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The double-bind facing capitalist society

Sotiris discusses the possibility that community reactions to the coronavirus pandemic may occur through non-coercive democratic decision making and not necessarily through apparently successful totalitarian decisions that are creating Agamben’s states of exception necessitating increasingly coercive surveillance and securitisation.

I just note here that Netanyahu in Israel has just announced that cyber-tracking of people’s movement will be used to ensure inefficiency to quarantine restrictions and that the loss of personal freedom to privacy is a ‘worthwhile sacrifice’.

Panagiotis Sotiris argues:

Here:

http://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/03/14/against-agamben-is-a-democratic-biopolitics-possible/

that there can be a non-coercive biopolitics so that it is possible “ … to have collective practices that actually help the health of populations, including large-scale behaviour modifications, without a parallel expansion of forms of coercion and surveillance?”

He suggests that this may take place through ‘democratic collective decision making’, and cites the success of grass roots movements like ACT-UP that led to many improvements in health care for people with, or at risk from, HIV.

No doubt grass roots movements are important and democratizing in their potential but their relevance to the coronavirus pandemic isn’t clear to me at the moment.

I want to consider first the idea of coercion within the context of subjectivity formation; and then, second, the potential impacts on the psyche of a) normative demands for social distancing and b) the inhibitions on the potential to consume and exchange commodities that is accompanying the coronavirus pandemic.

Love and capitalism both take a hit with this coronavirus. My guess is that capitalism will in its death throes become even more right wing and fascist.

Can collective decision making ever be non-coercive, when even identify or subjectivity adoption is always coercive – subjectivisation works through coercion. Caring for the other could be a non-oppressive ideology, albeit subjectivism always takes place through ideological coercion. I provide a short description of subjectivity formation here, but note especially that this means that individuals never have autonomy or free unlimited choice, but are only free to choose between masters, between ideological systems that determine what we have to value and what we can’t value as good things or good ways to be.

Here I draw from a Lacanian perspective on subjectivity – how humans assume their sense of themselves or their identity. This perspective is based on a standpoint that humans can never be fully self -aware and are always lacking – lacking a complete sense if self. This lack from birth, causes an inaugural fear or anxiety of the lack of identity, which in turn leads to desire, for security through the fantasy that there is a Big Other who can provide security, leading to (in order to secure identity) a felt unconditional demand of the imagined Big Other to obey his Law.

But what about if, as with these public health ideas for containing coronavirus. caring involves essentially negative actions: social distancing, not panic buying, not traveling, not gathering in groups of more than 10 (Israel). Is this a form of negative freedom (Lockes version of negative liberty for the vulnerable, albeit a positive liberty for most people constrained to be socially distant) – the freedom not to be infected or to infect, based on a normative norm?

Caring is, according to Freud, a fully sexually-driven, libidinal, activity albeit aim-inhibited. Doing care or giving love without harming, or assuming knowledge of the needs of the other. Is it possible to care with love, using what is a sexually-driven energy, by not-acting?

In any case not-acting, a philosophy or ethics of silence or absence (social distancing) runs directly counter to capitalist-radical-empiricism’s command to a) ignore science and its rationality and b) always act – as if for action’s sake – to solve ‘the’ problem you face regardless of collateral harms. This may go some way to explaining the reluctant of far right politicians like Trump and Johnson to reduce activity, in favor of, in Johnson’s case, encouraging viral spread to develop herd immunity, accepting the collateral damage of increased deaths – in the short term, it is implied.

I speculate that caring through inaction does not involve love as such; as love for an other individual, but is narcissistic – perhaps sometimes as reluctance to take responsibility for harming the other as opposed to wishing to care for the other with love. Especially likely if the other isn’t actually complaining of anything at this moment in time; that is, if the inaction means that usual forms if showing love – like being with people are forbidden.

To what extent does, say, social distancing represent a form of inaction and unconditional collective protection that prevents inter-personal caring with love; and at the same time represents an inaction abhorred by capitalism (and the far right pragmatists) as the chain of commodity exchange breaks up.

The far right capitalist and the left wing socialist face a dilemma. To not act – to be socially distant, not travel etc. is both to obey capitalism’s incitement to break social bonds; and at the same time to disobey radical empiricism’s injunction always to act – to encourage spread, to vaccinate, to invest in more technology etc. This may mean, at a population level, that many become very stressed because of what amounts to a double-bind, leading to anger (taken out on who? to your neighbor or the state?), emotional exhaustion, and paralyzing burnout with depression

People are positively ‘acting’ by wearing mask, by blaming the foreigner, or the Chinese, or, bizarrely, by buying lots of toilet paper, perhaps, if after Freud we interpret the stool as a gift for the other, then being able to wipe away faecal matter is an unconscious way of ensuring we can be free of the responsibility to actually care for individual others. Maybe. And people in towns are negatively acting through social-distancing sometimes through no real choice with gyms restaurants etc. closing.

But whether or not subjectivisation is coercive negative public health measures face two ideological obstructions – they prevent a natural (sexual but aim-inhibited, drive to care with love for the interpersonal other), and at the same time even seems to be causing ruptures in the commodity-exchange chain demanded by capitalism. I fear a collective response to this will be an even more intensified ramping up of capitalism and a ramping up of its consequent socio-economic inequalities and spin offs such as nationalist xenophobia.

