Peace is a fleeting dream; negotiations broke down and fell apart years ago. There is no dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority anymore--unless you count the PA complaining about Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel trading shots with Hamas as "dialogue." The peace process is not processing.
How can we ever achieve peace and justice if there aren't negotiations? The Israelis could annex the West Bank; the Palestinians could "unilaterally" declare statehood (this is splendidly ironic... as if declarations of statehood or independence are ever "multilateral"). Neither scenario would be a solution, but neither requires one side to talk to the other, so these outcomes are more likely right now than any outcome predicated on resuming negotiations between the two sides.
But if I'm so smart, what would I do or suggest to get the ball rolling again, in a direction that not only would lead somewhere, but would be productive for both sides, and self-sustaining (that is, the negotiations wouldn't fall apart without pressure/support from other countries or IGOs)?
I'm glad you asked, because I have a plan.
Step One
Settlement expansion has to stop, period. There is no Israeli argument for continuing settlement expansion that holds water. If there is a burning need to construct new housing for Israelis, there is plenty of room outside the West Bank. I know this for a fact, because I drove through a whole lot of nothing between Be'er Sheva and Ashkelon. Or, if agricultural land is too precious to build settlements on, south of Be'er Sheva there's even less than nothing. Build there. But the bottom line is that building and/or expanding settlements in the West Bank has no legitimate purpose--other than attempting to create more "facts on the ground" that will result in more territory for Israel and less for the Palestinians.
There are two types of residents who move to these new/expanding settlements: economic settlers, and religious settlers. Economic settlers move into these settlements because the Israeli government subsidizes rents, making the settlements cheaper than other housing options. Religious settlers move into these settlements because they want to prevent the land from leaving Israeli control. The first group won't stand in the way of a settlement freeze, because their subsidized housing can be built on Israeli soil, for all they care. The second group is against negotiating with the Palestinians regardless, so a settlement freeze won't affect their view of negotiations, either. In either case, a freeze won't change the political will of the Israeli public to resolve the conflict--or at least make progress in that direction.
Step Two
Past negotiations have broken down because neither side has faith in the political leadership of the other side (and, especially on the Palestinian side, for good reason). Mahmoud Abbas is a caretaker with very little public support, and the Israelis know how little power he actually wields; the Netanyahu government is seen as the worst thing to happen to Palestinians since Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister--and Sharon was the worst thing to happen to Palestinians since 1967.
Because neither side has faith in the other's leadership, negotiations need to take place outside the leadership circles. Negotiators outside the loop of politics-as-usual need to be appointed. This has been done before: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators outside the circles of power have met over the years, and had very fruitful discussions. However, these discussions have amounted to nothing, because the negotiators were... well, outside the circles of power. The negotiations were words on paper, and nothing more. I suggest that negotiators be given the power--by their respective governments and constituencies--to implement the results of their negotiations. Obviously, there are a lot of political hurdles to clear with this idea, and it would be all-but impossible to implement this for "big" issues like the final status of Jerusalem, the right of return, borders, etc. So that brings us to...
Step Three
"Confidence building" was a process in the early 1990s whereby each side negotiated on little things, to show the other side that they were negotiating in good faith and could actually carry out the agreed-upon results. AS things started to fall apart in the mid- to late-1990s, "confidence building" went out the window, because those "big" issues needed to be resolved, and each side wanted to make a "big strike" to show their own people that they were making real progress, rather than simply building confidence with the other side.
However, in the 21st century neither side has confidence in the other. At all. So we need to return to confidence building. But at the same time, big issues need to be resolved, because things have deteriorated so badly that change needs to happen now. So let's tackle a big issue, but one that's been off the table from the beginning, because it seemed to be trivial compared to the rest of the big issues: water.
Most of the water used in Israel/Palestine comes from an aquifer that lies almost entirely under the West Bank. Israelis use, on average more than four times the amount of water that Palestinians do--and this doesn't count water used in agriculture and industry. Long story short: the water resources are predominantly under Palestinian land, and Israel consumes this water at a pace far greater than the Palestinians. This is unsustainable--not only for the aquifer, but also for the Palestinians. West Bank wells are increasing running dry, or being infiltrated by salt water due to fresh water being pulled out by the Israelis.
So this is a very important issue, but one that is not in the forefront of political leaders'--or the public's--minds. In other words, no one is fighting-mad about water. But it's probably a more important issue than the right of return, or other intractable issues. Thus, it's the perfect issue to start with--solving a big problem through confidence-building measures.
And it's a problem that the US can help solve. Israel has desalinization plants; these plants are very expensive, and they use a great deal of energy. Israel has ample renewable resources, however--coastal wind and plenty of solar capacity. The US could easily provide a grant to Israel for the purchase of solar panels and construction of offshore wind farms, using parts and technology purchased from US firms. This is a two-birds-with-one-stone idea--give the US renewable energy industry a lift, while solving a couple problems for Israel.
Providing a viable alternative source of water for Israel would allow room for compromise--dare I say, even justice--with the Palestinians. Once the two sides saw that there could be a solution to an issue that wasn't zero-sum--that is, one side wins and the other side loses--they could think creatively about other areas of dispute.
Step Four
In South Africa after the Apartheid regime was dismantled, there was still a great deal of anger--and rightly so. But rather than pursue long, potentially fruitless criminal trials to bring to justice the worst offenders from the Apartheid era, South Africa tried something else. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee was a way for the stories of abuse and injustice to come into the open; victims had a forum to air their grievances and tell their stories, and the abusers could admit their roles without fear of prosecution or retribution. It wasn't a perfect idea, nor was it perfect in its implementation. But the TRC allowed South Africans to acknowledge the injustice of the past, to air those grievances, and to accept responsibility... in an open forum, and--perhaps most importantly--rather quickly. Criminal trials take a long time, and if the prosecution isn't successful, there is no sense of closure for the victims. The TRC, because it wasn't prosecuting anyone, moved quickly enough to keep the country's wounds from festering--and there was no "failure" to convict criminals, because no one was being tried.
Something similar should be put on the table in Israel/Palestine. First, an open, televised forum needs to be implemented, so that individual Palestinians and Israelis can share their stories. There's too much they-ing, as in "They took my land," or "They're violent," etc. Individual Israelis and Palestinians are not tiny subdivisions of government policy and position; each has a unique story, family history, and encounter with the past. The Israeli public certainly needs to be exposed to the histories of dispossession Palestinians carry with them; Palestinians could benefit from hearing the histories of persecution that drove Israelis to the region. In other words, the monolithic identities of "Israeli" and "Palestinian" need to be deconstructed, so that each side can see the other as individuals and human beings, rather than as cogs in the faceless oppositional nationality.
Step Five
Tear down the wall. Israelis feel more secure because of it, while Palestinians feel caged in. Yes, taking it down would run the risk that radicals would start bombing buses again. But negotiations are a risk in and of themselves, and, at some point, the wall is going to have to come down anyway--and even then, there will likely be radicals willing to kill to make their point. Taking down the wall is a good-faith gesture that is sorely needed, particularly when Palestinians see the wall as yet another appropriation of their land.
Step Six
Israel needs to talk to Hamas. Hamas was legitimately elected in free & fair elections. Yes, Hamas' charter still calls for the destruction of Israel. And yes, Israeli governments have made a big deal about "not negotiating with terrorists." But Israel negotiated with enemy states before (Egypt, anyone?), and so dealing with a group that is hostile to the Israeli state is nothing new. And Israel has, does, and will again "negotiate with terrorists." In fact, in the 1980s, even as Israel was branding Yasir Arafat as a radical terrorist, they were actually protecting him from harm.
The Israeli government needs to learn that they're playing chicken with Hamas, and by refusing to deal with them, giving Hamas more incentive not to blink.
No progress toward peace can happen in the West Bank without concomitant progress in Gaza; shutting Gaza out to punish Hamas will just prevent anything from getting done in the West Bank.
Now, I realize that most of these steps are moves/compromises the Israeli government must make, so that might seem like less of a "negotiation" and more "a set of demands." But the bottom line is that since the peace process derailed in 1995-96, Israel has moved farther and farther from the negotiating table, through words (e.g., "East Jerusalem is not a settlement!") and deeds (e.g., the wall, the blockade of Gaza, settlement expansion). Israel has the power, and thus it is Israel's obligation to take the first steps toward compromise and peace.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Reading Response: April 25
I said this in my last post about Armstrong: Jerusalem (the book) is a maelstrom of historical detail, to the end of illustrating how these details matter to those who contend with each other over the fate, over the meaning of Jerusalem (the city). Yes, those details are important in and of themselves (not to quote Santayana's "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but yeah, that might apply, too), but my one of my main points of contention with Armstrong is that she seems to miss that these details are precisely the weapons each side uses against the other.
That said (again), let me hit some highlights of chapters 14-18, and the whole book overall.
First, I think Armstrong has really hit on something when she identifies building as a political act. She didn't bring this up until, oh, maybe the Roman period or thereabouts, but the last 1000 years' worth of history have really hammered this point home. As an aside, it's rare that you can say about a city "well, for most of its history this didn't matter, but over the past 1000 years or so, this new thing was important."
