Stop ignoring anti-Jewish racism

Last Saturday I went to the protest against asset sales organized by Aotearoa Not For Sale. I was marching with my friend Maia, discussing the latest episode of The Good Wife in between chants of ‘hey hey ho ho/John Key has got to go’.

Halfway up Willis St we overheard a guy behind us talking: ‘This is all because John Key is a money-hungry Jew.’ Maia immediately turned around and told him that he was being anti-Semitic and that it wasn’t ok (she’s great like that). The guy explained that she didn’t understand the historical context, that ‘they took over this country with their money’, before finally giving up and telling her ‘you must be Jewish’ (incidentally, she isn’t. Not that it’s relevant’).

By that point I’d already walked away. I was in no mood to hear about how I control the world’s money and am personally responsible for the economic recession.

This wasn’t the first time that anti-Jewish racism has cropped up at Aotearoa Not For Sale events. Last year a guy named Nathan Symington joined an anti-asset sales march in Auckland holding a skateboard with swastikas chalked on it. The same man was later charged with the racist vandalism of the Symonds St Jewish cemetery.

When an Auckland activist noticed that Symington had clicked ‘attending’ on a facebook page for an Aotearoa Not For Sale street party, she commented and asked the organisers to make a clear statement that racism and fascism weren’t welcome at this event. She was ignored and her comment was deleted. (I’m told that at the party itself one of the organisers did make a statement condemning racism. I don’t want to imply that everyone involved in ANFS ignores racism.)

There were similar instances of anti-Jewish racism at Occupy spaces in 2011, and on the facebook pages of several of the Occupy groups as well.

The campaign against asset sales is broad. It includes socialists who argue for nationalization of resources, anarchists who argue for collectivization of the means of production, and tino rangatiratanga activists who view asset sales as a continuation of colonization. It also includes nationalists, racists and conspiracy theorists.

Aotearoa Not For Sale organisers can’t be held personally responsible for the actions of every single person who attends one of their protests. But they do need to take responsibility for ensuring that racism isn’t tolerated—or worse, nurtured.

One way to do that is to stop the nationalist rhetoric. Campaigns against privatization have a nasty habit of appealing to populist nationalism, because it’s an easy way of galvanizing support. That slope is both slippery and dangerous. Its logical conclusion is in racism and xenophobia. It’s essential that arguments against the privatization of public assets are based on an ethic of economic and social justice, not nationalism.

Another way to take responsibility is to take a strong and explicit stance against racism. Not just against Jews, but against Māori, Pacific islanders, Asians, Arabs—anybody. Opposition to racism needs to be one of the central tenets of anti-privatisation activism, and it needs to be made explicit and constantly reiterated. When people hold racist signs or make racist comments at protests they should be asked to leave. When racist behavior manifests it should be publicly condemned, not swept under the rug for fear of ‘damaging the movement’.

Nothing divides social movements quite as effectively as oppression ignored. If Aotearoa Not For Sale continues to ignore anti-Jewish racism, it will split the movement between those who are willing to tolerate racism, and those who cannot.

So stop ignoring anti-Jewish racism.

Keeping the thing going

I feel like I need to preface this post with a disclaimer: over the last year I have become extremely jaded and cynical. So it’s possible that my inability to get excited about parliament passing the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) bill has more to do with my current pessimism than with anything else. But I’ve been turning it over in my mind for the last week and I think I’ve finally worked out why I feel so uneasy about it.

I also recommend this much more interesting analysis by Neon, Anne Russel, LudditeJourno and Anthea.

When I was ten I wrote a letter to the president asking him to legalise same-sex marriage. Nearly two decades, and one inter-continental migration later, the government of the country I now live in did exactly that. Instead of feeling excited, I just felt sad and frustrated that even something as small and symbolic as the ability to marry requires such a long struggle.

