boxologies

Obama's monumental error

2011-09-23T14:00:00.015+03:00

If you'd asked me even three weeks ago whether Palestinians seemed interested in the statehood bid at the UN, I'd have said not really. But it seems that America's masochistic diplomacy has quickened the long dormant Palestinian street.

Jericho residents march in support of the 194 bid, Wednesday.

When I was first in Palestine in 2004, politics was regularly the first thing people talked about. Over the past couple of years people's weariness and justified cynicism seemed to have won the day. But during the past couple of weeks, there has been a palpable change, people immediately asking me what I think about the statehood bid, and increasingly going on to express their own qualified support for it. Barnaby Phillips on Al Jazeera just cited a poll showing 80% support for the bid.

This support is invariably coupled with an almost amused reference to Obama's rapid descent from 'Yes we can!' to 'No you can't'. His sanctimonious lecture about a shortcut to peace was not only offensive in its replication of Lieberman's narrative, reminiscent in fact of his pre-election AIPAC speech, but it was painfully patronising. People here know that they are contending with facts on the ground not with UN decisions on paper, and the 89 binding resolutions Israel has ignored testify to the limitations of the latter.

"We want a state in Palestine, not a seat in New York" one person in Jericho told me as he strapped a flag to a lamppost.

But what are their options? As is often said, you can't talk about the division of a pie with an interlocutor whose mouth is full and whose hands are already on the remainder. Obama dismissing the school bully and the little kid to sort it out by themselves is an outrageous snub that people feel acutely here.

Worse than this, instead of punishing Netanyahu for his intransigence and demonstrating that US aid comes at a price, it has given him free reign to pursue that which he has single-mindedly pursued since taking office: a state of play on the ground in which Palestine is literally nothing but a nearby market for Israeli goods, populated by people with no rights and no representation. To say this is unsustainable is, sadly, optimistic.

A balloon flying over Bethlehem Sunday.

Of course, the statehood bid was never in itself going to solve this, and poses more questions than it answers, not least with regard to the representation of diaspora Palestinians. However, it has successfully demonstrated the imbalance of power, the sheer asymmetry of the imagined conflict here, and the extent to which Israel has all the cards.

America's hapless and weak intervention has not disguised this reality. Contrast Obama's sermon, or that of the sickeningly mealy mouthed David Cameron, with the morally consistent, forthright, and common-sensical speech of Turkish PM Erdogan. No-one will be fooled. Even the Israeli press has been confused, assuming there will be a sting in the tail. I'm not so hopeful.

But America's increasingly incompetent support for manifest injustice may have the effect of galvanising a previously wearied and divided people for whatever comes next.

Persistence and resistance in Palestinian Christian uses of scripture

2011-08-24T07:00:00.001+03:00

The metaphor of the Bible as a contested territory is not original. NT Wright uses it powerfully at the start of his epic New Testament and the People of God. In the light of this image, it is possible to see the attempts of Palestinian Christians to settle upon an interpretation of scripture, one that does not concede to the interpretations of those who think their land really belongs to the Jews, as an important textual intifada.

Arguably, however, this struggle - as with many resistance movements - threatens to make the most impoverished even less secure in their textual land. The Palestinian farmer turfed off their land is less concerned by where borders fall and sovereignty is asserted than by retaining the rights derived from the fact that he grew up on the land, has made the land fruitful, and expects his children to inherit the fruit.

Likewise, the textual felah is the Palestinian Christian who does not have the time or language with which to engage in protracted debates about the meaning of various texts, but who cares deeply about the Bible as addressed to them as Christians, and who performs it every Sunday through liturgy. This person is under threat as much from the exclusive focus upon interpretation as from a specific exclusive interpretation itself.

Performing scripture in worship is to claim it as one's own canon. To say 'it means so-and-so...and that's all that matters' is to rob others with different interpretations, and to rob those for whom interpretation is secondary. Contesting the Bible as territory, subject to the interpretations of the most gifted theologians, is perhaps necessary, but it is not the only way to claim this land. Does not the person born in a land, tilling it despite its rocks and thorns, have an inalienable claim to it that does not depend upon the territorial compromises of the powerful? Can Palestinian theologians begin by affirming this relationship while engaging the interpretative enemy? Can we say at the outset that the person who uses scripture to worship God has an inalienable claim to that scripture that is not dependent upon their intellectual assessment of it?

One evangelical friend summed it up like this for me:

"When you interpret only, the text is away from you - you don't own it. When you chant it you own it. From time to time I go to the Orthodox for a wedding or funeral, and when I saw them chant Psalm 91 they were with tears in their eyes. For them if it is about Israel, it is about them. The Old Testament is their text as much as the New."

Bethlehem's "marginalised minority"?

2011-08-16T20:00:00.005+03:00

Rowan Williams recently described the Christians of Bethlehem as a "marginalised minority". This is not only incorrect, but possibly a damaging comment to those it aims to help.

Of course, the Archbish should be commended for using his good offices to highlight the difficulties Christians face in a number of places in the region, about which he clearly knows a great deal. But to characterise Bethlehem as "very definitely a place where Christians are a marginalised minority"seems to be gratuitous hyperbole.

Certainly, some Christians here do contribute anecdotes to a narrative of persecution for which there will be a ready and well-resourced audience in the West. This position may be the outworking of frightening or alienating experiences, of which there are undoubtedly some, though very often even these concrete examples are drawn from Jerusalem's charged melting pot, not Bethlehem. What's more, in other Palestinian towns such as Nablus, which used to have a healthy Christian minority, Christian communities may indeed face extinction, and Christians here are aware of that.

But it seems to me that the Palestinian Authority and other stakeholders in Palestinian public life bend over backwards to demonstrate the distinctively Christian character of Bethlehem and its satellite towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. Regardless of more altruistic motivations, it would be politically masochistic for them to do otherwise as the Palestinian national cause benefits a great deal internationally from being recognised as more than a Muslim struggle.

This political will might be demonstrated by three very different examples: the official and ecumenical endorsement of Bethlehem Bible College's 'Christ at the Checkpoint' Conference last year at which Salam Fayyad himself spoke; the reservation of the Mayoralty of the town to a Christian; and the appearance of Hamas officials at the Syriac Orthodox church in Bethlehem immediately after the massacres in Iraq and Egypt over the Christmas season explicitly to reject sectarian violence. Whether or not this is the outworking of genuine fraternal feeling is to some extent beside the point.

I might tentatively add another impression from the field. Where I have heard Christians express a sense of insecurity in Bethlehem specifically, it often seems somewhat reminiscent of the kind of defensiveness of established local populations in the face of immigration. The reason for the loss of a Christian majority here is of course related to the respective fertility of different communities and to emigration, but one mustn't forget that the population of Bethlehem was swollen by mostly Muslim refugees in 1948. The 'old families' of Bethlehem do not always look with affection upon them, and even some in-comer Christians drawn from families who arrived in the 20th Century have reported ill-feeling toward them from the established Christian families of Bethlehem. Tellingly, the attitude of Nablus Christians, among whom I lived for a couple of months in 2004, was never as defensive as that which sometimes I encounter here.

Promoting this narrative is risky. I recall recently listening to priest Jamal Khader (also Dean of Bethlehem University) assert the need to think of Palestinian Christians here not as a minority at all. I understood him to be saying that Western and local Christian anxiety about the plight of Palestinian Christians in particular, as opposed to Palestinians in general, may contribute to their 'othering' in the eyes of Muslims, and thus potentially undermine their persistence in the land which is presumably the Archbishop's goal. Some Christians may have a short-term interest in being thus othered, but Father Jamal would suggest, I think, that most do not.

Christian Palestinian sociologist Bernard Sabella has found that Christians leave the town for one overwhelming reason: economic hardship as a result of the occupation. This is wholly borne out by my interviews and informal conversations with Christians here, even those who are defensive and most aggressively sectarian. The Archbishop wishes to help Christians here, clearly, and in order to do this he must continue to challenge the Occupation and the theologies which support it, without giving succour to the defensiveness and Islamophobia which can prove dangerously divisive.

Multiculturalism revisited

2011-07-26T10:37:00.013+03:00

The massacre of dozens of young people in Norway was evidently motivated by some perverted attempt to protect a national, European or even Christendom 'identity' in the face of a perceived encroachment of an Islam bent on world domination.

Bearing in mind how reminiscent this paranoia is of early 20th Century anti-Semitism, we should be very careful to reflect on how our dominant discourses may contribute to the formation of modes of thinking which make hatred, fear and ultimately extremist violence, even mass violence, seem necessary to some.

I’m not simply talking about the obvious candidates, those whom Breivik cited in his manifesto such as jihadwatch et. al. Europe’s leaders of late have played a populist frostiness towards immigrants, and attacking a government’s laxity in the face of immigration has become the norm for oppositions. Of course, leaving aside France where a disturbing authoritarianism has taken hold of the mainstream, the consensus is not explicitly anti-immigrant or culturally chauvinist as such. When Merkel announces that “multiculturalism has failed” or Cameron proclaims its consequences as deep segregation, it’s hard outright to dismiss their thinking.

Where they transgress however is in insisting upon adoption of a centrally-defined identity as a prerequisite to immigration. The right to cohabit in a space becomes about being one sort of person and not another sort, rather than abiding by the law which demarcates officially acceptable behaviour. That this provides fertile soil for racist ideology and fear-filled hatred is clear.

Furthermore, there is a naivete to the post-multiculturalism consensus as a measure of multiculturalism is a fact of life. Taking culture to be all of the socially communicated symbols and norms a person integrates into their psychological development, the cultures of an Anglican aristocrat in Yorkshire, a Liverpudlian Catholic docker and a North London Jewish shopkeeper in 1910 would have seemed as mutually unintelligible (and potentially threatening to one another) as any of the combinations in our globalised 21st Century. The interaction of such different people has led to the demise of some group identities and the flourishing of new ones, and that's natural.

Cameron likes to allude to hospitality which involves a measure of reciprocity. He’s right, but do we want people, in return for hospitality (a right which of course has been won through the blood of colonised peoples), to pledge allegiance to the Queen or assert a centrally-defined British identity which will be as foreign to the people on my terraced street in Insch as to Afar nomads? Of course not, and the point is that it is the people on my street that will be actually providing hospitality, not ‘Britain’ or ‘Europe’.

The goal is not integration or assimilation and certainly not segregation, but is willing participation in local community life, perhaps even through the expression of origin cultures. This is no less difficult than it is necessary, and it certainly cannot be enforced from the centre. Instead, it falls to local communities to find ways of including the other, making space for and hearing from new arrivals and working out how different cultures can benefit one another. While it is unclear how national or European-wide policy-making can make this happen, unlike perhaps more accountable and democratic local government, I believe that the prevailing national identity discourse is hugely risky. It makes this kind of urgent hospitality to the other seem unnecessary or even treacherous, and a change of tone is overdue.

Chutzpah

2011-05-20T21:51:00.002+03:00

I can't quite believe what we just saw between Obama and Netanyahu. The former's careful diplomatic hospitality was met with a forthright and quite unmistakeable snub.

Every issue with which the so-called peace negotiations are apparently concerned was effectively pushed off the table. Obama's call last night for contiguous 1967 (-based) borders was flatly contradicted by the PM. Obama's recognition that the US will have to deal with whomsoever the Palestinians elect was met with Netanyahu again contradicting him by saying there can be no peace agreement with, er, the people they're fighting.

Meanwhile, the biggest refugee problem in the world was equated with the counter-expulsion of Jews by Arab countries who were of course 'absorbed' by a country needing an ethnoreligiously defined Jewish majority. Plucky little Israel was invoked despite the manifest military supremacy which they enjoyed from day one. And of course, the fact that Palestinians are still being forced from their land to make way for the last old fashioned Eurocolonialist project was completely ignored. It was a masterclass in shameless hasbara.

Had you told me this is what Netanyahu was going to do beforehand I would have said great - Obama won't stand for another such insult, surely?

I wish I could be sure.

Palestine: Obama's second chance

2011-05-19T22:43:00.002+03:00

Obama's much lauded 2009 speech in Cairo was encouraging if only because it ended the 'them and us' rhetoric which characterised two terms of 'crusading' Bush incitement.

And precisely for this reason the complete lack of initiative shown by his regime on the Middle East has been as much an insult to the intelligence of Palestinians as it has been a disappointment to their aspirations.

Despite Netanyahu's constant nose-thumbing, the US has singularly failed to reign in the vulgar - at times brutal - excesses of a militarised state which feels it can act with impunity, let alone advance an idea which promises to break the deadlock.

Obama's speech today certainly fails to do the latter, but we should perhaps dare to hope that it hints at the former. All he is doing is taking America closer to positions established in international law, and more importantly, to the moral claims of people who have been systematically forced from their lands by American tax money.

Streamers and fireworks are of course not in order, but contra Hamas, Obama has made an implicit promise long absent in American presidential discourse: we will not accept or support Israel's effective claim to Palestinian lands occupied since 1967.

We must not expect an end to the mealy-mouthed urging of restraint on both sides or the chumminess with a man whose hands are soaked in Palestinian blood and whose mind appears addled by fear and power. Still, rattled perhaps by the moral weight of Sunday's protests, he has drawn a line in the sand which is clear to all sides.

A promise gives him a second chance, and if he keeps it he may well lose his office. He would prove himself a more impressive character for it.

Intifada 2.0?

2011-05-13T21:19:00.013+03:00

Black flags in advance of Nakba Day in Bethlehem this week.

According to news reports and coffee shop chatter, forthcoming Nakba Day demonstrations will launch a new intifada. Thanks to social networking, this time it's organised from the outset.

Facebook groups and apparently viral SMS messages are calling for Sunday's demos to be the start of what proponents hope will be the Palestinian Spring. There's even a promo video.


Palestinian Muslims pray on the pavement after Israeli police bar all under-45s from the Old City of Jerusalem today.