Anyway, destruction is obviously a political act. As Norman Schwarzkopf pointed out in 1991, armies are made to "kill people and break things." And in the course of killing people, the things that are often broken are the buildings and urban spaces where the people live. On this topic, Stephen Graham's Cities, War, and Terrorism is a brilliant book. In his Introduction and chapter "Cities as Strategic Sites: Place Annihilation and Urban Geopolitics," Graham points out how for most of history, cities and civilians were not spared from the ravages of war, and instead were the targets of warfare. Only for a brief period of "civilized" warfare did armies try to minimize damage to civilians and cities. For more on the topic, and specific to Israel/Palestine, his chapter in the same book titled "Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories," is very compelling.
So anyway, armies conquer and break things, particularly the cities that are the targets/objects of conquests. Many times when this happens, buildings are--necessarily--destroyed. When a conquering army destroys the holy places, government offices, and/or walls of a city, it's obviously a political act--the erasure from history (and the city) of any notion of resistance to the conqueror. We can have no idea how many civilizations once existed, because many conquerors obliterated any record of their conquered foes. Similarly, as in Egypt, often the successes and achievements of past regimes are erased from history (in ancient Egypt, pharaohs would sometimes chisel from monuments the cartouches of predecessors, and put their own names instead).
But the notion that construction, rather than destruction, is a political act--well, not that that's novel among social scientists, but it's worth pointing out in a history, and it's of paramount importance in Israel/Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem. Constructing something is not only an establishment of a group's presence in the city, but it's also a claiming of space. And particularly where space is at a premium--within a walled city, proximate to holy sites--claiming space is not just a political act, it is an aggressively political act.
I wish that Armstrong would've taken a few pages out of each chapter to apply some social theory. She applies (or tries to apply) psychological concepts, and uses a lot of religious/theological theory, but some social theory would've been helpful. Most particularly, especially in the right historical frame (say, the last 300 years), she could've taken some time to examine Western notions of property ownership, and/or Eurocentric ideas of territory and territoriality. Because a lot of what she's talking about is ground that has been trod by social scientists (particularly, geographers) for a long time now: the notion that property must be improved to be rightfully owned. This is prominent in Locke, but it traces back to Grotius (late 16th - early 17th century philosopher). In short, if you don't make land more productive, you essentially lose your right to it. This isn't just a quaint historical notion: it survives in present-day American residential zoning (e.g., if you put a fence up on the wrong side of your property line, on your neighbor's property, and your neighbor doesn't contest this, after a set amount of time--usually something like seven or eight years--you can legally claim that property is yours).
This idea is how colonial powers justified their appropriations of land and the incorporation of territory into their empires. As Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, the Zionist settlers imagined Ottoman Palestine as "a land with no people for a people with no land." How did this come to be? Well, yes, as Armstrong has pointed out, the decline of the Ottoman empire ran concomitant with a decline in the economy and population of Jerusalem. But more importantly, the indigenous people in Ottoman Palestine were largely pastoralists, moving their livestock over large areas. What sedentary agriculture there was, was largely olive tree groves--which didn't require active maintenance or irrigation. So, when Zionist settlers arrived, they saw a land that was "sparsely populated" and not being utilized to its capacity. They formed their kibbutzim, and "made the desert bloom." By investing time and capital in the land, through irrigation systems and sedentarized agriculture (complete with permanent housing and infrastructure), the immigrants were thus improving the land, giving them claim to it that superseded any Arab claims. After all, the reasoning went, if the Arabs really owned and valued the land, they would have improved it long ago. They're just squatters, scraping a living off of land they don't own (and therefore don't have the right to improve, either).
This is an important bit of history and theory that certainly applies. And I think it makes a lot clearer the politicization of construction in the region. Building a new structure--be it a religious site or a marketplace or an apartment complex--is not just political because it establishes "facts on the ground," but because it establishes (and/or reinforces) a claim to that land that abrogates previous claims.
Next point about Armstrong, particularly in 14-18. She really pins the blame on the Crusaders. She even goes so far--in the Israel chapter, I think, or maybe Zion?--to say that the Crusades "broke" relations between the three great monotheisms. I don't dispute that the Crusades did a lot of long-term damage; a lot of very deep wounds were cut during this period. But during the Ottoman period--particularly during Suleiman's rule--relations were pretty good. Yes, there were undercurrents of hostility, and lingering grudges, but if things had kept up the way they were going during Suleiman's reign, perhaps those hostilities and grudges would've smoothed themselves out and healed over time.
And honestly, the British really bolluxed things up during the Mandate. Particularly in the wake of WWII, they were unwilling to say 'no' to the Israeli proto-state. And the bombing of the King David Hotel seemed to just give the British another reason to wash their hands of the Mandate, instead of doing something to solve the growing dispute. And then, particularly after 1967, the US took Britain's place as the power that contributed to the problem, rather than to the solution (for example, compare the US response to the Suez Crisis with the US response to the Six Days War, or the Yom Kippur War).
So yeah, the Crusades were a brutal period and established some dysfunctional relations between the three faiths. But to lay everything at the feet of the Crusades is not only too simple, but it absolves modern powers from their roles in creating and exacerbating the dispute.
This post is turning into a book, so I'll be brief with my two remaining points.
Third, the little people get left out of Armstrong's history. This is pretty much a necessity in any broad history of ancient times and even antiquity--accounts of quotidian life by the commoners are unlikely to survive hundreds or thousands of years. Instead, we get lists of rulers, conquerors, and priests. I understand this. But records from the Crusade on are pretty good--especially so from the Arab Islamic Empire, and the literally dozens of famous social scientists and travelers who chronicled the world (e.g., Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, etc.). This is one thing the Living Jerusalem project "gets" that Armstrong (as well as historians like Bernard Lewis) misses: people live in these histories. Armstrong goes to great lengths telling us about how Jews, Christians, and Muslims contended over sites like the Holy Sepulcher or the "Upper Room," but she simplifies the opinions of all these groups into a monolithic stance. Surely the common folk who lived in the city didn't all think the same way and hold the same opinions about these disputes--disputes that often involved mainly the wealthy & powerful.
Not only are the opinions of these unheard lives important, but their lives themselves are important. The intro video for the Living Jerusalem project tells more about the history and impact of the Israel/Palestine dispute in the story of the two bakers, than Armstrong does in Chapters 17 & 18.
Which brings me to my fourth (and final, for this post) point: Armstrong seems to have run out of gas by Chapter 16. The 20th century has seen more "history," more bloodshed and conflict, more danger and potential ruin, than previous centuries. The complexities of politics and dispute in the 20th century are deeper and more tightly imbricated than those of previous periods, because they carry the baggage of these periods, as well as contemporary issues. Armstrong does a lot of short-handing and eliding of very important events. For example, the 1973 Yom Kippur/Ramadan War gets a couple sentences, despite it provoking the OPEC boycott--which itself broke the world economy and prompted a restructuring that we're still feeling today--and damn near causing World War III. And let's not forget that the 1973 war pushed Israel to the brink of destruction, and there was the real threat that the IDF would nuke Cairo and/or Amman as a desperation measure. All that absolutely is germane to discussions of Jerusalem today--if only because military solutions are off the table, simply because of the threat Israel's military (and nuclear weapons) pose to Arab countries.
I also think Armstrong missed out on discussing more implications and fallout of the Camp David Accords, and though she was writing too early to really see the ramp-up of settlement activity in the West Bank during the Oslo period, she did touch on settlements, and this again would've been a great opportunity for her to employ some social theory and discuss the potential problems on the wind.
Like Armstrong, I started this post strong and verbose, and then ran out of gas and short-handed my last few points. I guess it's a hazard of writing about Jerusalem, eh?
That said (again), let me hit some highlights of chapters 14-18, and the whole book overall.
First, I think Armstrong has really hit on something when she identifies building as a political act. She didn't bring this up until, oh, maybe the Roman period or thereabouts, but the last 1000 years' worth of history have really hammered this point home. As an aside, it's rare that you can say about a city "well, for most of its history this didn't matter, but over the past 1000 years or so, this new thing was important."
Anyway, destruction is obviously a political act. As Norman Schwarzkopf pointed out in 1991, armies are made to "kill people and break things." And in the course of killing people, the things that are often broken are the buildings and urban spaces where the people live. On this topic, Stephen Graham's Cities, War, and Terrorism is a brilliant book. In his Introduction and chapter "Cities as Strategic Sites: Place Annihilation and Urban Geopolitics," Graham points out how for most of history, cities and civilians were not spared from the ravages of war, and instead were the targets of warfare. Only for a brief period of "civilized" warfare did armies try to minimize damage to civilians and cities. For more on the topic, and specific to Israel/Palestine, his chapter in the same book titled "Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories," is very compelling.
