Misunderstandings Redux

Israeli forces conduct a night raid in Bi'ilin to harass nonviolent protest coordinators. Taken by Habib.

Last week I wrote an article in the University of Rochester’s Campus Times, which inspired quite a bit of dissent (pretty much entirely by the Israel Council, a university organization devoted to spreading Israeli statist propaganda). In particular, Joshua Warhit drew attention to my so-called “intellectually embarrassing” positions:

Mr. Boianov, believe it or not, probably has wonderful intentions. The problem is that as a result of poor/no understanding of the history of this conflict and major concepts in this debate, including simple words such as “colonization,” “Muslim,” and “conquest,” which he commonly mistakes for other terms, good intention has led to him representing a view point that is intellectually offensive. A wider view might have helped him retain a more credible understanding of the situation, but his stance that eye witness [sic] accounts of terrible offenses from one side provide a full portrait of the situation (which, to put it simply, is just not true) has probably erased the possibility of gaining such a view.

 Their response was published today here. The third sentence: “People have freedom of speech, but when the information presented is not factual, others must speak out.” It is exactly with that reasoning that I was forced to write this entry.

The claim is that my article “ignores the reality that Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as all other citizens.”

This is simply false. The legal and political situation of Arabs in particular is dreadful and has been exhaustively documented.  First of all, there is no law that guarantees equal rights to all citizens of Israel. The Israeli government’s own Or Commission declared:

Government handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory. The establishment did not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action in order to allocate state resources in an equal manner. The state did not do enough or try hard enough to create equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot discriminatory or unjust phenomenon.

The US State Department notes concerns that Jewish children receive three times more educational funding than Arabs.

The “current Knesset [legislative branch] is the most racist in Israeli history,” civil rights groups declare.

53 percent of Israeli families below the poverty line are Arab, despite the fact that Arabs compromise only 20 percent of the population. Human Rights Watch details the educational conditions available to Arab-Israelis:

often overcrowded and understaffed, poorly built, badly maintained, or simply unavailable…[they] offer fewer facilities and educational opportunities than are offered other Israeli children.

 

The Israeli government oversees two separate school systems: one for Jewish children and the other for Arab children. The US Supreme Court denounced the idiocy of a “separate but equal” doctrine a long time ago, as all of us learned very early on in high school:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group

Now just insert “Jew” instead of “white” and “Arab” instead of “colored.”

            The article goes on to claim that Israel’s loyalty oath (where non-Jews have to swear an oath to Israel as a Jewish state) has not been passed, when in fact the Israeli Cabinet approved the measure on October 10.

            It’s true that the bill is not a law yet, but what is stopping its passage is not a conversation about how the insane practice of forcing non-Jews to swear loyalty to a single ethnicity and religion runs against every tenet of democracy and civil rights. Rather, politicians are screaming that the bill discriminates against Jews immigrating under the Law of Return. No thought is being given to Arabs that face institutionalized discrimination constantly – because at the end of the day it is the Arabs who will be most harmed by this bill, whether everyone has to take the oath or not.

            What’s missing from the shifted discourse is why a loyalty oath is needed in the first place: Joseph Heller minces oaths to a shred in Catch-22, writing that loyalty oaths are only drawn up so that the signees can exclude some other group from signing, and thus stand on a brittle platform of unquestioning nationalism.

            Joshua Warhit also commented last week that publishing my eyewitness account of settlers terrorizing Palestinians serves no purpose other than to obfuscate the complexities of the conflict. What he fails to understand is that there is no comparable treatment of Israelis by Palestinians. If a Palestinian so much as touches a Jew he is thrown in jail and indicted, even if the contact is entirely consensual.

            Equating the homemade rockets that Hamas fires with a brutal military regime that brings an entire population to its knees is an oft-repeated justification for said occupation. Remember Operation Cast Lead? The Israeli army massacred 1417 Palestinians, 926 of them civilians. 13 Israelis were killed (though each of their deaths is a tragedy as well). Palestinians have no recourse to any military action performed. At the top I posted a picture of Israeli forces conducting night raids in Bi’ilin, West Bank. A friend took this photo. The people who are targeted have only committed the crime of organizing nonviolent protests against a separation barrier that was declared illegal by UN International Court. Just consider proportionality.