All parliament did was change one discriminatory law, and suddenly everyone’s gushing about how proud they are to be a New Zealander. To me it feels like we’ve been given the kind of small-but-very-loud concession that makes it easy to pretend that institutional transphobia and homophobia aren’t a reality anymore [‘we gave you marriage rights, what more do you want?’]

This law change is an easy thing for parliament to give us, because it doesn’t cost anything. As much as homophobes like to complain that their marriages will be ruined if queers can get married too, the truth is that legalising same-sex marriage doesn’t take any resources away from heterosexuals. It doesn’t require any tax payers’ money. Actually it will probably be good for the economy, and it definitely makes it easier for the state to regulate people’s relationships.

On the other hand, there are so many things the government could do that would make a huge positive impact on the lives of trans and queer folk in New Zealand. But these things would all require money. Which means they will be much much harder to get. I’m not saying that legalising same-sex marriage was a waste of time—it may not be important to me personally, but I support other people’s right to marry—but it’s important that we don’t view it as the holy grail of queer liberation. It’s really more of a small stepping-stone on the way there.

Seeing how ecstatic everyone around me was when the bill passed did quite a bit to melt my cynicism. Still, I kept thinking of Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to the American Equal Rights Association in 1867, ‘I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.’

So in the interest of keeping the thing going while it is stirring, I started brainstorming a list of demands. These mostly came out of a good rant I had with Neon. I’m sure there’s plenty more others could add to this list.

• Resources to address queer and trans youth suicide
• Anti-homophobia & transphobia education in all schools
• Income support for queer & trans youth who’ve been rejected by their families
• No criminalization of street workers
• Resources to make street work safer
• No transpeople incarcerated in the wrong gender prison (this is a very reformist demand, ultimately I’d like to abolish prisons altogether).
• Education support for people who left school early due to transphobic/homophobic bullying
• Accept queer and trans asylum seekers
• Gender neutral toilets in all public places
• Access to appropriate medical care
• Adoption rights for same-sex and poly families
• Legal recognition of poly relationships
• Educational programmes on how to create trans and queer friendly workplaces.
• Media education packs on how to responsibly report on trans and queer issues.

Good riddance to 2012

It is already the fifth day of 2013 and I’m sitting in my office re-reading the post I wrote at the end of 2011. What can I say, that was such an exciting, exhausting year that I’d forgotten most of it. I spent 2011 gallivanting around the world doing a million different things. Not necessarily fun things. I think I was pretty drained by the end of it.

Now I’m trying to remember what happened in 2012, and my mind’s more or less blank. 2012 was a pretty rubbish year for me. I decided to settle down, move into a rent-paying flat, and study fulltime. I felt like I was going undercover in the Muggle world.

In the long run it was probably a good experience for me to step outside my anarchist bubble. At least, I’m sure in the future I’ll look back and think it was a good experience. Lefties love to complain about how we need to stop being so insular and engage more with the mainstream (whatever the hell that is), but this year really made me appreciate the importance of having spaces and communities where people actively oppose oppression. Radical left spaces don’t always live up to that, but at least there’s a shared understanding that they should.

That’s the self-involved component of this post. So on to the actually interesting things that happened last year:

2012 finally concluded the long and ludicrous saga of the Operation Eight court case. Rangi Kemara and Tame Iti are still in prison, and state attacks on Māori are continuing. So the struggle is far from over.

There was also the mass hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners, in protest of Israel’s administrative detention policies. There are still prisoners who are hunger striking, including Samer Issawi, who’s been hunger striking for over 150 days. Again, the struggle is far from over.

It made me fantasise a lot about alternate timelines where the world doesn’t suck as much.

Another thing that happened last year was that ridiculous Kony 2012 campaign. I still haven’t watched the actual video, but it did trigger some useful discussions about accountability of NGOs, and their role in perpetuating colonialism.

That war everyone was expecting for all of 2011 did happen in 2012. Israeli forces killed 170 Palestinians in Gaza in under a fortnight. They named it Operation Pillar of Defense in English, but in Hebrew it was Pillar of Cloud, which apparently is some biblical reference that I’m not a good enough Jew to get.

