amateur ramblings

UC Berkeley student group Tikvah’s “Israeli Peace and Diversity Week” makes two claims about Israel that are simply not borne out by history. The first is that there is such a thing as Israeli peace, even in the wake of the recent Israeli massacres that killed over 1,300 people in Gaza and prompted Amnesty International to call for an arms embargo against Israel. The second is that the ethnocratic state of Israel embraces diversity. Neither could be further from the truth.

Israel is not a country of peace. It was founded after terrorist militias called the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah gerrymandered a Jewish majority state by forcibly expelling non-Jews from the land that became Israel in 1948. It later instated two racist laws that forbade those refugees from returning. The laws of absentee property appropriated all property belonging to refugees as state land and made its sale to non-Jews illegal. The Law of Return allowed any person of Jewish background around the world to immediately receive citizenship and move to Israel, even if they had no roots in the land. At the same time, Palestinians who were actually born there but forced to leave were not allowed to return because they might shift the demographics of the new state. Since then, there has been virtually no time at which Israel was not at war protecting the Jewish-supremacist institutions of the state. Both laws are still in effect. (more…)

Note: I wrote this when I was in Syria last summer. I’ve decided to publish it in the hopes of starting a discussion on the nature of the freedoms we tend to discuss in political activism in different parts of the world. At the very heart of it, the question is, what kind of freedom do states produce? The guiding logic is that the biggest threat to the state is a desire for freedom from the state.

In Syria, a number of sites like Facebook are blocked. The official reason has been security. The common response has been, “citizens’ rights are being violated.” Granted, it is easy enough to agree with the latter perspective: it is certainly more troublesome than it ought to be to access these sites, but more than a few of the Internet cafes I’ve come across in Damascus have found a way to get around the block. What I am interested in exploring, though, is the degree to which we can say that it is not actually a contradiction to believe in both the reason for the block, as well as the opposition to it. In other words, are state security and the liberal rights which justify the opposition to the block incompatible with one another, or do they in fact complement one another? It might appear here that I am trying to reconcile the two perspectives in order to find some imagined ‘happy balance’: in fact, I am only trying to show that they were never even separate in the first place to require reconciliation. Further, when I say that the first point should be “believed,” I am in fact not endorsing it, but only trying to make the point that there might be a connection between the “freedoms” we think we have in some places, and the extensiveness of “security” apparatuses in those places. (more…)

The ASUC is the elected student government at UC Berkeley. Composed of five executives and twenty senators, its most important task is to distribute money to student organizations. Many people believe that the ASUC can, in some sense, be an activist tool for “change.” Unfortunately, I don’t think this is true, despite having believed it to be the case earlier. I will argue that fixation on the ASUC is actually harmful to progressive activists and causes in the long-term. Further, I will argue that in the long-term, the legitimacy bestowed upon the ASUC actually disempowers students in their relationship with the University administration and as far as ownership over campus spaces is concerned.

First, a few myths about the ASUC.

Myth: The ASUC is the student voice.

Students’ voices are the students’ voices. While students may come to a consensus on some issues, they cannot on all issues. Furthermore, a unanimous voice on anything of substance is almost unimaginable. When the ASUC proclaims itself to be the student voice, it actually attempts to monopolize legitimate expression in the student body. That may not be the intention, but it is the effect. To defend the ASUC by claiming that any voice may join the ASUC given enough votes only re-affirms the point that a voice must be present in the ASUC to be legitimate, when that is not the case. (more…)

Background: On Nov 13, 2008, three members of the Zionist Freedom Alliance, including current ASUC Senator John Moghtader, stormed up several flights of stairs in Eshleman Hall to confront three Palestinian students who silently held Palestinian flags on a balcony  above a ZFA event to protest the group’s anti-Palestinian message. An altercation ensued in which the Palestinian students claim they were attacked by the ZFA members, and the ZFA members claim the opposite. UCPD recommended charges be filed against the ZFA members, but the DA did not press charges. Now the Zionist Organization of America intervenes, likely at the request of members of the  ZFA or Tikvah.

A few days ago, Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) issued a press release urging UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau to address “Campus Anti-Semitism and Israel-Bashing.” The phone contact was in the 212 area code, nowhere close to Berkeley. Remember that, because it tells us much of what we need to know to see how flawed the ZOA’s press release and letter to Birgeneau (which reads like the pre-cursor to a lawsuit) are.

There are many contentious and mostly false claims made in the ZOA’s press release, but I will focus primarily on the sections related to the Nov 13 attack on Palestinian students as well as the ensuing recall election of John Moghtader, the Senator who was kicked out of the SQUELCH party, president of Tikvah, and sponsor of the ASUC bill funding the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) concert.