On March 4, CPTers were at Salaymeh 160 checkpoint monitoring the children leaving schools for home. One soldier, claiming to be “special forces”, was seen running, chasing young children unprovoked, aged 6/7yrs old through the streets.

Additionally, the soldier continually harrased other Palestinian community members. At one point, he aggresively brandished his firearm in a threatening manner at a Palestinian man who was carrying about 5 bags of onions. The Palestinian man was crossing the gate normally utilized for vehicles, bicyles, or any other items that can’t fit through the other small entry point. He was told by another soldier that he could place his bags down across the vehicle gate before going through the the other small entry point. At that point, the “special forces” soldiers ran down and brandished his weapon. Ultimately, the man was denied entry through the checkpoint without a reason.

Furthermore, the checkpoint was repeatedly closed or delayed without reason. Thus, children were waiting at the entrance of the checkpoint to return home from school, the elderly to go about their daily buisness, and other adults as well.

This aggressive and bullying behavior continued until the next day when soldiers fired tear gas into the premises of the schools.

While CPTers were documenting these events, three heavily armed soldiers approached, threatening to break the camera and arrest them if they didn’t show them their cameras and personal phones .

Moreover, the same bullying behavior happened on the day before on March 3rd when 7 soldiers began to walk towards the schools and suddenly started running towards the kids unprovoked.

In the past two weeks, CPT has witnessed 19 children being denied entry, 5 children having their bags searched, 1 tear gas canister fired near a school, checkpoints being closed for at least a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes, and although CPTers did not witness it, two children being arrested and held for one hour.

The behaviour of the Israeli occupying forces (IOF) described here raises questions that are important for helping us to grasp the nature of the oppression being inflicted on the Palestinians and the ideology behind it. 

1. Why would the soldiers chase children without visible provocation?

2. Why would they then express a wish to break the camera after being seen?

The IOF justify such behaviour in the name of Israels’ immoral, secular- and religious-zionist colonialist ideology. An ideology that does not value the lives of Palestinians and that continues to destroy the property, and to steal their lands, as a legalised, and official, Israel-State national value. Their reaction, to break the camera, and to hide their behaviour, reveals much. They actually know this behaviour, and the occupation, is regarded as immoral, that is, unjust and a form of collective punishment and violation of human rights, that is illegal under international law?

“Can 21st century fascism resolve the capitalist crisis?”

In this chapter I draw from some points made by William Robinson in his article in March 2020, which argues that a global police state and 21st century fascism are the responses of an international ruling class to the crisis of the world capitalist system.

I argue that there is truth in this, and point out that, in particular Israel is both an exception so far because of the dominance of Zionism ideology at the state political level and is also an important global player because it facilitates permanent war – one mechanism for sustaining outlets for profitable transnational investment for over-accumulated capital, through its nationalist and expansionist polyvalent blend of secular right-wing and religious (Christian as well as Jewish) fundamental fear-mongering and myth-reliant xenophobia.

Openly fascist tendencies there may be but fascism also hides behind many cloaks of invisibility and propagandist myths: state violence for our own good, national security. Etc. the biblical promises, archaeological ‘findings’.

The crisis of over-accumulation of capital that cannot find a productive outlet for profitable investment and global inequalities and fear of revolution from below creates drives for fascism:

“ … the global economy is itself based more and more on the development and deployment of these systems of warfare, social control, and repression simply as a means of making profit and continuing to accumulate capital in the face of stagnation – what I term militarised accumulation, or accumulation by repression.”

https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/can-21st-century-fascism-resolve-the-capitalist-crisis

Permanent warfare. This is only possible because made publicly acceptable as a pragmatic solution to a) our discursively exaggerated insecurity and dissolving sense of identity, and b) the discursively exaggerated sense of threat of the other, and its result racism or xenophobia. For example the oft cited but spurious threat of Palestinian child suicide bombers to justify state sponsored violence.

Wherein the collateral harms to the Palestinian civilian population is simply not-valued at an affective, or emotional level, at all.

“Moreover, the global police state is centrally aimed at coercive exclusion of surplus humanity. The mechanisms of coercive exclusion include mass incarceration and the spread of prison-industrial complexes, pervasive policing, anti-immigrant legislation and deportation regimes, gated communities and ghettos controlled by armies of private security guards and technologically advanced surveillance systems, ubiquitous, often paramilitarised policing, ‘non-lethal’ crowd control methods, and mobilisation of the culture industries and state ideological apparatuses to dehumanise victims of global capitalism as dangerous, depraved, and culturally degenerate.”

https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/can-21st-century-fascism-resolve-the-capitalist-crisis

. In Israel’s case its survival as a (institutionally racist) Jewish Nation depends upon ensuring the productive labour of the nation is Jewish necessitating the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their lands (as envisioned by the zionist Herzl in 1895).

“The private lands in the territories granted us we must gradually take out of the hands of the owners. The poorer amongst the [indigenous] population we try to transfer quietly outside our borders by providing them with work in the transit countries, but in our country we deny them all work.”

