Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons

Hi! I’m Mikko Sandt from Finland and the latest addition to World Community blog. Check my profile & blog.

(The following entry is actually a few weeks old but I was unable to post it due to not having an internet connection – so I apologize for commenting on old news)

A group of people marched for Israel some weeks ago in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Fine – it’s good to have some people marching in support of Israel’s actions on this day in history when it has become a habit to condemn every single thing that Israel does. But the thing is that almost all of these people were fundamental Christians and Jews who justify Israel’s actions by relying on Biblical arguments.

I don’t know which is worse – left-wing idiotarians marching against Israel or fundamental Christians marching for Israel. Both are doing what they’re doing for the wrong reasons.

Mikko Sandt

An Unlikely Unity in the Midst of War

Note: This article is crossposted on Sean’s Russia Blog.

Since the mid-1980s it is estimated that over a million Russians have immigrated to Israel. With a population of just over 6 million, this makes the Russian immigrant community a strong voting block in the Jewish state. Politically, they are considered a staple of the Israeli right wing.

But as Lily Galili reports in Haaretz, war can produce combinations that on the surface of Israeli politics seem unimaginable. At the head of Israel’s antiwar movement against the invasion of Lebanon stands Jana Kanapova and Khulud Badawi. Kanapova immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine as a young Zionist 11 years ago. Badawi is an Arab-Israeli resident of Haifa, which for the last month has been the target of Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets (which were ironically made in Russia). Together they have been the leaders of the peace movement on behalf of the Women’s Peace Coalition and the Ta’ayush organization. An Arab and a Russian. The combination defies most assumptions about the politics of ethnicity and the ethnicity of politics in Israel.

The way Kanapova and Badawi view the war and Israeli politics in general is laden with feminist overtones. As Karapova told Haaretz, “The police sees Khulud as a natural threat. In the same exact circumstances, the police refuses to see me as a threat. After all, they also share the stereotype that there are no leftists within the Russians. Khulud will always represent a danger, I’m never a danger; Khulud is the demographic ticking bomb, I am the demographic hope. This is the exact same attitude that views both of our wombs as state instruments, and we will not give them that pleasure.”

The demographic problem and solution that both their respective communities represent to the future of Israel makes their struggle more than over policy and war. Theirs is also a biopolitical struggle over what their bodies represent to the present and future of the Israeli state. Israel’s “Right of Return” law has always had biopolitical elements. The hope is that immigration from the Jewish Diaspora will offset the rapidly growing Palestinian population. Israel’s battle for its future therefore is more than about guns and missiles. It is about the reproduction of bodies. But not just any body. It is about the reproduction of particularly Jewish bodies.

The biopolical analysis that both Kanapova and Badawi make is not the only unique quality about resistance to this war. In fact, it is difficult to say whether this consciousness of the body is the main logic behind the peace movement. However, the fact that the protest against the Lebanon war, unlike Israeli peace movements of the past, has been mostly headed by women inevitably throws issues of gender into the mix. “All the aspects of this war tie the feminist, social, ecological and class struggle closely to the ongoing struggle against the occupation,” they told Haaretz. “Women make this connection naturally. The old left, even that of ‘Gush Shalom,’ did not manage to connect these struggles. We did. The women’s social and political networks are also stronger. This war is taking place in our social arena, in our homes. As women and citizens, we produce an alternative feminine voice to oppose the militant male voice.” “This is a war of men fighting for their honor, both the IDF’s honor and Hezbollah’s honor,” concludes Kanapova. “Women are less into the honor thing. Russian women are instinctively aware that wars are men’s games. That is the society we grew up in, and we find it obvious.”