So anyway, armies conquer and break things, particularly the cities that are the targets/objects of conquests. Many times when this happens, buildings are--necessarily--destroyed. When a conquering army destroys the holy places, government offices, and/or walls of a city, it's obviously a political act--the erasure from history (and the city) of any notion of resistance to the conqueror. We can have no idea how many civilizations once existed, because many conquerors obliterated any record of their conquered foes. Similarly, as in Egypt, often the successes and achievements of past regimes are erased from history (in ancient Egypt, pharaohs would sometimes chisel from monuments the cartouches of predecessors, and put their own names instead).
But the notion that construction, rather than destruction, is a political act--well, not that that's novel among social scientists, but it's worth pointing out in a history, and it's of paramount importance in Israel/Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem. Constructing something is not only an establishment of a group's presence in the city, but it's also a claiming of space. And particularly where space is at a premium--within a walled city, proximate to holy sites--claiming space is not just a political act, it is an aggressively political act.
I wish that Armstrong would've taken a few pages out of each chapter to apply some social theory. She applies (or tries to apply) psychological concepts, and uses a lot of religious/theological theory, but some social theory would've been helpful. Most particularly, especially in the right historical frame (say, the last 300 years), she could've taken some time to examine Western notions of property ownership, and/or Eurocentric ideas of territory and territoriality. Because a lot of what she's talking about is ground that has been trod by social scientists (particularly, geographers) for a long time now: the notion that property must be improved to be rightfully owned. This is prominent in Locke, but it traces back to Grotius (late 16th - early 17th century philosopher). In short, if you don't make land more productive, you essentially lose your right to it. This isn't just a quaint historical notion: it survives in present-day American residential zoning (e.g., if you put a fence up on the wrong side of your property line, on your neighbor's property, and your neighbor doesn't contest this, after a set amount of time--usually something like seven or eight years--you can legally claim that property is yours).
This idea is how colonial powers justified their appropriations of land and the incorporation of territory into their empires. As Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, the Zionist settlers imagined Ottoman Palestine as "a land with no people for a people with no land." How did this come to be? Well, yes, as Armstrong has pointed out, the decline of the Ottoman empire ran concomitant with a decline in the economy and population of Jerusalem. But more importantly, the indigenous people in Ottoman Palestine were largely pastoralists, moving their livestock over large areas. What sedentary agriculture there was, was largely olive tree groves--which didn't require active maintenance or irrigation. So, when Zionist settlers arrived, they saw a land that was "sparsely populated" and not being utilized to its capacity. They formed their kibbutzim, and "made the desert bloom." By investing time and capital in the land, through irrigation systems and sedentarized agriculture (complete with permanent housing and infrastructure), the immigrants were thus improving the land, giving them claim to it that superseded any Arab claims. After all, the reasoning went, if the Arabs really owned and valued the land, they would have improved it long ago. They're just squatters, scraping a living off of land they don't own (and therefore don't have the right to improve, either).
This is an important bit of history and theory that certainly applies. And I think it makes a lot clearer the politicization of construction in the region. Building a new structure--be it a religious site or a marketplace or an apartment complex--is not just political because it establishes "facts on the ground," but because it establishes (and/or reinforces) a claim to that land that abrogates previous claims.
Next point about Armstrong, particularly in 14-18. She really pins the blame on the Crusaders. She even goes so far--in the Israel chapter, I think, or maybe Zion?--to say that the Crusades "broke" relations between the three great monotheisms. I don't dispute that the Crusades did a lot of long-term damage; a lot of very deep wounds were cut during this period. But during the Ottoman period--particularly during Suleiman's rule--relations were pretty good. Yes, there were undercurrents of hostility, and lingering grudges, but if things had kept up the way they were going during Suleiman's reign, perhaps those hostilities and grudges would've smoothed themselves out and healed over time.
And honestly, the British really bolluxed things up during the Mandate. Particularly in the wake of WWII, they were unwilling to say 'no' to the Israeli proto-state. And the bombing of the King David Hotel seemed to just give the British another reason to wash their hands of the Mandate, instead of doing something to solve the growing dispute. And then, particularly after 1967, the US took Britain's place as the power that contributed to the problem, rather than to the solution (for example, compare the US response to the Suez Crisis with the US response to the Six Days War, or the Yom Kippur War).
So yeah, the Crusades were a brutal period and established some dysfunctional relations between the three faiths. But to lay everything at the feet of the Crusades is not only too simple, but it absolves modern powers from their roles in creating and exacerbating the dispute.
This post is turning into a book, so I'll be brief with my two remaining points.
Third, the little people get left out of Armstrong's history. This is pretty much a necessity in any broad history of ancient times and even antiquity--accounts of quotidian life by the commoners are unlikely to survive hundreds or thousands of years. Instead, we get lists of rulers, conquerors, and priests. I understand this. But records from the Crusade on are pretty good--especially so from the Arab Islamic Empire, and the literally dozens of famous social scientists and travelers who chronicled the world (e.g., Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, etc.). This is one thing the Living Jerusalem project "gets" that Armstrong (as well as historians like Bernard Lewis) misses: people live in these histories. Armstrong goes to great lengths telling us about how Jews, Christians, and Muslims contended over sites like the Holy Sepulcher or the "Upper Room," but she simplifies the opinions of all these groups into a monolithic stance. Surely the common folk who lived in the city didn't all think the same way and hold the same opinions about these disputes--disputes that often involved mainly the wealthy & powerful.
Not only are the opinions of these unheard lives important, but their lives themselves are important. The intro video for the Living Jerusalem project tells more about the history and impact of the Israel/Palestine dispute in the story of the two bakers, than Armstrong does in Chapters 17 & 18.
Which brings me to my fourth (and final, for this post) point: Armstrong seems to have run out of gas by Chapter 16. The 20th century has seen more "history," more bloodshed and conflict, more danger and potential ruin, than previous centuries. The complexities of politics and dispute in the 20th century are deeper and more tightly imbricated than those of previous periods, because they carry the baggage of these periods, as well as contemporary issues. Armstrong does a lot of short-handing and eliding of very important events. For example, the 1973 Yom Kippur/Ramadan War gets a couple sentences, despite it provoking the OPEC boycott--which itself broke the world economy and prompted a restructuring that we're still feeling today--and damn near causing World War III. And let's not forget that the 1973 war pushed Israel to the brink of destruction, and there was the real threat that the IDF would nuke Cairo and/or Amman as a desperation measure. All that absolutely is germane to discussions of Jerusalem today--if only because military solutions are off the table, simply because of the threat Israel's military (and nuclear weapons) pose to Arab countries.
I also think Armstrong missed out on discussing more implications and fallout of the Camp David Accords, and though she was writing too early to really see the ramp-up of settlement activity in the West Bank during the Oslo period, she did touch on settlements, and this again would've been a great opportunity for her to employ some social theory and discuss the potential problems on the wind.
Like Armstrong, I started this post strong and verbose, and then ran out of gas and short-handed my last few points. I guess it's a hazard of writing about Jerusalem, eh?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Reading Response: April 20
We've been slogging through Armstrong for a while now--and I say slogging not because it's not a well-written, enjoyable book, but because there is a lot of detail and Armstrong is prone to excursion--and I've come to a couple conclusions about Jerusalem.
First, Armstrong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a history of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This point bears emphasis. Armstong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a complete history of the three religions--from their origins to the present--of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This explains most of her excursions, wherein we learn details that hardly seem relevant to the politics of contested modern-day Jerusalem.
So what does it mean that Armstrong thinks that a history of Jerusalem is lacking without a full history of the three great monotheisms? Several things, really: first, that arguments about modern Jerusalem are rooted in the history of religion; second, religion and religious history is used in arguments about modern Jerusalem, and so it behooves everyone to know the history involved; third, details matter. This last point is most problematic. Because yes, I think it's important that we get a full idea of the history and the development of the three religions, so we know Jerusalem's place in all this history. But if the details really matter, then we're surrendering ground to those who use those details as wedges, as points of contention. And worse, Armstrong, while very thorough and drawing on a gamut of sources, leans very heavily on scripture for history--and as problematic as historical texts are for accuracy and reliability, scripture even moreso, if only because scripture is meant to enlighten believers about the nature of the religion, not to provide an accurate historical record of events.
So when I read today's chapters about early Christianity and the beginnings of Islam, and the Crusades, I'm troubled that an account like this does work against its primary objective. People can easily seize on factoids in the book, or entire chapters or even themes, and use those to bolster their exclusionary claims. Not only do we open the door to the inevitable "who got there first?" questions/arguments, but we also open the door to "who was treated the worst, and by whom?" claims--wherein whichever group suffered the most has the most puissant claim to the city now, and whichever group was the greatest victimizer has the weakest claim.
On these grounds, then, the Jews have the greatest claim to Jerusalem: they were present in the city and the region so far back in antiquity that it is difficult (if not impossible) to separate their presence from that of the progenitors of the Palestinians, and they suffered repeatedly at the hand of conquerors and rulers from afar--to an extent never known before (Armstrong repeatedly notes that the Jews were the first people to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and practices).