Following the qualified successes of the Arab Spring, Palestinians are being encouraged to recommence the concerted resistance characteristic of the first and second intifadas and, despite the reservations of many, some are hoping and believing that this time it really could work. The inspiration from Egypt is that no repression can be total in the electronic age - although Mubarak wasn't quite as adept at e-Hasbara as his Israeli counterparts.

In any case, there are two problems with this. The first is that it may just be what Netanyahu has been crying out for: a chance to delegitimise Palestinian attempts at declaring statehood (though Palestinians will point out that statehood in a territory as unviable as the West Bank cannot really be worth the wait). The second is that, despite the new unity deal, Palestinians do not share an endgame other than desiring the freedom to live normal lives.

Oh, and there's a third problem. Fatah/Hamas. One appears compromised and visionless, and one is etched on the mind for its defenestration of opponents.

The ball is obviously in Israel's court and, as Stephen Sizer points out, the question it still won't answer is this: of the Occupied Territories, Democracy, and Jewish statehood, which are you willing to give up? Hopefully, the Third Intifada will force the question rather than burying it.

Apologies to Tam

2011-01-28T14:31:00.004+02:00

When Tam Dalyell described Tony Blair as 'by far the worst' Prime Minister he'd observed from the Commons benches, I put it down to (not uncharacteristic) hyperbole. After all, my first job as a sabbatical-elect at Edinburgh was to take him to task for describing Blair as 'unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal'.

However, on Blair I should have taken him more seriously. In addition to what we already knew, only this week we learned the following:

That, while telling Bush that his government was intent on regime change in Iraq, he was telling his officers quite the opposite.
That his government was lending material support to brutal suppression of dissent in Gaza.
That his government's unprecedented civil liberties encroachments were, surprise surprise, unnecessary - a 'symbol of hypocrisy' around the world, no less.

And now he is lecturing the Egyptians, whose government's oppression his did nothing to alleviate, on the benefits of gradual modernisation.

Tam, you were absolutely right. And, likewise, you were right when you said: 'that since Mr Blair [went] ahead with his support for a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague.' That he used a progressive social democratic movement to do all of this compounds the crime.

But, rather than writing the man off as a vicious lying weasel with blood on his hands, we should seriously ask whether his messiah complex clouded his judgement. Can 'diminished responsibility' be taken into account in a war crimes trial?

UK won't recognise unilaterally declared state?

2011-01-21T09:51:00.002+02:00

Putting aside the fact that the two-state solution is less viable now than airborne pigs, Alistair Burt's comments that Britain won't 'recognize a [Palestinian] state that does not have a capital, and doesn’t have borders' is absurd.

For a start, one doesn't fail to recognise Eritrea because it has a border dispute with Ethiopia. Statehood and final status are different things. Burt's comments are even more preposterous in the light of Israel's own failure to define its borders, while the UK effectively recognises Tel Aviv as Israel's capital, in denial of its claims to Jerusalem. One should assume that, according to Burt's logic, Israel shouldn't be recognised as a state.

Of course, all of this ignores the facts on the ground. What kind of state would Salam Fayyad be declaring? Would residents of the West Bank settlements accept residency of Palestine? Would Palestine have control of its own borders, roads and natural resources? Would they control tourism on the Dead Sea? If not, then you can call it a state or, in the words of one 1990s Israeli government hawk, 'fried chicken', it's no real change.

If the international community genuinely wants to see a two state solution work, negotiated or unilaterally declared, then it will involve material support for a potentially bloody transition, and there doesn't seem to be any enthusiasm for that.

Given up on the Grauniad

2010-11-13T14:15:00.001+02:00

Has the proudly independent Guardian recreated itself in the image of any Murdoch paper circa-2002?

I fear so. Take today's headline:

Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge

It turns out that the Lib Dems considered what would happen if they ended up in coalition talks with the Tories and decided tuition fees wouldn't be a deal-breaker. Judging by what they managed to get out of the Tories, I'd say fair enough.

The Guardian headline of course paints the Lib Dems as conniving sons of bitches who screwed us to get into power. But this compromising is precisely the kind of politics that they, and we Greens, have effectively been campaigning for by supporting PR, and they seem reasonably good at it. Labour were authoritarian, militaristic and incompetent, and their worst policies were quickly overturned. Yet the left which they completely betrayed seems to be running back to them, with the Guardian leading the charge. It used to be the Times that would be the New Labour banner-waver, but the Guardian has made its peace with the pseudo-left simply because they aren't Tory. That they're echoing the Daily Mail in bashing the Lib Dems should give us some pause.

Don't get me wrong, the economic direction of the Coalition is, I think, very dangerous. I would much prefer to be criticising this. Instead I find myself defending the Lib Dems from misguided criticism that threatens to end the prospect of electoral reform for a generation.

New blog

2010-10-07T12:57:00.004+02:00

Just to let you know that I'm starting a new Anthropology-oriented blog here. I don't intend it to be too weighty or dense but more of a repository of reflections from the field. Hope you like it.

I haven't yet decided whether or not to keep boxologies up and running.

The normalisation of fascism in France?

2010-09-23T11:11:00.011+02:00

I don't use the F-word lightly. I have no wish to dilute the horror of fascist ideologies by associating them with just-a-wee-bit conservative politicians: to do so is too easy and probably counterproductive. But from this distance the current French regime seems clearly to be 'on the spectrum'. Fascism views the nation as a natural reality possessed of an absolute identity, and is willing to deploy coercive violence against dissident individuals to retain this identity. Simply put, the law is being deployed to reinforce the notion that some people groups are the right kind and others are the wrong kind.

At the same time as the high-profile Roma scandal is making the headlines, the suppression of the Israeli boycott campaign progresses apace. I received an email from the French EuroPalestine campaign which highlights the forthcoming trial of Alima Boumediene-Thiery, a member of the French Senate, because she participated in a BDS action in Paris a year ago. This constitutes, apparently, "incitement to racial hatred" as well as a breach of the curious statute: “discrimination against the Israeli nation”. The notorious plaintiff is Sammy Ghozlan whose apparent assessment of Judge Richard Goldstone is that he is "scum" and "a bastard", and who compares Obama to Pharoah who "transformed the Jewish people into slaves". He's entitled to express his opinions, but the irony is his astoundingly mainstream crusade to silence the BDS campaign.

The trial is something of a test case and some fear it is politically motivated. Boumediene-Thiery has been active on issues relating to immigration, Islam and Islamophobia, prison conditions and so on, all rather hot issues in Europe's latest pariah state. She is also an outspoken critic of successive Israeli regimes, having secured the successful vote in the European Parliament in 2002 on suspending the preferential commercial agreement between Europe and Israel.

Meanwhile, activists themselves are due to be in court to defend (wait for it) the posting of this video on their EuroPalestine site. Apparently Ma'asara mayor Mahmoud Suleiman's comments are "criminal" and EuroPalestine are therefore complicit.

Sympathisers in France are being asked to repost the video on their sites and being urged to write to the State Prosecutor requesting that they too can stand trial.

Peace talks, you say?

2010-09-03T18:19:00.005+03:00

The majority of Palestinians have no representation at the talks.
Israel’s representatives are currently engaged in acts of war against the Palestinian people even as they sit at the table.
Abbas has nothing to give or concede except Palestinian legal rights – everything else has already been conceded.
Netanyahu has much to gain in making a gesture toward peace and blaming Abbas and coalition partners when nothing happens.
Unlike the Mitchell who brokered the Good Friday Agreement, this Mitchell has done nothing to address the asymmetry of power and voice.
Any sustainable two-state final status agreement would require third party military reinforcement, and no-one’s offered it.

Doing the right thing

2010-06-10T11:42:00.003+03:00

Earlier this week Caroline Lucas asked the Government whether it intends to launch a public inquiry into the fatal toxic waste dump in Côte d'Ivoire in 2006, in which British companies are implicated. She received a dismissive negative from Richard Benyon, a DEFRA Under Secretary of State.

Just thought you'd like to know.

The Islamic Republic plays catch up

2010-06-07T01:00:00.007+03:00

So we heard nothing from Tehran for most of last week as Turkey stole their thunder in the rhetorical war against Zionism. And what's more, Turkey commanded the world's sympathy in a way Iran somehow never has.

Now they're attempting to catch up, realising that being caught on the wrong side of this spat makes them look ridiculous. Unfortunately, it puts the Gaza protestors in a tricky diplomatic position. Ahmadinejad and his completely counterproductive sabre-rattling is the object of scorn among many Palestinians I've spoken to, whose memories of being a pawn in an regional scramble for a piece of the pie have not faded. "They're Zionists too", as one friend put it, referring to the region's powers.

The Free Gaza Movement will surely never accept the cover of the Iranians, but such an offer may create a damaging fault-line between those who believe that such a military defence is an overdue and legitimate assertion of Palestinian sovereignty, and those whose desire is for continued nonviolent civil disobedience in the hope that, as with South Africa, the truth will out. If even one skipper decides he wants to take the Iranians up on their offer, an exchange in the Eastern Med between Israel and Iran seems dangerously likely.

Iran's intervention could therefore be the Macguffin that advances the plot of Israeli victimhood in the international community, and consigns this moment of momentum and opportunity to history. But we shall see.

Peretz: Israel not as bad as Iraq suicide bombers

2010-06-04T12:18:00.013+03:00

Marty Peretz's remarkable article in the New Republic shows just how close to the bottom of the barrel Israel's apologists have to scrape this week, and we should perhaps be encouraged by that.

He writes: "I am sorry to break the gloom, but I don’t think that the death of nine highly aware intruders into a war zone is actually a tragedy. The death by suicide bombing of an old woman in a mosque in Iraq or of more than 75 people at a volleyball game in Pakistan … these are true human catastrophes. But the fate of the Islamic jihadists was a mishap, nothing more than a mishap".

The number of errors is striking: the boats were not in a war zone, they were in international waters; the dead were nonviolent activists acting in self-defence, although if he wants to call this "jihad" so be it; thirdly, contrary to his suggestion that nobody would say Israel started it, to claim anything other than that Israel began the fighting is ludicrous. In any case, when does the fighting begin? When the concussion grenades are fired? When pirates actually board a ship? Or when those on the ship attempt to prevent their access?

That such a wilfully lazy presentation of events should be allowed in the proudly Zionist NR is no surprise. But it is astounding that an article should be printed in which Israel is being compared favourably with suicide bombers in Iraq, even if such an implication is presumably inadvertent.

So let's spell it out for Mr Peretz. The suicide bombers in Iraq are the enemies of every government in the world, they are viewed by the international community of the empowered as criminals and they are being pursued by the world's mightiest military. Israel, meanwhile, is the largest recipient of US aid, a "good friend" (as we are reminded with nauseating regularity) of the Western economic powers, a trading partner, and, as the refrain goes, 'the Middle East's only democracy'.

Israel: 'the West' in miniature?
Which brings us to the key point. I have heard Israelis describe their borders as the point at which the West meets the East. In an unabashed claim to orientalist we-feeling, Israel portrays itself as 'our' outpost 'over there'.

The cultivation of solidarity between Israel and their Euro-American allies on cultural grounds can be observed in self-presentation at home and abroad, and this is not wholly cynical. Israel's image of itself is as a 'Jewish state', and Jews and Judaism have contributed immeasurably to our cultural life (as they have, incidentally, to Islamic and Middle Eastern culture). What's more, the powerful in Israel are almost exclusively Euro-Americans. The symbiotic link between Israel and the West is manifested materially but it is bound up deeply in a shared imagination.

But in its Zionist incarnation, as Akiva Orr ably demonstrates, Israel retains less of the Jewish than of the imperial. Zionism makes more sense as a Eurocolonialist endeavour than as a nation's pursuit of self-determination. Its ability to use the rule of law toward ethnic cleansing is, I suppose, the civilisationist project distilled.

And that, alongside the material support of our governments, is why honesty with regard to Israel is of the utmost urgency: we are very directly complicit in their abuses. I have argued elsewhere that Zionism simply could not have prevailed without the support of Westerners, especially enthusiastic Christians. So when we criticise Israel it is not because they behave worse than the Burmese Junta or Kim Jong Il or Al-Qaida militants. It is because of our investment in their crimes.

The parallels with apartheid South Africa are compelling and we should perhaps heed Yitzhak Leor's bold argument that Israel's is the more barbaric of the two systems. The resilience of black resistance was eventually met by the robust (if derided) support of people in the most complicit countries, including the UK. Monday's horror may yet prove not to have been in vain if it motivates the kind of clear thinking necessary to draw Israel's day-to-day strangling of the invisible other, and our prejudicial sympathy, into the light.

Marty Peretz has lent us a hand.

The Flotilla's last stand

2010-06-03T18:12:00.004+03:00

You may know that one ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, was delayed in port for technical reasons. She has departed and you can follow her progress here.

Will this stand?

2010-05-31T15:29:00.006+03:00

Israel has long used terror on the populations under its control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This I have witnessed with my own eyes and the historical record is pretty clear. And yet I confess to being astounded by this morning's attack of a Free Gaza Movement convoy in international waters, in which 10 humanitarian activists appear to have been killed.

Israel's public information on fatal incidents is often wrong, and often changes once the facts become undeniable, as happened with the killing of two Palestinians at Awarta in the spring. But on this occasion even their immediate spin is feeble. The people whose boat we just boarded in international waters to thwart their effort to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza again..."were dead set on confrontation"!

This is not a typical oppressive state. This is not Saudi Arabia, North Korea or Burma, whose regimes brutalise their own. This is a belligerent anomaly whose agenda is the slow but irrevocable crushing of those who dare to have roots in the land they have conquered, who will be starved out if they cannot be driven out, who will be legislated off their land if they don't accept the law of the almighty incomers.

The story of states is almost always soaked in blood: Israel's birth is nothing compared to that of the USA. Our countries have no moral high ground. But if we care about justice and freedom we should no longer be cowards in the face of the vile acts perpetrated in the name of the Middle East's only "democracy". If Obama has any guts, this is his moment to prove it.

