In the last months there have been a lot of articles on the situation in Palestine -- check out Juliana Fredman's contributions. Whilst in Israel there is determined opposition to the wall and government policy. Often this movement does not get the attention it merits. Perhaps it's simpler for people to feel an easy solidarity with the Palestinians than to face the complexities of Israel's divided society. In the next weeks I'll try to remedy this lacuna a bit. Here is the first piece, written by a friend from Jerusalem last summern. [H.]

Ending the Israeli Occupation by Decentralizing Power

Ronen Eidelman

Ronen Eidelman is an activist, graphic designer and journalist living in Jaffa, Israel. Currently he is working on the campaign against the apartheid wall as part of the collective "anarchist against the wall".

One morning, in the first week of October 2000, I was awakened by a phone call; on the other end of the line was a good friend: “Ronen! We are at war.” “Who is {{we}}?” I muttered. It was my gut reaction. My sleepy head really had no idea what my friend was talking about. Was our football team having a big match today? Are the Orthodox in another big dispute with the seculars? Perhaps it’s south Tel-Aviv against north Tel-Aviv? God knows it could even be the crazy techno DJs fighting with the drum & bass posse.

A few days earlier I had been in Prague, taking part in the protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. I was tear-gassed and beaten by the police and I feared walking down the street due to the likelihood of being arrested. I came to Prague to oppose something I thought was wrong and because I was in conflict with the ruling powers, I was criminalized. So, as I was watching the protests in Israel and Palestine during the first week of October 2000, at the beginning of the Intifada, I really understood the saying of the Zapatista leader, Subcommandante Marcos: “Behind our black mask, Behind our armed voice, Behind our unnameable name, Behind us, who you see, Behind us, we are you” (Marcos, 2001). I am at war with no one, I said to myself, but I did feel a strong solidarity with those opposing power and resisting.

We show and tell, over and over, the crimes, injustices and horrors of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Those with open hearts are saddened and get upset. Others close their eyes, ears and hearts, and turn their backs. How many times can we show the image of the little Palestinian boy throwing the rock at the tank and still be inspired? We know how it ends. The Palestinian boy dies, the boys in the tank remain unpunished, and the Palestinian boy’s funeral is made into a patriotic video clip. We demonstrate, hold vigils, sign petitions, send letters, make conferences, publish magazines and create Web sites. The information is out there, but it seems that very few are interested. What can we say to make people listen? Or better yet, what can we do to make more people act?

In Rome, three million people marched against the war in Iraq, the biggest demonstration in the history of Europe. Millions more marched all over the world. But these numbers only make the political failure even harder to comprehend. In Spain, for example, the Anzar government became much stronger in the postwar elections, though polls showed that over eighty-five percent opposed the war.

The significance of this way of protesting—demonstrations and marches—is something that we really have to reconsider today. Numbers at demonstrations can mean many things. They can indicate that a mass of groups and individuals came together, unified artificially and disciplined into agreement by the lowest common denominator. The organizers simply want to show their power in numbers, not by resisting power or demanding change. Their desire for hegemony, rather than networks, creates a performance of opposition so banal and unthreatening that its effectiveness is questionable. Their motto could be, “War is bad, liberty is good, blah, blah, blah.”

On the other hand, the numbers can indicate that a space was provided for autonomous individuals and groups to engage communally, yet with each bringing his own concerns, desires and even ideology. Such a space creates an impact from below without creating a destructive higher political force that eliminates these singularities. We should be concerned with how to avoid creating a political culture of spectators, who stand aside to watch the different powers perform, and participate merely by encouraging them with rainbow flags and empty slogans.

So what can we do? How do we end these spectacles and create action? Or more simply, how do we end this occupation and injustice?

Encourage Diversity

The answers are as diverse as the faces of the occupation. But that is exactly the point. What we have to do is encourage this diversity, provide as many ways of resistance as possible. There is not one way, not one party, not one movement, and of course, not one leader. [[Creating a mass is creating a mass of differences]], small groups are good, many small groups are better. Rallies and speeches will send most people home to their comfortable TV chair. But maybe assemblies and spokescouncils with real participation by everyone will keep people around.

Build Better Networks


Yes, we have to build efficient networks such as the World Social Forum, No Border, and Indymedia, and we have to learn from each others’ mistakes and successes. We have to have an open dialogue, share resources and struggle together: change will only come if we avoid acting like the powers we are resisting.

