Re: On the Responsibility of the Weak: Jeffrey Isaac

My piece was circulated, without my knowledge, on your listserve. It
appears as though you have encountered it, less clear that you actually
have read it. I am not interested in polemics with you. You know nothing
about me, but you draw inferences about my politics from inferences about
my identity--that I am Jewish. I AM Jewish. I am also many other things.
I do not wear my identity on my sleave and I do not believe that ethnic
identities confer ethical commitments or political allegiances. I have no
"complexes" about Israel and I make no claim to speak for "my people,"
whoever they may be. I think for myself and I speak for myself. The piece
that you have seen explains what I think. I think that the settlement
policy is wrong. I think that Jewish terrorists are as reprehensible as
Palestinian terrorists.  I think there is much blame on "both sides" of
the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I also think that peace is better than
war. I was greatly disturbed by what I heard Hannan Ashrawi say. As for
what you say, I do not know you, nor do I know for whom you claim to
speak. It is regretful that you do not seem interested in engaging
arguments on their own terms. If there is to be any reasonable settlement
of these painful issues, it will only come when people cease denouncing
each other. The point that I made was that being subordinate does not mean
being irresponsible. Such leaders as Nelson Mandela ande Vaclav Havel have
understood this. I hope that Palestinian leadership comes to understand
this as well. 

Jeffrey C. Isaac



On Sat, 4 Nov 2000 KSamman@aol.com wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> Sorry in advance for an emotional response.  A truly unbelievable 
> peace!  Posing as an impartial objective analysis, this essay (below) by 
> Jeffrey Isaac is a masterpiece of deception.  Its language and 
> demeanor is intended to turn the focus away from Israel's 
> massacre of Palestinians and condemn the stone throwing 
> Palestinians.  Hanan Ashrawi and the stone throwing youth, 
> Jeffrey Isaac tells us, are calling for the complete dismantling of 
> Israel.  Instead of negotiating peace these Palestinians resorted 
> to that destructive strategy of resisting occupation.  
> 
> Living here in the US, it has always amazed me how people on 
> the left of the political spectrum here are unable to lift the veil of 
> their own social background.  This is especially the case when Israel 
> comes up for discussion.  More than any other area of the world, 
> the Jewish Left in the US (with the exception of some courageous
> active members, ie Chomsky ...) has been unable to see how 
> outright racist the state of Israel is towards its Palestinian 
> inhabitants.  It is interesting to note that when Palestinians resist 
> Israel's occupation and yell out "death to Israel" it somehow is 
> heard much more loudly than when Jewish settlers not only yell 
> out "death to the Arabs" but are actually giving the green light by 
> the IDF to search and kill Arab Palestinians.  
> 
> Mr. Isaac, with all due respect, I think this failure to not recall this 
> tidbit of information is due to the fact that you, and not the 
> Palestinians, want to insist on seeing your people as "the wretched 
> of the poor."  Indeed, my analysis of your piece leads me to 
> conclude that your whole recall of the situation is an imposition 
> of your own anxieties of fearing that the Palestinians may have 
> a moral cry that is AT THE PRESENT more in tuned with reality.  
> At least for this issue, do us a favor and let go of the martyred 
> complex that you have of yourself and maybe than you can see how 
> truly Apartheid the state of Israel is towards the Palestinians.  By 
> doing so it will at least allow you some space for an honest reflection.
> 
> In Reading Jeffrey Isaac's essay I am especially captured by his skill
> to maneuver around the issue.  He throughout the essay begins every
> allegation by first making statements like "Palestinians have been 
> allotted a raw deal in history."  Such statements are made to give the 
> reader the impression that the author is a fair minded writer, and 
> prepares the ground for his real intentions: "If the Palestinians do 
> not want violence, then they should cease to practice violence."  All
> of the real meat found in the essay is preceded by a few drops of
> "I understand that Israel has more power than Palestinians, but..."