Freedom and watermelons

2010-05-15T22:40:00.008+03:00

Caroline Lucas described the 2010 Westminster manifesto as "left-wing plus", an apt description of a boldly redistributive platform, causing some to compare the party to a watermelon: green on the outside but deep red where it matters.

We should indeed view our party's contribution in essentially materialist terms, concerned firstly with the most sustainable solution to the basic economic problem of scarce resources and (supposedly) limitless demand. What's more, if we lose sight of the materialist grounds of politics there is the danger of becoming dangerously authoritarian or quixotic and irrelevant.

And I would add that, if we are socialists, we should be quite unrecognisable as such to the rhetoricians of class struggle, of big, centralised statism, and of bureaucratic unionism. We should not be a party that despises markets, neither should we deny the elegance of the price mechanism, even if we are rightly suspicious of their use in capitalist quasi-libertarianism. In fact, it is perfectly possible to articulate our aspirations in libertarian terms, because there is nothing neutral or natural about the disconnect of people from land, of wealth from the production of resources. Any interventions to restore this link could justifiably be viewed in terms of responding to market failure.

Importantly the shared core of Green politics is actually quite simple: a belief in entropy, a belief that growth is far from an adequate indicator of prosperity, that we now have to refuse to keep growing and growing if we don't want to undermine the ability of our species to live freely and securely on planet earth. Is this socialist? Well it's anti-capitalist, but I'd not like to go much further than that. The manifesto was exciting precisely because it took such a broad view of freedom, understanding that sanctifying economic growth in a world governed by entropy is a system of collective masochism in which the poorest suffer first.

Of course, the Green Party should be a place wherein we find space for the conversations that are not being had elsewhere, about the effective hierarchy of rights, about personhood (animal rights, abortion, bioethics), about the role of nations and supranationalism in a world that needs localism more than ever.

However any policy positions in these areas shouldn't define us as much as our profoundly countercultural economic position. Beyond that, our other distinctive could be hospitality to a genuine plurality of views.

Comrades, get a grip

2010-05-13T14:56:00.003+03:00

ID cards have been scrapped. The third runway at Heathrow has been scrapped. Capital gains tax will be restored to 40%. In 2011 those earning under £10,000 per year will be removed from income tax. Electoral reform is on the table.

Had any of these measures been taken six months ago, the libertarian left would have been celebrating a more enlightened turn for the Labour party. Instead, the Labour party stood against each of these policies, excepting their deathbed conversion to a slightly more proportional system of voting.

I confess, it sticks in the throat a little that the Tories will be delivering all of this instead, but it has less to do with some Disraeli-esque calculation on Cameron’s part than with the genuinely accommodating nature of an unprecedented coalition deal. Even if it’s all blue from here until 2015, Labour simply would never have legislated for these policies and we should allow ourselves a moment’s celebration.

So why are my left-leaning friends so downcast about the new order? The party that took us into an illegal war with Iraq is out of office, but instead of giving ourselves a few days to celebrate their demise, talk has immediately turned to a Lib Dem sell-out and Tory cuts. As a neat bit of PR, the Greens are offering a year's free membership to anyone switching from the other parties, those who may feel disaffected by the new Liberal-Conservative pact. One Green friend of mine posted as her Facebook status that it’s “as if the past 13 years never happened”.

It did happen, and it was disastrous. For all the improvements in human rights legislation and public services, we emerge from years of bloody foreign policy, authoritarian domestic policy, and an economic policy that was hopelessly short sighted. It's over, and my heart is glad!

But perhaps this is all secondary to the larger point that our new government is based on a new pluralism, a new inclusiveness that says ‘21st Century’ to me more clearly than any hate crimes act ever will. For all the cynical (if enjoyably witty) comment in the press this morning, I experienced the Cameron-Clegg 'love-in' as a refreshing change from vicious sniping, if nothing else.

I'm not going to get carried away. The Tory brand is rightfully beneath contempt in Scotland. If Thatcherism stole England’s soul, it battered and bruised our social body. But good policies are good policies, and bad policies are bad policies. So far, a mere 48 hours in, the latter have replaced the former, and I’m unashamed to be pleased at that.

On the other hand

2010-05-12T11:13:00.001+03:00

I suppose it's possible that Labour support could rally in the wake of this decision, in which case it could work for the Union. It'll be interesting to see how the SNP play it.

Con-Dem Nation?

2010-05-11T23:54:00.004+03:00

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition was by no means my preferred option, but it was always the most likely option. I regret it a little, but there are several reasons for considering it a potential advance for British politics. Well... we'll come back to the 'British' bit.

My main regret about the last few days is actually the manner in which a largely honourable and dignified process has been spun in the press (with the help of Malcolm Rifkind et al) as some kind of grubby deal. The angry mob has been exercised on internet forums and news comments threads, most definitely representing little Britain, not Big Society.

For coalition talks in a deeply adversarial political culture they were, to my mind, both genial and efficient. But that's the past. More than anything I am delighted that a deal could be struck between quite hostile parties without it deteriorating into some kind of slagging match (again, excepting Rifkind and his ilk). It is the best advert for proportional representation, for consensual government and for a political culture of inclusion.

On the nitty gritty, it remains to be seen how stable this deal will be in the long term. Liberal Conservative Social Democrats. That doesn't quite work for me. On the up side, the sun is shining on our civil liberties for the first time since 2001. New Labour have been the most authoritarian and invasive regime of modern times, and I do not mourn their passing in the least. Meanwhile, with nothing but a rizla between the Tories and Labour on foreign policy, it's excellent that the Lib Dems, whose voice on war and international relations has been by far the most enlightened in the Commons (perhaps with the exception of George Galloway) will be there to critique any militaristic project at its earliest stage.

Further, the concessions that the Liberal Democrats have gained from the Tories are very encouraging. The ludicrous increase of the inheritance tax threshold has been ditched, alongside the £150 marriage "gesture", and more significantly, we are beginning to take baby steps toward electoral reform. We wait with bated breath to see what else they managed to secure.

On the other hand, most of the ugly features of the old politics are still with us. There's little stomach among either party for the giant strides required to prepare for a post-carbon, post-peak oil economy, the electoral reform on the table is nothing but a gesture at this stage, and many will feel their vote was doubly wasted with this outcome. Meanwhile, we may see a dramatic withdrawal of money from the UK economy in order to cut the deficit with devastating effects for stability, alongside the inevitable and painful cuts in public services.

Perhaps the most significant change, however, will be the effect upon the Union. It is hard to see Liberal Democrats north of the border partying tonight. Perhaps Clegg can be so successful as a Deputy PM that Lib Dem losses on ideological grounds are made up by gains on pragmatic, managerial grounds. Even so, we now have a huge gulf between the political centres in London and Edinburgh respectively, and softly unionist Labour supporters are going to consider independence with new eyes as they get used to being out of power in both nations. The Lib Dems federalist plans may struggle to find a home in the new order.

It may not be the condemnation of the Scottish Lib Dems, but of the United Kingdom? It really could be.

Progressive alliance

2010-05-11T12:52:00.001+03:00

Assuming this alliance goes ahead, I'm just not sure sidelining the SNP is very sensible. On several key concerns the SNP and the LDs especially agree. This will be something of a red rag to Salmond's bull (no double entendre intended) and creates a second front which the alliance would have to defend.

Rifkind says...

2010-05-11T12:17:00.005+03:00

"The idea that the two parties that suffered most in this election, that were rejected by the electorate, that in the case of the Labour party lost a hundred of its seats, should put together an illegitimate government, this is the Robert Mugabe style of politics. It's exactly what Mugabe did you know, he lost the election and scrabbled to hold onto power."

Yes, Mr Rifkind, Labour cadres are currently beating and murdering poor Tory activists all over the country, their leader is unable to pose any challenge due to widespread intimidation and having been violently attacked himself, and there's no free media to represent their cause.

Silly, silly man.

Quiet times and noisy times

2010-05-06T18:24:00.005+03:00

Those familiar with the Evangelical Lexicon will have encountered the term "quiet time". It's a big deal. In fact, I once had a conversation with an evangelical girl who demonstrated that her Anglican upbringing wasn't really Christian because she hadn't known what a quiet time was.

Now it's a bit of a misnomer - it doesn't exactly do what it says on the tin. "Quiet" is not merely an adjective here, it's part of a proper noun, as in a quiet time, wherein, rather than being still and listening Quaker-style, the emphasis is often on cramming as many Bible verses as possible, and praying, by which I mean petitioning God.

Hence, in my evangelical days, I got unbearably tied up in issues of propositional assent as I read, the quiet of quiet time wholly absent as my reason waged war noisily on itself. Even when I had the energy to get beyond a few verses of morally suspect quasi-history, clunking translations of 3000 year-old poetry, or letters that clearly weren't written to me, I would think: but do I really believe it?

Reading Brian Brock's 'Singing the Ethos of God', I encountered his exhortation to have a "first-person" relationship with scripture. For the one who claims its heritage, the Bible is not an object consisting of truth claims but an ensemble of our community's stories and songs. Participation in these stories does not require propositional assent but in fact it requires a kind of active use, an active embrace, whether this is one of acceptance or of resistance, like that of a wrestler.

So I tried it, singing a number of Psalms each day, and the effect is remarkable. It is not that singing glosses over the verses one would rather didn't exist, but it opens up particular sorts of human experience as inhabitable worlds. I vocalise another's resistance to God and it becomes mine; my voice expresses another's hatred of a vicious foe, and I enter their world as guest; I revel in another's experience of intimacy with God and, as the inheritor of their song, so I find intimacy.

Brock views the best engagement with scripture to be this inhabiting of its thought world, eschewing the usual attempt to bring it into ours as a textbook. His approach recovers something our literate culture has largely lost by objectifying texts as something one either 'believes' or rejects.

In biblical terms, this is a form of idolatry, and thanks to Brian Brock I'm having a go at repentance.

Predictions

2010-05-05T17:28:00.005+03:00

OK, this is a mug's game but as a bit of a geek it's incumbent on me to have a guess at what we'll wake up to on Friday morning:

1. Deep down I fear the Tories may get a small absolute majority, with their polls performance apparently hardening and the Lib Dems faltering. But in virtue of Brown's last stand I shall optimistically give the Conservatives 286 seats, leaving Labour on 254 and the Liberal Democrats on a healthy 81 seats, with about the same vote share as Labour.

2. Seats I'm personally interested in include Dudley South, which I'll call for the Tories; Gordon which will stay Lib Dem with a big swing to the SNP and a smaller one to the Tories; Aberdeen South, which I'll controversially return to Labour's Anne Begg; and Edinburgh South which Fred Mackintosh will take for the Lib Dems, with Labour dropping to third place.

3. As for the rest I am cautiously optimistic that enough Labour and LD voters will switch to the Greens to keep out the Tories in Brighton Pavilion, and that Poplar and Limehouse will be George Galloway's latest scalp. Ever the optimist, I will take a deep breath, cross my fingers, and predict an Adrian Ramsay rally, taking Norwich South for the Greens. I would have called Perth and North Perthshire for the Tories but their candidate seems to have been a little calamitous.

box goes Green

2010-05-01T14:51:00.002+03:00

For many it's a tough call in Gordon: an experienced and competent incumbent Liberal Democrat; an articulate and engaging SNP candidate; and a proven Labour councillor who stood against the Iraq war. Barney Crockett even boasted that the current government is the most "redistributionist" since Atlee's in '45: you don't hear that from Mandy.

But none of them will get my vote this time. The Green manifesto is a remarkable, challenging document that promises to change the rules of the game not just the players. They will not get in here, as in many constituencies, but for me it is important that they get as many votes as possible, votes which will encourage the party to focus their sparse resources here, to field candidates in future, and, locally, to challenge the outrageous political consensus on Trump's desecration of our natural inheritance.

The clincher was this elegant precis of Green political philosophy from Patrick Harvie. In an era in which discredited statism has made space for technocratic neoliberalism, the Greens offer a vision of prosperity that goes beyond growth and acquisition, a vision of personhood that is more nuanced than that of competitive, self-interested monads, and a vision of politics that is robust, radical and desperately needed.

Ben White: The colonisation of Palestine (in microcosm)

2010-04-28T16:44:00.000+03:00

Ben White's excellent analysis of the recent story of Beit Sahour and Har Homa settlement.

Guardian spins against Clegg

2010-04-27T11:41:00.002+03:00

I'm not quite sure what The Guardian think they'll achieve by portraying Clegg as having flip-flopped on coalition. As far as I can tell he has consistently stated that going into coalition with third-place Labour and allowing Brown to remain PM would be ludicrous, which is common sense. He has not said that he wants to go into coalition with the Tories, but that they, as the anticipated bigger party, have a stronger claim to government, and to having their man at the top.

A new housemate

2010-04-19T10:36:00.007+03:00

Don't get me wrong, the rapid and remarkable ascendancy of the Liberal Democrats over the past view days is a good thing for democracy. Among the three main parties at Westminster, they have consistently proposed foreign policy that shames the narrow militarism of the other two, alongside what I take to be the most sustainable economic approach, and the greater willingness to countenace serious reform. What's more, alongside Gordon "I'll take responsibility for everything except what went wrong" Brown, and David "I met a black man in Brighton" Cameron, Nick Clegg really was refreshing on TV. So, a good thing.

But not a very good thing. It is a measure of just how narrow the debate has become that the third party stand out most on things like changing the electoral system and having a witty economy spokesperson. What's more, people's excited response to 'Nick' is rather like the water-cooler chat after Channel 4 introduced an entertaining wildcard into the Big Brother house. Just when everyone was coming to their senses and reaching for the remote, along comes someone unexpected to make the other residents (whom we deride) squirm.

Now, if there's not going to be a meaningful contest of ideas then at least make democracy entertaining. Thank you ITV for our first three horse race in a generation or two.