I will disclose, if it is not obvious already, that I believe in the victims’ narrative of what happened, that after they silently hung a Palestinian flag in protest on a balcony above a concert for the ZFA–an organization which openly advocates the “elimination” of Palestinians–three ZFA organizers, including Moghtader, ran up several flights of stairs to confront the Palestinian students on the balcony. I will concede, however, that besides people close to either “side” of this encounter, who tend to believe their friends, no third party in Berkeley has really bothered or felt confident enough to take a stand either way. That includes the Daily Californian, the Berkeley Daily Planet, Jewish News Weekly SF, the Dean of Students, Chancellor Birgeneau, and the District Attorney, all of whom agree on only one thing: that they can’t decide who to believe because the evidence consists of diametrically opposed stories coming from the attackers and the victims. Someone is lying, but nobody can decide who. (more…)

Recent weeks have seen the appearance of a group called the Zionist Freedom Alliance at UC Berkeley. It is not clear at this point what the group’s affiliation is with Tikvah, however all the major members of Tikvah work with the Alliance, which sponsored Israeli Liberation Week.

The Zionist Freedom Alliance reflects the desperate and doomed status of right-wing Zionism in the United States. In tactics, it adopts thuggery, aggression, and violence in the style of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the terrorist organization the Jewish Defense League (which Tikvah links to on its Facebook group). It also romanticizes the Irgun, a Zionist militia group which carried out dozens of attacks on civilians in the 1930s and 40s. In rhetoric, it pretends social justice, national liberation, and anti-imperialism. Overall, it symbolizes a failing attempt to maintain victim status for the State of Israel, which possesses the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East as well as the world’s 5th most powerful military. (more…)

As soon as Obama finished giving his acceptance speech, crowds of students began to gather in the streets of Berkeley. By the time I melded myself into the march somewhere on Durant Avenue, hundreds of students had already amassed. We ran down Durant feeling that a huge weight was off our shoulders, that there were only better days ahead. As we rejoiced, preparing to say goodbye forever to those familiar faces of the Bush regime, it dawned on me that we had no idea where we were going. Where was this march headed? (more…)

I put this graph together to get a visual representation of how much an individual person’s vote is worth when translated into an electoral college vote. I did this by dividing the number of electoral votes per state, by the population of each state. According to these numbers, each citizen of Wyoming has four times as much of an electoral vote as a citizen of Texas. The graph is scaled up by 1,000,000 so that it can be indexed by whole numbers. Population statistics are taken from here.

Of course, this representation is not accurate except in a world where everybody votes regardless of their age. In reality, the actual vote you cast will not be worth what the table used to make the graph claims.

First, you run the risk of your vote having no impact whatsoever on the electoral college if you vote for a losing candidate in your state. That means that you and your neighbors have to fight amongst each other over who will even get to have a vote in the electoral college. If your candidate wins in your state, you’re probably taking away your neighbor’s vote.

Second, the numbers are based on population, not on actual voter turnout per state. The lower voter turnout is in your state, the more your individual vote is worth if your candidate has won. Since a large percentage of the population in many states is not qualified to vote, either due to age or other reasons, the numbers could change dramatically, though I have no idea whether it would much affect the relationship between states. The turnout thing is a real zinger: if turnout in some states is significantly lower than turnout in other states, the votes in the first state are worth more than votes in the second state.

What this graph really says is, “if everybody who lived in every state could vote, this is how much each vote would be worth.” But of course, not everybody who lives in every state can vote, nor will everybody who can vote, actually vote: so this is only a theoretical example, though it illustrates how undemocratic the voting system is under perfect conditions.

I plan to create a follow-up graph after the election based on actual voter turnout to see who actually chose the President. That one will be more interesting.

The cartoon above by Gretchen Faust in the Daily Cal pretty much sums up what it means to have a Panda Express on campus. First, it literally doesn’t fit. Second, it’s an ominous threat to the independent small businesses in the space. And Third, despite the way some people have been waxing philosophical about free choice in food choice, this is a financial issue, not a philosophical one. Panda has nothing to offer but money. And the problem is, not even that much is certain.

My op-ed in the Daily Cal today addresses the last issue,  showing how the supposed financial need for Panda is actually based on an increase in Auxiliary spending. The Auxiliary is a part of the University administration whose expenses the ASUC must pay for with profits from commercial services. This year, the Auxiliary’s spending will go up almost $300,000. According to members of the Store Operations Board, Panda Express’ revenues to the ASUC will probably only be within that range, if not less. That means that the sum gain for student organizations and the ASUC is $0, and that Panda revenues may go exclusively towards covering rising Auxiliary spending, even while changing the landscape of our campus. A bailout plan for the Auxiliary.

Check out the op-ed here:

While many students have been quick to rally either for or against the Panda Express chain on campus, something that has been left out of the conversation is an explanation of the financial circumstances that are being used to explain the necessity of the chain’s presence. What members of the Store Operations Board, some ASUC Senators and the ASUC Auxiliary have been saying is that the ASUC will go into deficit within a year if we do not find a new source of revenue. But the unanswered question is, how did the ASUC end up in this position?