> 
> Do you really understand Mr. Isaac?  Or are you maybe trying to resolve
> some deeply repressed anxieties of loosing your martyred complex in this
> recent conflict?  Do yourself and others a favour and try to resolve it in
> a more productive way than blaming Hanan Ashrawi or the stone throwing
> Palestinians for wanting to come after Israel and their threats of dismantling
> the "Jewish State."  I don't think thats what you fear at all, for the state
> is fully equipped to protect itself from such attacks.  What you fear
> is something much more deep, so deep that you can't seem to see it.
> 
> Khaldoun Samman
> ------------------------------------------
> Jeffrey Isaac's article:
> 
> ====================================================
> Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 09:09:22 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Jeffrey C. Isaac" <isaac@indiana.edu>
> 
> 
> On The Responsibility of the Weak, Or The Perils of Palestinian
> Self-Righteousness
> 
> 
>     I watched Hannah Ashrawi on C-Span last night. She was speaking
> about Palestinian issues. This is what she said: that the Oslo peace
> process was a flawed peace process, and there can be no going back to a
> flawed process; that the current Intifadah was an authentic expression of
> the will of the Palestinian people, and that it had once again turned the
> Palestinian cause into an irrepressable cause of the Arab people as a
> whole. And then she went further: she avowed that she still considered
> herself in the minority (among Arabs), because she still believed that a
> real peace process could produce a two-state solution; most (Arabs), she
> said, now believe that this was no longer possible, and that only a single
> binational state in Palestine could bring peace. But this, she allowed,
> would mean much turmoil and conflict. And so she hoped it wouldnt come to
> this.
> 
>     The words were astonishing. For Ashrawi was doing more than
> declaring the definitive end to the Oslo peace process. She was declaring
> that most Palestinians and most Arabs would only rest with the destruction
> of the Israeli state, and implying that the only way to avert this outcome
> was for an authentic peace to be aceded to by Israel, in other words, for
> Israel to bow to the current demands of Arafat and Ashrawi.
> 
>     Dont get me wrong. The message itself was not astonishing, for
> Ashrawi was only articulating the logic behind the current Intifadah
> itself. What was astonishing was the temerity with which these words were
> uttered. In the name of so-called freedom, dialogue, democracy, and peace,
> Ashrawi was (implicitly) declaring war on Israel. And behind this was the
> implication that Palestinians, the perpetual victims of a world enthralled
> with victimhood, simply had no choice, that Israel had forced this upon
> them and made no other choice possible.
> 
>     This, alas, is the intellectual and moral depths to which the
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sunken.
> 
>     Let me be clear. I have always believed that the Israeli
> Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza--Palestine if you will--is immoral
> and unwise, and I have always supported peace negotiations leading to a
> two-state solution, and likewise supported those forces within Israel,
> associated with Peace Now!, that sought such a solution. I never believed
> that peace would be easy, that it would be simple, or that it would usher
> in a new age of harmony and complete justice. I simply believed that peace
> was better than war and a perpetual state of war. And that a modicum of
> justice is better than no justice at all.
> 
>     My views about peace were based on moral principle, but they were
> also based on a political analysis of the costs of the status quo and of
> the prospects for building constituencies for peace on both sides of this
> tragic national conflict. While I believe in moral principles, and I
> believe that politics should seek to promote and codify moral principles,
> I also know that politics is a messy business and that in politics, to
> paraphrase Hannah Arendt, the only final solution is death. Politics is a
> realm of imperfections and frustrations. If we are lucky, politics can
> mitigate these. But it cannot eliminate them.
> 
>     What is most deplorable to me about the current revival of the
> Intifadah, with its Ashrawi-like veiled threats about a war to destroy
> Israel, is the extraordinary hypocrisy being vaunted by Palestinian
> spokespersons long purported to be reasonable seekers of a two-state
> mutual recognition, and long presented to Western audiences as liberals of
> a familiar sort.