But our thirst for "a little bit different" shouldn't be sated by a change of personnel: there's still hope that our politics can become more meaningful than reality TV.

Illegal settlements and all that

2010-04-12T12:39:00.006+03:00

Amidst the depressing fog that descended in the wake of meeting the displaced residents of Sheikh Jarrah, one clear question emerged: should Palestinians base their claims to the land on others' laws?

The lesson of apartheid South Africa would suggest not, but the brutal deployment of Israeli laws by Israelis to destroy the lives of Palestinians, such as in Jerusalem, is not the only issue. More widely, when Palestinian claims to the land are articulated firstly according to international law they are on much shakier ground than they need to be.

This is not to say that the legal case isn't strong. The Geneva Convention relating to population transfer provides some cover, as does UN Resolution 242. But law tends, perversely, to favour the already strong, those who make it and those who can afford to mine it for advantage. And of course, law can be deployed to exacerbate injustice, as in the case of Israeli absentee laws or the infiltration regulations passed yesterday (which being almost beyond the pale even for Israel, have been taken out of the regular court system and placed within the remit military tribunals).

International law is no exception, and promises the unsettling prospect of some kind of international police force, which will always be the de facto role of the superpower's military.

The legal argument also ends ups inverting the moral argument, which is this: Palestinians belong to their land, it is not simply that land is 'owned' in a narrow legal sense by Palestinians. Land which has been inhabited and worked (owned is too weak a word) by Palestinians for generations has been appropriated by 'legal' and 'illegal' means, with no regard either for the persistence of Palestinian relationships with the land, or for the livelihoods upon which it depends, and has characteristically been accompanied by racist violence and the deployment of a foreign police force in favour of the thieves. The Tent of Nations is only exceptional for the residents' ability to resource a legal battle, not for their possession of deeds or their manifest right to remain on the land.

Of course, this would be impossible if Palestine was not effectively a series of Bantustans under the ultimate sovereign authority of Israel. Perhaps the legal argument should be reduced to: you have no jurisdiction here.

With this truism asserted, settlers who manage to buy land from those who belong to it at present should be given Palestinian ID and residency status, they should be subject to Palestinian police (until the dawn of a single democratic state in the whole territory), and they should of course be prevented from bearing arms. This takes at face value the bizarre claims of one settler I spoke to who said he wanted to live at peace with his Palestinian neighbours and that there was nothing ideological about his residency in the West Bank, despite the fact that Efrat (his home colony) was built, and is intended to expand, on Palestinian agricultural land.

This expansion of Efrat is a good place to end. Currently the colony has an application with the Israeli court system to pursue further building. Palestinians haven't been allowed to access and work the land in question for several years, therefore the community claims it as vacant public land, and Israeli law would seem to agree. Israel should have no jurisdiction here, but taking this for granted, the courts will not consider the case in terms of the overwhelming injustice of turfing people off their land, because this has already happened. Law follows might, and that's why it's such a treacherous friend to the powerless.

'Infiltrators'

2010-04-11T18:54:00.001+03:00

This could be the most disturbing development in Palestine in some time, and that's saying something.

The irony is of course that "infiltrators" will not apply to those Israeli citizens who have taken others' land, settlers. No, it will only apply to people who are in their own country, or spouses of people in their own country.

I am genuinely shocked by this.

Hearts and minds

2010-04-06T13:46:00.005+03:00

WikiLeak yesterday released footage of US troops gunning down a dozen Iraqis including two cameramen. It is truly horrific but you can see it here. I can't say I was surprised by the footage itself, but the really shocking thing is the fact that the US military told Reuters, whose cameramen were killed, that the operation was basically normal.

The footage is there for all to see, but if you'd rather not, it goes like this. It is taken from a US helicopter and comes with the recorded dialogue between soldiers in the helicopter and command.

The patrol spots a group of a dozen or so men walking together in a seemingly relaxed fashion in the helicopter's gaze, but they are identified as a potential threat. Mistaking cameras for rocket-propelled grenades the helicopter opens fire killing most of them, leaving one of the cameramen crawling around desperately injured.

When they assess the damage they report back a successful operation. Shortly thereafter a van pulls up, as it happens with two children in the front, and men get out to carry the cameraman away. For no clear reason they open fire on the van, killing the adults and leaving the children struggling for life.

Finally tanks arrive, one of which drives over a body, causing mirth among the soldiers in the helicopter. Foot soldiers want to remove the children to a nearby military hospital but their request so to do is denied. Instead, they should be handed in to Iraqi police. One of the crew say: "Well it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle."

Just another Friday in the Holy Land

2010-04-02T17:41:00.013+03:00

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace - but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side."

Today we walked the Via Dolorosa with Christians from all over the world. The ratio of Palestinians to internationals was smaller than in previous years because of the reduction in the number of 'worship permits' Israel made available. At each corner troops and police asserted the Empire's ownership of the city, arresting some of those too zealous in their expressions of dismay, although at one point some scouts carrying a cross managed to breach a cordon adjacent to the Holy Sepulchre, asserting a different Sovereign.

Poetic resistance aside, Jerusalem's Palestinian Christians remain in this 'Friday of Grief', as the Arabic for Good Friday would render it. While Palestinians behind the wall are able to compartmentalise, to some extent, the effects of occupation and day-to-day life, the situation for Jerusalemites is one of permanent limbo. Since they rejected Israel's offer of citizenship in 1967, which would have conceded their rights under international law to residence in a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, they have been subjected to a form of collective punishment for this insolence.

Sheikh Jarrah is but one example of this selective use of a law which offers less protection than pain, the ongoing expansion of settlement blocks another. But the city is not only held in a constrictor's coil, it has a cobra's venom is in its veins.

Education deserves particular attention. It is not permitted to build a Palestinian school in Jerusalem. Hence overcrowded domestic properties deliver this curriculum under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian awqaf. If you want a reasonable number of teachers per pupil you'd better go to an Israeli school where it is illegal to teach the story of Palestinian displacement. If you want your child to retain their Jerusalem residency then they need to present a diploma from each year they've been at school, and these must be consecutive. If not, when you graduate, you are denied the right to live in your home city. What's more, if you graduate from the highly respected Al Quds University your degree is not recognised by Israel, while degrees from the far more controversial Islamic University in Gaza are recognised. It isn't trespassing on sacred turf.

And back to that turf. Villages and towns around Jerusalem, such as Jaba, have had their main entrances closed under the wholly untenable pretext of security. The effect is that Palestinians now may take hours to reach their own agricultural land via checkpoints into and back out of Israel, making its management almost impossible. And, you guessed it, when land is not being worked regularly it can be claimed by the Israeli state.

On the Mount of Olives I saw where the wall has cut off one Palestinian home from the resident's mother's home. Householders can stand on their roofs and talk to one another, but to visit takes well over an hour. Nearby, as compensation for being pulled out of Gaza, militant and heavily armed settlers have been given Palestinian land and a vacated police station in a Palestinian area on the mount of Olives. As in Sheikh Jarrah, children now play under the eyes of those who despise their presence, and under the barrels of their guns.

Where is the way out? There's migration, either to the West Bank, still divided into cantons by Israeli controlled roads within Israeli controlled borders, or abroad if you can afford it. There are other options. East Jerusalem has 5000 drug addicts, an enormous proportion compared to the the West Bank, and the pressure of life in limbo creates only very few alternative escape routes. Jerusalem is a place of contest in which one side has all the power. It is a place where tension is so heightened your hair stands on end. A Jerusalemite child is not allowed, in short, to be Jerusalemite unless they jump through the Empire's hoops.

All of this is because, as Netanyahu claims, Jerusalem is Jewish. One of the enduring mysteries of a world in which Zionism is tolerated is how it can be acceptable for Israeli politicians explicitly to declare their desire to establish a Jewish state with a Jewish Jerusalem as its capital, and for western governments to assent. Imagine if Abbas tomorrow changed the PA's agenda to claiming an Islamic state with Jerusalem as its capital. All hell would break loose.

I guess it's because they look like us. They're democratic Europeans, we suppose, and they even have minorities to prove it. And, we continue, let's face it, it's hard work living next to those other people, whom tourists are told by operators to avoid if they can. It's dark, dangerous and smelly in their parts of the city, evidence of their sub-us-ness (rather than that they receive a fraction of the municipal spending Jewish areas receive). One friend of mine met a European tourist who'd accidentally booked a hotel room atop the Mount of Olives. She was petrified.

Perhaps the conflict is best explained as the Western freedom charade in microcosm. Israelis have the money, they have the guns, they have the civilisationist narrative, they have the religious zealots who justify their violence through recourse to canon. Palestinians have their ties to the land, but these are being severed and corroded, and we only pay attention when a bomb goes off.

We in the west have made the error of making sense of the conflict here as a two sided contest with almost equivalent claims on each side. This is a nonsense. While we must recognise the root causes of tyranny, which lie in European soil, we must also call it what it is. Israel has no moral, legal or historical justification for the way it behaves.

So back to the Via Dolorosa. The message of it, in the light of Resurrection, is one of hope and victory through total defeat. But right now it feels that those admirable Palestinians who refuse to resort to violence as they protest are being crushed and being ignored. The desolation of Good Friday and Holy Saturday really means something here.

And off to pray

2010-03-30T20:58:00.007+03:00

I was back in Sheikh Jarrah today, and spoke to some of the Hanoun family. They're living in a tent down the road from their house, now the home of a Jewish settler family, apparently from New York. Police evicted them in the middle of the night, 2 August last year, threw them and their furniture out onto the street, and moved the settlers straight in.

In 1948 several such families fled Talbieh, in what became Israel, and the Jordanians who then occupied the West Bank offered the land in question, considered public land, to these Palestinians. The UN helped build their houses, and the families paid rent to the Jordanian government. When the Israelis took over in 1967, they claimed ownership of the land on the basis that it was still technically 'public' and insisted that it had once been owned by a Sephardic organisation.

It's only recently that evictions have begun, this despite residents obtaining evidence that the land was in fact owned before 1948 by a Palestinian. One family we visited are living in a tent on the grounds of their erstwhile home, while a settler lives in the house on their own. An old lady we met, aged 70, was evicted in the early hours of the morning with her husband, who was sick and wheelchair bound, and who died days later.

It occurred to me as I watched the settlers return from post-Pesach prayers at around noon this afternoon, that they must take their god very much for granted. Settlers have private guards, funded by an American multi-millionaire. Daily these people eyeball those who have been displaced for their warped ideology. They see the old lady, they see the absence of her husband, they see the children whose beds now give rest to other children, who are growing up homeless and around heavily armed Zionist militants, and then they go and pray.

[The Gideon Levy article on this is a must. As is the end of Amos 5.]

Bullies

2010-03-29T21:46:00.006+03:00

Seeing as none of the major networks seem to have reported this I thought I'd at least share it with my friends.

Yesterday a hundred or so Christians making their way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to celebrate Palm Sunday refused to show their IDs on their way through, making the point that freedom of movement in one's own land is a legal right. Having allowed them through the first section of the checkpoint, soldiers confined the protestors to the no man's land between the checkpoints where they were detained and, according to a friend there, began to beat demonstrators. 15 arrests (or 16 depending on reports) were made, including Abbas Zaki, a senior Fatah official close to Salam Fayyad.

The consequence was a complete closure of the checkpoint, preventing Palestinians and internationals alike from getting through. As we waited to get through there was a sense of disbelief that the collective punishment for an entirely nonviolent demo could be so severe. The checkpoint remained closed today, although it is possible to go through a different exit so the only reason for maintaining the closure is to maximise inconvenience. A pretty pathetic kind of reprisal.

This is the way it goes here. Have a blessed Holy Week.

In Sheikh Jarrah

2010-03-27T22:36:00.008+03:00

What an odd place. In Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, recently arrived Jewish Israeli residents have made themselves at home flying Israeli flags. I just saw two orthodox Jewish men walking down the main road towards the Kings' Tombs and the American colony, shadowed about 20 metres behind by an enormous chap with a startlingly large rifle. I thought to ask him for a photo for my blog, but the expression on his face wasn't entirely hospitable.

His machine was particularly fierce but, for those who haven't been in the 'Holy Land', guns are very much part of the scenery, although less so these days inside Palestinian Authority controlled areas. Travelling through 'Afula earlier, several young women were negotiating the combined challenge of handbags and heavy weaponry. The combination of haute couture - not always that much of it - and Galil assault rifle can be a surreal one, reminiscent of those old fantasy shoot 'em up games.

Sheikh Jarrah, meanwhile, remains the focus of weekly demos by the peace movement and locals. For more on the takeover of properties in the area, Ha'aretz has an interesting article.

Holy Week in the Holy Land

2010-03-27T14:47:00.010+03:00

Holy Week began for me last night. A priest friend took me to a production at the Maronite Church in Nazareth, where children from the Catholic school in Raineh took the congregation through the final days of Jesus' life.

I have to say I was blown away. Interspersed with readings, the performance consisted mostly of symbolic reenactments of the Passion accompanied by choral music, much of which was taken from Fairuz's Easter collection. The director, Samer Kheshaiboun who teaches at the school, got a phenomenal response from the young children in the choir. I have rarely heard such sensitivity to dynamics from a kids choir, and a couple of hours into the service they were still giving it laldy.

But probably the highlights for me were the Fairuz numbers rendered by a 19-year old singer called Ahlam Khoury. Though the dramatic sequences were iconographic, her voice rendered them tantalisingly imminent. A voice with immense strength but all the dexterity needed to make each quarter-tone interval count, and I mean count to the point of goosebumps and tingles. As she sang Al Yom Ollika I could have cried.

Even better, none of the soloists forgot that they were narrators, servants of a story. It was a lesson in performance, particularly of sacred music. They transported the congregation from the attitude of an audience to that of participants in something sacred, confidants of God, bearers of a mystery. It was that special.