Theodor Herzl, Selected Works vol. 7, book I (Tel Aviv: Newman, 1928–29), 86. A slightly different English translation of the same text is available online at http://archive.org.

Zionist expansionism is also driven by a transnational capitalist class – to coercively exclude surplus humanity:

“As with its 20th century predecessor, the project (to sustain economic growth, exclude surplus humanity and prevent revolution – my addition) hinges on the psycho-social mechanism of displacing mass fear and anxiety at a time of acute capitalist crisis towards scapegoated communities, such as immigrant workers, Muslims and refugees in the United States and Europe, southern African immigrants in South Africa, Muslims and lower castes in India, Palestinians in Palestine/Israel, or the darker skinned and disproportionately impoverished population in Brazil.”

https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/can-21st-century-fascism-resolve-the-capitalist-crisis

This also provides work and a sense of valued if uncertain identity for the insecure – in the 21st century both working classes and middle classes facing economic recession and/or unemployment.

The ‘wages of fascism’ are, I suggest, entirely psychic (self-identification through subjectivisation) based on a selfish self-entrepreneurial fantasy of socio-economic benefit to come – which of course, is not going to happen.

“Yet Trump’s populism and protectionism has no policy substance; it is almost entirely symbolic – hence the significance of his fanatical ‘build the wall’ rhetoric, symbolically essential to sustain a social base for which the state can provide little or no material bribe.”

https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/can-21st-century-fascism-resolve-the-capitalist-crisis

The wall symbolizes security – economic and otherwise for those whose security the state and the TCC is steadily eroding.

In Israel Zionist settler-colonialists and their political backers have merged TCC and the state so that fascism has indeed emerged. Israel, remember provides for the TCC, the much needed productive outlets for profitable investment – of the technologies of permanent war and coercive exclusion of surplus humanity.

For an effective resistance against fascism, it needs to be outed, and made visible for what it really is, (and note it is only different from 20th century fascism because even the nation-based middle and working classes are going to be coercively excluded, as surplus, from economic security). This requires identification of the ways in which the features around which fascism congeals, are working today, even when they are being made (almost) invisible by propaganda. And finally, a call for recognition of the power of ideology to subjectivise the soul, and a call for ideologies that value the other, with love and compassion, over the selfish desire for surplus life, land, wealth, security or holiness (grace).

“In the Gaza Strip there are 8,000 permanently disabled young men as a result of the snipers’ actions. Some are leg amputees, and the shooters are very proud of that. None of the snipers interviewed for Hilo Glazer’s frightening story in Haaretz (March 6) has any regrets. If they are feeling at all apologetic it’s because they didn’t spill more blood.”

by Gideon Levy on Gaza’s snipers

https://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-the-israeli-army-doesn-t-have-snipers-on-the-gaza-border-it-has-hunters-1.8637587

A nation of psychopaths ‘collecting scalps’ – any scalp will do – is this what Hebrew-Zionist Israel is producing? Is this one of the seeds of political Zionism’s self destruction? Action for action’s sake is a short way of describing a sniper’s almost voyeuristic ‘perversion’ or neurosis, and one of Eco’s features of cultures around which fascism congeals.

There aren’t many clues in these soldiers’ testimonies as to the felt-purpose of the crippling bodily harms they inflict on Gaza’s youth. Under orders, ‘action for action’s sake’, young people with no moral compass. No sense of why they do what they do – its part of a fascist sport, ‘hunting’ as Levy puts it, a blood sport, and a bloodthirsty desire for the surplus blood of the enemy. Separated from the blood they spill, the suffering they cause, by the distance and the telescopic sight of their guns.

“Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.”

Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco 1995

Dehumanized soldiers, who have lost their souls but on the outside appear well, even impressive and well-admired young men within their xenophobic Zionist cultural circles. No doubt capable of warmth and affection for their own kind, but how emotionally true, sustainable or stable is that warmth and that Zionist circle. Are they turned into callous psychopaths – without empathy, even perverse in a Lacanian sense?

Losing a moral compass might mean they have no sense of right or wrong about anything but only need to feed their narcissistic desires to ‘win’, surplus blood today, surplus recognition (or notoriety), surplus wealth, surplus control / of anybody, anything, tomorrow – the incitement to perverse action for action’s sake. As long as these malevolent subjectvities desire recognition by others or by their imagined Big Other, then this psychic structure may fall short of a true Lacanian perversion. But, as long as Zionism’s Big Other demands more, surplus ‘ethnic cleansing’, surplus security, surplus land-for-Jews, Zionism – like capitalism – just by demanding ‘more’ already reveals its own failures: to achieve satisfaction, to achieve its goal. So, Zionism like capitalism by always desiring more, surplus land, surplus destruction of the Arab always already reveals the inadequacy of Zionism to its subjects.

This is the ‘failure of the paternal metaphor’ that Lacanian describes, the failure that destabilizes the sense of self or identity, that can lead to a rejection of the Law of the Big Other, and lead to an inward turning narcissistic search for identity based on the individuals own resources. This is however, always impossible, and not only impossible but further destabilizes subjectivity, as self awareness always requires an other, and so this leads to the anxiety driven frenzy of action for action’s sake of the true pervert.

