When I was first asked to participate in the drafting of a solidarity statement for the latest issue of the Occupy movement journal Tidal, I was apprehensive. Solidarity statements rarely make for great literature; worse, they tend to follow a rather tired and jargon-filled mold that leaves little chance of being more than an empty gesture. But at the time I was in the midst of finishing an essay on my recent travels with the Jenin Freedom Theatre — which appeared at WNV as “What I Learned About Empire in the West Bank” — and my head was swirling with the very specific intersections between the U.S. past, the U.S. present and occupied Palestine. So I became involved.
What came out of those meetings, those email chains, those conversations, far surpassed what I’d expected. “Colonizer as Lender,” which appears in the new issue of Tidal released today, benefits from the months of hard thought and work that has gone into the Strike Debt project — the project that brought us the Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual and the Rolling Jubilee. Through this lens, the statement was able to draw very clear connections between the economic structures imposed under Israeli occupation and those that entrap the 99 percent everywhere in the United States and the world; different in degree and context, but not entirely different in kind.
The public debt of the Palestinian Authority is approaching $5 billion—as much as 70 percent of GDP—and more than $1 billion of that is external debt. For an economy still heavily dependent on foreign aid, this volume of public-sector indebtedness is alarming. Household debt has also skyrocketed, largely because relatively new bank lending programs are being used to finance homes, cars, marriages, computers, and educations. So, like almost everywhere else, an ever larger share of personal income and government revenue is being swallowed up by debt service. All over the globe, debts are imposed and manipulated for the sake of social control, but this is all the more true for a people under siege in a struggle for self-determination.
Debt not only helps one understand the problem, but to think about means of remedy:
The psychology of debt impels us to think at every level about who and what Palestinians owe. But since we refuse to value fellow human beings by their relationship to capital, we should be asking the opposite question. We owe to Palestinians at least what we demand for ourselves: freedom from occupation, freedom from new forms of colonization, freedom to return to, inhabit, and live in a territory which we or our parents and grandparents called home, without annexation, without financialization, without exclusion, without pollution, and without the destruction of the common resources that nurture and sustain life.
Read the complete statement, hot off the presses, at TidalMag.org.
“We owe to native Americans at least what we demand for ourselves: freedom from occupation, freedom from new forms of colonization, freedom to return to, inhabit, and live in a territory which we or our parents and grandparents called home, without annexation, without financialization, without exclusion, without pollution, and without the destruction of the common resources that nurture and sustain life.”
I wish I saw an article from you written as above. Why are you so enchanted with problems so far away, and not putting your efforts to work on our own burning issues?
Because for me, this seems like hypocrisy.
Before calling me a hypocrite, you might have looked at the essay I linked to above, “What I Learned About Empire in the West Bank“:
Nathan,
The clause above is very touching, but still doesn’t explain why you focus on a small country thousands of miles away when the real issues are at your doorstep (the aid money is completely irrelevant).
Have you demonstrated against the the American settlers’ occupation of native America? Have you written to the congress/senate/president? The press? Are you willing to give the land back? Your home? Are you open to a financial restitution?
What did you *actually* do to fix these problems?
The aid money is not irrelevant; it is directly provided by the U.S. government using U.S. tax money. It is essential to maintaining Israeli military policies.
Protesting U.S. colonialism of the past would be rather unstrategic, since much of it has already taken place. Of course, the colonial process certainly continues, most visibly in the ways in which North American governments continue to trample on Native Americans’ treaty rights in order to take their land for various energy exploitation projects, which native people have steadfastly tried to resist. This has been most notable in the recent Idle No More movement, which we at WNV have covered despite almost complete silence about it in the U.S. media:
http://dev2.wagingnonviolence.org/series/idlenomore/
Nathan,
I disagree. The aid is first and foremost to force Israel to promote U.S. interests, in many cases on Israel’s expense.
“Protesting U.S. colonialism of the past would be rather unstrategic, since much of it has already taken place”
The same goes for the events of 67′, they are also in the past. ‘Unstrategic’? Perhaps for yourself…
You have not explained why do you require Israeli Jews to abandon their homes when you are in the exact same position and refuses to do the same.
U.S. leaders stumble over themselves to do everything in their power to show their total support for Israel. It’s a kind of determination unheard-of for any other country. Who else but “Bibi” do U.S. presidents and presidential candidates refer to on a first-name basis in official forums? In bodies such as the U.N., the U.S. routinely votes on Israel’s side even when almost the whole rest of the world opposes them. All told, the U.S. appears to be much more the tail being wagged than the other way around.