In Israel

2010-03-27T13:20:00.003+03:00

The experience of Palestinians or Arabs in Israel creates a range of unique tensions, making it difficult to know whether or not it should be considered part of the same narrative, the same tapestry as the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Some of the themes are the same. The issue of internally displace persons in Israel is given little attention but is clearly part of the larger Palestinian refugee issue. The classic case of Bir'aim, in which villagers agreed to vacate their village for use by troops on the condition that they could return two week later, is typical in so much as no return has ever been allowed, despite a 1952 Supreme Court ruling in favour of the villagers. Many of the villagers now live in nearby villages and (bizarrely) are able to return to their old churches for weddings and to bury their dead.

A slightly more distinctive issue is that of unrecognised villages. According to a priest I was speaking to this morning, an estimated 170,000 people live in villages which pre-exist the establishment of the State of Israel, but which were never recognised by the government. As such they are unable to build, and live ancient houses or in shacks. They are registered in neighbouring towns and so pay taxes, but receive no amenities, and live in a precarious legal grey area. The mixed village of Ras al-'Ain in Galilee is a case in point. The Christians there are trying to build a church, not least to establish the fact of their roots in the village, to say 'we belong here'. It may prove to be something of a test case.

However, perhaps the most critical issue for Palestinians in Israel is that of education and identity. I spoke to a teacher who says he often has to persuade some of his pupils that they are Palestinian, that their roots are in the land, and that the discrimination they experience as non-Jews demands the articulation of their own story. But this is complicated. A recent law has withdrawn state funding from any organisation that allows any representation of the Palestinian story of the Nakba to qualify the triumphalist celebrations of independence day. So schools, even schools without Jewish students, are forced to avoid the defining story of Arab Palestinian identity in the 20th Century. When Holocaust denial is legislated against, it is ironic and tragic that Nakba denial is legislated for.

These are issues that will not go away even if Palestine gets its state tomorrow, and could even be exacerbated. The pursuit of a single democratic "state for all its citizens" in the Holy Land is by far the best solution, one in which conflicting narratives are taught alongside each other, in which Jews and non-Jews are equals such that demographic majority becomes an irrelevance, and in which land is viewed as a shared responsibility rather than an exclusive right. It is also perhaps the only solution in which the Palestinians of Israel can enjoy a happy ending to their story.

Tent of Nations

2010-03-25T10:55:00.010+02:00

One of the highlights of my journey around the Holy Land so far was my visit to Daoud and Daher Nassar's farm near the village of Nahali. When the IDF first came to their door in 1991 they were served an order to vacate three quarters of their family's land, but being one of the few families to have been issued and retained their title deeds from the Ottoman era, they've managed to hang on until now.

Meanwhile, illegal settlements surround the farm, and Daher told me they never leave the farm unattended. If a settler managed to park a caravan on their land the legal wrangling would become a whole lot harder. Settlers have occasionally vandalised their property. On one occasion, settlers uprooted 250 trees, but a Jewish organisation in the UK supplied 250 saplings to replace them.

Their story of living under a territorial sword of Damocles is by no means unique here, but their response really is. As you enter the farm there is a sign saying "We refuse to be enemies". They host children's summer camps, reconciliation work with Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals, and run a women's centre in the village down the hill. For these activities they have called their farm the Tent of Nations.

All of this is in the context of a sense of interdependence with the land. It is this reconceptualisation of the struggle to retain land, not simply as territory or property but as the very source of life, that strikes me as particularly profound. In the Christian narrative, the bond with the land is one of our few fundamental human callings, and it's something that the Nassars proudly fulfil. I believe anyone who senses that the modern world has torn them from the land could learn a way of living at Tent of Nations, the 'political' ramifications of which could be transformative anywhere. But in Palestine it is the gospel.

Israeli fear

2010-03-21T22:38:00.008+02:00

One of the most moving talks at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference was that of Sami Awad, Director of the Holy Land Trust.

He recounted a trip to one of the Nazi death camps, a visit he naturally found distressing in its own right. But his epiphany was when a group of Israeli school children were brought into earshot by their guide, whose detailed account of what the Nazis did to their Jewish ancestors would have penetrated the thickest skin. The guide then moved to explain that, after 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, the State of Israel was the place in which Jews could take refuge, the only place Jews could call home. The twist was this: but you're still not safe. Your Arab neighbours would do to you as the Nazis did to your ancestors, and it is only through the might of the Israeli Defence Forces that we can have a normal life.

The epiphany was Israeli fear. No wonder a would-be Israeli government needs to talk about security, people are insecure. No wonder some young people enthusiastically undertake to do their national service, and no wonder they behave so often like animals. They believe there's a latent genocidal desire on the part of today's Arab Other, just as there was lurking in the background of Christendom.

Sami Awad wasn't seeking to understand for understanding's sake, but because it is the narrative of the oppressor that lies at the root of oppression, and narratives can change. Of course there's nothing like fear for creating very scary monsters, and I would imagine there are plenty of people living in Palestinian refugee camps for whom the distinction between an Israeli and a Jew is trifling technicality. Likewise, the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad: a Nabulsi was explaining to me today how damaging to the Palestinian cause this kind of cheap bombast is.

But perhaps this is another reason why demos are useful. It brings children face to face: the ten-year old I wrote about with the courage to claim what is rightfully his, and the child who, a decade earlier, had been standing frozen to the spot as a teacher told him that he was hated, that he could trust no-one, that his life depends on the machines of death.

More from Nablus

2010-03-21T14:25:00.008+02:00

A Nabulsi shopkeeper just told me that two labourers were shot dead near the Awarta checkpoint, just a couple of hours ago. He said they were tending the land there and were shot unprovoked. The official line is that soldiers were attacked with pitchforks and gunned them down. Who knows. Two Palestinians carrying gardening equipment deciding to attack soldiers a stone's throw from a settlement? Perhaps we'll hear more.

Speaking to a chap in church this morning, there's a belief that the Israeli strategy is to provoke a third intifada so that they can escape the pressure currently being applied - if rather equivocally - by the US. It's a pretty credible thesis.

I should say, Nablus is a picture this afternoon. Bustling, colourful, warm with a breeze. The sight of people doing people things, selling their wares, keeping their children under control, repairing their cars, becomes a life affirming, positive picture in this situation. The mundane takes on a rare profundity.

I also had a good conversation with a student at An-Najah University. She said day to day life here is much better, but that the political situation, though less immediately destructive, is undermining all hopes of long term reconciliation.

One final observation: Fatah aren't just more dominant here than they were, Hamas have practically disappeared. Or should I say, they've been disappeared. Even in the student council nobody openly represents the Islamic Resistance. All the martyr posters are of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade members. All the flags are Fatah or PFLP. It's quite weird, bearing in mind the dominance of Hamas when I was last here.

I would imagine Fatah are storing up a fair bit of resentment for the future.

How long?

2010-03-20T23:42:00.009+02:00

I’m in Nablus for the first time since the end of the intifada when regular military incursions, curfews and cordons, and militant resistance were the order of the day. Nablus today is, at least superficially, more peaceful. But it would be a stretch to say the situation’s better than it was.

I hitched a ride with the Bethlehem Bible College Choir who had a gig in my old church in the Rafidiya district. I was invited to sing the setting of Psalm 13 I dedicated to those people of Nablus who’d been such an inspiration to me, and it was a huge honour to be able to do so. It was a particular pleasure to see Violet again, a lady stalwart of the church whose stories of a childhood in Mandate Palestine kept me entertained for hours one afternoon in the summer of 2004. Alas, tonight she said, “Things here improve and they get worse, it’s up and down. But now it’s worse than ever. There is just no hope of peace, really no hope."

Getting some food and kunafa after the performance, people in the street seemed neither festive nor downcast. As I walked into the old town to find a bed, there weren’t many people around, the faces on the faded martyr posters seemed a little forlorn, the flags - now seemingly representing Fatah a little more than before - fluttering with less vigour. Perhaps it was Violet’s words that made me perceive my surroundings in this way, or the very visible expansion of settlements on several of the hilltops as we drove into town this afternoon. But the lack of music or street corner chatter was conspicuous, and the young man cycling in erratic circles while shouting at himself as I entered the gloomy streets of the Old Town seemed to provide a strangely resonant image of desolation.

In any case, it’s hard to stay optimistic when locals are pessimistic. After my uplifting story about the boy at the demo yesterday, I read that a boy was shot dead at a demo today.

I’m spending the day here tomorrow. I’ll maybe pick up something more positive from my friend who works at the aptly named Project Hope.

Meanwhile, I'm left with Psalm 13. "How long, Oh Lord?"

Chastened

2010-03-19T22:34:00.003+02:00

'Do demos work?' I asked.

A friend who was at the Ma'asara protest today and was filming from the front saw something I missed. A 10 or 11-year old boy incrementally edged onto and eventually over the razor wire and began attempting to hand out flyers to the soldiers. Later, despite being warned, he took hold of the handle used by the troops to lay the wire across the street and ended up in a tug-of-war with an IDF soldier armed with an M16 and the back up of one of the world's mightiest militaries. Aware of how daft he looked, the soldier gave and left the kid free to remove the coil of razor wire and liberate the road.

Here we have the rare interface of humans at either ends of the gun. Humans who have begun to operate as cogs in the military machine but who, faced with the courage of a small child, can deploy none of that apparatus without surrendering their humanity completely. It is the those armed to the teeth that look naked in the meeting of flesh and blood with flesh and blood.

Do demos work?

Anarchy in the P.A?

2010-03-19T17:51:00.019+02:00

Tonight I'm sleeping at Bustan Qaraaqa, an extraordinary project near Beit Sahour, at which an assortment of internationals tend the land either side of a small wadi on permaculture principles. Complete with compost toilet (only), sun-heated water, and a huge collection of glass bottles being saved for the construction of a (potentially enormous) greenhouse, it's quite an inspiration in its own right.

Perhaps more impressive is the work they've done for a Palestinian whose land has been surrounded on three sides by settlements, and who finds himself rather isolated by ongoing building. When a local is given an ultimatum to tend a bit of fallow land or face losing it, BQ have saplings available and will go and plant them by way of counterclaim on the owner's behalf.

This kind of work is hugely important. You may recall I visited Efrata settlement in the Etzion block last week. One of the villages threatened by the ongoing expansion of the block - very near Efrata in fact - is Ma'asara, a village in an area subject to land confiscation, house demolition, and threats of reprisals to local demonstrators. Investment in the land isn't only about preserving the desperately depleted natural environment here, but about ensuring that ownership doesn't become about borders only.

At Ma'asara, many villagers who came to welcome international protestors did not approach the razor wire to protest. According to one protestor, they're scared. Even though the Ma'asara has been invariably nonviolent, people know that similar protests in nearby Beit Jala have ended up with recent injuries. A Ma'asara man was killed at one of the famous Bi'lin demos.

So does it work? Well in itself, perhaps not. If anything, its makes it less likely that Palestinians will be disappeared and held without trial for nonviolent direct action. But that's something of a circular argument. Sometimes they may be a little counterproductive. Today protestors were waving Rachel Corrie placards, which may be seen to imply that the trial of her killers is the biggest story on the ground just now. It really isn't.

Having said that, a demo provides a focal point, and refuses to allow ongoing abuses to be normalised. It concentrates the mind on the local, on the human stories in tiny nondescript villages, where lives are being ruined because of a nation-state's narrative of fear and its enormous power surplus. And this is where something like Bustan Qaraaqa comes in. Covenanting first with the land roots a project, literally, in a manner that makes politics look trivial. It is people doing what people were made for, it is making residence in the land about something way deeper than borders. It's absolutely impossible to argue with it.

It reminds me of the Gustav Landauer quote: "The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another… We are the State and we shall continue to be the State until we have created the institutions that form a real community".

He'd have liked Bustan Qaraaqa.

From the Via Dolorosa

2010-03-17T21:40:00.010+02:00

I'm on an eerily quiet section of the Via Dolorosa. A dozen or more Israeli troops are gathered at the end of the street but without that jumpy, schoolboys-with-guns look, seemingly content that the situation's "cooled" in the Old City, as a Muslim restauranteur described it to me just now.

(And precisely on cue, I've just heard a few bangs. Sounded like tear gas grenades, although it's a bit tricky to accurately identify noises by their timbre over the snoring of my dorm-mate Fritz. He's obsessed with Ancient Egyptian chronology so I doubt the trifling matter of imminent violence is much concern.)

Listening to Salam Fayyad yesterday as he addressed the conference, you could have been forgiven for thinking a final status agreement was days away. Though implausibly dismissing the economic aspects of the conflict, he was actually rather impressive. As he enumerated the infrastructure projects completed since his government's accession, described the simplicity of contrasting narratives coexisting, and asserted repeatedly that Palestine was preparing for statehood, it was quite infectious. Tellingly, at one point he arrested a rambling list of vaguely positive minutia to say, "You can tell I'm looking for anything optimistic!"

This moment of bathos added to rather than subtracted from the sense of sincerity he conveyed. But, sitting in the ballroom of the Intercontinental, the bleak words of Fadi, a chap with whom I smoked argila last week, responded to each bureaucratic vignette with the word on the street: "We have no future."

If this bleak prognosis depends to any extent upon the electoral politics of the US, there may be cause for hope, and that's why this conference of evangelicals has interested me so much. Not only has the theology been rigorous and the politics inspirational, but delegates whose passionate attachment is to their Jewish heritage were asserting that faithfulness to this heritage demands the pursuit of justice for the Palestinians. In the past few days I've heard this asserted by evangelical luminaries, pentecostal charismatic zealots, and a Messianic Jew.

150 delegates, perhaps two thirds of which were American, will not change the world over night. But that this number made the trip to the occupied West Bank, alongside reported changes in the attitude to Israel of many Jews in the States, may point to some kind of sea change.

Tonight I hitched a lift from Bethlehem with a staffer at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. As we talked about our polarised theology, politics and narrativising of history, I thought our genial chat was perhaps too easy. The words on many hearts are those of Psalm 137's wretched finale, words of despair, desperation, and the desire for vengeance: can an overdue change of heart among the citizens of superpowers provide any meaningful response to these cries?