Tikvah Students for Israel’s false accusations that SJP members are behind hateful vandalism at UC Berkeley exacerbate campus tensions and endanger students on campus rather than defuse the situation

Anybody who has studied the Israeli occupation of Palestine knows that supremacist arguments and narratives frame much of the dissent against and support for Israeli state policies. These points of view cover the range from some Israeli ministers who believe that all Arabs should be kicked out of Israel and the West Bank, some people who believe that all Jews in Israel should return to Europe, and even those who believe that Jews and Arabs inherently cannot mix and must live segregated from one another.

Approaching Israel and Palestine from a perspective that is not rooted in one of these racist points of view is essential to, first of all, finding hope in human resilience and resistance against systems of oppression, as well as finding a place where principled activists can situate themselves vis-á-vis US support for Israeli state policies regardless of their backgrounds.

With that said, yesterday evening a hate crime occurred on the UC campus when pro-Israel propaganda at a bus stop was tagged with a swastika. Nobody should accept these kinds of hateful messages, regardless of who they come from. As somebody who passed by this particular sign on more than two occasions last night, I can attest that the two messages that were on the board were likely not placed by the same person. On my way to a student government meeting around 8:45PM, I passed by the board and noticed that it was tagged with the phrase “Free Palestine.” On my way out only about a half an hour later, I noticed that a swastika was added below the message. What this indicates to me is that these are two separate messages, possibly added by different people, at different times– maybe even somebody trying to frame a connection that does not exist between the two messages. (more…)

According to Haaretz, Danny Ayalon, the ex-Israeli ambassador to the US and newly annointed member of Israel’s fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party (whose leader, Avigdor Lieberman, recently suggested that the Israeli state should do what it can to expel the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian), issued the following ‘warning’:

“If the government of Israel does not act to have a Jewish majority in the North, then the Arab majority in the Galilee will declare independence and [demand] international recognition on the basis of the precedents of Kosovo, Abkhazia and [South Ossetia].”

The Israeli government moves ordinary Jews and Arabs around as if it is playing chess. Don’t like the demographics of this particular sub-region of Israel? Give an incentive to Israeli Jews to move there by subsidizing settlement construction or with other ‘perks’–maybe even help out Jews around the world to acquire Israeli citizenship and move into one of these new settlements. This strategy is not new at all when it comes to Israeli state designs–in fact, this sort of “acting to have a Jewish majority” is the very premise of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon’s settlement plans in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which were introduced in the late 1970s. What is interesting, however, is that it is being applied to an area already under Israeli sovereignty in order to prevent the possibility of a future secessionist movement.

When it came to the West Bank and Gaza, settlement construction became a government policy for two reasons: one, it provided the army with a pretext to continue occupying Palestinian land because it placed Israelis in the middle of what could be framed as a “dangerous” situation; and two, because it would create “facts on the ground” which could lead to a “demographic transformation” that could give Israel a pretext not to withdraw from all of the occupied territories, and to make the consolidation of a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

And while the Israeli government attempts to orchestrate the living patterns and dynamics of Jewish populations in settlements, it also wreaks havoc on the Palestinian people. Ordinary Palestinians are viewed as obstacles to the state’s grand plans for Jewish-stateness, and efforts must be made to get rid of them. In 1947 and 48, Israel’s pre-state terror squads razed villages killing men, women, and children, causing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee in terror. Today, the Israeli government uses means just as explicit to make life unlivable for Palestinians, by putting them under siege, preventing them from moving freely within their own lands, and disallowing their refugee relatives to return back to their homes. If a Palestinian town is “inconveniently placed” when it comes to Israel’s own state interests, it builds a wall around it to disconnect the residents from their agricultural lands, jobs, and surrounding towns, crippling their economy and encouraging them to leave to make way for Jewish-only settlements.

While the rhetoric of Yisrael Beiteinu party members, including Danny Ayalon, some tell us, is not mainstream in Israel (the party is currently part of the government), its underlying logic of demographic control of the population and a forced sort of gerrymandering is very much a mainstay of Israeli politics. When Avigdor Lieberman threatens to expel Palestinian citizens of Israel from the state, he shares already the government’s official understanding of those non-Jewish citizens as “threats” to the state, even if some of the softer Zionists believe there is room for a group of people in Israel that is by necessity institutionalized as a minority. He is only willing to be more bombastic about it. When Ayalon says that Jews must move to the north of Israel to prevent a Palestinian secession, he already shares the Israeli state’s historical position of re-settling Jews and expelling Arabs in order to produce a claim to sovereignty.

In short, in a state which defines itself as being a Jewish state–since states can have religions these days–demographic control is everything. It is the key element in all state strategy, and it is the measuring stick by which ’stability’ and ’sustainability’ are assessed. Everything else–including things like democracy, freedom, equality, justice, peace, which are not present in the Israeli state’s calculus when it comes to Palestinians, citizens or not–is of a lesser, disposable priority and, quite often, antithetical to the state.