Capitalism incites perversion, so we may wonder what effect capitalism, in addition to a Zionist racist fascism based on Hebrew-Israel’s eternal genocidal settler-colonialist project, has on the developing psyches of Hebrew-Zionist-Israel’s young.

2/3/2020

Umberto Eco’s essay in 1995 outlines 14 characteristics of national political systems around which what he called ur- or eternal fascism may congeal.

I have found three of these features at work in the Old Testament:

a) a cult of tradition: that implies a rejection of modernity, an ‘irrationality’ based on myth of origin and destiny:

 … people of different religions … started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning.

and b) elitism, a sense of being a chosen race, supreme over all others.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism.

and c) Life as permanent warfare: there can be no peace until the enemy is defeated:

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare.

I have read optimistic interpretations of the Old Testament that claim to fnd messages of non-violence, well being for all, and even of ways of ensuring national security; at the same time I have read accounts of so-called messianic zionism for which the OT provides messages of elite supremacy and (genocidal) settler-colonialism.  By drawing from Lacanian theories of human subjectivity I suggest in this essay that the OT is a blueprint for an ideology that subjectivises the human-of-faith in the God of the OT to a ideology and regime that demands irrationality (origin and destiny myths), elitism, and permanent warfare, that the OT is an ideological blueprint around which fascism can congeal, and around which fascism has already congealed for Hebrew-Israeli apartheid and genocidal political policies.

As a first principle:

The relevant biblical narratives of the past are not simple history, but reflect the religious and political ideologies of their much later authors.

See: Prior, M ‘Confronting the Bible’s Ethnic Cleansing’ chapter in ‘Burning Issues – Understanding and Misunderstanding The Middle East: A 40-year Chronicle’ pp 267-290.

To be as clear as possible, there is ‘virtual unanimity among scholars that, for example, ‘the model of tribal conquest as narrated in Joshua 1-12 is unsustainable’. That is, the OT should not be relied upon as if a history of actual events let alone to justify ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population as if a divine imperative or command. The Zionist and literal reading demands belief in an Israelite invasion of Canaan commanded by God to annihilate the Canaanites, however, the historical evidence suggests this is a myth: for example:

The Iron Age settlements on the central hills of Palestine, from which the later kingdom of Israel developed, reflect continuity with Canaanite culture, and repudiate any ethnic distinction between Canaanites and Israelites.

For an academic and moral critique of the way the OT is used to support Zionist oppression in Israel-Palestine (as well as oppression in South Africa and Latin America) see Michael Prior’s “The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique” (Sheffield, U.K., Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.) Prior, a catholic priest who sadly died in an accident in 2004, was a fierce, erudite and eloquent critic of the way the Bible has been used to justify racism, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing in Palestine by both zionists, as well as even mainstream Christian theology. Prior states that:

Nor can the Shoah (Holocaust) be appealed to credibly to justify the destruction of an innocent third party …. I have been led gradually to situate Zionism within the category of xenophobic imperialism so characteristic of the major European powers towards the end of the 19th century.

Priors moral stance is that Zionism is a pernicious ideology, now embraced by religious elements, that promotes ethnic cleansing that is fundamentally immoral and cannot be excused by any claims of needs for a Jewish State, or recall of the Shoah (Holocaust).

… the interpretation of biblical traditions that advocate atrocities and war crimes had given solace to those bent on the exploitation of new lands at the expense of native people.

Developing Prior’s work, this chapter explores how such an ideology, of great fascist potential, takes such a firm grip on the psyches of so many. I suggest that this ideology works in part through the way all humans seek a sense of self  – by responding to an ideological political Law, or Big Other, expressed in language that decides what is a good thing.  Thus, in the OT this Law, in the name of God or Yaweh,  instills fear by establishing inadequacy in the reader (a sinner), who then desires security, and who then can only establish a (flawed) sense of identity by taking on board, as if a command that cannot be disobeyed, the demand to sacrifice the self, and to defeat the enemy that must be found,  in the name of the greater good of the chosen race.

The quest for surplus grace is embodied in the agitated gait of the neurotic religious fundamentalist.

In The Name of the (God)Father, to destroy the other is a good thing because you are not only weak sinners but also the chosen few, and your destiny is to be persecuted. To face and suffer violence is good for you because you are a sinner and lack grace, but your sin/lack makes you unsure of your identity and envious of others, makes you seek more identity-security in a kind of nationalist-ethnic holy congregation, and this identity of precarity/security also demands ever-surplus grace and surplus security through ever more devotion, more sacrifice, and more militarisation and attacks against the enemy – which is justified by imagining the other always as enemy – the other ethnicity, arbitrary or convenient, that is imagined to seek your total destruction.

