identical with 'the Palestinians' any more than the P.L.O were when they claimed to legitimately represent them. I suspect, however, that we reach this point because people see Hamas as the Palestinians' legitimate elected representatives who do speak on behalf of the 'Palestinian people', which leads to a much wider debate about the way Palestinian representatives have acted historically in the region (as far as I'm concerned, used by the West and Israel to police and check grass-roots unrest among the Palestinian working class - see the article above), and the role of liberal democracy and the nation state in general.

Quickly, though, in response to Haus' final question (How would one approach branding the struggle, and what positive effect would that branding be aimed at?), given that I don't think anyone on Barbelith is actively involved in the conflict itself, the most promising attempt at 'branding the struggle' I've seen was the attempt to introduce the notion of a Worldwide Intifada (Intifada around the World being a variation on that), which tried to move beyond the narrowly nationalist approaches to the conflict and to draw out wider connections with the rest of the world. Basically, though, anything that encourages people to strive for a proper understanding of the conflict and to see how it is connected to factors and power relations that shape their own lives, rather than seeing it as a distant struggle in which one has to take sides with Palestinians rather than the Israelis, because the former are 'oppressed'.

Marketing, Movements and Nations - Palestine, Hamas and Israel