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Resisting the Clash - Marhaba Europe Editorial (essential reading!)

Solidarity | 01.11.2004 04:05

The below frames the thinking and intention behind the Marhaba Europe tour which sees the two groups of Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese and Interntional activists journey and talk through Ireland and Sweden respectively...

Editorial: Resisting the Clash

Fear is quickly becoming again the main foundation for power in the post-sept 11 world. For a long time, thanks to the living memory of colonialism and World War II, those in power had to pay lip service to the values that stood at the core of liberation struggles in all continents, such as equality, freedom, justice, anti-racism, a fair distribution of wealth, democracy of some form or another, etc. But people are now bombarded all over the world on a daily basis with messages designed to provoke a shift in their priorities. Human rights and emancipatory social values, which for 50 years were held as the goal by most of the world's population, are losing ground at increasing speed as mainstream media and so-called 'experts' and 'academics' continue promoting the security paranoia, the idea that we need a strong state that is able to keep suspicious strangers under control, and the racist notion that we are at the beginning of a long-lasting conflict between 'cultures' or 'civilisations'.

This change in priorities happens at a time when, despite all attempts at beautification, global capitalism can no longer hide its outrageously violent, destructive and divisive character, and now that its effects are also starting to be felt by the white middle class of Europe and North America (who were previously protected against it by the welfare state, the remains of the New Deal, etc). History has shown that oppressive systems can be strong and stable if a large share of the population supports them, but if they lose their legitimacy, the same systems become volatile, expensive to maintain and vulnerable.
However, history has also often proven that in the absence of legitimacy, the status quo can nonetheless still be preserved by fostering fear, and that there is nothing better to distract attention from injustice than using all means available to focus this fear (and the corresponding hatred) on an external (or internal) "collective enemy". This is the beginning of quasi-fascism, and it is what we are witnessing today, as mutual hatred between different cultural, religious, national or 'ethnic' identities is encouraged all over the world. [FOOTNOTE: It should be noted that this is not a symmetrical situation, since people from the South have been exploited, oppressed and exterminated by people from Northern countries in ways that have never been experienced in the opposite direction. But while this is an important fact to bear in mind and it is vital to reverse this vast historical injustice, it does not justify any form of collective hatred based on nationality, skin colour or cultural affiliation.]

On a much more positive note, this is also a historical opportunity to strengthen alliances of resistance all over the world. We are living through times of rapid change, and the direction which these changes take depends primarily on the response of our societies to them. One of the few good things about the 'divide and rule' strategies is that they can only work if the people who are being pitted against each other don't know much about each other and hardly have any contact or cooperation. This kind of isolation, which enabled the cold war to last so long, is something that we can successfully fight against. Grassroots groups cannot compete in militaristic terms with the established powers, but we can dismantle the mental framework on which their authority is based.

The speakers tour "Marhaba Europe!" is precisely a rallying call against the racism and violence fostered by the 'clash of civilisations' agenda, a cry to increase the contact and cooperation across the Mediterranean through a better mutual knowledge between people and grassroots groups in Europe and the Middle East. We are focusing on this part of the world for obvious reasons (such as the brutal violence inflicted by ruthless colonial regimes in Palestine and Iraq and by corrupt neo-colonial regimes in many other countries, the demonisation of people of different religions, nationalities or cultures among increasing sectors of the population of the Israeli, European and Arab states, the almost generalised growth of the extreme right that this provokes, the increasingly inhuman and disturbing nature of responses to oppression across the region, etc) We would like to contact people interested in working on these lines anywhere in the world. We are already in contact with people who are planning a similar initiative in North America, and would love to get in touch with people wanting to work in a similar direction elsewhere.