The Palestinian Authority finally got observer state status at the UN. I don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing. It’s a huge symbolic victory, and it gives Palestine the right to take Israel to the International Criminal Court. But it could also entrench the 1967 borders and endanger the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1948 homes.

There was a lot of organising around asset sales and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. I’m opposed to both, but I also feel incredibly uneasy with the nationalist rhetoric used by anti-asset sales and anti-TPPA activists. Especially after finding out that a neo-Nazi participated in an Aotearoa Not For Sale march. You can’t separate the struggle for economic justice from the struggle against colonisation and racism.

I’m trying to think of exciting new music that I discovered in 2012 and the only band I can think of is the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Feel free to leave your music recommendations in the comments section.

On the other hand I went to see four movies at the cinema last year, which is a lot for me. Here’s my 2012 film reviews:

The Avengers: so did not pass the Bechdel test. WTF Joss? I expect better from you.

The Hunger Games: was a perfectly fine movie, but really did not live up to the book. I am very emotionally invested in the book.

Cabin in the Woods: was so fucking amazing. Joss, you’re a genius, I totally forgive you for The Avengers

Five Broken Cameras: is a very moving documentary and you should watch it.

I read a lot of books last year. My picks are Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors, Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man, Ali Abunimah’s One Country and The Hunger Games trilogy.

Towards the end of the year my grandmother died. I want to write something about her life, and what she meant to me, but I’m not quite ready yet.

I feel like I should have something inspiring to say about my hopes and aspirations for 2013. I’m actually feeling pretty jaded at the moment. I’ve decided my goal for 2013 is to find a way to feel optimistic and inspired about revolutionary social change. I figure if you set small goals, you’re less likely to be disappointed. So here’s to feeling hopeful about feeling hopeful.

Happy (belated) new year. Go forth and make revolution.

No to anti-Semitism, no to Israel

I love the Symonds St cemetery. I love that it’s right in the middle of the city where anyone can enter, not locked up behind a fence. I love that a Jewish cemetery in a mostly non-Jewish country can be in the middle of the city where anyone can enter.

I love sitting in the cemetery and reading the inscriptions on the headstones. It’s comforting reading Hebrew in New Zealand. It makes me feel less alien here. I don’t know anything about the lives of the people buried in that cemetery, but it’s reassuring to see that Jews have a history in this country—as much as any other Tau Iwi anyway.

I imagine that’s exactly why neo-Nazis targeted the Symonds St cemetery. To them, Jewish people are not part of New Zealand society (along with other non-White, non-hetero people). Attacking a 19th century Jewish cemetery is a way of attacking Jewish existence in New Zealand.

It’s hard to describe how I felt when I read about it. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. In 2004 the Jewish cemeteries in Karori and Makara were vandalised by neo-Nazis. So it’s always at the back of my mind, the possibility of anti-Semitic attacks. But that didn’t stop the shock that hit me this afternoon. It’s the same shock I felt the first time I saw swastika jewelry being sold at a New Zealand shop. It took me a few minutes to notice I was shaking.

The people who attacked the cemetery spray painted swastikas and 88s on Jewish headstones. They also sprayed ‘fuck Israel’ on a grave. Why spray anti-Israel slogans in a cemetery that pre-dates the Israeli state’s existence?

I am not a Zionist and I don’t support Israel. I support freedom and equality for everyone living in historic Palestine and I support the right of Palestinian refugees to return home. I don’t think that ‘fuck Israel’ is an anti-Semitic slogan—except for when it’s spray painted on a dead Jew’s grave.

Whoever vandalised these graves wasn’t acting out of solidarity with Palestinians. White supremacists attack Muslims just as much as they attack Jews. But anti-Semites are perfectly happy to hijack Palestinians’ struggle for liberation from a racist state, when it serves their racist agenda. That’s something the global Palestine solidarity movement has been addressing recently after a Palestine solidarity organisation tweeted an anti-Semitic video. Both Bekah Wolf and Ali Abunimah have written about it. The discussion on anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement lead over 100 Palestinian activists to sign a statement condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Zionism and all other bigotry.