> 
>     It is claimed that the Oslo process was flawed. It was flawed. But
> what process is not flawed? In spite of its flaws, and because the
> alternative was greater bloodshed and misery for all concerned, the
> PLO--emboldened no doubt by the first Intifadah, but also weakened by its
> preposterous support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War-- seemed to
> commit itself to this process. It appeared as though the peace option was
> recognized as the only option. And yet the recent volte face indicates
> that appearances can be deceiving. It is now claimed that Oslo did not
> solve the Palestinian refugee problem. But there is no simple way
> definitively to solve this problem. Barak made some concessions. These
> were by no means beyond challenge. But they were diplomatic concessions
> made as part of a diplomatic process. The Palestinian response--an
> escalation of rhetoric about a Palestinian right to return to original
> Palestine, i.e., to Israel. In other words, no diplomatic response at all.
> The same with Jerusalem. What was offered by Barak was not fully
> satisfactory to the Palestinians. Nor was it fully satisfactory to most
> Israelis. But it was more than any previous Israeli ever put on the table.
> And it was a diplomatic offer that might have been the basis of
> compromise. But no compromise was forthcoming.
> 
>     And why? The bottom line, repeated again and again by Palestinian
> spokespersons and by their supporters abroad, is that Israel bargains from
> strength and that this is unacceptable or, in the words of some propaganda
> handed to me yesterday, there can only be peace among equals. Now, this is
> a wonderful slogan, no doubt intended to lift the spirits of the wretched
> of the earth, but it is obstructionist and it is false. If there could
> only be peace among equals then there would never be peace at all. It is
> very rare that in world politics peace between states is negotiated from a
> position of parity. Peace is negotiated between antagonists, sometimes
> combatants, sometimes after one party has been defeated, sometimes after
> both parties become exhausted by the fight. But to insist that there can
> only be peace between equals is to insist that there can be no peace. And
> it is to treat a possible and hopeful result of a prospective peace--a
> more equitable and mutually agreeable relationship--as its precondition.
> This is absurd. The Palestinians can have a peace of the brave if they
> wish, by being brave enough to settle a nasty and tragic conflict by
> giving up on the idea of a complete restoration of the Palestinian nation,
> which is nothing but a myth; but they cannot have a peace of the strong,
> for they are not strong. They are under Israeli military occupation. That,
> alas, is the problem.
> 
>     What this all boils down to is this. After seven years during
> which the Palestinian leadership participated in a flawed, halting, and
> unfair peace process--the only game in town--this self-same leadership
> responded to the most recent Israeli diplomatic gambit by--repudiating the
> basic premises of the process, by fanning the flames of popular violence,
> and by promoting maximalist rhetoric about the restoration of
> Palestine--sometimes referring to the West Bank and Gaza, but sometimes
> referring, and the slippage is deliberate, to the entire territory covered
> by the UN Partition Plan of 1947--to the Palestinians.
> 
>     It is true that the Israelis had the upper hand. It is true that
> the Occupation has continued to be unjust even in the midst of the peace
> negotiations. The continued building of settlements, the demolition of
> Palestinian homes, etc.--this was and is wrong, and it deserves to be
> criticized. It is also true that Barak was politically weak among his own
> constituencies in Israel, and that he was a poor tactician, and that he
> was perhaps too indulgent to Sharon. And that the Israeli right-wing has
> tried hard to scuttle the peace process, and bears great responsibility
> for the current crisis for having done so. Further, all of these things
> made the peace process harder to sell to the Palestinian people, and
> contributed to the delegitimation of Arafat and of the process. This is
> all true. This made it hard for the Palestinian leadership to continue
> negotiating. But it does not absolve this leadership of responsibility for
> its decision to stop the negotations and to foment uprising. Nor does it
> absolve this leadership of failing to repudiate a wave of bitter and
> vicious anti-Zionist passion that clearly has long simmered beneath the
> surface of Palestinian society. For recent events have made it clear that
> there does not exist among the Palestinians a real and deeply rooted peace
> camp analogous to the Israeli one, nor does there exist a real plurality
> of opinion about politics. Instead, there has surfaced a frightening
> anti-Israeli conformism. In the name of bowing to the will of the people
> the Palestinian leadership has simply succumbed to this anti-Zionist zeal
> rather than seeking truly to lead. This stance may seem democratic or
> popular to some. But it is in fact demagogic and populist in the worst of
> senses.
