The Bank(rupt)sy of 'Solidarity'

When I first heard, a couple of weeks ago, that the British graffiti artist Banksy was off to Bethlehem to paint a section of the wall, I thought: how typical. Here's an artist whose country is presently involved in not one but two occupations and he goes off to show solidarity with the occupied somewhere else entirely - someone else's occupied!

It's par for the course over here in Boycotting Britannia. As we know, Palestinians are the totems of the world's suffering and the Israelis, the ultimate bad guys who, alone in this universe, attract boycotts & so forth.

We know why Banksy was likely to choose a wall in Bethlehem over, say, Baghdad: think security, think basic amenities and it's not hard to see why this would be a good deal more attractive an option for these 'brave souls' in the international solidarity crowd (not to mention the press opps it affords since our journos are apparently of equivalent bravery, going by the sick obsessions of places like CiF). We know, from experience, that these solidarity types don't want to suffer personally. Otherwise our bonkers boycotters might have suggested boycotting their own academic institutions instead of Israel's, on account of our occupations (plural) and the absence of any of our universities having "publicly condemned what is being done" in our names as part of those occupations - or, if that defies logic (boycotting of self), they might at least have suggested boycotting the academic institutions of the USA. That won't do, though, oh no - think of all those pay-checks & all those research grants they'd have to boycott & all those prestigious academic conferences and journals from which they'd have to be excluded.

What I hadn't anticipated was that Banksy's gesture would spectacularly backfire, perceived not as showing solidarity but denigration, and causing widespread offence to Palestinians in the process.

This is one of the offending pictures Banksy painted on the wall:



Palestinians didn't much appreciate being likened to a donkey in Banksy's representation here of IDF checks on identity papers. In Arabic - as indeed in Hebrew - the word is also used to mean idiot! The upshot is that the picture is no longer - this is how the relevant section of the wall looks today:



Given what I've seen of our solidarity movement here in Boycotting Britannia, I should really have known better and anticipated this. What with the experience of this whole sorry story of the academic boycott, we know very well that these people are all desperate to do something but they don't really want to get involved. They don't want to engage. Instead, they like to reduce the situation to one of good & evil; they want to have someone who can be blamed for everything. What they don't realize, however, is that this constructs an "infantilizing and dehumanizing representation of Palestinians" - the sort of construction perceived in Banksy's representation of Palestinians here which has so caused offence. In ignorance, they opt for the most inappropriate forms of solidarity. Like proposing a racist boycott of Israeli academics!

Of Boycotts & Blaming

Engage give publicity to a dreadful piece by a boycott-agitator. (It's critical of Engage so I guess that's why it's cross-posted.) In it, we find many foolish, weak arguments but I'll just focus on the one which literally drives me insane whenever I encounter it.

It's the oft-repeated claim that the anti-boycott campaign gives the

implication that Israel’s Jewish identity should protect it from criticism

I fail to see how this implication arises out of the anti-boycott movement. Why can't people get the simplest of distinctions, between proportionate criticism, on the one hand, and demonization and scapegoating, on the other?

This sort of nonsense claim is crawling all over the I/P debate, even making it, in another incarnation, into UCU motion 30 itself, as previously discussed. This is frankly dangerous & anti-racists really need to get a grip before they completely render vacuous values for which we've long struggled.

Good, at least, that even Graun's CiF didn't see fit to publish this (he's been on there in the past, in similarly infuriating form). Perhaps Graun will start having some standards, however low? Perhaps it'll stop publishing pieces such as this which are based on a complete falsification of history and fail to make a single argument with the slightest cogency in favour of a boycott? Miracles might happen... Not.

I think it would be fitting for me to answer this boycott-agitator by reproducing a letter I came across recently. It was sent to Irshad Manji who has predictably suffered simply for the fact that she does not engage in the blame-game being played out by these bonkers boycotters:

The Serenity Prayer for Muslims…

God grant Muslims the serenity to accept the things we can not change, the power to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity to accept the things we cannot change…

Israel clearly is not going anywhere. Muslims can either accept this and put our efforts toward improving our societies. Or, fueled by the prevalent Muslim hatred of Israel, we can allow violence to simply become the “Muslim way” of dealing with any problem, calling it resistance, and placing tribal pride above the lives and souls of our children.

Power to change the things we can…

While this fighting is often thought to be the only way to empower Palestinians, and even all Muslims, it’s really nothing more than the power to self-destruct. Our goals of creating a better life for Palestinians and Muslims are not being accomplished. Instead, life is becoming unbearable across the Arab world. Is that power?

Muslims are not powerless. We have the power to do what no one else ultimately can. We can stop the violence. But we need to convince other Muslims that this behavior is vile, rather than telling non-Muslims that this is not Islam.

Stopping this strain from flowing through our faith and cultures doesn’t mean that bad feelings won’t remain and that Palestinians won’t continue to feel that Israel has humiliated them. It means that as Palestinians get back on the road to dignity, trust will be gained and they’ll eventually be able to give their children something to to look forward to: life.

This is the only chance that Muslims have for gaining the respect we crave from the rest of the world, and it is the only way the Middle East will ever become a viable part of the global community.

Do Muslims value our pride more than our children? Does Islam not have the power within it to inspire us to create just, safe societies? If Islam means peace’ then we should make it, rather than waiting for someone else to first take blame.

Wisdom to know the difference…

One would expect it to be Muslims in the West, enjoying safety, opportunity and freedom, who would have the most wisdom in dealing with our current state of affairs. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Rather, many Muslims in America and Europe instigate the hatred of Israel while doing little to demand an end to Islamist violence. While done in the spirit of supporting their Muslim brothers and sisters, this actually only prolongs the bloodshed and sentences Palestinians in particular to even more violence, indignity and death.

While Muslims in the West are pushing for Islam to gain better recognition, and sometimes even for Sharia law to enter the court system so that we may feel validated in our faith, others within the Muslim world, Afghanistan for example, realize there is a price to be paid for someone else’s version of Islamic law. (And it will always be someone else’s version). It’s noteworthy that there appears to be more outspoken reformist Muslims in Arab countries than there are in the West, because they are the ones paying the price for this violence.

Muslims face the choice to promote violence (which will never improve our situation) or end it and its instigation. It’s frightening, but we are actually the ones with all the power. We can use it to hold the world hostage by allowing Islamic extremists to be a continuing threat, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghanis ultimately paying the biggest price. On the other hand, we can exercise our power to finally bring an end to this insanity, start the Middle East on the road to recovery, build the productive societies that we boast have been Islam’s legacy, and save Islam from what’s looking like an unspeakable fate.

Amen…

Few are more in need of the serenity prayer than Muslims are. We’re likely not alcoholics, but we’re becoming addicted to violence as a means to a non-end. It’s time we hosted our own intervention, while the Middle East still has a chance to become more than poor and Islam still has a chance to mean peace.

Written by Amina Khan, Boston via Irshad Manji