Again, this is a very problematic direction, because it closes down the possibility for dialogue. Israelis use this history as justification for their claims, while Palestinians point to evidence that their progenitors were in the region at the same time as the progenitors of modern Jewry, and that the Palestinians or the Muslims were not the great persecutors in Jewish history, and therefore they (Palestinians and/or Muslims) shouldn't suffer penalties today. These are the terms by which the argument is framed so often, without deep histories of religion. So giving us the deep histories doesn't serve to defuse or to deconstruct those terms.
The second conclusion I've reached is not so deep (or long-winded), and one I've stated in class as well as above. Armstrong relies too heavily on scriptural sources to flesh out her "history." At one point--I think in describing the Bar Kokhba Revolt, but I'm a bit foggy on where exactly--Armstong cites... maybe Josephus, saying that the Legions swept through and killed something like 585,000 people in the scouring of Judea. That number is preposterous--there's no way a half a million people were living in the region, let alone that many being killed in the sub-province (and leaving any survivors behind to populate it, even sparsely). I've read a few critiques of Josephus, who, as a "historian" is problematic and not very reliable. So if Josephus isn't entirely reliable, and (at the very least) exaggerates numbers, what about scriptural writers? Armstrong is right to point out the very anti-Jewish themes in the gospels of Matthew and John, but despite acknowledging this bias, she never questions the historical veracity of their writings. This is beating up chapters that we read prior, but the point is still valid, because establishing scripture as a reliable history undermines the (more recent) history of Muslim presence in the region--a history that has greater support and more sources.
So coming to the expansion of the Arab Islamic Empire, and the clash with European Crusaders, the Jewish presence is not entirely written out of Jerusalem, but then Armstrong replicates some of the violence down to conquered peoples--but focusing on the contests between the powerful, between the armies and rulers of the two newer religions. Even more than in the bloody history of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests, the Crusades stand out for the cruelty and violence--not because the Crusaders were necessarily more villianous than previous conquerors, but because we have more detailed records of the cruelty that survive to the present--often because the Crusaders themselves bragged of their (mis)deeds as if they were virtues.
And I'm not sure that Armstrong acknowledges that problem.
I was going to write something else about Armstrong, but not only have I forgotten my point--I've written a bunch already, and don't want to write a book here. Oh, and did anyone else despair at finding the Ellwood chapter? I couldn't find a link or anywhere to download it.
First, Armstrong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a history of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This point bears emphasis. Armstong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a complete history of the three religions--from their origins to the present--of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This explains most of her excursions, wherein we learn details that hardly seem relevant to the politics of contested modern-day Jerusalem.
So what does it mean that Armstrong thinks that a history of Jerusalem is lacking without a full history of the three great monotheisms? Several things, really: first, that arguments about modern Jerusalem are rooted in the history of religion; second, religion and religious history is used in arguments about modern Jerusalem, and so it behooves everyone to know the history involved; third, details matter. This last point is most problematic. Because yes, I think it's important that we get a full idea of the history and the development of the three religions, so we know Jerusalem's place in all this history. But if the details really matter, then we're surrendering ground to those who use those details as wedges, as points of contention. And worse, Armstrong, while very thorough and drawing on a gamut of sources, leans very heavily on scripture for history--and as problematic as historical texts are for accuracy and reliability, scripture even moreso, if only because scripture is meant to enlighten believers about the nature of the religion, not to provide an accurate historical record of events.
So when I read today's chapters about early Christianity and the beginnings of Islam, and the Crusades, I'm troubled that an account like this does work against its primary objective. People can easily seize on factoids in the book, or entire chapters or even themes, and use those to bolster their exclusionary claims. Not only do we open the door to the inevitable "who got there first?" questions/arguments, but we also open the door to "who was treated the worst, and by whom?" claims--wherein whichever group suffered the most has the most puissant claim to the city now, and whichever group was the greatest victimizer has the weakest claim.
On these grounds, then, the Jews have the greatest claim to Jerusalem: they were present in the city and the region so far back in antiquity that it is difficult (if not impossible) to separate their presence from that of the progenitors of the Palestinians, and they suffered repeatedly at the hand of conquerors and rulers from afar--to an extent never known before (Armstrong repeatedly notes that the Jews were the first people to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and practices).
Again, this is a very problematic direction, because it closes down the possibility for dialogue. Israelis use this history as justification for their claims, while Palestinians point to evidence that their progenitors were in the region at the same time as the progenitors of modern Jewry, and that the Palestinians or the Muslims were not the great persecutors in Jewish history, and therefore they (Palestinians and/or Muslims) shouldn't suffer penalties today. These are the terms by which the argument is framed so often, without deep histories of religion. So giving us the deep histories doesn't serve to defuse or to deconstruct those terms.
The second conclusion I've reached is not so deep (or long-winded), and one I've stated in class as well as above. Armstrong relies too heavily on scriptural sources to flesh out her "history." At one point--I think in describing the Bar Kokhba Revolt, but I'm a bit foggy on where exactly--Armstong cites... maybe Josephus, saying that the Legions swept through and killed something like 585,000 people in the scouring of Judea. That number is preposterous--there's no way a half a million people were living in the region, let alone that many being killed in the sub-province (and leaving any survivors behind to populate it, even sparsely). I've read a few critiques of Josephus, who, as a "historian" is problematic and not very reliable. So if Josephus isn't entirely reliable, and (at the very least) exaggerates numbers, what about scriptural writers? Armstrong is right to point out the very anti-Jewish themes in the gospels of Matthew and John, but despite acknowledging this bias, she never questions the historical veracity of their writings. This is beating up chapters that we read prior, but the point is still valid, because establishing scripture as a reliable history undermines the (more recent) history of Muslim presence in the region--a history that has greater support and more sources.
So coming to the expansion of the Arab Islamic Empire, and the clash with European Crusaders, the Jewish presence is not entirely written out of Jerusalem, but then Armstrong replicates some of the violence down to conquered peoples--but focusing on the contests between the powerful, between the armies and rulers of the two newer religions. Even more than in the bloody history of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests, the Crusades stand out for the cruelty and violence--not because the Crusaders were necessarily more villianous than previous conquerors, but because we have more detailed records of the cruelty that survive to the present--often because the Crusaders themselves bragged of their (mis)deeds as if they were virtues.
And I'm not sure that Armstrong acknowledges that problem.
I was going to write something else about Armstrong, but not only have I forgotten my point--I've written a bunch already, and don't want to write a book here. Oh, and did anyone else despair at finding the Ellwood chapter? I couldn't find a link or anywhere to download it.
Monday, April 18, 2011
April 18 Reading Response, Part II
To clarify and reiterate: I don't think that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra or any similar cultural exchange programs are bad ideas, or wasteful, or that the money & efforts would be better spent elsewhere. I simply think that we should be cautious with our expectations, and we should be cognizant of the political implications (or lack thereof) of such programs.
Because (and here I tie this to the rest of the readings) images of Other-ness are powerful and entrenched so deeply in the collective (and individual) psyche that it takes a huge amount of counter-programming to overcome those ingrained images and perceptions.
Stereotypes rule how we think and how we react, even when we deny it (see Fiske, et al 2002. "A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Morton, et al. 2006. "We Value What Values Us: The Appeal of Identity-Affirming Science." Political Psychology). Our ingrained preconceptions are powerful, and often determine how we'll react and perceive others. So we're pre-conditioned by all of our experiences and knowledge to act sympathetically (or not) to people outside our own (perceived) group. Certainly for the participants in cultural dialogue programs (including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra), the exchange deconstructs some of their ingrained stereotypes. But how much do programs like these affect people outside the program?
And, to complicate things a bit further, there's evidence to suggest that what is happening to participants in programs such as these isn't necessarily a dismantling of stereotypes of Others, but in fact a rearrangement of perceptions of who is part of the in-group, and who is part of the out-group (see Dovidio & Gaertner 2008. "Commonality and the Complexity of 'We'" Social attitudes and Social Change." Personality and Social Psychology Review and Fischer & Roseman 2007. "Beat Them or Ban Them: The Characteristics and Social Functions of Anger and Contempt." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In other words, quite often when we're talking about "breaking down barriers" between groups, it's not about actually deconstructing stereotypes, it's about taking some people of a perceptual out-group and turning them into members of the in-group. We see this in the Parallels and Paradox extracts, where Israeli and Arab musicians are portrayed as excluding each other from their group, or their conversations. After some time and interaction, the Israelis and Arabs include each other--but this isn't necessarily any tremendous breakthrough, any re-organization or destruction of stereotypes. What is more likely is that the musicians re-organized how they perceived the "Us vs. Them" grouping. For the Lebanese musicians who excluded the Israeli from their Arab jam sessions, they didn't see the humanity common to all people, Lebanese or Israeli: they saw the Israeli as part of the Orchestra, a musician like them. If the Israeli musician had a friend who wanted to sit in on the jam session, it's not very likely that the Lebanese musicians would feel very welcoming. The out-group/in-group dynamic had changed from "Lebanese vs. Israeli" to "Orchestra musician vs. other."