This is how the Israeli State and the alt-right, nationalists from the right in US/UK/NATO justify their calls for the ‘eradication of terror’ by the presumption that these so-called rogue states want to “destroy us, our freedoms, our way of life …. ” For example:

Within weeks after the 9/11 attacks, surveys of American attitudes show that this presumption was fast congealing into a hard reality in the public mind. Americans immediately wondered, “Why do they hate us?” and almost as immediately came to the conclusion that it was because of “who we are, not what we do.” As President George W. Bush said in his first address to Congress after the 9/11 attacks: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

This language literally works to construct an (always inadequate) identity or subjectivity for the already oppressed populace that is made even more precarious and therefore willing to be used as political pawns under the illusion they are working for their security. This is kafkaesque in its complexity and a Foucauldian subjectivisation in which we are subjugated by our objectivisation and objectivised in the constitution of our subjectivity. For Lacan this ideological formation of sense of identity is always unsatisfying as we are always less than fully self-aware. (Striving to re-experience what we never had in the first place – the result of a retroactive imagined fantasy).

The Old Testament has formed the basis for both a supremacist and even genocidal messianic Zionism (see link for good overview of Messianic Zionism called ‘The Ass and the Red Heifer’ by Moshé Machover a Jewish UK academic), whilst others have tried to draw hopeful instructions for the faithful out of messages of social justice, faith and even national security – to guide political policy in more egalitarian and just ways for all men.

Drawing from an essay by a colleague on the CPT Palestine team (inspired by the teachings of Gordon Brubacher), JB, I have laid out a psychoanalytic approach to the OT text, which contradicts the interpretation of the text as egalitarian instructions for the faithful in how to guide policy for the well-being of all, and also contradicts faith itself in the violent messianic Zionist (and Christian Zionist) traditions. I lay out a third way of reading the OT.

This is my reply to Julian:

The key issues for the psychoanalytic reading are a) the identity or subjectivity of the reader; b) what are the invisible ‘Laws’ in the text (not said), that determjne the good or right values to hold; c) what is universal – man as a subject of ideology (subjectivised by ideology); and d) the invisible presuppositions behind a surface reading ? (See here for an introduction to the idea of a psychoanalytic reading)

For example: after Adam takes a bite of the tree of knowledge:

A surface reading might be that God is annoyed because he has been disobeyed and man is always desirous to know more – at any price. But at a deeper level – who is this God anyway? what does this behaviour represent? – is it moral inertia – i.e. disregarding the goodness of something, or a moral choice where ‘To Know is good, or even, to obey and to know is good?

A commonly understood or surface reading may situate man’s search for identity in terms of his/her disobedience to a greater more knowledgeable Good or God. However, this would exclude the possibility, or even make invisible the possibility that man’s lack of full self-awareness is all there is, and make invisible the possibility that individual choice of which (symbolic) Law to obey remains within the gift of the individual, albeit within limits. and is not something granted or ordained by a ‘God’. From JB:

“But no. Peer pressure. The man simply goes along, with the kind of moral inertia which plagues humans in community because they just do what others do. In verse 17 God will say: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife [and disobeyed me] . . . .”

The OT has been interpreted, with a view to finding a guide to western political policies on eg so-called Islamic terrorism e.g. in Afghanistan, Iraq/Iran, Syria or Israel/Palestine, on the presumptive basis that western politics are so-called democracies justified in seeking a ‘national security’, by eradicating terrorism.

But, these presumptions may be in error: I suggest that so-called western democracies are really corporatised dictatorships with no real political choices about political-economic structures. Consider this quote from JB’s essay:

“The United States has been great in large part because it respects understanding and discussion of important ideas and concepts, and because it is free to change course. Intelligent decisions require putting all the facts before us and considering new approaches. The first step is recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don’t make Americans any safer — in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.”

But, what does the word ‘great’ mean here? – thinking of the recent settler-colonisation and genocide of the indigenous Indians, (a process being repeated in Israel today and pay-rolled by the USA), and slavery.

Literary criticism:

A reading from a standpoint of faith, maximizing well-being for all, and national security, is problematic f or me on three levels. First, faith encourages irrationality one of Umberto Eco’s catalyst for ur- (or eternal fascism, second, a utilitarian approach is not specific enough (like a phrase ‘Justice for All’) that can justify ignoring or not valuing the oppression of marginalized groups, and third, national security as a concept to be valued presupposes that nationalism and nation-states are a good thing, to be secured, whereas nationalism is a major cause of xenophobia and oppression of the other and ethnic minorities. For an illuminating account of The State and its Historic Role, by Peter Kropotkkm in 1896, see here.

The standpoints above, faith, wellbeing for all and national security, seem to invoke a literal surface reading albeit with some liberal-minded re-interpretations (e.g. Feminist or eco minded). But these hide or make invisible the possible interpretation of the bible as a manual for the ideological slavery of mankind to a religious sovereignty. Which makes invisible humankind’s universal lack of full self-awareness; and, the role of religion in separating man from his/her authentic reality.

From the meta-narrative: this interpretation is closer to a psychoanalytical reading as it looks at the bible’s impact on the psyche of the reader. Here, the bible seems to be interpreted as displacing a God the all powerful protector onto the human’s capacity to make choice based on the well-being of others. Thus:

“The power of God is in the voice of conscience within the human heart, calling people to accountability for their actions. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Or in modern English idiom; “Where are you at, Elijah? The question is for all people of all times.”