            The Israel council proceeds to claim, of all things, “Israel is not an expansionist colonial state.” What idiocy is this? As I wrote earlier, settlements are illegal under international law and are not recognized by any nation. In fact, the fourth Geneva Convention specifies that transferring a population from the occupier’s land to the occupied land is illegal. What is not expansionist and colonial about this? There is no justification for settlements other than they are part of a massive land-grab. I cannot believe I even have to point this out.

            Also, please don’t misquote me. The ‘centuries-old identity’ that I mention is the Jewish identity, which is evident to any decent speaker of the English language. Although I may be confused, since, “The author brings up a ‘centuries-old identity’ he is referring to the people known today as Palestinians,” is not a grammatically complete sentence. Who wrote this press release, Netanyahu?

            And finally, the Israel Council is afraid that my articles “jeopardize the readers’ abilites [sic] to retain knowledge.” Yes, I do endanger the student population’s ability to memorize propaganda that was ripped from a Birthright trip. I am not ashamed of this.

            Several weeks ago I was speaking to a student at the University of Rochester: she implored me to recognize the good that Israel has done for the West Bank, like bolstering its economy (apparently evidenced by its recent economic growth). That’s a funny way of putting it. After the grass is mowed down it grows back. But let me ask: do we praise the lawnmower?

Biometrics (Ir)Rationalized

It's no secret that the military is attempting to wage a massive PR campaign both in the United States and in Afghanistan. Sometimes it’s stunning how effective it is at home, while quite the opposite is true abroad.

The Guardian recently published a video report by Sebastian Meyer on “counter-insurgency operations,” which are basically attempts at “PR campaigns,” as a soldier claims in an interview. Meyer even names the soldiers “front-line anthropologists…mapping out the intricacies of Afghan tribes.” The operations entail landing in villages and speaking to locals about various construction projects that the military can fund.

I’m sure the motives behind such actions are pure in at least some of the ground troops, but how is it that they fail to understand that tearing someone’s homeland to shreds pretty much erases his capacity for meaningful reconciliation? The whole humanitarian angle is a farce, one that is nonetheless skillfully put on by the upper echelons of the military.

Anyways, while this attempt at pacifying the natives by throwing them goody bags is going on, Meyers documents the real purpose of the mission: biometric data acquisition. Richard Tomkins writes, “in the Garmser District of Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan…virtually every adult male in [the army’s] area of operation” has his details scanned and recorded.

Tomkins quotes Marine Corp. Caleb Owens discussing the practice: “It’s a good tool and no one since I’ve been here has objected to giving us their information.” Meyer’s video clearly shows one of these scans. What could be more humiliating than being held down while one’s intimate physical details are efficiently recorded? I doubt many civilians would voice objections to a group of heavily armed retinal photographers, especially in a region of Afghanistan that hasn’t seen foreign soldiers since the Russians were fighting the mujahedeen.

But then again, the army neatly skirts the trap of having to physically force each Afghan to submit to a scan: the same corporal brags that his soldiers tell the Afghans the scans are only needed for ID cards. IDs by their nature do require some proof of authenticity, so why should any villager question the practice? Yet the information gathered is used principally to add to a growing database of Afghan biometric information whose entries number approximately 800,000. To boot, all this information is exclusively in the domain of the US Army.

Noah Sachtman details exactly how transparent this program is: President Hamid Karzai was unaware that roughly 20,000 residents were coerced into providing biometric information in exchange for IDs until he saw a photo in the US weekly Newsweek. He immediately stopped the practice at the three checkpoints that where the photos were taken. However, it is clear that biometric scanning in the rest of the country continues despite his repeated objections.

A Marine officer nonchalantly classifies the practice of biological identification under “basic population-control measures.”

The consequence of these measures is a civilian population that is tagged and released like a herd of cows. Uttering a few soothing words during the process (offering cash for village construction projects) does not alleviate the humiliation of being tricked or forced into a system of racial subjugation.

Another prime example of how the media reframes the conflict: most of these articles speak in terms of military strategy or read like a press release straight from the army. There is no regard given to the basic civil and human rights that are being brushed away. Even sitting down with village elders in an attempt to sway them to NATO’s side is an incredibly misguided attempt to placate an indigenous population. No one forgets what the troops’ primary role is, and stowing a few assault rifles out of sight as if the Afghans will feel safer is little better (and possibly worse) than just kicking a few doors down, performing weapons searches, and handcuffing a few villagers.

photograph taken from the Guardian's Sebastian Meyer