No Prosperity, NO Development, No Humanitarian Crisis

From Al Jazeera - Gaza in Ruins

From Al Jazeera - Of the 22,000 buildings destroyed in the Israeli offensive, 4,000 of them were residential buildings

The vulnerability of the first photo is so startling.  I just spent the last five minutes staring at the boy and the person in the background trying to clean up the rubble with their hands and the bunny in the boy’s arms.  This is Gaza after the Israeli massacre – absurd, isolated, on the edge of survival, in a constant state of exception.

The New Yorker has an article on Gaza by Lawrence Wright.  Lets talk about it.  I was surprised to see the New York discuss this as its coverage on Palestine is fairly limited (excluding the peripheral coverage exhibited by amazing Seymour Hersch).  Wright is detailed, though I think some of his reporting is inaccurate.  He does make a point of listing several crucial examples of the tragedy in the aftermath of the Israeli massacre as well as the ongoing imprisonment of 1.5 million Gazans.  Unlike most mainstream writers he discusses the physical isolation and destruction imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli siege.

- Twenty million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage flows from Gaza into the Mediterranean.  The water treatment facility is broken the Israeli will not allow the necessary parts into Gaza to fix it.

- Two children burned to death when Israeli forces bombed the Beit Lehia elementary school with white phosphorus.  But Israel, which refused to cooperate with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN Goldstone Report, found that they used white phosphorus in accordance with international law.  If Israel truly believe this and has nothing to hide, why not cooperate with international investigations?

- In 1994 the Gaza poverty rate was 16%, now it is close to 70% as a direct result of Israeli actions.  Only thirty-seven trucks of aid are allowed into Gaza each day, while it is estimated that 106 trucks daily are necessary to sustain life in the Strip.  Yet Israeli government officials ha ben said that their aims are, “no prosperity, no development and no humanitarian crisis”.  Never mind that lack of prosperity and development results in a humanitarian crisis. For me this is a dire echo of Ariella Azoulay’s brilliant piece Hunger in Palestine: The Event that Never Was from 2003.  If Israel names it, it must be so.

- 14% of the buildings in Gaza were partially or completely destroyed, including 21,000 homes, 700 factories and businesses, 16 hospitals, 38 primary health-care centers, and 280 schools. 250 wells were destroyed, 300,000 trees were uprooted and large swaths of agricultural land were made unarable.

- This massive destruction was geared to what Israel calls the “infrastructure of terrorism”.  Yet the list above reflects the infrastructure of democracy and food security.  To this day, according to the UN’s John Ging, not a single bag of cement or a single pane of glass has been allowed by Israel to enter Gaza.  How does a place recover from such brutalization without rebuilding?  With institutions of democracy in tatters, Gaza will only be more isolated and more provincial.  I know there are Gazans struggling against this, but their voices are consistently sounded out.

What Wright doesn’t state also speaks volumes.  In talking about the founding of Hamas in 1987, he never mentions the well documented support for Hamas by the Israeli state.  Hamas was viewed as a way to destabilize Palestinian support for the then secular Palestinian Liberation Organization engaged in a well articulated struggle against Israeli occupation.

In a priceless documentation of hypocritical blindness, an Israeli colonel expresses his rage when three home-made rockets from Gaza struck Sderot in the morning.  When children are at school and could have been injured.  It is true that the carelessness of this rocket fire should be condemned.  But this colonel is one of the strategists behind the 27 December  attack on Gaza.  As F-16s dropped bombs, it was also morning in Gaza.  Children were just getting out of school. Many of these children died and were injured by shards of glass flying through the air.  Does this colonel also condemn the vulnerability of these children?  No.  Because one group, based on ethnicity and citizenship, is deemed to be human and another group is not.  Anyone reading the description of this colonel cannot escape this monstrous logic, which forms the basis of the attack on Gaza.

The timing as well is monstrous – two days after Christmas and on a Saturday.  Saturday, in which devout Israelis are shunned for driving and listening to the radio.  But apparently bombing is acceptable.

Image of Gaza from Google Earth

Israeli soldiers were told

“God protects you, everything you do is sanctified, this is a holy war”.

The expectation and entitlement is evidenced by this T-shirt as well:

In a recent Al Jazeera article an Israeli filmmaker took a very different take on this idea of Israel’s justified holy war.