This is closer to how I would feel the name God: as the power to make choices, albeit always within a framework limited by socio-economic structures and cultural norms.

An example of the paradoxical social injustice that results from following a biblical text that preaches social justice is the presence of signs on Shuhada St. In Hebron, erected by settler-colonisers, aimed at God knows who, which claims the Torah as espousing charity and kindness. When, as is clear, Shuhada St. is a symbol of Zionist genocidal settler colonisation (cite Ehrenreich), the opposite to charitable or kindly.

Think about the ‘failed violence’ of the flood – is this ,as JB suggests, to show the faithful that violence doesn’t pay? Is the flood violent? Doesn’t it pay? It could be a ‘kind’ of rebirth but … is it to remind man that he is a sinner, and will always deserve to be at risk – of natural disaster, God ordained disaster, fate or simple accident, or of oppression by others.

Or. could the failed flood be an indication that, signify to man that man should remember he is, and will always be, a sinner, vulnerable, at risk from the hatred of others, and in need of sovereign security: Gods ‘guidance and protection’? In other words it signifies the importance for man of obedience to the rule of God.

Finally as Eco wrote: 

These words, “freedom,””dictatorship,” “liberty,” – I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words. We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. UrFascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances – every day, in every part of the world.Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”

February 23rd 2020

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Two very disturbing images in Hebron today. The most disturbing by far is the apartheid checkpoint at checkpoint 160, or Salaymeh; the second, less disturbing but pretty strange was this goat. After the school run we had a call to say that soldiers had invaded a house in the Old City in order to gain access to the roof. Unfortunately, we went backwards and forwards and in circles in the midst of a communications failure between us and ISM, and their activist J. who by now as having coffee with the family who apparently were unperturbed by the soldiers on their roof.

See video here

https://www.instagram.com/p/B86bRekjens/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

To cut a long story short we didn’t find the soldiers but we did find a small herd of these feisty goats in a small alleyway in the souk being somewhat nonchalantly sheperded, if that’s the right word, by an older guy sat on a chair. Around us children played asking Paul to take their photos and chanting football anthems at us.

Later we discover that the Israeli PM Netanyahu is visiting the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba today – and apparently has promised the settlers sovereignty over the (whole of) the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is also the Al Ibrahim mosque and a very holy site for Islam globally. One might imagine that Netanyahu is wanting to incite a holy conflagration, which would act as a justification for intensifying the oppression.

PS today 25th Feb the media confirm Netanyahu’s pledge to give sovereignty over the Al Ibrahimi mosque to the Zionists.

See article: here

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This, the weekly settler tour, is a confusing experience for us, foreigners from the UK, here in Hebron, Palestine. We are new to this, working for CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams), and struggle to make sense of this place and these events. Each week, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force .. the “most moral army in the world” according to the Israeli State, and note that we distinguish between the Israeli state and the Israeli people), gather and emerge from their camps and bases behind the checkpoints to ‘escort’ guard, and enable an invasion by an uninvited, and un-permitted group of Jewish people.

These Jewish folk may be here for God knows what reason individually, but one thing is clear, they have not passed through any legitimate frontier seeking visas or permission to be in this place. They have literally barged into the homeland of Palestinians under military protection, and are now barging into the very centre of the Old City .

And, in addition, they will justify their mission to take over this place on the basis that Yaweh (God) apparently encouraged Abraham and his followers, or is it tribe, to invade and take over this land many years ago. Or so the bible stories have it. As many know they, the settlers, the army and the state, will justify this invasion on the basis that Jews lived in Hebron up until around 1929, when they were evacuated by the British for their own safety after many Jews were killed by Muslims here.

What the settler won’t tell you is that the 1929 massacre of Jews followed the influx of religious Jews from Europe – an immigration permitted by the British who held a UN mandate to govern Palestine in 1917. This mass immigration in the 1920s, of European Jews led to violence as they attempted to gain access to religious sites including the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. In other words the European Jewish immigration in the 1920s and the ensuing violence at religious boundaries instigated by zionists who wanted a Jewish only State, were an incitement to violence in which Jews , and let’s not forget, Palestinians too were killed.

it was sparked by the incitement of the Hagana and Betar (the Revisionist organization) taunting Arabs at the Al-Buraq Sanctuary of the Haram al-Sharif (Western Wall) … Same trick used by Ariel Sharon in 2000 to spark the Second Intifada …

see Alex Winder

The Jewish settlers from Europe have no historical or ethnic connection with Hebron. And Zionism contains the roots of its own destruction:

Because Zionism is not sure of itself. It knows that it brought a catastrophe upon another people and it knows that the fire of evil and injustice is burning beneath the carpet upon which it treads. If Zionism were certain of its righteousness, it would put itself to the test like any other worldview and it would be permissible to doubt it. Israel in 2020 is not yet ready for that. A true left will only arise here when we wean ourselves of the addiction to Zionism and free ourselves from its chains.

In Israel, Zionism is a religion, and it is mandatory: Haaretz
Gideon Levy | Mar. 5, 2020 | 3:03 AM | 2

The so-called tour of settlers, with their tour guide, is accompanied by a gaggle of heavily armed soldiers, who prevent us or any Palestinians getting too close. They walk around the souk of the Old City, receiving a historical, and no doubt zionist biased version of events.