Christ at the Checkpoint

2010-03-15T23:28:00.010+02:00

This week I'm attending a conference in Bethlehem called 'Christ at the Checkpoint'. Aimed at Western and local evangelicals, it comprises theological and social-political teaching, cultural events, and a broad range of visits. My hope is that I can begin to enter into the problematic and highly nuanced thought world of a Palestinian evangelical.

I ve

ry much respect the organisers' decision to include in the conference programme today's trip to a community in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. It shows not only a genuine desire for delegates to be exposed to the cacophony of narratives in the land, but also a confidence in the ability of the Palestinian case to withstand that of Zionists, event at their most fundamentalist extreme.

To a large extent they were vindicated. Speaking to delegates as we left, many if not most were scept

ical of the settlers’ spurious assertions. During our meeting in the synagogue, our settler guide Robert made the rather outlandish case that a one state solution would still retain its Jewish majority and could therefore be genuinely democratic. He also asserted the common refrain that Palestinians before 1967 were not identified as Palestinians but Arabs, despite one of our Palestinian friends (b. 1944) stating that she had Palestinian on her birth certificate and always saw herself as ‘Arab Palestinian’. His colleague from Chicago further implied that Arabs left their villages in 1948 voluntarily, which just happened to create the world’s biggest refugee population. These notions did not seem to hold much sway.

What I did notice was the immediate connection the (American-born) settlers were able to make with the Euro-Americans in the audience, and for this they can hardly be blamed. The wisecracks, the identification of common ground, the speaking styles, stances and gesticulations. They were all conspicuously like ours. By the end of the talk there was a slightly unsettleing atmosp

here of congeniality, and several nodding heads greeted absurd comments relating to the alleged disparity of violence, such as the implication that suicide bombings arrived out of nowhere (no mention of Goldstein), the claim that the first intifada was essentially violent and so on. In the face of the very obvious, very tangible power surplus Israel has in the land, to which all delegates have been exposed, I can only put the believability of the fantastical down to the familiarity, the ‘insideness’ of our settler interlocutors, or in short, to racism.

One of the things that has been particularly interesting at this quite remarkable conference is exploring the inside-outsideness of Palestinian evangelicals themselves. While many of them have been arrested, deported and targeted by Israel for their involvement in nonviolent direct action, their evangelical theology and institutional independence may make them appear rootless in the land, foreign, and suspicious to the established churches and the Muslim majority. This isn't helped by the fact that many of them seem to cultivate a distinctly Western personal image which must look slightly odd to their compatriots. But by far the most significant factor is the fact that Christian Zionism is, at its monied and powerful extremes, almost exclusively evangelical, and people here know it. Association with Western evangelicalism's militaristic image puts great pressure on Palestinian evangelicals.

But there is a suggestion that this pressure can be and has been powerfully productive. One Palestinian evangelical, Daniel, told me tonight that defensiveness may be a reason for the fact that arguably the most rigorous theological critique of Zionism and the practices of the state of Israel has emerged out of this tiny minority wing of the Protestant Palestinian church. There may well be some truth in this. At the conference I have heard remarkably rich exegeses of biblical texts by young Palestinian theologians such as Alaa Zayed and Yohanna Katanacho, and their mentors such as Salim Munayer. (Naim Ateek and Mitri Raheb are yet to come on the programme.)

Palestinian evangelicals are articulating a position of resistance to the theology of Christian Zionism through, rather than despite, their characteristic dedication to a biblicist approach. While the undeniable shallowness of mutual respect between many traditional and independent churches is a tragic missed opportunity to learn from each other in the face of mighty opposition, defensiveness may also be a catalyst for the kind of biblically-framed, Christocentric argument that some Western evangelicals demand before they will even consider appeals to justice, mercy and peace-making for their own sake. This may make Palestinian evangelicals extremely useful, not only to the church in the holy land, but to the whole Palestinian cause, as changing minds in America remains one of the most important tasks it faces. Perhaps Palestinian evangelicals are uniquely placed to rise to this enormous task.

You can download the papers here.

[Images: residents of the Efrata settlement address conference delegates in the synagogue; author Colin Chapman and Jim Schutz of the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem at Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem.]

West Bank sealed off?

2010-03-12T14:00:00.005+02:00

Just back from Jerusalem. It was getting a little heated down by the Damascus gate, but apparently several Palestinians were injured over by the Haram al-Sharif.

Now I've just read that they've "sealed" the West Bank, although we came through the Bethlehem checkpoint with no trouble about 45 minutes ago.

The protests are an extension of the weekly demos that have been held each Friday since the annexation of Rachel's tomb and other sites in Palestine as 'Israeli' heritage sites. But this week's announcement of the construction of 1600 more settler homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem has stoked the flames.

This quote is bound to pacify Palestinians though: "The IDF will continue to operate in order to protect the citizens of Israel while maintaining the quality of life of the Palestinian population in the area."

(Italics most definitely mine.)

The wall

2010-03-11T19:22:00.006+02:00

I had a good natter with a guy in a clothes store in Bethlehem this afternoon. He seemed genuinely interested in my thoughts on ‘the situation’ here, although his own prognosis was pretty bleak: “If you speak to Palestinians and go deep down there is just pain. They’re pushing us and pushing us. I think there will be a war." Later he added, "My father lived the life I live, and my grandfather, and his father. I hope my children don’t have to.”

I couldn't help think of the conversation I'd had with an Israeli woman on the flight over. Apparently, "Israel's wonderful. Every day is like a party."

Andrew Philip - now in paperback

2010-01-21T21:11:00.003+02:00

You can now get Andrew Philip's anthology in paperback. Just thought I'd let you know.

Oh, and he was nominated for the Aldeburgh First Collection prize last year, so congratulations to him.

Hope

2010-01-11T19:55:00.003+02:00

"Despite the lack of even a glimmer of positive expectation, our hope remains strong."

This wonderful line proclaimed from deep within the interminable Holy Saturday experience of Palestinian Christianity is in part 3 of the Palestine Kairos Document. It's well worth a read.

Paper, scissors, stone

2010-01-05T00:18:00.000+02:00

Mystery by answers
Answers by suspicion
Suspicion by mystery

Poetry blog

2010-01-05T00:10:00.001+02:00

My sister has started a poetry blog here. It's fab, please check it out.

Bird - Ruth Murphy

2009-11-16T15:59:00.001+02:00

I fly.
I soar and swoop.
I can walk, I can sing,
But even people do that.
I fly.

Autumn - Ruth Murphy

2009-11-16T15:58:00.000+02:00

The rain is planting cold kisses on the soil,
shocking it awake.
this is not a pleasant
cockerel crowing dawning.
It is not soft and mollycoddled in mist
nor bright with sunshine diamonding the dew.
It is just dripping cold,
drip, drip,
each drop a cold shock
to a world so recently wrapped in warmth.

Audacity - Ruth Murphy

2009-11-16T15:55:00.001+02:00

I had a question for God.
I had a question for the one
who placed the sun just so
in the big blue arch of the sky,
who dotted the stars
mystically about the heavens.
I had a question for God.
I had a question for the one
who rocks and swells the sea
on its primeval bed,
who brings back the seasons,
shy from their hideaway.
I had a question for God.
A question from one
who was born naked and screaming
into the human race,
who is proud to be gazing
at the stars and wondering,
underneath the sun that
rises and sets,
watching as the seasons turn,
assuming that they always will.
I had a question for God.
I had a question,
and God would answer if He was there.
Are you there God?
Are you there?
Above the horizon,
opposite the setting sun,
a single star.
The smell of summer
on the edge of the breeze.
The sky grows dark,
the stars come out.
I am waiting for an answer.
I had a question for God.
I had a question
and God would have answered
If He were there.

All the Colours of the Rainbow - Ruth Murphy

2009-11-10T11:27:00.003+02:00

I love you.
You are all the colours of the rainbow to me.
You are black and white,
day and night,
you are the summer sun
and the pale frosted pastel
of a winter dawn.
You are mist and sunlight,
dew and starlight,
you are the winter dark
that turns my brain
in spiralling circles close to madness,
you are the warmth of summer
breathing life into my brain
and strength to my heart.
I love you.
You are my mind
and my madness,
you are my new-found everything.

[I'm intending to publish a few of Ruth's poems here over the next few months on an entirely ad hoc basis. I hope you enjoy them.]

Abu Mazen's exit

2009-11-09T13:42:00.004+02:00

Mahmoud Abbas has been a partnerless advocate of a negotiated settlement in the Middle East for years now, but having been left in the cold by Israel he began to look impossibly compromised.

In losing Abbas, Israel will certainly be losing the best hope of being able to negotiate a secure and sustainable solution to the conflict, but that is lower on their agenda now than it has perhaps ever been. They may in fact view his departure as a bit of a gift.

Still, if the Israelis are intent on creating facts on the ground, Palestinians can do likewise. This is not limited to violent resistance, and it does not require a retreat. The international community should encourage and support a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within 1967 borders, and if Salam Fayyad makes this his position it would surely be difficult for anyone except the U.S. to resist the manifest equivalence of this position to that of the Israelis.

It may bolster Hamas in the short term, because some would certainly see this as a surrender. But a unilateral declaration in no way undermines previous UN resolutions that give Palestinians their legal cause, it in no way dilutes the claim to refugee right of return, and it places the onus on Israel to actually wrest East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements from the Palestinians.

Surely that wouldn't be allowed to stand?

Red poppies: a political statement?

2009-11-03T15:49:00.007+02:00

What a tricky question.

On the one hand, for most people, it is not. Statements are heard precisely in so much as they stand out against the background noise of the status quo. In that sense, at least, it is not a statement.

Indeed, many people wearing red poppies will be against many of the specific military ventures in which Britain has and is engaged. They view Remembrance as simply that.

On the other hand, precisely in so much as it isn't heard as a statement that is exactly what it is: a statement of unity, of unanimity in many offices, churches and communities, in which the totem is the same even if its connotations are different.

That this is a form of statement is thrown into relief when such unanimity is impossible to assert, such as in Northern Ireland where the poppy became associated with Loyalism. Here the poppy and the flag are inseparable. The question is, are they ever?

The point for me is that those who wear the white poppy are often accused of making a political point on the back of an apolitical event. But for as long as people are still dying as a result of the system that they oppose, it's difficult to imagine how wearing a symbol so deeply embedded in the military economy can be acceptable to them.

Others' hostility to this betrays a totalising tendency among those who would prefer that, for one day, the monologue is unchallenged. This, in itself, is a reason to opt for the white poppy.

Things that go BNP in the night

2009-10-23T01:24:00.008+02:00

A number of things gave me a vague unease about the debate, if you can call it that, surrounding Nick Griffin's appearance on Newsnight, which clarified a little as I watched the show. I'll mention two of these.

The first was the pomposity of the 'mainstream' politicians, who looked horribly exposed by their own bluster tonight. Watching Chris Huhne express reservations about immigration from eastern Europe, Baroness Warsi move (rather belatedly) to endorse civil partnerships, and Jack Straw defending British freedoms, I was a reminded of a time I asked a politician what their "big picture" was, drawing a complete blank. When I asked this question I wasn't expecting a totalising ideology, simply an allusion to some kind of vision, and like me the oft-referenced 'British people' are being denied any contest of ideas in favour of posturing, tinkering and selective moralising.

Which brings me to the second point, concerning this British people that apparently emerged victorious tonight, as their formal and informal representatives shredded Nick Griffin. In the words of one of my Facebook friends: "griffin looks like a moron and the great british public speak much sense".

Well, some of the questioners spoke good sense, others just spoke, or shouted. Why do we presume that somehow 'we' are sensible, and the population of interwar Germany or 1990s Rwanda were mindless drones? What essentialism drives this sense of our own collective wisdom, what guiding principles keep us "sensible" other than our own moderate comfort in global terms? Such a fragile shield. The speed with which the German people went from guardians of the treasures of progressive culture to advocates of supremacist tyranny should be instructive.

Yes, I'm glad that Nick Griffin was allowed to go on and be confronted with the reality of his own barbarous past. But this was obscured by the foaming of the sensible centre, who, when the noise died down, had offered nothing. Nothing at all.

Bonnie Greer's composed good humour occasionally made Nick Griffin look a fool. She mocked his recourse to the most arbitrary of categories to pursue his agenda, she subverted them, she brought in humanity at its relational best to show what a nonsense such devices are when the rubber hits the road.

So why couldn't the other politicians do likewise? Well, which of them can speak in anything but the most platitudinous terms when their precious democracy looks like a five year one-off outing for a special interest group, their idolised freedom is played out at the barrel of a gun (and a thousand CCTV cameras), and our civilisation, all embracing humanism, excludes whomsoever we wish to exclude for the purposes of security? Which of them could grab their last constituency newsletter and claim they haven't peddled emotive concepts to accentuate quite arbitrary divisions and thereby to reinforce structural violence?

When we are looking at the ugly face of the BNP, we are in a sense looking at ourselves getting older, the next logical step. If that's not where we want to go we'd better come up with some better ideas.

God the ineffable host

2009-10-22T01:09:00.013+02:00

To speak of God: the necessary impossibility.

So imagine, if you dare, the triune communion in dynamic perfection, united in will, ever-giving in love, wholly self-sufficient. The circle dance of all there need be.

Creation, of which we are a part, appears as a mysterious and majestically unnecessary making space for another in this cosmic community. Critically it looks like a risk, taken by one who need not risk, because true hospitality is to trust, to concede rights, to relinquish control. Here God the totalitarian is dwarfed by this unfathomable God, who could still, in virtue of his own love, end up on a cross.

These days, alas, I just don't know what I can affirm securely. My faith has become a way of being in the world, but without the succour of propositional security.

