Butchery in Sri Lanka/Tamil Eelam

It is probably a pity, but as reactions to the G20 protest policing show, images often matter. So for example the analysis of new images may work as an important confirmation of “the persistent verbal testimony…from doctors, aid workers and civilians fleeing the area” – the Sri Lankan government is massacring civilians.

I’m reluctant to set much store by the category of ‘war crimes’, since very few crimes are as serious as the crime of starting a war itself, but for what it’s worth, this government is committing war crimes. That government is of course also, for what it’s worth, an authoritarian and racist one, even by the standards of modern governments.

I don’t have much to add personally, it just felt like something that could do with saying. It is of course interesting how little coverage and how little protest this conflict has prompted in the West, especially compared to the Israel-Palestine conflict, to which it bears many resemblances (apparently the governments involved recognise this, and do a lot of business trading weapons with each other). There has been protest, of course, some of it involving very brave hunger strikes, but it seems to have mainly been carried out by Tamils themselves, with less of the shouty lefty students.

Iranian Racist Accuses Israel of Racism: Western Racists Outraged

This isn’t really a post about racism, as much as one about the idea of an ‘artificial’ state. According to the Iranian state, Israel is “an artificial creation of the West”. It is an alien entity with no right to exist in Arab land.

Now this is, in a sense, true. Israel was created by a sort of ‘artifice’. But it applies equally to Iran and every other state in the region.

What would be a viable criterion of ‘artifice’ vs. ‘nature’ in the formation of political set-ups? As in many areas, we have to move away from external impressions, judgements of naturalness that come from looking at the region and feeling something – that it is ‘natural’ for Christians to live there but not Buddhists, Arabs but not Turks, theocracies but not secular dictatorships, etc. Everyone can give a different judgement of that, we would never be finished.

An objective criterion of artificial/natural would have to come from the experiences of the people involved. And I can think of no better criterion than violent/voluntary change. A political change that results from people doing what they themselves want to do is a natural change, while one that results from people being compelled to do what they don’t want to do by the threat or reality of violence is artificial. Do we not often speak of sudden unexpected events as ‘violent’?

Human-itarian Concern for Gaza

Interesting comments by Obama on the Israel-Palestine situation:

“I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water and basic medical care, and who’ve faced suffocating poverty for far too long.”

What is noteworthy of course is that the Israeli occupation and blockade of Palestine isn’t mentioned, nor is the killing of palestinians by Israelis condemned.

The analogy is by no means perfect, but what sprang out at me was that I had seen this before: this sort of disconnected ‘concern’ for suffering, divorced from any issue of rights, this acceptance that suffering is bad and should be avoided, without any acceptance that the actions which produce it are actually wrong, impermissible, immoral. This idea that while Palestinians may have welfare, they do not have rights.

This is the dominant position on non-human animals. For example, it is, I recently learned, a legal requirement that at the end of any experiment carried out on animals, even a harmless behavioural one, they must, with a few exceptions, be euthanased – to prevent them suffering. To prevent even the risk of ‘unnecessary’ suffering, blanket, systematic killing is prescribed.

It would be alarmist and hyperbolic to say that the Palestinians are being treated like animals. But there is a noteworthy connection: in both cases, welfare concerns are accepted, but rights are not – with the result that while suffering may be regretted, it is out of the question for either humans or the Israeli state to be accused of doing something impermissible, something forbidden. I feel this needs to change in both cases.

This concern with welfare is, in a sense, the opposite of respecting someone’s rights. It means taking on the authority to evaluate and deal with how others are feeling, without recognising at any point the imperiousness of a prohibition – something that you simply may not do, regardless of whether you consider it a good idea.

If the Israeli assault on and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank are not condemned, the Palestinians are not being granted the level of respect we typically grant to humans, but rather that which we grant to animals.

A related discussion of double-standards is up at Lenin’s Tomb.

Three Entities, Not Two

As reported to me by my dear friend Gabriel, Hamas are torturing Fatah and Fatah are torturing Hamas. Fatah say that it was a mistake for Israel not to totally destroy Hamas, and Hamas accuse Fatah of supporting Israel in its attempt to destroy Hamas. It’s beginning to look like we will have to stop speaking of two entities, Israel and Palestine, and start speaking of three – Israel, Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the Fatah-controlled West Bank.

Oedipus, Imperialism, and Blurred Agency

Something that has alays struck me about discussions of Israel-Palestine is the way that pro-Israel people can claim confidently and vociferously that the British media is clearly biased against Israel, while Pro-Palestinian people can claim confidently and vociferously that the British media is clearly biased in favour of Israel. Odd, no? How does this come about?