“There army is not something holy.  In war there are no good guys and bad guys.  The war is the bad guy”

My largest issue with Wright’s article is less specific.  Underlying the piece is the idea that Israeli and Palestinian armed forces are intractable, that each commits atrocities and each shares equal blame.  This rhetoric of equalization is incredibly misleading because only one side has all the F-16s, white phosphorous, unmanned drones and free U.S. dollars it so desires.  This destroys the equation and makes one side inherently unequal.  As long as Israel controls the entire space and geography of Palestine, it will have to take more of the blame.

American advocates of a militant Israel know this and, in direct conflict with many Israeli critical voices, are strategizing to alter the direction of the conversation. In an Israel Project report leaked to Newsweek and written by a Republican operative it is stated:

Never talk about “giving” the Palestinians something.  It reminds people that you’re in a stronger position.

Harper’s Magazine printed this memo next to the testimonies of Palestinian children illegally arrested by the Israeli military.

A soldier ordered me to stop and said, “I saw you throwing stones.” I replied, “I wasn’t. Look, my left hand is broken and in a cast.” My uncles intervened to persuade the soldier that I did not throw stones and that my hand was broken. About ten other soldiers then got out of the jeep and approached us. Two of the soldiers grabbed me, and the others tried to chase away my uncles. The soldiers beat my broken hand with their rifles. They placed me in a jeep. As soon as the jeep started, a soldier kicked my broken hand and beat my shoulders with his rifle. A short time later, the soldiers tied my hands and feet and blindfolded me, while still beating me. The beating continued for about an hour.

Movement Research

MR where I interned in NYC finally has a new website.  It is always heartening to see them producing new work, even as they always struggle financially.  I’ll never forget walking to the Soho studio, a beautiful wood floored room in a woman’s apartment.  Walking through the street level abyss of overpriced and trendy shops, I would smile thinking of all the dance created just a few floors above.

On Adequacy

Driving in the U.S. today and listening to National Public Radio.  I have a love-hate relationship with different NPR programs for various reasons.  So I was listening half-heartedly to Lourdes Garcia Navarro reporting from Palestine.  She managed to say something along the lines of Israel allowing “adequate” amounts of “food and medicine” into Gaza.  I do not have the exact quote but I know adaquet was used as was food and medicine.  She then when onto to say that limitations were placed on other goods.  As if Gazans have everything they need, but it is real difficult to purchase flat screen televisions.

It is this kind of factually incorrect reporting that is so damaged.  Many people in the U.S. believe that NPR can be taken seriously, but it just as politically manipulated as other media outlets.  Sara Roy, one of the leading U.S. scholars on Gaza, wrote in June:

According to the World Food Programme, the Gaza Strip requires a minimum of 400 trucks of food every day just to meet the basic nutritional needs of the population.  Yet, despite a 22 March decision by the Israeli cabinet to lift all restrictions on foodstuffs entering Gaza, only 653 trucks of food and other supplies were allowed entry during the week of May 10, at best meeting 23 percent of required need.

This is not adequate.

Notional Tomatoes

It is tomato season.  And as I enjoy all the fresh local heirlooms – Cherokee Purples, Dixie Yellow Giants, – I am haunted by Michael Pollan’s words in the great documentary Food Inc.  He described the standard supermarket tomatoes, you know them – available all year with skin as thick as plastic, as the idea of a tomato.  They aren’t real – grown with pesticides and fertilizers and picked so early they must be ripened with ethylene gas.

So how to feel, then about Michael Pollan’s decision to ignore the Whole Foods boycott?  Pollan is a well reasoned and researched author who manages to be both accessible and theoretical in his work on our U.S. food system.  So to hear him so lazily fall back on some kind of categorization between the Local Food Movement and the Health Care Movement is absurd.  He knows that both movements have their parallels and that “political opinions” of the Whole Foods CEO are incredibly important to their practices.  Sure, they carry produce from some organic farmers, but they did this due to economic pressure.  How better to ensure change in Whole Foods’ health care agenda then through the economic pressure of a boycott?

Anyway, there are better places to shop for food.  If you can’t be part of a community garden or go to the farmer’s market, there are many smaller local organic grocers that also buy from farmers.  Think local first, not Whole Food first.