We shouldn’t say that we are helping those ‘poor’ refugees, workers, and peasants. When a Dana or Yonatan travel with a few shekels they earned, waiting tables or working a night shift, to meet a Ziad or Faareed, who are joined by a Tom and Rachel, and work together with many others to remove a road block, or to break open a fence that prevents farmers from reaching their own land, they are not doing this for political power; most of the time they don’t even give their names. What they—what we—are doing is helping ourselves, by participating in the farmers’ struggle, or by escorting a pregnant woman through a roadblock. We want a future world that they can live in; the struggle is ours. We see the walls coming up faster than it takes to coordinate an international conference in a five-star hotel. And these walls are not only going up in Palestine: these Berlin Walls of capitalism are being built on the US-Mexico border, in the North African enclaves of Ceute and Melilla, between Russia and Poland, and also in our cities, between the neighborhoods of the rich and poor, and between the people and the structures of governments and corporations everywhere.

We Have to Make These Connections Clearer, Voice Out the Analysis, to Make People Care

Anyone fighting to bring down these walls, anywhere, is in solidarity with the Palestinian farmer who has lost his land. Those on the streets today in Bolivia; Dalya, an unemployed woman with a Ph.D., unable to support her children in Tel Aviv; S., a Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon, who during a demonstration in Beirut, raised a flag of her personal freedom—not the Palestinian flag but the rainbow flag of gay liberation (the first ever to be raised publicly in the Arab world)—and the next day went as usual to her volunteer job, teaching children in the Shatilla camp; M., whom I met in a social center in Italy and who asked me to not mention where he is from out of fear of the regime he lives under, is working on distributing free, open-code software and is fighting the concept of intellectual property.

These networks of global activists, bulldozer stoppers, free-software distributors, migrant smugglers, independent journalists, summit smashers, olive tree pickers and border campers, are destroying the ruling power from below. We are doing this not to create another power to replace it, but to bring a serious critique of power. We don’t want to rule others, dominate, or have control of anything except our own lives and destinies. We are interested in true freedom, and when you control others you are not free. We see a boring political left, often occupied with its inner feuds and struggles, advertising petitions in the same newspapers they love to criticize, doing actions just so they can run back to the office to report to their funders, taking credit for actions they earlier opposed, and worst of all, [[supporting nationalistic and chauvinistic groups and leaders in the name of freedom]]. Then they wonder why they stay so small. Yes, these authoritarian systems are perhaps good at changing laws, but what we need is a change of habits.

Refuse and Resist


We all have to cry out for refusal, not only for refusal of military service, but a refusal of the whole system: the judicial system, educational system, consumer system, financial system. Not to drop out but to [[refuse and resist]]. This is not a time to respect the law that our oppressors have written. Fifteen people squatting a building and turning it into a social center, a place of popular education and political action, but also a place of art and theatre; this is far more effective than a thousand people marching in the street, stating the obvious. Hack, sabotage, steal their tools, tear down their fences and demolish the walls.

Reframe


Let’s not get stuck in the same way of working. We all agree on the UN resolutions, even 194 (recognizing the Palestinian Right of Return). Big fucking deal. Say something that really matters, not things that we’ve heard hundreds times before in so many different meetings. Let’s talk, for example, about freedom of movement for all. Not the Palestinian right of return or the Jewish right of return. But also the right of movement for Nigerians, Ukrainians, and Thais, in Israel and worldwide. Because if you believe that all people have equal rights, of course you support the UN resolutions. But you are also in solidarity with the hundreds of Moroccan refugees who are being washed up on the costs of Spain and Italy, drowning on their way to Europe on rafts.

A couple of weeks ago I witnessed the destruction of an old village. I saw old men leaving the homes their families had lived in for generations. With tears in their eyes, they packed the trucks and drove off without a struggle. One old man refused to leave, and with him stayed hundreds of activists from around the world. They built lock-ons and barricades, and hid on the roofs waiting to resist the destruction. At the end the state came with full force: it violently arrested the resisters and its bulldozers flattened the entire village. This did not happen in Palestine, or Colombia, or some other place of struggle. It took place in Artozki in the Itoiz valley, in Navarra Spain. Witnessing the destruction of Artozki, walking around the empty village, I could not help but compare it to the same feeling I had going to Yanun for the first time. Yanun is a small village in the West Bank whose inhabitants left, in fear of violent Israeli settlers. At Yanun a network of Israeli, Palestinian and international activists came to assist the village and bring back safety and soon the residents started to return. In Artozki, a mixed group of activists failed to save the village. Of course the reasons for the two empty villages are completely different. But seeing a bulldozer destroying a house in the name of state power is the same. And the people sleeping on the floor in Yanun and Artozki are all part of the same beautiful force that we will use to destroy the power from below."