I don't mean to trample all over the successes and meaning of the Orchestra, but to instead frame the mission of the Orchestra against harsh reality. I'm reminded of what Stalin said when warned that he might run afoul of the Vatican. Stalin said, "How many tank divisions does the Pope have?" So, despite the powerful influence of the Catholic church, the realipolitik boils down to who has the most guns.
To bring this bad to Said, geographers trade quite heavily one two (related) concepts from Said's works. They're deceptively simple when you look at them, but they're very deep, and the influence of these on our thinking is even deeper. First, is the notion of the Other. The idea that we group people into "Us" and "Them" is pretty facile. Sociology and psychology affirms this grouping: to shorthand it, we tend to sort people into groups in order to save brain processing power, to simplify the world and our reactions to others. We have positive feelings towards our in-group, and negative towards the Others. Edward Said articulated all of this in his seminal work Orientalism, but he applied it specifically to the knowledges ingrained in Western history and cultural studies, and delved deeply into the implications of this Other-ing process.
To put it in a nutshell, Said argued that we define ourselves in and by the very act of defining Others. That is, we don't form a concept of ourselves and our in-group in a vacuum, and then perceive Other-ness. Instead, through our encounters and interactions with others, we discover and define difference, and create a Self from this difference perceived among the Other. Then, we ascribe all sorts of positive traits to "Us," while ascribing their opposites, their negatives, to Others. The Other, for Said's work, was the Eastern world--the Middle East in particular. This Other-ing allows for and justifies all sorts of violences against the Other: not just physical violence, but the cultural violence of "writing out" of history subject peoples.
The second idea of Said's that geographers use is the notion of "imaginative geographies." This is plainly put: imaginative geographies are the mental, imaginary terrains we populate with people--people whose traits and characteristics are determined by what we have learned via acculturation from our schooling, our peers, and our culture. Thus, the average American populates her/his imagination of the "Middle East" with turban-wearing zealots. These imaginative geographies color our actual geographies: Derek Gregory has written at length (see his The Colonial Present for a brilliant example) about how imaginative geographies are transformed into geographies of violence.
Finally, the last bit I have time for is a commentary on Noura's thesis. I know that time & space constraints limited the breadth of her argument, but I can't help but think that yes, it's possible to construct the notion of "homeland" without exclusion, without creating in-groups and out-groups that vie for territory in a zero-sum game. But is it likely? Especially when the exclusionary narratives established by each side are rooted in and justified by the violent conquest of the land?
David Newman is a giant in my field, and he has published a lot about these notions of territory and attachment, of nationalism and its expression on the land. Ghazi Falah (who was the chair of the session I presented in at my conference last week; I chaired a session he presented in at our national conference in 2007) is very forthright in his application of these notions in the Israel/Palestine dispute--Falah reads the landscape as an exercise in Israeli nationality and Palestinian dispossession. Derek Gregory knits together Newman's base, Falah's reading, and Said's fundamental notions of Other-ness (particularly in his 1995 Progress in Human Geography piece, "Imaginative Geographies," which was an intimate portrait of Edward Said and his dislocation from his homeland), and the result is a damning indictment of Orientalism and its direct descendant, imperialism.
To boil it down, geographers sometimes joke about "the geography of hope," but the joke conceals something geographers feel very acutely: the geopolitical realities we analyze and critique are very powerful, entrenched, and continue to do their violence upon the world (especially the disadvantaged). We can rail and research and posit alternatives, but in the end, we're whistling past the graveyard, aren't we? The alternities that we posit are fractional and subject to the inertia of the world, and the prejudices of power. So yeah, we can posit possibilities and we can light those candles instead of cursing the dark, but I would be happier if we could make those possibilities happen.
Because (and here I tie this to the rest of the readings) images of Other-ness are powerful and entrenched so deeply in the collective (and individual) psyche that it takes a huge amount of counter-programming to overcome those ingrained images and perceptions.
Stereotypes rule how we think and how we react, even when we deny it (see Fiske, et al 2002. "A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Morton, et al. 2006. "We Value What Values Us: The Appeal of Identity-Affirming Science." Political Psychology). Our ingrained preconceptions are powerful, and often determine how we'll react and perceive others. So we're pre-conditioned by all of our experiences and knowledge to act sympathetically (or not) to people outside our own (perceived) group. Certainly for the participants in cultural dialogue programs (including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra), the exchange deconstructs some of their ingrained stereotypes. But how much do programs like these affect people outside the program?
And, to complicate things a bit further, there's evidence to suggest that what is happening to participants in programs such as these isn't necessarily a dismantling of stereotypes of Others, but in fact a rearrangement of perceptions of who is part of the in-group, and who is part of the out-group (see Dovidio & Gaertner 2008. "Commonality and the Complexity of 'We'" Social attitudes and Social Change." Personality and Social Psychology Review and Fischer & Roseman 2007. "Beat Them or Ban Them: The Characteristics and Social Functions of Anger and Contempt." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In other words, quite often when we're talking about "breaking down barriers" between groups, it's not about actually deconstructing stereotypes, it's about taking some people of a perceptual out-group and turning them into members of the in-group. We see this in the Parallels and Paradox extracts, where Israeli and Arab musicians are portrayed as excluding each other from their group, or their conversations. After some time and interaction, the Israelis and Arabs include each other--but this isn't necessarily any tremendous breakthrough, any re-organization or destruction of stereotypes. What is more likely is that the musicians re-organized how they perceived the "Us vs. Them" grouping. For the Lebanese musicians who excluded the Israeli from their Arab jam sessions, they didn't see the humanity common to all people, Lebanese or Israeli: they saw the Israeli as part of the Orchestra, a musician like them. If the Israeli musician had a friend who wanted to sit in on the jam session, it's not very likely that the Lebanese musicians would feel very welcoming. The out-group/in-group dynamic had changed from "Lebanese vs. Israeli" to "Orchestra musician vs. other."
I don't mean to trample all over the successes and meaning of the Orchestra, but to instead frame the mission of the Orchestra against harsh reality. I'm reminded of what Stalin said when warned that he might run afoul of the Vatican. Stalin said, "How many tank divisions does the Pope have?" So, despite the powerful influence of the Catholic church, the realipolitik boils down to who has the most guns.
To bring this bad to Said, geographers trade quite heavily one two (related) concepts from Said's works. They're deceptively simple when you look at them, but they're very deep, and the influence of these on our thinking is even deeper. First, is the notion of the Other. The idea that we group people into "Us" and "Them" is pretty facile. Sociology and psychology affirms this grouping: to shorthand it, we tend to sort people into groups in order to save brain processing power, to simplify the world and our reactions to others. We have positive feelings towards our in-group, and negative towards the Others. Edward Said articulated all of this in his seminal work Orientalism, but he applied it specifically to the knowledges ingrained in Western history and cultural studies, and delved deeply into the implications of this Other-ing process.
To put it in a nutshell, Said argued that we define ourselves in and by the very act of defining Others. That is, we don't form a concept of ourselves and our in-group in a vacuum, and then perceive Other-ness. Instead, through our encounters and interactions with others, we discover and define difference, and create a Self from this difference perceived among the Other. Then, we ascribe all sorts of positive traits to "Us," while ascribing their opposites, their negatives, to Others. The Other, for Said's work, was the Eastern world--the Middle East in particular. This Other-ing allows for and justifies all sorts of violences against the Other: not just physical violence, but the cultural violence of "writing out" of history subject peoples.
The second idea of Said's that geographers use is the notion of "imaginative geographies." This is plainly put: imaginative geographies are the mental, imaginary terrains we populate with people--people whose traits and characteristics are determined by what we have learned via acculturation from our schooling, our peers, and our culture. Thus, the average American populates her/his imagination of the "Middle East" with turban-wearing zealots. These imaginative geographies color our actual geographies: Derek Gregory has written at length (see his The Colonial Present for a brilliant example) about how imaginative geographies are transformed into geographies of violence.
Finally, the last bit I have time for is a commentary on Noura's thesis. I know that time & space constraints limited the breadth of her argument, but I can't help but think that yes, it's possible to construct the notion of "homeland" without exclusion, without creating in-groups and out-groups that vie for territory in a zero-sum game. But is it likely? Especially when the exclusionary narratives established by each side are rooted in and justified by the violent conquest of the land?
David Newman is a giant in my field, and he has published a lot about these notions of territory and attachment, of nationalism and its expression on the land. Ghazi Falah (who was the chair of the session I presented in at my conference last week; I chaired a session he presented in at our national conference in 2007) is very forthright in his application of these notions in the Israel/Palestine dispute--Falah reads the landscape as an exercise in Israeli nationality and Palestinian dispossession. Derek Gregory knits together Newman's base, Falah's reading, and Said's fundamental notions of Other-ness (particularly in his 1995 Progress in Human Geography piece, "Imaginative Geographies," which was an intimate portrait of Edward Said and his dislocation from his homeland), and the result is a damning indictment of Orientalism and its direct descendant, imperialism.