The main objective of this project is to contribute to undermining the imposition of the "clash of civilisations" agenda by promoting more contact and solidarity between grassroots struggles across the region, all over the world. The incredibly rich forms of grassroots resistance and creativity that we want to help connect include anti-colonial struggles, emancipatory struggles of women, queers and minorities, the rejection of racism and xenophobia in all its forms, and the efforts to overthrow authoritarian or oppressive regimes and social practices everywhere. Although Palestine and Iraq are (again for obvious reasons) in the focus of attention, we hope to motivate groups all over Europe to collectively shape international cooperation projects together with diverse organisations in the Middle East and the North of Africa.

With these tours we would also like to foster connections with lots of untapped cooperation potential. For example, most groups working in Europe against the corporations and governments that determine our energy policy focus on environmental questions (climate chaos, oil spills, transportation policy, etc). These same corporations and governments are behind the neo-colonial regimes of the Middle East, which provoke widespread resentment and frustration among their populations. Although this is a well-known fact, often denounced by the environmental groups in Europe as part of their texts and protests, most of them do not have any direct contact with grassroots organisations in Arab countries. Connecting the different forms of resistance against those governments and companies would certainly be one of the best ways to challenge the oil economy. We are totally aware that making these connections is easier said than done (particularly to groups with less access to resources and technology), and that maintaining balanced relationships across continents is probably even more difficult. But we also believe that it is totally possible if it is given enough priority. This project aims at inspiring all kinds of grassroots groups in Europe to give priority to this kind of connections, and to strengthen those already existing and the obvious first step is to get to know a small sample of the wealth of emancipatory struggles in the Middle East. [FOOTNOTE: In August 2003, grassroots social movements from all over the Mediterranean area and other parts of the world met in Barcelona for a gathering at which this project was conceived. Many movements that attended this gathering didn't have previous contact with other movements in the region. For most grassroots organisations from Arab states, international networking is difficult due to mobility restrictions and economic disparities. Most European grassroots groups were already internationally connected, but their contacts in Arab countries and Israel are extremely limited (except in Palestine), and their knowledge about social dynamics in these countries is often influenced by mainstream stereotypes. Anti-Zionist grassroots movements in Israel hardly have any contact with grassroots organisations in Arab states, other than in Palestine. This was one of the main reasons for us to facilitate this project.]

We are aware that many important struggles and issues related to the Middle East and the North of Africa have been left out of the speakers' tours and this magazine due to lack of capacity. Among them are the Almazigh (aka Bereber), Kurdish and Saharahoui struggles, the resistance against ruthless regimes in countries like Algeria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The ones that are included (Palestine & Iraq, feminist and queer struggles, independent media, etc) will be treated superficially. Furthermore, this magazine uses concepts that we reject, since it would become extremely obscure and difficult to read if we didn't use words such as, for instance, 'civilisation' (an extremely dubious and ideologised way to classify people in abstract categories that are useful to the 'divide and rule' game). We do not see any of this as a problem, since we do not claim (nor desire) to have an all-encompassing analysis or ideology. We rather want to foster a process of increased cooperation and exchange in a framework that has room for diversity, while being based on a number of clear principles, which will develop over time.

Among these principles, one that we consider particularly important is to promote the self-critical analysis of our societies and struggles. Boxes 1 to 3 provide brief examples for this kind of analysis from Palestine, Israel and Europe. These excerpts relate the domestic growth of racism, the extreme right and neo-colonial policies to the development of global capitalism.

The speakers tours “Marhaba Europe!” will finish with an international networking meeting to plan future projects and actions, and find ways to make this process of resistance against the “clash of civilisations” agenda more broad-based, inclusive and effective. It will take place in Easter 2005 and you are all invited.

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Box 1: Excerpts from "Flirtations with Fascism", by Asma Agbarieh*

The Arab leaders, and above all Yasser Arafat, promised their peoples economic prosperity, provided they submit to American domination and the capitalist ideology. Today they find themselves at a dead end... In the absence of progressive socialist support, Arab nationalism is in danger of falling into the waiting arms of fascism. The Arab world is not ready to confront the US and capitalism, because until now no true opposition-movement has arisen from within it. Given the vacuum, nothing is easier than to blame everything on the Jews while supporting fascist forces in the US and in Europe, looking to the latter to "purify" the Arab world of the Jewish "parasite".