> 
>     There was a flawed peace process that might have produced a more
> tolerable situation. The Palestinian leadership did not like the pace of
> this process and it did not like Baraks proposals. Instead of countering
> them it chose to end the process. The violence that has followed
> throughout the West Bank and Gaza is deplorable, but it is also
> predictable. The Intifadah, contrary to the rhetoric of its supporters, is
> not a civil disobedience campaign. It is an insurrection, and its weapons
> include stones that can split open a persons skull, explosive devices, and
> automatic weapons that fire live ammunition. The Israeli Defense Forces no
> doubt might have initially responded to the uprisings differently. The
> Occupation is unjust and it has promoted a hardened attitude on the part
> of many Israeli soldiers who, after all, are not a civilian police force
> but an occupying army. It was wrong when the IDF responded
> disproportionately to violent civilian demonstrations following Sharons
> visit to the disputed Jerusalem holy sites. But it is also hard--and more
> than a little disingenuous-- to expect young soldiers to hold their fire
> when they are being attacked, even if by civilians who outnumber them. And
> even if those civilians are only throwing stones at their heads and only a
> few of them are firing weapons, while the crowds all the while call in
> unison for death to the Israelis. The Palestinian leaders are correct when
> they insist that these Israeli soldiers dont belong there in the first
> place and that if they werent there the violence would not be taking
> place. But what they fail to also say is that this is exactly why there
> was a peace process, to negotiate the terms under which these soldiers
> would go home. But it is disingenuous to scuttle the process that is
> negotiating their withdrawal, then to attack them, and then to condemn
> them for defending themselves.
>     
>     This brings me back to the question of power. The Israeli state is
> more powerful than the Palestinians. And while the Israeli government was
> willing to negotiate the terms of the Occupations end, it was not and
> cannot be expected to be willing to respond to the Palestinian scuttling
> of the negotiations by aceding to Palestinian demands. If the Palestinian
> leadership wishes to see the peaceful end of the Occupation, then the only
> way for it to seek this worthy goal is by trying to limit and moderate the
> violent popular upheaval that it is now fomenting, and to seek to reenter
> negotiations.
> 
>     The Palestinians are a dominated people. They have been allotted a
> raw deal by history. But they are not thereby absolved of responsibility
> for their own fate. It is precisely because of the tragic situation in
> which they find themselves that their leadership should feel responsible
> to work toward peace based on compromise. For there is no good alternative
> to compromise, with all of its imperfections and limits and frustrations.
> But this leadership cannot savage peace and then condemn their adversaries
> for responding to their own calls for violence with violence. If the
> Palestinians do not want violence, then they should cease to practice
> violence. 
> 
>     On one thing Ashrawi is right. There can be no going back. There
> can only be, perhaps, going forward. This will be difficult. Very
> difficult. But it is not impossible. Unless the Palestinians mean what
> they say when they talk about binationalism, and seek to go back to 1947.
> If they do this, then, alas, their dispensation will be the same result
> that was won for them the last time the Arab world sought to put an end to
> Israel--defeat. And the defeat will noones fault but their own. The
> prospect of such a defeat should give succor to noone. Let us hope that at
> some point soon there emerges, miraculously, a Palestinian leadership
> truly brave enough to put an end to the hyperbole and to seek a realistic
> and peaceful process of negotiating a more tolerable and just solution.
> 
> Jeffrey C. Isaac
> Department of Political Science
> Indiana University, Bloomington
> 
> 
> 
>