Anti-Semitic attacks on diaspora Jewish communities hurt both Jews and Palestinians. They reinforce the Zionist claim that Jews aren’t safe unless Israel remains a Jewish-supremacist state—and that this justifies the horrific consequences for Palestinians and other non-Jews. Anti-Semitism and Zionism are both racist ideologies and they reinforce each other.

I’m sad that the response to these racist attacks is to increase security, including building a $250,000 security fence around the cemetery. We should be addressing the root of the problem, which is to say, we should be addressing anti-Semitism and racism.

I’m relieved that so far no one’s attempted to exploit the situation to garner support for Israel.

Defending Jewish people’s right to live in peace anywhere in the world is part of the wider struggle against racism and colonialism, in Palestine and elsewhere. Conflating Jews with Israel serves anti-Semites like the people who spray painted swastikas on 130-year-old graves, and it serves Zionists like the IDF soldiers who terrorise West Bank Palestinians. It doesn’t serve anyone’s struggle for liberation.

Remembering Sabra and Shatila on Erev Rosh Hashana

Today is Erev Rosh Hashanah—Jewish New Year’s Eve. Traditionally it’s a time to atone for the sins of the previous year. In a secular sense, it’s a time to think about things you’ve done wrong, people you’ve hurt, and to try to fix those wrongs.

Today is also the 30^th anniversary of the massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. At the time Israelis were shocked by the bloodbath. 300,000 people protested against it in Tel Aviv. I’m not old enough to remember it, but when my mother talks about it I can see the impact it had on her. I’m sure the massacre was a wake up call for so many Israeli Jews about the brutal nature of the Israeli military.

The thing about being in a position of privilege is: even after you receive a wake up call, it’s still pretty easy to get back to sleep. Thirty years later, it doesn’t seem like the majority of Israeli Jews have taken on the lessons of Sabra and Shatila. Every day I read another story of horrific violence committed by the IDF. I wonder how much worse things have to get before Israeli-Jews wake up and stay awake.

I don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not a lot to be said about a massacre of several thousand people. But I wanted to share this poem by Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana and Ariel Bloch.

You Can’t Kill a Baby Twice

By the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila,
there you transported human beings
in impressive quantities
From the world of the living to the world
of eternal light.

Night after night.
First they shot,
they hanged,
then they slaughtered with their knives.
Terrified women climbed up
on a ramp of earth, frantic:
‘They’re slaughtering us there,
in Shatila.’

A thin crust of moon
over the camps.
Our soldiers lit up the place with searchlights
till it was bright as day.
‘Back to the camp,
beat it!’ a soldier yelled at
the screaming women from Sabra and Shatila.
He was following orders.
And the children already lying in puddles of filth,
their mouths gaping,
at peace.
No one will harm them.
You can’t kill a baby twice.

And the moon grew fuller and fuller
till it became a round loaf of gold.

Our sweet soldiers
wanted nothing for themselves.
All they ever asked
was to come home
safe.

In any war between the coloniser and the colonised, support the oppressed

San Francisco buses have recently started displaying these ads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first I thought this was (brilliant) satire. I mean, American Freedom Defense Initiative sounds like something George Orwell would make up. Alas, it is a real thing.

I can’t help thinking these ads have a lot to teach us about Western White people’s support for Israel. The alternate text for them could have been ‘Indigenous sovereignty anywhere is a threat to colonisers everywhere’.

It seems that the aim of these ads is to get White American people to identify with Jewish-Israelis by equating Palestinians with Indigenous American people. Inadvertently these ads illustrate the connection between Western settler-colonialism (for instance in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine. In all these countries, Indigenous struggles for sovereignty threaten existing power structures. In all these countries there’s an ethnically privileged group who are terrified of having to stop their exploitation of Indigenous resources, and having to give back what was stolen.