To boil it down, geographers sometimes joke about "the geography of hope," but the joke conceals something geographers feel very acutely: the geopolitical realities we analyze and critique are very powerful, entrenched, and continue to do their violence upon the world (especially the disadvantaged). We can rail and research and posit alternatives, but in the end, we're whistling past the graveyard, aren't we? The alternities that we posit are fractional and subject to the inertia of the world, and the prejudices of power. So yeah, we can posit possibilities and we can light those candles instead of cursing the dark, but I would be happier if we could make those possibilities happen.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Reading Response: April 18
First, questions for Miriam Said:
1) Since the peace process stalled and began deteriorating in the mid-1990s, attitudes among politicians and segments of the public on both sides of the Israel/Palestinian divide have hardened. As time goes on and the distance from/to a peaceful settlement grows, has the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra had difficulty with the logistics of practice and performance? That is, I am wondering if the performers are able to get together and practice outside of the yearly meetings in Spain. As a addendum, I'd also be curious to find out what Israeli/Palestinian government or public attitudes toward the project are. It seems ironic that the Orchestra meets and performs so facilely outside the region, but performances in Israel/Palestine are so rare.
2) Related to the mission of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and drawing on the influential work of Edward Said: Particularly among the politically powerful on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute, images of the Other have increasingly become ossified over time. While the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a compelling project in and of itself, what (if anything) might result politically? That is to say, it is a noble and worthwhile effort to break down the walls between individuals--particularly young people--but the walls exist and continue to grow because of the actions of the powerful. And the politically powerful rely on tropes regarding the Other, tropes that generate support for their political agenda domestically. For example, Netanyahu cannot (publicly) characterize Palestinians as anything other than intransigent intruders, lest he lose support from the Israeli right; Abbas cannot talk productively about Israel without losing support to Hamas. So as a political engagement, I don't know if the project will bear fruit.
My overall impressions of the cultural exchange and dialogue among Israeli and Palestinian youth are unguardedly enthusiastic. I am firmly of the school that it is "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra project is the exact sort of the interpersonal exchange--among young people--that I think that the Israel/Palestine dispute needs. But my enthusiasm wanes quickly when I recall the reality of the geographic and political divide between the two sides. I despair that a cultural exchange will ever have a significant impact on the entrenched positions of the (politically) powerful, and I wonder about class issues, as well.
To elaborate on this last point, though I have seen news items on individuals, groups, and NGOs that donate monies and instruments to youth in Palestine, by and large, developing the skills needed to play symphony instruments is largely a luxury. Not only are instruments expensive, but playing & practicing demand time and space that most Palestinian youth simply don't have. So the pool from which the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra draws from on the Palestinian side is probably not representative of Palestinians on the whole--I would guess that the Palestinians involved largely come from more affluent (and culturally more Westernized) backgrounds.
Similarly, on the Israeli side, though the higher standard of living and a tradition of musical aptitude (with Western symphony instruments) would lead me to believe that there would be a more representative sample of Israeli youth, I don't see many hard-right families allowing their children to perform in the Orchestra. I can imagine secular and/or leftist families being much more enthusiastic, and therefore I wonder if the political orientations of the participating performers are predisposed to dialogue with Palestinians.
So ultimately, I wonder if the project has that great of an impact. The critical side of me wonders if the youth involved are changing their own outlooks and perceptions (of Other-ness) that much--if they aren't already predisposed towards dialogic exchange, especially as far as music is concerned. And then, once established, I wonder how much the dialogue accomplishes on the wider scale. In other words, does it make a difference beyond the lives of the performers?
Again, I think it is noble and completely worthwhile. But I also am a realist, a pragmatist, and I don't think that the Orchestra is going to change any of the political realities. Actually, if anything, I think that the project makes for good propaganda by extremists on either side, sort of a "Well, of course we don't hate them--look, we let our kids play in an orchestra with them!" thing.
1) Since the peace process stalled and began deteriorating in the mid-1990s, attitudes among politicians and segments of the public on both sides of the Israel/Palestinian divide have hardened. As time goes on and the distance from/to a peaceful settlement grows, has the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra had difficulty with the logistics of practice and performance? That is, I am wondering if the performers are able to get together and practice outside of the yearly meetings in Spain. As a addendum, I'd also be curious to find out what Israeli/Palestinian government or public attitudes toward the project are. It seems ironic that the Orchestra meets and performs so facilely outside the region, but performances in Israel/Palestine are so rare.
2) Related to the mission of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and drawing on the influential work of Edward Said: Particularly among the politically powerful on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute, images of the Other have increasingly become ossified over time. While the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a compelling project in and of itself, what (if anything) might result politically? That is to say, it is a noble and worthwhile effort to break down the walls between individuals--particularly young people--but the walls exist and continue to grow because of the actions of the powerful. And the politically powerful rely on tropes regarding the Other, tropes that generate support for their political agenda domestically. For example, Netanyahu cannot (publicly) characterize Palestinians as anything other than intransigent intruders, lest he lose support from the Israeli right; Abbas cannot talk productively about Israel without losing support to Hamas. So as a political engagement, I don't know if the project will bear fruit.
My overall impressions of the cultural exchange and dialogue among Israeli and Palestinian youth are unguardedly enthusiastic. I am firmly of the school that it is "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra project is the exact sort of the interpersonal exchange--among young people--that I think that the Israel/Palestine dispute needs. But my enthusiasm wanes quickly when I recall the reality of the geographic and political divide between the two sides. I despair that a cultural exchange will ever have a significant impact on the entrenched positions of the (politically) powerful, and I wonder about class issues, as well.
To elaborate on this last point, though I have seen news items on individuals, groups, and NGOs that donate monies and instruments to youth in Palestine, by and large, developing the skills needed to play symphony instruments is largely a luxury. Not only are instruments expensive, but playing & practicing demand time and space that most Palestinian youth simply don't have. So the pool from which the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra draws from on the Palestinian side is probably not representative of Palestinians on the whole--I would guess that the Palestinians involved largely come from more affluent (and culturally more Westernized) backgrounds.
Similarly, on the Israeli side, though the higher standard of living and a tradition of musical aptitude (with Western symphony instruments) would lead me to believe that there would be a more representative sample of Israeli youth, I don't see many hard-right families allowing their children to perform in the Orchestra. I can imagine secular and/or leftist families being much more enthusiastic, and therefore I wonder if the political orientations of the participating performers are predisposed to dialogue with Palestinians.
So ultimately, I wonder if the project has that great of an impact. The critical side of me wonders if the youth involved are changing their own outlooks and perceptions (of Other-ness) that much--if they aren't already predisposed towards dialogic exchange, especially as far as music is concerned. And then, once established, I wonder how much the dialogue accomplishes on the wider scale. In other words, does it make a difference beyond the lives of the performers?
Again, I think it is noble and completely worthwhile. But I also am a realist, a pragmatist, and I don't think that the Orchestra is going to change any of the political realities. Actually, if anything, I think that the project makes for good propaganda by extremists on either side, sort of a "Well, of course we don't hate them--look, we let our kids play in an orchestra with them!" thing.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Reading Response: April 11
In "Exile and Return," Armstrong deals with two topics that for me--despite what I think to be a pretty good grasp of history and theology, particularly of the ancient world--were somewhat glossed over and unexamined. First, the Exile itself. In what I've read (and taught) previously, the Babylonian Exile was notable primarily for two things: 1) It was the first iteration of destruction and displacement, echoed and magnified 600 years later; 2) It was during the Exile that the first record was made of Judaic scripture--or at least, the first written record that survives into modern times.
In other words, Exile wasn't so much a period in time but more of a stopping point: things didn't happen during Exile; Exile was a lacuna in history between the First Temple and the Second. Armstrong fills in the gaps and turns Exile into a living, breathing time when Judaism grew, changed, developed.
These changes and developments touch on the second point that Armstrong communicates--she argues that it was during the Babylonian Exile that Judaism actually became unequivocally monotheistic. Prior to the Exile (and during it), Armstrong asserts, Yahweh was one god among many--supreme, and requiring worship exclusive from other gods. Then, during Exile, Yahweh is pronounced to be singular and sole deity.
To me, this is an interesting revelation. In the past, I had always thought of the core concepts of Judaism as being ossified by the time of Exile--I mean, the religion was already established & practiced for quite some time, with the Temple in Jerusalem at its center. Instead, it is a dynamic thing that was still adapting to the rest of the world.
And when I apply this thinking to Jerusalem itself, I see why I fell into the mindset of the religion being established and unchanging for thousands of years--because that's how we default when we think of the Israel/Palestinian dispute, or Jerusalem itself. We tend to think that the ideas, concepts, conflicts, and contestations are eternal and unchanging--that the rock-throwing & tear gas is just a modern manifestation of conflict that reaches back through time.
In other words, Exile wasn't so much a period in time but more of a stopping point: things didn't happen during Exile; Exile was a lacuna in history between the First Temple and the Second. Armstrong fills in the gaps and turns Exile into a living, breathing time when Judaism grew, changed, developed.