However, one thought is sustaining me tonight, the thought of God the hospitable; and, the other side of the same coin, the thought of being created as a kind of eternal, unconditionally welcomed guest. It is a thought that begins in Trinitarian theology, but invigorates even as I lose my grip on such concretes.

My inability to stop pursuing God, despite the shredded feet and barren landscape, may be articulated as this irresistible sense of having been included in something, having been made space for. It is the sense of the unlikelihood of being alive at all, and the hope that I was not begotten of death but of dazzling life.

There are countless, impossibly challenging implications of this starting point, at least, to the one ready to walk in deed as the image-bearer of this host.

But for the weary pilgrim, who has walked and fought for too long without rest, the thought of it appears as the lights of an inn on the horizon.

Faisal Husseini poem

2009-10-12T12:13:00.003+02:00

Oh God, the chest is replete with bitterness, do not turn that into spite.
Oh God, the heart is replete with pain, do not turn that into vengeance.
Oh God, the soul is replete with fear, do not turn that into hatred.
Oh God, my body is weak, do not turn my weakness into despair.

Oh God, I, your servant, am holding the embers, so, help me maintain my steadfastness.

Oh God, faith is love.
Oh God, faith is forgiveness.
Oh God, faith is conviction.

Oh God, do not put off the flame of faith in my chest.

Oh God, we wanted for the Intifada to be a white one, so protect it.
Oh God, we wanted freedom for our people; we did not want slavery for others.
Oh God, we wanted a homeland for our people to be gathered; we did not attempt to destroy states of others nor demolish their homes.
Oh God, our people is stripped of all, except for his belief in his right.
Oh God, our people is weak, except in his faith and in his victory.

Oh God, grant us conviction, mercy and tolerance in our ranks and do not make us war against ourselves.
Oh God, turn the blood that was shed into light that will guide us and strengthen our arms and do not turn it into fuel for hatred and vengeance.
Oh God, help us over our enemy so that we could help him reconcile with himself.

Oh God, this is my prayer to you, my invocation.
So listen to it and grant us our supplication and guide us to the Straight Path.

Faisal Husseini, October 1990

Loch Ness Marathon 2009

2009-10-06T09:29:00.013+02:00

Who'd have thought it: I'm promoting exercise on my blog. However, after the most exhilarating Loch Ness Marathon on Sunday, I offer no apologies.

The conditions were about as perfect as they could have been. Glorious sunshine, a biting chill in the air, and not a breath of wind; meanwhile, the majestic scenery at the start line was enough to impart a sense of Icarian possibility. The shambles of transport to the gun (our bus broke down, some failed to turn up at all) was quickly consigned to history.

Piped and drummed from the start line, I soon realised that this would be of a different order from those interminable training runs as mile after mile fell off without any need to dig deep. Smiling faces along the roadside and momentary glimpses of the loch seemed to express human and Divine blessing for our folly, and there were moments of a quite palpable rush, an enveloping tingling unlike anything associated with exercise in my experience.

By the big hill at 18 miles I was still feeling good, and it was only on the descent into Inverness that I began to fade, quite rapidly, my last three miles taking nearly 90 seconds longer, each, than my earlier average mile. But with the turn onto the running track at Queen's Park Stadium the energy returned for a showman's sprint finish and the young lass who gave me my medal could have been Jacques Rogge for how on top of the world I felt.

My only regret was telling the Mrs to expect me half an hour after I actually finished. She was wandering the streets of Inverness at the time I crossed the line.

The profound anticlimax that many feel after a race hasn't really hit me yet. I had a slight dip on Sunday afternoon, but a pint of Bitter by the locks in Fort Augustus sorted that.

I know one of my friends is already dusting off her running shoes for Loch Ness 2010, and I'd say the more, the merrier.

I ran raising funds for Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy. To donate please click here.

Settlements: a choice of war over peace

2009-09-09T14:29:00.003+03:00

Western political and diplomatic norms regarding the Middle East have a habit of reforming according to Israeli government whim, so it bears repeating that settlements are an act of war, illegal, immoral and indefensible.

Whether Obama's government will allow Israel to thumb its nose in their direction remains to be seen, but with the current preoccupation with healthcare reform it's quite possible that Netanyahu's scandalous move is shrewd opportunism. The US government will perhaps not be able to fight two unpopular battles at once.

Meanwhile, to remind ourselves of what this latest commitment to settlements constitutes, this is a useful quote from Michael Neumann's 2002 essay, 'What's so bad about Israel?'.

Settlement policy, "quite apart from its terrible effect on Palestinians, is outrageous for what it represents: a careful, deliberate rejection of peace, and a declaration of the fixed intention to dispossess the Palestinians until they have nothing left....

"Israel could claim, as a matter of self-interest if not of right, that it needed the pre-1967 territory as a homeland for the Jews. It cannot say this about the settlements, which exist not from any real need for anything, but for three reasons: to give some Israelis a cheap deal on housing, to conform to the messianic expectations of Jewish fundamentalists, and, not least, as a vengeful, relentless, sadistically gradual expression of hatred for the defeated Arab enemy."

This is the point:

"By the mid-1970s, Israel's crimes were no longer the normal atrocities of nation-building nor an excessive sort of self-defense. They represented a cold-blooded, calculated, indeed an eagerly embraced choice of war over peace".

Mr MacAskill's genius?

2009-08-27T13:00:00.014+03:00

It has never been established that Mr Al-Megrahi had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombings, and in this I not only agree with the majority of Scottish legal professionals, but the legal academic who set up the Lockerbie trial, Robert Black, and a host of other interested parties. This is no marginal conspiracy theory.

That this makes the Scottish legal system look wholly compromised by the Lockerbie trial is a sad reality, but one which needs to be faced up to rather than drowned in high-pitched, self-righteous condemnations of a "mass murderer".

As well as any compassion or altruism Mr MacAskill's party may be demonstrating, it is also possible that the SNP are the only party whose political interests align with those of the families and the reputation of the Scottish legal system in outing the truth.

Why?

Well, with the original trial being set up without the involvement of the yet-to-be-reconstituted Scottish Parliament and Executive, any evidence of political interference would land squarely on Westminster. But the Scottish Government lacks the authority to open an investigation into the Lockerbie trial itself so is rather dependent upon someone else doing so.

The UN has this power and were the Scottish Government, backed by a measure of goodwill in the Arab world (recall the Saltires flying in Tripoli), to invite the UN to carry out such an investigation, the British Government could be bypassed. Plus, any attempt by the UK to block it or trivialise it would be viewed as an admission of guilt.

That Libyan Ali Abdessalam Triki is the next President of the General Assembly is also worth bearing in mind.

Such an inquiry of course suits the SNP's agenda, assuming that it is demonstrated that the US and UK governments interfered with or withheld evidence in order to implicate Libyan agents.

Imagine the headlines about Westminster's contempt for Scots law, their disregard for truth and justice, and the extent to which Scotland has been beholden to the interests of London.

Who would emerge unscathed? Tory and Labour governments would both be implicated. The Lib Dems should tread carefully, as I think they are doing. But, if all goes according to plan, the SNP will look like the innocent bystanders who rose to the challenge of restoring Scotland's pride and dignity as a nation.

As soon as any such investigation reported, emotional support for independence would rally.

Not only this, but even in the short term MacAskill's decision, and particularly the transparent meddling of Robert Mueller - whose interests as the original 'investigator' of the bombing may not lie in an inquiry being launched - will almost certainly galvanise domestic Scottish opinion in favour of the SNP as against perceived US bullying.

I therefore view Kenneth MacAskill's decision to release Mr Megrahi as the first step towards coming to terms with the travesty that took place in one of our courts. It may also be political genius.

For a good discussion of the Scotland-US fallout, check out MacNumpty.

Obama: no change in the near neighbourhood

2009-08-14T22:27:00.003+03:00

Recently Qunfuz described Obama as a monster on this blog, the cosmetic surgery performed on the hideous face of American empire.

This article in the Guardian regarding Honduras makes those of us who hoped Obama's election would lead to an wholly different approach to foreign policy feel a bit foolish. Honduras is precisely the arena in which a foreign policy guided by principle rather than short-term self-interest would distinguish itself.

A quick word from the Camino de Santiago

2009-07-15T21:32:00.004+03:00

I only have a few minutes on the internet here in Estella, but thought I´d post a quick thought on my first few days of pilgrimage.

Often, when walking in the hills or going for a run in Aberdeenshire, I look out to the horizon and wonder what it must have been like for those of old who had to traverse great distances by foot, gazing for miles at their next few days´journey.

It´s a bit like this. It begins by hearing others´ skeletal tales of a place not yet reached, before experiencing these bones being quickened, first as an embryonic dot on the distant horizon, then as the complex and uncontainable reality of imminent surroundings. Then, unavoidably, each place fades to simplified memory.

Doing the Camino gives me this experience every day, and in turn betsows a sense of unconditional relationship to the land - an irresistable, exhilarating subjectedness to the environment. It´s maybe this that makes the old cliche about pilgrimage being a living metaphor for life itself decreasingly trite and increasingly compelling as each day elapses.

Anyway, I´d better get off the net.

Andrew Philip

2009-07-02T10:34:00.017+03:00

If you've been following Andrew Philip's cyber-tour of his collection The Ambulance Box, or if you've met the man himself, you will probably encounter the poems themselves as strangely familiar.

For while they are deeply observational and experiential, such that he describes his approach as "use your ears, trust your ears and cut", it is the quiet, passionate insistence of his 'way of saying things' that stops the reader in his tracks.

This poetic sensibility emerges whenever he writes as he does here on boxologies for the first time, and it is the crafted but relentlessly personal voice that I find most exhilarating about his poetry: a confident vulnerability that gives of itself because there's no doubt in his mind that it matters.

In this way his voice is not just the medium of these poems' transmission, rather it is the black ink that preserves the finger-prints of his experience, much as hearing Paul Robeson sing Ol' Man River imbues the song with meaning born of a thousand stories.

So his tragic bereavement, his pursuit of truth, his experience of language as power are parts of his story but it is the voice that has been forged by these experiences, in which these experiences and observations are retold, and through which they are refracted which elevates them and makes them irresistible.

Q: The title poem 'The Ambulance Box' refers to those who, disabused of any notion of wholeness, and “huddled/ round our various wounds/ are at home with the box”. Is this a description of your own engagement with grief?

A: It certainly emerges from my engagement with grief, but it’s part of a broader life experience than that. The absence of wholeness in this world has been in front of my nose from the start, not least because my older brother is autistic. That meant I grew up having regular contact with people with physical and learning disabilities of various kinds and many levels of severity. Nonetheless, the death of my son Aidan shortly after he was born brought home to me in the strongest way possible how false any notion of wholeness in this world is. You could also view that poem as an exploration of the beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn.”

The line about being “at home with the box” indicates acceptance not only of our grief and brokenness but of the richer life that comes through engaging with it. I still rail against the unfairness of having had to bury my son—there are other poems in the book that explore that—but my life is all the richer for everything I’ve learnt, the people I’ve met and the greater closeness that I’ve developed with certain friends as a result of facing the loss head on.

Q: You've created a kind of internal dialogue between three voices in your use of English, Scots and Gaelic - three voices, one identity. Bearing in mind the global dominance of English and the decline of Scots and Gaelic, is there a political energy to this Trinitarian interaction?

There certainly is. There’s obviously the well-trodden path of trying to make the two lesser-used languages visible and grant them equal status to English in the poetry. However, there’s also the desire to disrupt the texture of standard English—the global language—with the Scots and Gaelic words. It’s a way of resisting that empire, to use a word that some may find controversial, and saying that I don’t identify with or belong to it entirely.

I like the way your phrase “Trinitarian interaction” anchors that element of resistance in a Christian context and gives a it spiritual underscore. Not everyone would recognise that or its relationship to the political, but that’s fine. It’s certainly part of the foundation for the writing.

It’s worth pointing out that English and Scots are part of my upbringing, so it’s natural for me to use them. Gaelic, by contrast, is a language I’ve been learning off and on over the past nine years, so its use is more conscious. I’m not yet anywhere near the stage where writing in Gaelic is as natural as writing in the other two.

Q: So has your work amongst politicians influenced your poetry?

A: You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

My day job in the Scottish Parliament official report is very much focused on political language, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say that political language is somewhat lacking in poetry! Barack Obama is an exception, but I can’t think of anyone in this country who can match his oratorical skill. I’ve written two poems at most that have any direct connection to the day job, but if working in that milieu has done anything for my poetry, it has sharpened my desire to write with economy.

Q: “As we cool/we harden” you write in “The Road from Emmaus”. Motion, dynamism and journey together comprise a key theme of this collection, both in terms of form and content. What are the ‘cooling agents’ in your sights here, against which the poet or the pilgrim or the activist must remain hot?

A: Well, actually, that image is intended to communicate something more ambivalent: the comparison is to “red-hot iron hammered into shape”, which, although it must go through the red-hot stage to be formed, comes into its own only once it cools. There is an element of regret at passing from the red-hot stage to the hardened but there’s also a recognition that the hardening is a necessary part of growing and becoming what one is meant to be. So it’s still part of the journey, just a different phase. Those lines also reinvent or open up the Biblical image of the furnace, which is a commonplace of contemporary Christian worship songs.

Q: Your closing poem implies the necessity of saying the impossible-to-say. Is this a fundamentally religious position?

A: It’s a fundamental position for me a poet, certainly, and set in a deeply religious context, but I don’t find it easy or necessarily helpful to disentangle the religious from the aesthetic in the way your question might imply is possible. There’s also a lot of silence in the poems. “Poetry is only there to frame the silence,” says the poet Alice Oswald, and I imagine the Trinity as having silence at its heart: a profound, holy, loving silence that’s not the absence of noise but an intense kind of presence.

Q: How would you review Andrew Philip’s poetry?