Some of the soldiers come close to use, very close, and photograph us, we can complain that they don’t have permission to take photos of us and we are there legitimately, but on the whole it is enough to document their behaviour, so they know the world is watching what they are doing.

We are there to record their crimes, their invasion of Palestinian territory, the disruption of the freedom of movement, and even the invasion of homes (see the picture above of soldiers on roof tops at the tour, vantage points only obtained by trespassing on private Palestinian property).

Today we have as usual co-ordinated our monitoring of the tour with ISM (International Solidarity Movement) and EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniers). Today the tour is uneventful, so once its over we spend a few moments chatting with the ISM and EAPPI teams. The rest of the day flies by, some food shopping, an attempt to find a mains lead for an old laptop (an attempt which, so far, has failed but has resulted in an invitation to a shop called ‘Falafel Shower’ tomorrow where we will, we hope, be offered falafel and access to a computer person). The evening consists of meal preparation, (we thought we’d bought chicken but its probably turkey judging by the size of the joints), writing a blog, and erecting shelves in the office, and finally a trip to the gym for me – men only 5pm to 11pm, about twenty minutes walk away. Its hard to be disciplined and to go, partly because it is almost impossible to develop any regular daily routines here.

Finally, 10.30pm, last few odd jobs in the office and that’s the day over. We’ll be up at 06.00 to get to the checkpoints at Qutein and Salaymeh in the H2 High Security Zone to monitor the childrens’ safe passage on their way to school .

In February 2020, billboards were erected in Tel Aviv depicting the political leaders of Hamas and of the Palestinian Authority as blindfolded and kneeling, as if, one might reasonably think, they are about to be shot. They were endorsed by an Israeli Jew Nave Dromi, leader of the ‘Israel Victory’ project. The slogan is ‘Peace is made only with defeated enemies.

Umberto Eco draws attention to 14 ideas around which fascism can congeal. one of these is the idea of the enemy, and an obsession with plots and conspiracies. This poster signifies the Palestinians as the enemy ‘within’, plotting to annihilate the Jews, through terrorism sponsored by Hama and the PA.

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.

The article in Haaretz by Gideon Levy identifies a xenophobic billboard in Tel Aviv and calls it fascist. I am suggesting that we can see here Eco’s elements of fascism: a) the enemy within (within the zionist idea of Eretz Ysrael, or Greater Israel); b) the obsession with terrorist plots by the Palestinians (as opposed to their legitimate resistance and fight for justice); and c) the idea of being besieged: the only way to defeat the enemy that is besieging us is to destroy them.

Opinion In Endorsement of Fascist Billboards, Nave Dromi Showed Her True Face. And That of Israel

Billboard in Tel Aviv reading ‘Peace is made only with defeated enemies.’

According to Nave Dromi the head of the Israel Victory Project, a project of the Middle East Forum-Israel, this billboard depicts:

… billboards we hung that showed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas defeated.

Three of the 14 elements around which fascism can congeal are, according to Umberto Eco : a) xenophobia; b)  the need for an enemy to establish public acceptance of racist; and c) elitist supremacist policies . And all three are signified in this billboard.

is it now possible to see this  billboard is a visible signal telling us that Israel is now a fascist state – enacting terrible crimes against humanity whilst the world looks on and does nothing.

Levy identifies Nave Dromi as an individual in Israel who endorses Israel’s Zionist ethnic cleansing policies. She endorses her racist and murderous view here.

Israeli military tower next to the Jerusalem Hebron road

It is almost too shocking to be able to respond coherently. Levy, see link to article above, does a fair job. I would only add, from my alien foreigner perspective, that: a) an occupied people have the right under international law to respond militarily against military targets, and b) it is palpably clear from seeing the settlements scarring the landscape, monitoring the military checkpoints and passing by the massive concerted military observer posts along the Jerusalem Hebron (and settlement Kiryat Arab) Road (see above), that Israel is enforcing a genocidal regime of forced displacement.

The concept of the defeated enemy as used here, signifies the need for the  total defeat, or the complete absence of resistance to Israeli oppression, which in turn signifies the total destruction of Palestinian identity everywhere. This is the genocidal ideology behind the Israel Victory project. And, this is also one of the key motifs in the 2020 USA/Israel so-called peace plan for Palestine which forbids any Palestinian resistance to their oppression.

On the basis of inciting hatred at least, and genocide by implication, Nave Dromi should be charged with crimes against humanity. The international community should rebut Israel’s Zionist ideology that claims land based on biblical myth and should identify and prosecute Israel’s crimes for what they are.

This is a perspective from a CPT white male reservist from the UK, so bear in mind that this is through a lens of passport, white and male ‘privilege’. In other words bear in mind I cannot know what Palestinians feel about these issues.

I have deliberately chosen a day without extreme violence or clashes etc. to emphasise the routine and everyday structural violence of the occupation and settler colonisation.