One of the most frustrating ideas I’ve encountered while working with Western pro-Palestine activists is that Israel is somehow an exceptional state, that it is different from other colonial states. Once, at a Palestine teach-in, a Pākehā man spent half an hour explaining to me why I shouldn’t compare New Zealand colonialism to Israeli colonialism. (According to him, Māori were lucky that Europeans introduced them to universal human rights values.)

The idea that Israel is somehow special is a Zionist idea. Zionists argue that the Israeli state doesn’t have to meet basic minimum human rights standards, like legal equality for all its citizens, because it is special. That’s not an idea Palestine solidarity activists should be reinforcing.

I realise I’m not making any profound statement by pointing out that Israel is a colonial state. Many people have pointed this out in the past. For many Palestine solidarity activists in Western countries (both Indigenous people and those who are part of colonising groups), this activism is part of a wider struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

But I’ve also encountered people who use an inverted form of the rhetoric employed by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (I still can’t type that with a straight face). Where Zionists initiatives try to get White Western people to identify with Jewish-Israelis, pro-Palestine activists try to get White Western people to dis-identify with Jewish-Israelis by situating Israel as inherently incompatible with the principles for which the West stands—democracy, equality and freedom. I agree that Israel is not compatible with these principles. But I don’t think Western governments are either.

I’ve often heard Americans complain that support for Israel is inconsistent with the ethics on which the USA was founded. The USA was founded on the genocide of its Indigenous people and the slavery of African people. Those aren’t just historical atrocities that are disconnected from today’s American society—the USA continues to be a racist and colonial country. Support for Israel is utterly consistent with that.

Denying the colonial nature of Western states does real harm to Indigenous people who are suffering under colonisation. It also does harm to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. This is something that Mike Krebs articulates really well in this article:

If Israel is held accountable for its crimes against Indigenous people on the world stage, Canada has a greater risk of meeting the same fate. It can’t allow these precedents to be set, and thus it benefits from ensuring that the UN and its various bodies are kept weak and unable to uphold international law.

He’s talking specifically about Canada, the country that colonised his people’s lands, but what he says is equally relevant to other settler-colonial states. I recommend reading the entire article.

The San Francisco bus ads were quickly corrected:

 

 

 

 

This picture sums it up pretty succinctly.

This is our darkest timeline

May started off so promisingly. On the 9^th, it was announced that Emily Bailey, Rangi Kemara, Tame Iti and Urs Signer would not be retried on the charge of belonging to an organised criminal group. It was a victory, albeit a tiny one. Four and a half years of court battles, economic hardship and uncertainty were finally coming to an end.

Then on May 15 Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoners Support Association, announced that the hunger striking Palestinian prisoners had reached an agreement with the Israel Prison Service. Among other things, prisoners in solitary confinement would be allowed to rejoin general population, family visits from Gaza would be resumed and all administrative detainees would be released at the end of their current sentence (as opposed to having their detention extended which is what often happens).

The prisoners’ hunger strike was supposed to be ending, before anyone died. That day I was so happy I was dancing around my kitchen singing Pet Shop Boys songs.

I’d convinced myself that May was a lucky month and that only good things could happen.

On May 24 I was looking forward to celebrating the Urewera Four not being sentenced to prison time. I figured that they’d get fines or suspended sentences. I’d interpreted the stay of proceedings as a sign that the crown was tired of the whole shenanigan and would try to resolve it as quickly as possible. Boy was I counting my anarchist chickens.

Justice Rodney Hansen sentenced Rangi and Tame to two and a half years in prison. Emily and Urs will most likely be sentenced to home detention, though we won’t know until June 21. Justice Hansen was very explicit about the reason for the harsh sentence, ‘in effect a private militia was being established. That is a frightening prospect in our society; undermining of our democratic institutions and anathema to our way of life’. He even added that ‘Some of the participants held extreme anarchist views’.