These changes and developments touch on the second point that Armstrong communicates--she argues that it was during the Babylonian Exile that Judaism actually became unequivocally monotheistic. Prior to the Exile (and during it), Armstrong asserts, Yahweh was one god among many--supreme, and requiring worship exclusive from other gods. Then, during Exile, Yahweh is pronounced to be singular and sole deity.
To me, this is an interesting revelation. In the past, I had always thought of the core concepts of Judaism as being ossified by the time of Exile--I mean, the religion was already established & practiced for quite some time, with the Temple in Jerusalem at its center. Instead, it is a dynamic thing that was still adapting to the rest of the world.
And when I apply this thinking to Jerusalem itself, I see why I fell into the mindset of the religion being established and unchanging for thousands of years--because that's how we default when we think of the Israel/Palestinian dispute, or Jerusalem itself. We tend to think that the ideas, concepts, conflicts, and contestations are eternal and unchanging--that the rock-throwing & tear gas is just a modern manifestation of conflict that reaches back through time.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
There's no avoiding it
The Qalandia checkpoint is the main transit point between Ram'allah and Jerusalem.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
There it is again...
The ad for the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews" is showing up on my blog pages again, and this time I decided to pick a fraction of a penny from their pocket, and I clicked on the ad. The page that loaded has a banner picture--featuring the map I posted about earlier, as well as a photo that looks like it was taken during the Egyptian January revolution (with a rock-thrower holding an improvised shield prominently displayed). The text of the page reveals an interesting way of thinking about the wave of protests and anti-authoritarian regime changes that have been sweeping across the Middle East this year:
So this bit of propaganda is rooted in fantasy, in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim paranoia that equates any act or event with a threat to Israel.
And interestingly, the chain of cause and effect is portrayed as "upheaval" --> disaster for Israel --> instability in the region. In the worldview of the IFCJ, Israel is not only maintaining stability in the Middle East, but is the linchpin keeping the Middle East from destroying itself.
And, to top it off, I'll point out the sop to Israel as a "Jewish state," which excludes the Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel, and points out what a farce it is for this organization to call themselves the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews."
"Violent street protests are spreading across the Middle East, from Yemen to Bahrain and even into Iran. This upheaval could have disastrous consequences for Israel, threatening the stability of the entire region."A little deconstruction first. The protests that have swept across Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and Bahrain have been almost entirely nonviolent. Yes, the responses by the regimes in power have often been violent, but the protests (and protesters) themselves have been peaceful. The most "violent" of the protests has been in Libya, where the protesters did not resort to violence until after the regime opened fire on protesters and bystanders. Next... Iran??? Ummm, the regime in Iran has not allowed any protests--let alone violent ones.
So this bit of propaganda is rooted in fantasy, in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim paranoia that equates any act or event with a threat to Israel.
And interestingly, the chain of cause and effect is portrayed as "upheaval" --> disaster for Israel --> instability in the region. In the worldview of the IFCJ, Israel is not only maintaining stability in the Middle East, but is the linchpin keeping the Middle East from destroying itself.
"Now more than ever Israel needs committed friends to stand by her. One way you can help Israel during this time of violence and volatility is to show your solidarity with the Jewish state by wearing this free U.S.-Israel flag pin, The Fellowship's gift to you for helping spread the crucial message of support for Israel."Never mind millions of Arabs peacefully demonstrating in hopes of overthrowing autocratic regimes; never mind the peoples and nations hungering for freedom and democracy; never mind the thousands who have died in efforts to affect change: Israel needs our support and solidarity.
And, to top it off, I'll point out the sop to Israel as a "Jewish state," which excludes the Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel, and points out what a farce it is for this organization to call themselves the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews."
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Reading Response: April 6
Reading the introduction and first four chapters of Armstrong's Jerusalem, three themes stand out for me. But before I get to these themes, I have to do a bit of excavation and explanation, introducing another historical work I think is very germane to our discussions of ancient history in the holy land.
David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings is a compelling challenge to orthodox Egyptology & archaeology in the holy land. Rohl's central argument is that overlapping (and competing) pharaonic reigns in the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) have traditionally been seen as sequential, resulting in a timeline of Egyptian history that is artificially extended. Revising down the elongation of the TIP results in a different sequence of historical linkages between Egypt and Israel--in short, Ramses II ("Ramses the Great") is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus historians and archaeologists have been looking for biblical Israel during the wrong time period. Rohl argues that his revised dynastic timeline coincides with other historical accounts, and concludes that Solomon's rule didn't take place in the early Iron Age (ca 1000-900 BCE)--a period of impoverishment and decline--but up to 200 years earlier, during the late Bronze Age--a period of wealth and prosperity.
Rohl builds a very convincing case (though my understanding is that mainstream Egyptologists and archaeologists remain very skeptical of his radical adjustment to the pharaonic timeline), and with his new chronology, suddenly a great deal of biblical narrative finds congruence with other historical sources. The Amarna period of Egypt dovetails nicely with the unification of Israel by David.
I bring up Rohl's work--and the orthodox resistance to his conclusions--to illustrate how ingrained knowledges become, and how staunchly these knowledges are defended. The resistance to Rohl's revisionist chronology was staggering--I watched a Discovery channel series based on his research, and there were scenes of academics (their CVs with publication lists as long as my arm) dismissing Rohl's ideas out of hand, simply because he dared depart from "what everyone knew."
I'm not completely sold on Rohl, because he is one of a number of historians and archaeologists who seek to find "proof" of the Bible in archeological digs; I think he's too quick to accept elisions and logical leaps that support his theories, despite criticizing the orthodoxy for these same sorts of elisions and leaps.
But he makes a powerful argument--if only because through his revised chronology, there is a wealth of evidence that connects not only ancient Egypt, but biblical accounts with places that we can visit and apprehend with our own senses.
In Armstrong's terminology, Rohl gives us a connection to "sacred geography" that we are otherwise separated from by thousands of years. Rather than searching blind and relegating biblical stories to myth and symbolism (and not as Armstrong uses these terms, but more in the rougher vernacular), we suddenly have access to tangible proof of these stories. Rohl's work creates a powerful connection not only with the past, but with the biblical narrative that describes this past and gives it meaning.
So that's the first thing and the second thing all rolled together. First, that knowledge and power are (as Foucault argued) one in the same, and one cannot talk about one without the other. Thus, even Armstrong's very careful dissection of historical and biblical evidence about who lived where and who did what to whom (and why, and when, and where) is imbricated with power--her account can be used as justification for modern Israeli claims to territory (or as a refutation of those claims, depending on what passages one chooses to cite). There is no getting away from it--any exploration of the history of Israel/Palestine is fraught with the politics of contesting claims to modern Israel/Palestine.
The second thing is that even putting aside politics, when examining the history of the holy land and Jerusalem, we run into the concept of the sacred... and are confronted with the presence of the sacred. For believers, this can be a psychologically powerful experience. A devout Christian who visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is confronted with the very place s/he believes Jesus lay and was resurrected. Armstrong points out that this connection to deity results in a transcendent experience, and an attachment of meaning to place--in geographic terms, this is the fundamental notion of territory: land that has some (intrinsic or extrinsic) value, and can be contested. Thus, what is sacred is socially constructed through human experience; Jerusalem is valued, contested, and sacred because events transpired there that resonate with believers, creating a space where deity and humanity are closer to one another.
The third thing that occurred to me as I read the opening salvo of Jerusalem is the conditionality by which Armstrong writes, and the importance thus assigned to her account. That is, it borders on tautology to use biblical accounts as evidence for biblical history; ultimately, if one argues that the Bible--written centuries after many of the events described within--is not a historical account and at best is a collection of myths and allegories, then the historical account Armstrong is building is undermined significantly.
The ambiguity captured in Armstrong's opening chapters--who were the hapiru really? Who were the progeny of the Hurrians? Of the Jebusites?--is what I feel is the basis for why Jerusalem Project members believe Jerusalem is a balanced account. It's easy to identify "bias" when a writer makes definitive statements one way or another, when an author declares something (especially history) to be true beyond the shadow of doubt. But Armstrong is less challenging such declarations so much as declaring history to be muddy and murky.
Don't get me wrong--I think she's done a brilliant job synthesizing a lot of material thus far, and her repeated calls to social theory are very good at framing her historical narrative. But even with the level of detail (really, do we need all the monologues by Baal?) Armstrong provides, I think this history misses one of the most important points (if not the most important point) that get in the way of peaceful, productive dialogue about Jerusalem: histories are partial and contested, and everyone can roll out their experts who will provide definitive proof that their ancestors "were here first." No history, no matter how meticulous (and "balanced") can overcome willful ignorance of evidence that contradicts one's worldview. In other words, Armstong's doing a great job, but the only people who will appreciate all the peeling-back of history are those who haven't formed indelible opinions already.
