Why I will vote against Motions 3 and 4
In the purely performative world of the NUS NEC, there seems to be very little consequence to any motions. And no doubt it must be quite tedious to read my seemingly interminable comments about Israel-Palestine (I do have other interests, honest). But here are nevertheless the reasons for why I won’t be voting to censure the VPUD for what he is accused of, nor will I denounce those who went on a trip to Israel-Palestine organised by the Union of Jewish Students, given as a set of responses to statements I have come across. The motions can be read here http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/nec-28-february-2017-motions
An NUS VP colluded with a foreign agent to destabilise the NUS President
Firstly, calm down, the NUS President isn’t a Latin American country that’s about to be invaded or subverted by the CIA. Secondly, most of what I was told about the incident was in fact bluster. The VPUD didn’t meet anyone from the Israeli embassy and say anything other than what everyone in the world already knows: that he wants to get rid of the NUS President. There was no mention of underhand tactics or even, say, an attempt to start a smear campaign. There is no reason to believe the VPUD is planning anything other than trying to get someone else elected at the next NUS conference.
And finally, I am appalled that so many so-called leftists are obsessed with the idea of “foreign agents”. In this Dreyfus Affair-esque debacle the most insidious thing was the constant insinuation that the Israeli embassy had some underhand influence in subverting student movement activity.
I personally have zero loyalty to the British state and I had previously thought likewise of so many so-called leftists on the NEC. If a British civil servant was doing something against the rules to get rid of the NUS President would that be magically better than if it was the Israeli or indeed the Slovenian or Mongolian ambassador? If not, then why the focus on the “foreign” bit? The exact motion says “NEC rejects the notion that it is acceptable for a VP to hold a meeting to discuss the undermining of a democratically elected officer with a student introduced by an embassy, and therefore by a foreign government”. Seriously, what? A VP shouldn’t discuss trying to get rid of another elected officer with a student because the person who introduced them was a foreigner?
The fundamental thing the VPUD did do wrong, and it wasn’t against any rules but rather something I consider politically bad, was carry out his politics clandestinely. When I say I want to bring people down (and I do want to “bring down” MPs in the Labour Party like for example Kate Hoey) I say it openly and try and convince others so that I can achieve it democratically, for example through mandatory re-selection.
But I have been involved in student politics long enough to know just how common that kind of behaviour is. In fact, it is breathtakingly hypocritical of the “so-called left” on the NEC to criticise such behaviour when 90% of their bland (lack of) politics is carried out through backroom meetings, cosy chats between friends in their cliques, and Whatsapp messages.
NUS has BDS policy so any officers who go on trips to Israel should be censured
The trip was quite clearly taken in a personal capacity. Of course to some extent it is true that for an NUS VP, the line between doing things in a personal capacity and a public one is a little blurred. When a VP is invited to make a speech on a picket line, are they doing it in a personal capacity? Well yes, sort of, but then they probably would not have been invited to do so had they not been an NUS VP. But given that no speeches were made, no one spoke on any panels, the trip wasn’t massively publicised in any way, in the end one has to see this as the moral equivalent of making a personal trip to Israel.
And to those who think making even personal trips to Israel is unacceptable (and there are undoubtedly some who do think this, even if few may admit as such) I do think that is a rather unsavoury demand. Especially given that, with 45% of the world’s Jewish population living in Israel, it effectively means demanding many Jews in Britain never visit potential family members.
You were taken to the occupied Golan Heights, in an attempt to legitimise Israel’s occupation of it
The mention of the Golan Heights by supporters of the motion was semi-laughable; a clear sign of either unbelievable ignorance or that this is all a hastily put-together attempt to throw everything that could conceivably sound bad into one motion.
Israel may not have the right to simply unilaterally annex the Golan Heights, but is anyone seriously suggesting that Bashar Al-Assad has the right to rule it instead? Because that is what Israel handing back the Golan Heights to “Syria” (that is, the regime in Damascus) would in effect mean.
I personally think the Golan Heights must be given back to Syria at some point (or at least discussed, alongside the issue of Israel’s recognition). But the idea that the Golan Heights is under some dreadful oppression, especially when compared with the rest of Syria, is truly absurd. It is not Israel after all that has spent the last few years massacring thousands of Syrians and forcing them to leave their homes (no, you’re thinking of those sworn enemies of Israel — Assad, Hezbollah and Iran).
Don’t these trips take you around settlements? Isn’t that supporting or normalising the occupation?
Do people genuinely think UJS takes people round to settlements and says “look, aren’t these nice? Now when you go back to the UK, make sure you write things in favour of further settlement expansion and unilateral Israeli annexation of Palestinian land.” This is absurdly unserious and anyone with any objective thought is likely to spot how unbelievably disingenuous the statements about settlements are. UJS, as far as I’m aware, supports two-states in Israel-Palestine. Why are the BDS-supporters pretending they are against settlements in the West Bank? They are opposed to Israel’s existence tout court; for them, Tel Aviv is as much of a settlement as Ariel or Ma’ale Adumim.
I firmly oppose the settlements, wish to see them dismantled, and support Israelis who boycott their products, but I won’t pretend this is the easiest issue in the world to grapple with, given the exact nature of the occupation and colonisation. The Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City is technically in what is recognised as East Jerusalem and hence part of the occupied Palestinian territories. Are they settlements? Was it disgraceful that UJS organised a trip where we went to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City? Was that a legitimisation of the occupation?
We did meet an organisation called Roots that is run by Jews and Arabs who live in the West Bank. I don’t actually agree with them in many ways (especially their focus on religion), but it was interesting to hear from them. But as much as I am not in favour of organisations who feel that religion doesn’t play enough of a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which is, by the way, why I regard Friends of Al-Aqsa with such contempt. They don’t call themselves friends of Palestine or the Palestinian people, but friends of a building for goodness sake), I hardly think more discussion between Arabs and Jews is a bad thing. To the BDS-fanatics of course this is simply fraternisation with the enemy. Normalisation of the occupation. Capitulation to the Zionist entity.