In other words, Rangi and Tame weren’t sentenced for the crimes of which a jury found them guilty. They were sentenced for other, imaginary crimes, which they hypothetically may have desired to commit. They were sentenced for their political opinions, for their opposition to the New Zealand state.

The next day Addameer reported that IPS had already violated the terms of the agreement with Palestinian prisoners. At least two prisoners are still on hunger strike. Mahmoud Sarsak, a soccer player incarcerated under the ‘unlawful combatant’ law, has been hunger striking for around 90 days. It’s almost impossible to get information on his current state. Akram Rikhawi, who has been held in the Ramleh prison medical center since 2004 because of his medical condition, has been hunger striking for around 65 days.

Meanwhile the anti-African racism in Israel has reached new heights of fascist.

Basically the whole world is going to shit.

Last year I hear Tariq Ali speak at Auckland University. He presented an interesting thought experiment: what if the Ottoman Empire had allied itself with the Allies instead of with the Central Powers in World War One? What if the Middle East had never been carved up between France and Britain? What would the region look like today?

At the time I thought it was an interesting question, but it wasn’t until Jarvis pointed it out that I realised: This is our darkest timeline.

In the prime timeline, the Middle East was never controlled by Western colonial powers. It was never divided into arbitrary nation-states. In that timeline the people of the Middle East live freely and move freely.

In the prime timeline the Nazis never gained power in Germany. In that timeline there was no Third Reich, no World War Two, no Final Solution. In that timeline the idea of human beings being gassed in death factories is only found in obscure dystopian science fiction films.

In the prime timeline Jewish society continued to flourish in eastern and northern Europe. There is now a rich Yiddish culture, expressed in literature, film, television, comic books and even video games.

In the prime timeline the communist movements of the 20^th century didn’t degenerate into authoritarian regimes. In that timeline the communist movements of Europe formed alliances with the decolonization movements of Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific. In that timeline those movements grew and learned and evolved. They overthrew colonial regimes. They abolished capitalist economic relationships and created new economic systems based on collective control of resources. Alongside, they created new forms of political organization based on the free association of people. There are no states or borders in that timeline.

In the prime timeline the trans, queer and feminist movements were a welcome and integral part of revolutionary movements. In that timeline gender and sexual diversity are now taken for granted.

In the prime timeline Mahmoud Sarsak is outside playing soccer right now. There is no Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in that timeline. There are no Palestinians in Israeli prisons. There are no Israeli prisons. There is no Israel. There is a significant Jewish community living in Palestine, made up of people who migrated there from other parts of the Middle East, from Europe, and from Africa. They live peacefully with the Palestinian majority.

In the prime timeline Rangi and Tame are not in a New Zealand prison. In that timeline there is no New Zealand. In that timeline all land stolen by the crown was returned to iwi and hapū in the twentieth century. Pākehā and other tauiwi have integrated into Māori society while retaining their own languages, traditions and cultures. In that timeline aotearoa is a real democracy.

Something went wrong in the prime timeline. Maybe somebdy traveled back in time and stepped on a bug, or maybe they inadvertently conjured a demon who cursed the world into an parallel reality. Somehow we ended up in this, our darkest timeline.

In the darkest timeline colonial powers build bigger and fancier bombs. In this timeline land and natural resources are continually stolen from indigenous people. In this timeline people are forced to sell their labour to avoid starvation. In this timeline people’s sexuality and gender identity are controlled and policed. In this timeline those who fight back are locked up in prisons. In this timeline people are forced to resort to violence to protect themsleves and their communities.

But never you fear, all is not lost. By the end of the story the heroes always find a way to reverse the spell. They’ll go back in time and stop themselves going back in time and then everything will be back the way it’s supposed to be. We will return to the prime timeline.

If they don’t, if we are doomed to remain in this timeline for all eternity, then I guess we better keep organizing and fighting like hell to make this the kind of world we want to live in. Even in the darkest timeline.