Not A Wear

Bodyontheline is absolutely right – Seeds of Peace should more aptly be titled Seeds of Discord.  So, it seems important to say no to this apparel option…

Just found about a great T-Shirt company in Chapel Hill.  They have a couple of different designs, but my favorite is “Not A Terrorist”.  The founder is an interesting Palestinian – American who was recently interviewed with his amazing Mother on The Story. I really would love to purchase a shirt from him.  However, I saw that they donate some proceeds to the organization Seeds of Peace.  I have heard Seeds of Peace critized as part of the “peace industry” that has sprung up around the struggle for Palestine.  A recent Electronic Intifada piece covered this very well.  While not mentioning Seeds of Peace directly, it does discuss the problematic nature of groups of groups that ignore the larger colonial context of the situation.  So to buy the T-shirt or not?

The Cooking Animal – 80% of the cost of food eaten in the U.S. goes to someone other then the farmer…

When we don’t have to cook meals, we eat more of them: as the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about a half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed; since 1977 we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake…The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. The amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity more reliably then female participation in the labor force or income.

From Micheal Pollen’s newest NY Times piece Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. While I often wish that other writers on the intersections of food, behavior and politics received as much exposure as Michael Pollen, I have to admit that he deserves a blackberry bush full of credit. (Blackberries are in season and delicious at the moment). This article is accessibly written and while first appearing to be an obvious indictment of televised cooking duel programs like “Top Chef”, he includes fascinating research angles and ideas that re-frame the movement for food system change in the U.S.

It is not just about how fat we are in the United States or about how much time we watch TV. But how this trend is major signifier of our de-evolution (my word not Pollen’s – he doesn’t quite go that far). Cooking, as he explains, is basically the discovery that allowed us to evolve to our current form of small digestive systems and large brains. Cooking allowed us to digest more energy in a more energy-dense format then a raw diet. Cooking also gave us the formation of a culture – with certain times of the days devoted to the social aspect of eating with our friends and family. There is a direct line between cooking and the making of culture. Yet the current U.S. diet (also exported to much of the world) of consistent snacking or “grazing” on heavily processed and packaged foods while skipping meal times has more in common with the style of constant eating we all evolved from.

This changed the way I’ve been thinking about food systems. I tend to think in terms of advocating for land reform, traditional and artisinal food preparation, organic agriculture, environmental and urban planning and farmer support. But Pollen points that none of these changes and goals will be possible if people stop cooking. We can’t reform the current system if nobody desires the food. It also challenges current assumptions about “civilization” – a word often used in conjunction with the all-powerful democracy of the U.S. But we are in the leaders in this trend of increasingly consuming televised cooking shows but not cooking ourselves. This makes us less civilized then “developing” countries who have yet to totally abandon their food cultures.

So the question is how to reclaim cooking (with forcing a gendering of the cookies duties in a family) as well as how to save endangered cooking cultures from complete destruction. I think and have written of Palestine as a food culture especially endangered and colonized by Israeli occupation and land theft as well as by Israeli and international processed foods. The colonization through food control in Palestine is explicit. Baladi varieties are becoming more and more scarce as olive harvests become more dangerous – carried out under the M16s of Israeli settlers and soldiers. Sheppards grazing their flocks – local sources of meat, yogurt and cheese – are attacks by Israeli settlers wielding axes. Palestinian land is occupied and tastes are colonized.

Yet the food culture in Palestine is stronger then that of the United States. Our tastes have also been colonized, perhaps not as explicitly, but certainly recognizably so. Our food dollars don’t go to farmers, they go to Or-Ida and the Food Network.

Touring the Occupation

This great short video from Al Jazeera illustrates the hypocrisy of the organized tours for pro-Israeli Occupation visitors of West Bank colonies.  The funniest moment comes at the end – the tourists stop to take in a beautiful view. Of Nablus.  The Palestinian city they won’t visit.  Settlers desire to gaze at the fruits of Palestinian labor – the terraced olive groves and ancient cities – while working to annihilate Palestine.

The New Class of American/Israeli Hawks?

I haven’t posted in over one month, but I have no intention of sending Mapping The Margins to the digital wasteland of dead blogs.  Perhaps just decayed a bit.  I’m back in Amrika and have avoided all media outlets for the past week.   But on my email today was this video posted on the blog Mondoweiss.  Made by Max Blumenthal and Joesph Dana, two Americans living in Occupied Jerusalem.  They asked young Israelis (most of whom seem also to be American) drinking in bars for their reactions to Obama visiting Cairo.