Being on call involves working as a pair. with phone to hand, ready to take calls from the CPTer allocated to the team phone that day as part of rotated daily duties, for routine on call work and any incidents that may arise.

So, take today the 13th February:

We’re up at 6 for a quick cup of tea and a pastry, and meet up with the others in the team office at 06.40, and divide ourselves between different checkpoints.

Our role at checkpoints is to monitor and document the numbers of children going through, and to record any other violations of human rights such as searches, delays, detainments etc (bearing in mind that having to go through a military or border police controlled checkpoint is already a restriction on freedom of movement and a violation of human rights).

This morning two other pairs of CPTers are going to Qutein, and Salaymeh checkpoints, and Louise and I are heading over to Cortoba check point.

We walk through the tunnels of the Old City souk only to find the mosque check point crowded with Palestinians, held up because of some delay of unknown cause.

We’re already running late so we turn tail and re-trace our steps towards checkpoint 56, an alternative entrance to what is known as the H2 high security zone (H2HSZ). See the map, but note that the topography is complex.

We are trying to get to Cortoba checkpoint by 7am – this checkpoint lies on Shuhada street within the H2HSZ, and consists of a soldier in a sentry box, with his ubiquitous machine gun, who controls the gate that leads to Cortoba kindergarten, primary, and secondary schools.

By the by, since Trump/Netanyahu’s proposed plans for Palestinian subjugation to their domination there has been increased aggression and questioning of CPTers at checkpoints which has made us a little nervous. We all have a good idea of what to say if we’re asked why we’re there. And we double check we have our passports and no incriminating photos on our cameras.

We walk briskly past the watchtower at Bab al Balladye, past Bab az Zawiye, and through to check point 56 where a child of 16 was shot dead through the chest by the Israeli Defense Force a few days ago. We are nervous as we go through the intimidating architecture of the checkpoint (see photo).

At first encounter these monstrosities make no sense to the foreigner, and it takes time and repeated exposure and experience of them for feelings to develop appropriate to the dehumanising impact they have (on, I suggest, everybody, but of course intentionally and oppressively on the Palestinians). The checkpoints guard the H2HSZ, which is the area demarcated by the military to enable and protect Israeli Jewish Zionist settler colonisation.

We pass through the heavy metal turnstile, and through the concrete shed with its metal detector under the gaze of two soldiers behind a (presumably bullet and knife proof) screen. We glance at them to double check whether they want to check our IDs, and also, possibly, to hopefully indicate our fearlessness and hence innocence of wrongdoing – to avoid being stopped. Anyway, we both get through unscathed.

We walk along Shuhada Street for a few hundred metres, and turn right by Cortoba checkpoint where we’re both asked where we’re from, and to show passports, by the soldier on duty: a form of minor harassment of activists, and becoming more common.

We wait on a path higher up, overlooking Shuhada Street, the checkpoint, and the stark huge overbearing Hadassah settlement building, on the path that leads to the school.

We watch the children and teachers as they also pass through this soldier-controlled gate.

We’re there for about 90 minutes, and we really enjoy interacting with the children as they pass by.

But as well has happy children, we are aware of the checkpoint and the settler children on Shuhada Street, escorted by settlers holding machine guns.

From where we stand we see and hear an over-bearing and loud settler giving a tour to American youth. He is using forceful, indoctrinating and biased de-contextualised narratives about the 1929 massacre of Jews (ignoring Zionist violence in Jerusalem by extremist religious European Jewish immigrants fomenting unrest). And, he is extolling stories of past Zionist settler heroism, and the ‘necessary even though reckless’ sacrifice of individual life of Jews so that Jewish life may live. He exhorts the all-too impressionable youngsters to seek out the sacrifices they each can make, as if for the greater glory and longevity of Jewish Israeli nationalism.

This illustrates just one of zionism’s fascist features – the cult of heroism: described by Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay:

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

So, we are becoming increasingly aware of the intensity of this apartheid and oppressive security regime imposed by a settler-military-state ideology of relentless colonisation: in the name of a mixture of biblical origin myths and more contemporary fears and antisemitic victimhood.

The rest of the day is uneventful, in the afternoon we escort children from the kindergarten near the mosque and patrol the checkpoints at Qutein and Salaymeh for the children going home.

We have other tasks in hand to think about, inputting data on the computer, writing as part of our advocacy activities, meetings with partners in Hebron and with visitors or delegations, domestic tasks such as maintenance work or preparing dinner for the team.

Not much down time, but we emphasise the importance of self-care for everybody and try to get some rest at some point. Some team members use the gym in the newer part of Hebron about 20 minutes walk away from the apartment.

That evening we get a call from a team member, it appears that the military are carrying out a home invasion, and somebody has contacted the team and asked us to go. We get a taxi, but there is confusion over the location. We have a team member who speaks Arabic which helps and she liaises with the family and the taxi driver. We are dropped off in a residential area near Tel Rumeida. And we feel apprehensive about confronting the military in this situation. However, despite making enquiries we draw a blank and head back to the team office/apartment. We were at the wrong location, and we hear the military have left the home. We agree a home visit by us next week would be a good idea.

Back to bed. A day without any major crisis, of routine work, but demanding in many ways nonetheless.