The significance of Kanapova’s and Badawi’s gender is not the only unique aspect of resistance to this poorly planned and ill fated Israeli offensive. Their respective ethnicities is what makes them attractive to the news. If they were two Ashkenazim, their presence and efforts on the Israeli Left would have perhaps been overlooked. Their presence allows for the peace movement to be conducted in three languages—Arabic, Hebrew and Russian–,and according to Kanapova, this has allowed her to engage, and even convince some in her community to oppose the war. The presence of Russian female activists has ballooned from three to 200. It has also led to more contact with Israeli Russians and Arabs:

In the past, Israeli Arab citizens avoided coming to demonstrations in Tel Aviv in the midst of war. At most they resigned themselves to a symbolic representation in the later stages of the protest. Their demonstrations against the occupation also usually took place in Arab towns. No more. This time, the Arabs were equal partners in the left’s demonstrations in Tel Aviv from the outset of the war. The thousands of Katyushas, falling on them as well, have toppled the old inhibitions. They do not see it as another Jewish war, but as a civilian war in which they have an equal right to speak out. Badawi says that they purposefully bring their voices to Tel Aviv, which they consider to be the Israeli capital.

Another kind of change is happening in the Russian-speaking arena. The community of Russian-speakers has long been considered the hard core of the Israeli right wing. The recruitment of a even handful for leftist Zionist demonstrations was always considered a great achievement. On this occasion, there exists a small but prominent and consistent presence of Russian-speakers in the radical left’s protests. The Arabs learn to shout out the slogan “Vayni nyet” (no war), and the Russian and Hebrew-speakers rhythmically call “Salam na’am, hareb la” (peace yes, war no.) It is safe to assume that these ties will remain long after the sounds of war fade away.

One hopes that they are correct.

Sean Guillory

Perspectives on Gaza

This being one of the most diverse blogs I’ve ever participated in, let alone read, I thought that I could start a lively discussion on people’s thoughts and perspectives regarding the recent Israeli incursions into the Gaza strip. This being one of the most explosive and politically charged issues of the day, I can imagine that there is a wide gamut of opinions on the matter, and I think that it is precisely the sort of issue that this blog was created to foster discussion about.

Recent news in the region indicates that Israel has continued to put real military pressure on the Gaza residents as well as the political leadership of Hamas:

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip on Sunday after rebuffing a proposed ceasefire by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

Israel is threatening to expand its offensive unless militants release Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in a cross-border raid on June 25, and halt rocket fire on Israeli cities.

At least three militants were injured in an early morning air strike near the Karni commercial crossing, Palestinian medics and police said.

I’ve written my thoughts about the matter before, and I would say that my prevailing attitude- which is a cautious support for curbing militant actions in the region- remains the same. Though I am sympathetic to the real humanitarian problems with the incursion, I have to admit that the blame seems to fall squarely on Hamas, who, believing that Israel will be forced to cease putting pressure on Hamas due to the outcry over the humanitarian crisis fostered by their incursion. Hamas realizes that the more the Israeli action harms the civilian population, the more likely they are to be pressured by various international groups to cease their attempt to recapture their soldier- a conflict that is a mere pretense for the larger war between Hamas and Israel that has been brewing for some time.

At the same time, Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian targets- namely, the power plant and the infrastructure for water and other desperately needed resources- seems both inadvisable and ethically problematic. Although such actions no doubt ratchet up the pressure on the Hamas government, they do so not while avoiding collateral damage but by causing it. The legitimacy of these targets is certainly in question, and in a region where the civilian population has already been forced to undergo so much hardship, it seems like this sort of action is precisely the kind of thing Israel should carefully avoid.

There is a real danger in analyzing this conflict to adopt a view that does not recognize the complexities and failings of both parties. Those of my own political persuasion often times refuse to look at the real injustices the Israelis have visited upon the Palestinian population, but often in respose, those of differing views come close to painting Hamas as saints- or at the very least, acknowledging their crimes not in any real, honest way, but as a disclaimer that attempts to justify unfair demonization of Israel. Both paths, I think, are clearly no representative of the actual situation and the complexities inherent in it, but also merely fuel in the fire, feeding the conflict rather than working toward a real solution.

I would very much like to hear the opinions of other bloggers on this site, and I hope that we can have a calm, civil, and rational discussion on the matter.

Curtis Schweitzer