David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings is a compelling challenge to orthodox Egyptology & archaeology in the holy land. Rohl's central argument is that overlapping (and competing) pharaonic reigns in the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) have traditionally been seen as sequential, resulting in a timeline of Egyptian history that is artificially extended. Revising down the elongation of the TIP results in a different sequence of historical linkages between Egypt and Israel--in short, Ramses II ("Ramses the Great") is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus historians and archaeologists have been looking for biblical Israel during the wrong time period. Rohl argues that his revised dynastic timeline coincides with other historical accounts, and concludes that Solomon's rule didn't take place in the early Iron Age (ca 1000-900 BCE)--a period of impoverishment and decline--but up to 200 years earlier, during the late Bronze Age--a period of wealth and prosperity.
Rohl builds a very convincing case (though my understanding is that mainstream Egyptologists and archaeologists remain very skeptical of his radical adjustment to the pharaonic timeline), and with his new chronology, suddenly a great deal of biblical narrative finds congruence with other historical sources. The Amarna period of Egypt dovetails nicely with the unification of Israel by David.
I bring up Rohl's work--and the orthodox resistance to his conclusions--to illustrate how ingrained knowledges become, and how staunchly these knowledges are defended. The resistance to Rohl's revisionist chronology was staggering--I watched a Discovery channel series based on his research, and there were scenes of academics (their CVs with publication lists as long as my arm) dismissing Rohl's ideas out of hand, simply because he dared depart from "what everyone knew."
I'm not completely sold on Rohl, because he is one of a number of historians and archaeologists who seek to find "proof" of the Bible in archeological digs; I think he's too quick to accept elisions and logical leaps that support his theories, despite criticizing the orthodoxy for these same sorts of elisions and leaps.
But he makes a powerful argument--if only because through his revised chronology, there is a wealth of evidence that connects not only ancient Egypt, but biblical accounts with places that we can visit and apprehend with our own senses.
In Armstrong's terminology, Rohl gives us a connection to "sacred geography" that we are otherwise separated from by thousands of years. Rather than searching blind and relegating biblical stories to myth and symbolism (and not as Armstrong uses these terms, but more in the rougher vernacular), we suddenly have access to tangible proof of these stories. Rohl's work creates a powerful connection not only with the past, but with the biblical narrative that describes this past and gives it meaning.
So that's the first thing and the second thing all rolled together. First, that knowledge and power are (as Foucault argued) one in the same, and one cannot talk about one without the other. Thus, even Armstrong's very careful dissection of historical and biblical evidence about who lived where and who did what to whom (and why, and when, and where) is imbricated with power--her account can be used as justification for modern Israeli claims to territory (or as a refutation of those claims, depending on what passages one chooses to cite). There is no getting away from it--any exploration of the history of Israel/Palestine is fraught with the politics of contesting claims to modern Israel/Palestine.
The second thing is that even putting aside politics, when examining the history of the holy land and Jerusalem, we run into the concept of the sacred... and are confronted with the presence of the sacred. For believers, this can be a psychologically powerful experience. A devout Christian who visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is confronted with the very place s/he believes Jesus lay and was resurrected. Armstrong points out that this connection to deity results in a transcendent experience, and an attachment of meaning to place--in geographic terms, this is the fundamental notion of territory: land that has some (intrinsic or extrinsic) value, and can be contested. Thus, what is sacred is socially constructed through human experience; Jerusalem is valued, contested, and sacred because events transpired there that resonate with believers, creating a space where deity and humanity are closer to one another.
The third thing that occurred to me as I read the opening salvo of Jerusalem is the conditionality by which Armstrong writes, and the importance thus assigned to her account. That is, it borders on tautology to use biblical accounts as evidence for biblical history; ultimately, if one argues that the Bible--written centuries after many of the events described within--is not a historical account and at best is a collection of myths and allegories, then the historical account Armstrong is building is undermined significantly.
The ambiguity captured in Armstrong's opening chapters--who were the hapiru really? Who were the progeny of the Hurrians? Of the Jebusites?--is what I feel is the basis for why Jerusalem Project members believe Jerusalem is a balanced account. It's easy to identify "bias" when a writer makes definitive statements one way or another, when an author declares something (especially history) to be true beyond the shadow of doubt. But Armstrong is less challenging such declarations so much as declaring history to be muddy and murky.
Don't get me wrong--I think she's done a brilliant job synthesizing a lot of material thus far, and her repeated calls to social theory are very good at framing her historical narrative. But even with the level of detail (really, do we need all the monologues by Baal?) Armstrong provides, I think this history misses one of the most important points (if not the most important point) that get in the way of peaceful, productive dialogue about Jerusalem: histories are partial and contested, and everyone can roll out their experts who will provide definitive proof that their ancestors "were here first." No history, no matter how meticulous (and "balanced") can overcome willful ignorance of evidence that contradicts one's worldview. In other words, Armstong's doing a great job, but the only people who will appreciate all the peeling-back of history are those who haven't formed indelible opinions already.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Reading Response: April 4
As noted by many, in conversations about the Israel-Palestine dispute (in general, and Jerusalem specifically), the dialogue often devolves into a "who was here first?" argument.
The readings for Monday's class certainly tread upon this territory. Like many supportive of the Israeli side, Reba Rubin (in Jerusalem: The Holy City Through the Ages) draws upon biblical and historical support for ancient Jewish claims to Jerusalem. For Rubin, the Bible is proof of Jewish presence and thus historical claim to territory. Archaeological evidence fits neatly into this narrative--not necessarily 'archaeological fact,' because especially in the context of Israel/Palestine, political (and religious) agendas exert a great deal of influence on archaeological evidence ex post facto. In other words, evidence is tailored to suit explicit political/religious motives.
Counter to Rubin and other Zionist accounts, Khalidi (in The History of Jerusalem: An Arab Perspective) deconstructs the notion of objectivist history, and argues against many of the traditional pillars of Zionist argument for historical claims justifying contemporary Israeli control of Jerusalem. Interestingly, Khalidi leans on Enlightenment (particularly from Grotius) notions of property claiming and ownership--in that to truly retain a right to ownership of land, one must improve it and make it more productive--to create a context justifying Arab/Palestinian claims upon Jerusalem. As an example, Khalidi discusses Muslim architecture and monumental structures in Jerusalem, as evidence that not only was there a persistent and continuous Palestinian/Muslim presence in Jerusalem from antiquity, but that these ancestors of today's Palestinians weren't just itinerant and negligent squatters. They inhabited, ruled, and improved the land. This is in line with Khalidi's other writings on the subject, wherein he takes an aggressive anti-colonial/anti-imperialist stance, vilifying the notion that Palestine was ever "a land with no people for a people with no land."
The most "objective" piece of the readings for today, by Jeremy Pressman (A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict) strikes me as less objective than a neophyte might think. I won't go into a laundry list of the elisions that Pressman makes that gloss over some of Israel's bad behavior, but I will sum things up by saying: any historical narrative that puts on objectivist clothing is inherently dangerous. Though Bernard Lewis is a very knowledgeable historian, Edward Said argued very vehemently (and to me, convincingly) that the knowledge that Lewis shares as "objective" history is all couched in language and ideas that are themselves biased and partial.
The readings for Monday's class certainly tread upon this territory. Like many supportive of the Israeli side, Reba Rubin (in Jerusalem: The Holy City Through the Ages) draws upon biblical and historical support for ancient Jewish claims to Jerusalem. For Rubin, the Bible is proof of Jewish presence and thus historical claim to territory. Archaeological evidence fits neatly into this narrative--not necessarily 'archaeological fact,' because especially in the context of Israel/Palestine, political (and religious) agendas exert a great deal of influence on archaeological evidence ex post facto. In other words, evidence is tailored to suit explicit political/religious motives.
Counter to Rubin and other Zionist accounts, Khalidi (in The History of Jerusalem: An Arab Perspective) deconstructs the notion of objectivist history, and argues against many of the traditional pillars of Zionist argument for historical claims justifying contemporary Israeli control of Jerusalem. Interestingly, Khalidi leans on Enlightenment (particularly from Grotius) notions of property claiming and ownership--in that to truly retain a right to ownership of land, one must improve it and make it more productive--to create a context justifying Arab/Palestinian claims upon Jerusalem. As an example, Khalidi discusses Muslim architecture and monumental structures in Jerusalem, as evidence that not only was there a persistent and continuous Palestinian/Muslim presence in Jerusalem from antiquity, but that these ancestors of today's Palestinians weren't just itinerant and negligent squatters. They inhabited, ruled, and improved the land. This is in line with Khalidi's other writings on the subject, wherein he takes an aggressive anti-colonial/anti-imperialist stance, vilifying the notion that Palestine was ever "a land with no people for a people with no land."
The most "objective" piece of the readings for today, by Jeremy Pressman (A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict) strikes me as less objective than a neophyte might think. I won't go into a laundry list of the elisions that Pressman makes that gloss over some of Israel's bad behavior, but I will sum things up by saying: any historical narrative that puts on objectivist clothing is inherently dangerous. Though Bernard Lewis is a very knowledgeable historian, Edward Said argued very vehemently (and to me, convincingly) that the knowledge that Lewis shares as "objective" history is all couched in language and ideas that are themselves biased and partial.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