Aren’t these trips always run by pro-Israel groups? Won’t they therefore only give you Israeli propaganda?
I’ll say it now even though I’ve said it a thousand times and even though I know plenty of people will refuse to believe me: I detest the Israeli government. I have no good thing to say about Netanyahu and his cabinet, nor about that piss-poor opposition leader Herzog. It’s rather sad that I always appear to be defending the existence of a state whose government I loathe but if people denied the right of Turkey or Russia to exist as blithely as they deny Israel’s, then I would end up having to do the same thing for them.
However, here is something that cannot be said clearly enough UJS IS NOT THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT.
While I am not a subscriber to the school of thought that thinks because I’m offended I must be right, or somehow entitled to something because of that offense (a dominant school of thought in the student movement), I do feel I should express how offensive I feel the tone of these kinds of motions are. I’m sure UJS would probably describe itself as Zionist (Shocking! Appalling! Racist!) but what on earth does “Pro-Israel” mean? Does it mean accepting Israel’s right to exist and not wishing to see it destroyed? In which case the following are all pro-Israel individuals or organisations
· The PLO (1)
· Yasser Arafat (Have fun going to Ramallah and arguing he was pro-Israel. Have fun going anywhere and arguing that)
· Norman Finkelstein (3)
· Jeremy Corbyn (Haven’t you heard? Huge Zionist 4)
· Nelson Mandela (5)
· Martin Luther King Jr. (6)
It’s pretty outrageous to suggest that UJS are incapable of organising a trip to Israel-Palestine that would be anything other than a slavish propaganda trip designed to glorify Netanyahu’s coalition.
Indeed, most UJS members I’ve met through NUS, though not part of my wing of the Labour Party, have broadly been on the left in that they’re generally Labour supporters.
This is despite the fact that sadly fewer and fewer British Jews tend to vote Labour these days (as late as 2010 more British Jews supported Labour than the Tories and historically support for Labour was even higher. These days, support is around 8%). Perhaps this lack of support for the left might have something to do with the fact that Jewish organisations like UJS keep getting accused of being an effective appendage of the Israeli embassy. Who knows?
They will only have shown you nice Palestinian areas, and fooled you into thinking everything is fine for the Palestinians
Who on earth honestly thinks that the participants of this trip were made to believe that life is perfectly jolly for those living in Gaza? Or for those in Hebron, or even in Ramallah? And even if they did attempt to imply that, which they didn’t, I would hope that people would at least have a little respect for my and others’ intelligence and expect that we would approach everything we ever come across in the spirit of, what Karl Marx described with the phrase, de omnibus dubitandum (roughly meaning “be critical of everything”). Though to be fair, not everyone on the left has in the past been that critically minded (seriously, go and read some of the reports of visitors to Cuba; they’re embarrassing).
I know to some, visiting somewhere like Sderot, where bomb shelters built to escape Hamas rockets are ubiquitous, would be seen as a propaganda trip. But one should really dissect that kind of a thought, because it as the root of so much of what is wrong with the way Israel is seen not just on the left, but in the Arab and Muslim world. Any talk of Jewish or Israeli suffering is necessarily seen as, at best, a dismissal of Palestinian suffering and at worst an acceptance of Israeli propaganda. On a larger scale, this problem is linked to, for example, why Holocaust denial is so disturbingly common in Arab and Muslim countries.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t a balanced equation, treating both sides as if they’re equal is whitewashing the conflict, not being fair and balanced
No it isn’t a balanced equation. Only one group of people don’t have a state, only one group of people are occupied and only one group of people can be said to have their tragedies unresolved. Who is arguing otherwise? Do the writers of Motion 4 think the trip was run by Avigdor Lieberman? Is attempting to understand anything from an Israeli point of view automatically “support for the oppressor”?
Support for the Palestinians should be reflexive for all on the left, but this doesn’t mean the Israelis have no right to a say to anything. They are not all extremely powerful, gratuitously malicious, evil people who just like oppressing Arabs just for fun. Talking to an Israeli (heaven forbid you do anything as uncool as that) will not somehow taint your support for the Palestinians, it may even in a small way be useful in ending the occupation.
The two populations do not live equal lives, BUT THEY DO BOTH HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS. Indeed, it is precisely because they have these equal rights that the occupation must be opposed; because it denies the Palestinians rights that Israelis enjoy every day. Nothing is gained for the Palestinian struggle by denying, Israelis their right to self-determination, and in fact most Palestinians understand this, which is why the PLO has had a de facto two-state position for almost 30 years.
BDS likes to think of itself as a relatively modern movement but in reality it isn’t. It is exactly the same tactic (nay, principle) used by the Arab dictatorships and the PLO for decades. The PLO eventually came to their senses in 1988–93. One can only hope that the boycottniks do the same at some point, though I won’t be holding my breath.
My overall views can be summed up as follows:
What the Israel-Palestine conflict is:
· The conflict over one piece of land, between nationalisms of two peoples who have both known historical injustice, refugeehood, exile, persecution, and lack of control over their own destinies.
· A situation where only one set of people currently exercise their rights to self-determination, and those rights are denied to the other set of people, by the state of Israel and its continuing occupation.
· Something that will be ended by advocating solidarity with Palestinians, support for their rights to a free and independent state and support for embattled Israeli leftists fighting Israeli nationalism.
What the Israel-Palestine conflict is not:
· A football match where you should pick a side that you want to win, hoping the other side loses.
· Something that will be ended by advocating revenge.
Seriously, the motions may as well have been written by Jeremy from Peep Show.