For the Arab regimes, anti-Semitism is preferable to a confrontation with the real enemy: American capitalism and its agent, Israel. As long as the latter are strong, after all, they guarantee the survival of the dictators. These prefer to see the people going after Jews rather than attacking their own corrupt regimes.

When Holocaust deniers convene in Arab capitals, they are not adopting the Palestinian cause for its own sake, but rather exploiting it as fertile ground for their ideas. In this way they degrade the struggle - originally political, ideological, and conscious - to a more nefarious level. When Arab leaders join hands with them - as did the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who sought support from Hitler - they betray their cause.

Fascism is not just the enemy of the Jews, but of all humanity... Our enemy is not an ethnic or religious group. It is the combined forces of American capitalism, Zionism and the reactionary Arab regimes.

* Director of the monthly Palestinian magazine Al Sabar and coordinator of the legal office of Workers Advice Centre in East Jerusalem and Nazareth. The complete English version of this article was published in Al Sabar's sister publication Challenge, and can be found at  http://www.hanitzotz.com/challenge/67/asma.html)

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Box 2: Excerpts from "Zionism and Colonialism", by Gershon Shafir*

The 1967 war opened the door to the radicalisation of Zionist colonisation (...) In independent Israel, after 1948, the Histadrut [1] did away with the threat of Palestinian Arab competition in the labour market and brought about the gradual substitution of the exclusionary strategy of "Hebrew labour" with a scheme, that for all practical purposes, amounted to a caste system. After 1967, this caste system was dramatically expanded [2]. (...)

The post-1967 era in Israel was one of cultural transformation, of a far-reaching, though ultimately inconclusive, legitimational shift. This shift resulted from the efforts of the supporters of territorial expansion to find a popularly acceptable replacement for the demographic calculus that was deeply ingrained in most Israelis. The rise of the Likud - National Religious party coalition, and the retreat from democratic values and in certain areas from modernity itself, were part of these "cultural revolutions". The latter oscillated between the fully exclusivist homogeneous settlement colony perspective of the various advocates of "transfer" [3], and the more powerful wing of the Likud that adopted a supremacist approach, typical of its hierarchical structure and its attendant rigid primordial (and in many cases racial) justification. (...) It is still in this respect, and in these terms, that the future of Israeli society is likely to be determined.

* Gershon Sharif used to teach at the Tel Aviv University and is now at the University of California at San Diego. The essay "Zionism and Colonialism" is part of Ilan Pappe's compilation "The Israel/Palestine Question", published by Routledge in 1999.

1 Editor's footnote: The Histadrut was the organisational and economic umbrella of the Jewish Labour Movement. In 1920 it centralised a vertically and horizontally integrated network of Jewish enterprises and institutions, creating a homogeneous Jewish economy with the aim of excluding Palestinian Arabs and removing them from the labour market under the slogan "Hebrew labour".

2 Editor's footnote: after the displacement of most of the Palestinian Arab population from 1948-Israel, the economic advantages of exploiting the remaining Palestinians were more important than the demograpic disadvantages of their presence. They became the bottom of a stratified system where Jews of European and North-American origin stood at the top, followed by "second-class Jews" from Arab countries, Ethiopia, etc. Since then, the demographic supremacy of the Jews has been the main concern of the Israeli right.

3 Editor's footnote: A small but vocal part of Israeli society favours the forced removal of Palestinians out of the Occupied Territories (hypocritically calling such a fascist measure " transfer"), while others in the Israeli right are keen to use Palestinians as a source of cheap labour.