We are talking about much more than the events of ’67. We are talking about ending the current military occupation of the West Bank and the siege of the Gaza Strip. And we are talking about creating a situation in which living people who were born in what is now Israel, and their children, can have full citizenship rights on the land they grew up in. I (and many Palestinian activists I have met in the West Bank calling for the same thing) believe that it is possible to do so in ways that also respect similar rights of Israelis, Jewish and otherwise.
One people’s freedom simply cannot depend on another people’s subjugation. All are, in fact, subjugated by the subjugation of some.
That’s why I do think, by the way, that comparable measures are necessary in the U.S., both for Native American victims of U.S. colonialism and African American victims of the ongoing racial caste system: full civil rights, significant reparations, a full-scale process of restorative justice.
Nathan,
Apart of calling a leader of a friendly country names (how would you feel if Israelis would call President Obama – Baraki?) their is no explanation why you deal with Palestinians, who already have their country and own government (so it’s not clear what do you call occupation), instead of native Americans whom their land you took. Since you call for the removal of settlements and the transfer of Jews into the 67′ borders, are you willing to request the same for Americans living in occupied Texas and New Mexico? Doesn’t Mexico deserve to have its land back? Don’t Mexicans deserve to have their homes back?
Why is monetary compensation instead of land return is an acceptable solution for Christians in America, but not for Jews in Israel?
I never said reparations would be just money. I said: “full civil rights, significant reparations, a full-scale process of restorative justice.” This is a process of justice for all inhabitants of the region — expulsion for none, dignity for all. I would like to see the same thing in the U.S. Many articles on Waging Nonviolence, for instance, have presumed an analysis of immigration issues that puts people’s needs before borders or racial identity. If people in Mexico want or need to move to the U.S., why not? If Native Americans and African Americans are disproportionately in poverty in the richest country in the world, shouldn’t this society make their rights a priority?
If Palestinians have their own government, why can they not even have an airport? Why does Israel try to deny them representation in the U.N.? Why do Israeli soldiers have nearly free reign to conduct night raids in many Palestinian towns? Why did I have to pass through Israeli checkpoints in the middle of the Palestinian city of Hebron, far from the Green Line?
I think I’m probably done with this back-and-forth, if you don’t mind. I appreciate the dialogue, but it doesn’t feel like it’s making much progress.
Also, the Israeli occupation is “our own burning issue” for U.S. citizens. Israel is second only to Afghanistan as a top foreign aid recipient from the U.S., and it is that aid (along with nearly unconditional and unquestioned political support) which makes the occupation possible.
Nathan,
You know well that the restrictions on the Palestinians are due to their relentless efforts to kill Jews (the U.S. uses killer-drones all over the world for its protection, is that better?).
“I never said reparations would be just money. I said: “full civil rights, significant reparations, a full-scale process of restorative justice.”
You again vigorously refrain from committing transfer of land, I guess you have no intentions to do so. Also, you say “expulsion for none”, but you do mean expulsion for the Jews from their homeland (Judea).
You say “I think I’m probably done with this back-and-forth”. Well, I can see why. What you expect from the Jews is far more extreme than what you expect from yourself, even though you are in the same position, or worse.
You say “it doesn’t feel like it’s making much progress”. It did quite a lot, it has proven me that you and your ilk do not operate in decency, integrity or honor.
There is no more need for the back-and-forth, because evidently there is no compassion, truthfulness or goodwill behind your group’s actions, only self-righteousness, and perhaps a hardship driven business model.
Interesting conversation. It looks like you lost the debate, Nathan.
On what basis? Because I was called compassionless and self-righteous? Because I was attacked repeatedly for holding positions I do not hold and for not holding positions that I do hold? I’m curious to know what wisdom you’re seeing in Bob’s assault, as I am not seeing it for myself.
The simple truth is dogma doesn’t solve political fights that begin and end over thousands of years with ethnocide and genocide occurring in that region since the Bronze Age (probably longer).
The reality is no land is owned by any group, just ancestral claims which will go on until one group drops a really big bomb on the other.
That is unless we learn that tribalism and religion are poor illusions to actual kindness. One human species living on one planet.
I’ve always said this site has an ax to grind and a perspective which doesn’t promote peace but just takes sides. Its a circle-jerk of leftists and those who support Christian liberation theology who always see American power at home and overseas as bad.
You can thank the friends over on 147 Thomson Street for the vile hate which pretends to be love for perpetuating this dogma.
Ironically, it is the RC Church and all religious doctrines are the actual oppressors, destroying language, culture and life-ways for generations. Before the military arrives, it is usually the missionaries who make land first.