amateur ramblings

Though I was unable to help with the enormous efforts that members of SJP put into Israeli Apartheid Week over the past two months due to other obligations, I did come to recognize last week for the first time just how I felt about our organization.

To be sure, the number of asinine remarks, statements, opinions, and arguments that saturate the discussion regarding Israel and Palestine is enormous. Most of these are either chauvinistic or based in falsehoods. And, I think, for a long time the mainstream perspectives (and to this day, the mainstream of Israel advocacy) merely reproduced the statements and arguments of “official representatives” of either people, acting as simple propagandists.

Even in the logic of the “peace talk” that often arises in this sort of discussion (that is, where one person is taken to represent the Palestinian government, and the other the Israeli one, even though they are both in unofficial capacities having what is most likely a meaningless screaming match on a campus in the US), there is something troubling that does not feel quite right. I don’t think I quite began to understand what this was until last Spring.

I am troubled by the divisions that the logic of the “peace talk” relies upon and strengthens. I am troubled by the fact that the priorities in such talks have very little, if anything at all, to do with the experiences of Israelis or Palestinians themselves, as people (not “peoples”) and how they are centered on non-human subjects like sovereignty, statehood, etcetera.

If anything, I have very little faith in the ability of those “official representatives” of either Israel or Palestine to improve the life experiences of those they purportedly represent, even in the unlikely case that they reach a “peace deal.”

And that is where SJP comes in. I feel that our organization is really quite atypical and does not have a place in the mainstream binary logic of the discussion surrounding Israel and Palestine. Comprised of people from all backgrounds, a majority which is not even Palestinian or Arab or Muslim, I think our very existence as a cohesive and principled organization drives a stake into the heart of nation-state logic–into both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism.

And that is not simply because we are remote from the situation. There are parallels, though they are relatively small (they will grow) in Palestine and Israel. The joint struggle between Israeli and Palestinian activists in Bil`in comes to mind.

My hope is that those who confront members of SJP on campus will stop thinking of us as official representatives of any government or organization in Palestine, but instead will begin to see in us the embodiment of an alternative future that is possible and is firmly within our grasp as activists.

In an increasingly pessimistic world, there is room for alterity, and it is possible to play a role in constructing our future. From this perspective, though things are bad now, and most likely will be for quite some time, they will never be hopeless, as long as we continue our dedication to building the world we would like to live in.