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Box 3: Excerpts from "State of Terror", by Raif Smythe*

In little over a year Britain has been turned into a 'police state on paper' with scarcely a murmur of dissent from the public. Far from the huge outcry in 1974 when the original 'temporary' anti-terrorism laws were introduced, the public has believed (inasmuch as it cared) New Labour's claim that the terrorism laws were merely being modernised. (...) It was only with the publication of the list of banned organizations in February 2001 that ethnic minority and refugee groups woke up to the threat and were drawn in. In particular, Kurds and Tamils in London, Sikhs in Birmingham and Muslims in both cities became involved as groups in or connected to their communities were the most banned. (...) While a tentative proposal to introduce compulsory ID cards for everyone produced immediate and incensed opposition and was quickly withdrawn, measures to deny the fundamental rights of suspected terrorists won widespread support. The message was clear: the public was concerned about 'their'rights but not those of migrants. (...) The rest of the population was instilled with a general fear it was under surveillance or being "grassed up;" a similar form of social control was used in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and is far more effective than the usual deterrence of prison.

It is already well known that social authoritarianism, in particular the identification and managing of the unproductive and surplus elements in capitalist societies, is as essential, indeed just as much a part of neo-liberalism, as is economic liberalisation. The proposed computer system being developed for the UK to determine sentencing of criminals by providing a risk assessment based on factors such as previous offences, age and postcode could not be a better example. This marks a fundamental shift from imprisoning people for what they have done, towards imprisoning people for what they might do in the future. Instead of being people they are simply figures in an actuarial calculation of risk, fodder for the prison-industrial complex to grow fat on.

Now, however, it is becoming clear that something more than mere physical exclusion is needed for those who actively question and oppose the neo-liberal vision of progress and contradict the politicians' line that economic globalisation is the only possible future. For this "progress" to continue, those elements need to be excluded politically and ultimately socially.

By deciding that somebody is not just a suspected criminal but a suspected terrorist, the odds are stacked against them from the start. Magistrates will be unlikely to refuse requests for continued detention, judges will be more likely to grant requests to withhold sensitive evidence from the defence. (...) Anyone to whom the label "terrorist" sticks will suffer what is known as stigmatic harm and will find themselves increasingly sidelined in society, as others will not want to be tarred with the same brush. Just as was the case with women, people of colour and non-heterosexuals being unable to join in public debate because they were seen as irrational, inhuman or an object of hate, so it will be with the new terrorists.

Of course most people rely on information from media rather than everyday life in this area. "The power to name, label and define terrorism is especially relevant...since terrorism is so distant and beyond the average person's experience. It is a case...where the media wield exceptional power over popular conceptions of reality." With a mass media of entertainers willing to sensationalise to increase profits, this is obviously a problem.

* Coalitional Against the Terrorism Acts, UK. Complete article available at  http://squat.net/cia/gp/hom3c.php?artid=44&back=/cia/gp/hom.php

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Table of contents of the magazine "Marhaba Europe!"
3-6 Editorial: Resisting the Clash
7 No, Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism, by Brian Klug
8-10 The Clash Of Ignorance, by Edward W. Said
10-11 Old Hates Fuelled by Fear, by Naomi Klein
12-22 Anti-Muslim Racism and the European Security State, by Liz Fekete, Institute of Race Relations
23-25 The Boy who Kissed a Soldier, by Starhawk
26-27 Flirting with Anti-Semitism, by Asma Agbarieh
28-29Globalization and the Rise of the Radical Right, by Yacov Ben Efrat
30 Is The Islamic Hijab a Women's Right? by Nadia Mahmood, OWFI
31 Untold Stories of the Occupation of Iraq, by Houzan Mahmoud, Nadia Mahmood and Lydia Ratna, OWFI
32-33 How to Strengthen the Palestine Solidarity Movement by Making Friends with Jews , by Guy Izhak Austrian and Ella Goldman
34-35 Arab Nationalism, American Imperialism and my Boyfriend, by Imad Mortada
36 Laila Was Eaten by the Wolf, by Sara Abou Ghazal
37-39 Resources and Links

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