What is so shocking is not simply their crass language and blind chauvinism or their apparent stupidity at speaking into any available microphone.  What shocked me was the undercurrent of malicious racism in speaking about Obama.  There was the obvious “white power” moment which was nauseating, followed by the subtler but just as offensive, “I’m gonna eat watermelon with Obama”.  I wondered if that kid had any idea where he learned that racial stereotype?  Judging by the comments on the original blog post, many readers were upset that this was essentially a film of drunk people who could not control themselves.  I’m not sure about all of you, but a drunken racist is usally a racist when sober.  I haven’t met many people who suddenly turn from thoughtful individuals into offensive vulgar ranters (without a hint of irony) after a few drinks.  As for the self-proclaimed political science student who didn’t know who “Benjamin Yahoo” was?  What does that say about U.S. political science departments?

Here is a response from one the filmmakers, Joesph Danna:

It’s about entitlement, stupid.

Max and I went on to the streets of Jerusalem at ten o’clock on a Wednesday to ascertain the feelings of the young population about Obama’s upcoming speech in Cairo. As is often the case, the streets of central Jerusalem were not filled with native Israelis but American Jews. Doubtlessly anyone who has visited Jerusalem has encountered the droves of American Jewish kids that are sent to Israel to study for a period of time from Teaneck or Westchester. We asked people a simple question, “What do you think of Obama and Israel?” Most of the people that we talked to were dual American Israeli citizens. The answers in this video reflect the education and worrisome perspectives that many American Jews harbor towards Israeli politics. The sense of entitlement that the American Jewish community has when it comes to Israeli policy is on full raw display in the words of these young adults.

Based on our interviews these people were from high socio economic backgrounds and had developed thoughts about current Israeli politics. The question is why more journalists are not covering this story. All you have to do is walk the streets of Jerusalem and you will find dozens of people that harbor the same beliefs. As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

Obama’s speech seemed to be the status quo dressed up in more attractive rhetoric.  But I have to say that this video leaves me thinking that Obama should take extra security with him on his next trip to visit Israeli “leaders”.

COLA-NIZATION

I wish I had thought of that, but it was Marwan Bishara on an excellent Empire from last week that I saw last night.  It is a long video but at 17:49 you will hear a fascinating segment on the new Coke bottling plant in Afghanistan.  As horrific as Coke has behaved in Columbia and India, I should not be surprised.  This is the perfect addition to Afghanistan’s ne0-liberal trajectory.  The 25 million USD factory stands in stark contrast to the 3.5 million Afghans subsisting on food rations as well as the 78% of the population living without clean water.  Yet another reason, as if we needed more, to boycott Coke.

NAKBA

I haven’t posted in a bit.  Busy with spring and the garden and chickens.  Spring in Palestine is a truly amazing season.  But yesterday finally had me thinking of things to digitize.  Yesterday was something Israelis refer to as “Independence Day”.  It is “celebrated” according to their calender, which results in different days each year according to the Gregorian calender.  I have always only thought of the Nakba, marked every year on 15 May, when I think of the actual day marking the formation of the state of Israel. Yesterday was a reminder to me that Nakba is not just one day, not just an annual commemoration.  The catastrophe that is and was Nakba is ongoing.  Last year, I lived in the West Bank and Israeli Independence Day was simply another day – though the Israelis sealed off the West Bank and people were not allowed to enter or leave.  This year, in the ‘48, is the first I knew of people gathering to hold events in a number of the 418 destroyed Palestinians villages inside of Israel.  Many Palestinians in the ‘48 are descendants of internal refugees.  In 1948 their families fled the Zionist gangs and settled in other towns.  In the Galilee, there are at least two destroyed villages within walking distance from the town I live in.

Ruins of Howshi - www.decolonizing.ps

The tragedy is not only the loss of land and the attempts of the Israeli state to concel the ruins of these villages (done through planting evergreen trees, turning the area into a “nature park”).  The tragedy is the loss of history for the people of these villages and for the entire region.  Howshi, pictured above, was a village in which many Algerian immigrants settled in the early 1900s.  To escape French colonization, they moved to Palestine only to be victims of Israeli colonization.  We will never know their impact on the village life, their architecture and food, their customs and culture.

The loss that is Nakba is a continual reverberation.  Through the brutality of Israeli construction on Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem, through the ripping apart of olive groves to build another American reminiscent Israeli settlement.  John Berger calls the destruction of a home “an amnesia not of the mind but of the tangible” ….