A: At the risk of sounding evasive, I’d have to say it’s not for me to review my own work. But if asked to describe it, I would say I hope it’s poetry that engages the heart, the head, the eye and the ear; poetry that will draw you back with its music, its mystery and its power. And although there’s a strong religious element to it, I hope the non-religious reader can find pleasure and richness in it. So far, the reactions I’ve been getting indicate that it’s doing pretty much what I intended.

Andrew Philip's cyber-tour continues at Robert Peake's blog, 8 July.

Climate Bill redeemed?

2009-06-30T14:43:00.003+03:00

A resounding endorsement of the finalised Scottish Climate Bill from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland:

I am delighted to report that the Scottish Climate Change Bill has now passed into legislation with most of our amendments and demands being met. I think it's safe to say we are delighted.

The Bill has its flaws, but lets enjoy the positives, it has 80% by 2050, 42% by 2020 (admittedly caveated), includes aviation & shipping (includes a multiplier for aviation), the energy efficiency amendment got through, the public engagement commitment, the lib dems cumulative reporting is in, the carbon impact of the full govt's annual budget, and the duty on public bodies. It is unequivocally the most ambitious climate legislation in the world today.

Perhaps this is now where the real work begins, and there is much still to do and achieve as a coalition. There has already been a back lash and sniping from various quarters. But in the bigger picture what the world needs more than anything is examples and thanks to SCCS' efforts it now has one.

Please help to get the message out to the rest of the world that the Bill has happened and lets hope others draw inspiration from it.

Thank you for your part in helping make this happen.

Mike Robinson, Chair of SCCS

From an email to all SCCS campaigners.

Andrew Philip on Boxologies, 2 July

2009-06-22T16:40:00.005+03:00

I'm delighted to be able to give you a heads up that Andrew Philip's cyber-tour of his recent poetry collection will be stopping here a week on Thursday.

If you've not been following the tour to date, here are the details:

10 June - Our sweet old etcetera ...
17 June - The Crafty Writer
23 June - One Night Stanzas
26 June - Douglas Robertson
29 June - Dumbfoundry
02 July - Boxologies
08 July - Robert Peake
15 July - Cadwallender
22 July - Poetry Hut
29 July - Andrew Shields

Armed Forces Day: Soldiers of Peace trailer

2009-06-22T13:38:00.002+03:00

Watch here.

Armed Forces Day: wear black

2009-06-22T13:15:00.007+03:00

There's something deeply disturbing about the Government-endorsed Armed Forces Day, due to be 'celebrated' this Saturday.

We should however be encouraged that they feel the need to propagandise their wars in so vulgar a fashion. By concealing the context and reality of war from the people (for 'war' is a euphemism for unspeakable abuse) they also deprive their campaigns of the succour of popular support.

So they've contrived Armed Forces Day, promising to be the usual smokescreen: cloaking the dark heart of imperial greed in the innocent veil of individual heroism and bravery; disassociating our wars from our brutal imperial history and confining them to the eradication of an irrational recent evil such as the Taliban; ritually celebrating a blood sacrifice that puts a noble, human and familiar face on the bloodthirsty state deity.

Though individual soldiers endure pain and loss beyond most of our imaginations, it remains the fact that if people did not take up arms on behalf of their governments war could not be such an easy recourse. Therefore we should not celebrate the choices of those who, with whatever courage or selflessness, risk their lives at their government's bidding.

Wear black this Saturday.

Norman Finkelstein on Gandhi-ism in Palestine

2009-06-22T13:12:00.002+03:00

Ezra Nawi - an article in Ha'aretz

2009-06-22T12:23:00.001+03:00

"Bad times bring out the best in some people. Most of us remain passive, even willfully blind, in the face of great crimes that we see perpetrated on others, whether they are strangers or our next-door neighbors. But there will always be someone, probably just an ordinary decent person, to whom this rule doesn't apply - someone who will try to do the right thing at any cost, risking his or her well-being or even, perhaps, life itself. Ezra Nawi is such a man. He's a plumber by profession, a Jewish Jerusalemite, and he is also the unsung hero of the Israeli peace movement in the south Hebron hills. It's largely thanks to him that the Palestinian farmers in this area are still living on their land. Unless something happens to change the current prognosis, an Israeli court will sentence Nawi to jail on July 1."

Read more here.

An atheist reviews un|broken (and the cosmos)

2009-06-21T15:51:00.005+03:00

I asked Rich Turner, an atheist friend of mine, to record his thoughts on the Exile Band's new un|broken album.

I never thought I'd ever be excited about the arrival of a Gospel album through the post, but then un|broken is a little different, and I'm even playing it on my iPod as I tap away at this keyboard. Let me explain. Track number 7, Love Song, is dedicated to “Rich and Wana”, and I'm the “Rich” bit. It's a great feeling having a song written for you, I can recommend it, and we were lucky enough to have Mark [Calder, songwriter] and his wife, Karen, perform it for us at our wedding celebration in Zambia in March 2008.

I'm referring to myself as an atheist in this piece and I'll try to clarify that later, but suffice to say that me and gospel music have never normally been great bed fellows. My wife is a committed Christian, and so my exposure to religious music has dramatically increased since we've been together, but even though I like to think that I'm open to all kinds of music and that I'm the world's greatest singer in the confines of my car – when alone, of course – on hearing it, I do find myself involuntarily reaching to turn the volume down. Not much, just below zero.

You see, when it comes to contemporary Christian music, and I can only really comment on this branch of religious music, I've found that I have a bit of a problem. It's always seemed to me that it's the lyrics that are the important bit and the music is an afterthought. Fair enough, I'm pretty certain they haven't been written for someone with my viewpoint, but I end up being able to concentrate entirely on the lyrics which I find hard to swallow to start with and then they're accompanied by a dreary tune. And they say the Spanish Inquisition was tough on non-believers! Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get Christian people wishing they could swear at this, it's just my opinion, from my experience – I don't mean for it to sound sweeping. Hey, who could honestly say they didn't tap their feet to the great music in the film Sister Act?

Exile Band's un|broken is a refreshing change from the music I have come to dread. Now, I could be accused of being biased because of Mark Calder being a friend of mine, but there's not much I can do about that connection now, it's there. It's still a great album. Obviously, 'Love Song' is a track that's very special to me, and it triggers some amazing memories from our time in Zambia. As a result, I must confess that it does get played a little more than most.

The diversity of the band members is reflected in the mix of music styles on this album, but in every case the production is never neglected. 'Little by Little' delivers if you're into the Blues, 'Shining Light' provides a harder edge if you're in need of some rock ( I'm sure Mark once told me he was into thrash metal), and there's even a couple of tracks that wouldn't be out of place in one of Lord Webber's West End stage productions. I hope they take that as a compliment, the guy's very successful. So, despite my resistance, I now find myself singing along (ok, in the car) to these songs, and it's because they're good songs. 'Hallelujah' really is a stand out track, building brilliantly with layers of voices, oh, and mine over the top of it on the journey home from work. I don't even know what it means!

Will this album convert me to Christianity? No, I doubt it very much, but I don't think that's what it sets out to do. I get the feeling that these songs are personal to the performers, and I'm being allowed to just listen in on their thoughts. They'll be used to that though. And so I sing along, but I don't join in. That's atheists for you.

I suppose we're a little envious of the feeling of fellowship that sweeps through a group of people linked by a common belief, when they're belting out their songs of worship. Do the atheists have these opportunities? I'm not sure that they do – perhaps on the football terraces the common bond is felt, even if it is at the expense of the referee's optician. Of course, I should also acknowledge the audience at a Barry Manilow concert who manage to get themselves worked up to quite a fever. (And I should know, I've witnessed it – don't ask. Although I'm not sure that anyone has yet been prepared to die (or kill) just because some one didn't agree with the message of “Copacabana”.)

Again, I'm really not trying to offend people of faith by equating songs of worship with “Can't smile without you”, but that's how I, as an atheist, view it. I just don't get it. To me a fan is still just a fan, regardless of where their devotion is directed.

The thing is, even if atheists did get together for a sing-song, can you imagine what it would be like? What songs would they sing? A ridiculous scene springs to my mind of a bunch of people gathered in a leisure centre hall, with the Chief Boffin at the front (wearing of course, the ceremonial lab coat), introducing the next song. “And now we will sing hymn number 1 in your text books, a tune originally made popular by Ray Davies' pop combo, The Kinks. Please join in with me for 'I'm an ape man, I'm an ape, ape man'”.

It's not going to happen, is it? I do hope not.

So where can music play it's part in bridge building between people of opposing faiths or viewpoints? I'm not sure if it truly can. Unless it is that there is a recognition of the joy someone else can feel through the music of their faith, as they do from their own. The problem as I see it is that faith runs deep, and it's not much for bending, let alone breaking.

So when opposing views on religion meet head-on, no matter how courteous the exchange may be, each party is thinking to themselves, “Yep, that's all very well, but one day, my friend, you'll realize you've got it all wrong”. I am reminded of a discussion programme I recently saw on TV that had gathered together various religious leaders, which included amongst others, a Catholic Priest, a Muslim Imam, an Anglican female Vicar and a gay Priest, to discuss the role of religion, in front of a very vocal audience which included people from many other faiths also. Quite a debate ensued - “The Bible is the truth!”, “No! The Koran is the only way”, “U-uh, I think you'll find Hinduism pre-dates both of your books!”. And so it went on, and on. Eventually, the host (ironically, Terry Christian) calmed everyone down and went over to the end of the guests row to the guy who, through all the arguing, had sat very quietly. “You're an atheist,” said Terry,”what are your thoughts on what's been said so far?”.

He looked up to the host and very calmly said, “Well, I came here fully expecting a fight. I just had no idea that I wasn't going to be involved.” Brilliant.

I'm hoping that I don't give the impression that I'm Mr Grumpy-Pants just because I don't have a faith in my life, and I'd also hope that those that know me will vouch that generally I'm pretty happy with my lot in life – I consider myself very lucky. The reason I mention this is that as part of agreeing to share my atheist thoughts on theistic music, I was also asked to share my journey from agnostic to atheist as a result of the “Christianity Explored” Bible study group.

In truth, I was already an atheist, and had been for a long time. I have vague memories of saying my prayers at night up until I was maybe six or seven, but pretty soon I realised that either I was talking to myself, or He didn't much care for my problems – my dog didn't come back to life, the pretty girl at school still didn't love me, and West Brom were relegated again. So I managed to continue through life completely indifferent to religion, and yes, when I joined the cub scouts I did “promise to do my duty, to God and to the Queen”, but I didn't mean it. I just held on to one of the other promises - “I will do my best”.

To me, some people were religious, and some people weren't. It was all fine by me, whatever it took to float your boat (or Ark). This all changed when I met the girl who was to become my wife. As mentioned earlier, Wana is a committed Christian, it's part of who she is and the way
she is – and I love her.

Last year, Wana asked me if I would attend a bible study group that was being run by a couple from her church one evening a week for ten weeks. Oh. Initially I gave a flat “No thank you”, but she managed to change my mind with a subtle blend of constant pestering and the eventual promise that if, at the end of the course, I still couldn't see the point of it, she would never ask me to do anything like it again. My agreement also came with a condition from me; that she wasn't allowed to be angry with me for asking any awkward questions.

I hate fights. Always have. Confrontations get my insides into complete knots. So each Wednesday evening I could feel myself getting tense on the journey to the house where the meetings were held, then on the drive home I'd wonder what on earth I'd been so bothered about. The truth is, in general, I had a great time. The hosts were wonderful, they were open to my views, there was always some good banter between myself and the other seven attendees, and I couldn't fail to be impressed by some of the mental acrobatics used to try to answer some of the questions I had. A short DVD would be shown to us at the start of each session, where the presenter would usually recount something about his life and then relate it to something in the stories of Jesus or a section in the Bible explaining what God expects of us.

Week one was a cracker, it went something like this – The DVD began by showing us some sights of absolute wonder, from sunsets, waterfalls, snow topped mountains and newborn lambs playing in the dewy Spring morning, to rainbows, pretty flowers and migrating wildebeest on the African plains. Wow! Then on came the presenter to explain that all this was happening because of God.

Here goes, I thought. “Why then”, I asked, “didn't the footage then go onto plane crashes, disease, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, or maybe even a child dying with a brain tumour (a friend of mine had just lost her three year old son to this awful illness).

The presenter could then go on to say “Oh yes, God is also responsible for all of this”?.

I never got a straight answer to any of my questions, always just a riddle, or “it was all part of God's plan”. Planning's not his strong point then. There was, however, one occasion when I asked why China had been struck by those devastating earthquakes, and the answer one guy gave me was that “they must have been sinners and so deserved to die”.

Mind you, he was the same guy who, at one meeting, announced that he'd read in the paper that a scientist had proved the existence of God. This was big news, world news, and I wondered why I hadn't heard or seen anything about it on the radio or TV. I inquired which newspaper I should buy on the way home even though, surely, they must be sold out now. It transpired, however, that it was a story in the “Good News” newspaper that gets handed out at church. That would explain it, he'd read it in the “religious man's Sunday Sport”.

I was always amazed at how, for some, the Bible, this immovable object, this truth, this word of God, suddenly became really flexible when faced with science. They would say things like -
“yes, I know it says seven days, but a day was probably the same as a thousand years back then”. Really? So why wasn't it so flexible before the boffins worked out that it couldn't possibly be true? Why were people being tortured for questioning it? How much of the rest of it is open to interpretation?

I'll be honest, I did become rather all consumed with finding out more and more ways to pick holes in faith and in the Bible, reading all sorts of books and scouring the internet for articles by like-minded people. I even thought, secretly, that once the people at these meetings had heard my concrete reasoning, that they would see that I was right all along. They didn't. I was the daft one for thinking that they would. I had to concede that logic and faith aren't even in the same room together, so they're never going to meet head to head. Science looks at the Bible, or indeed any of the Holy books, and it concentrates on the gaps. Faith fills the gaps in. I'm still with the scientists on this but I figure that's OK.

With all this research I was doing there was one thing I did figure out about myself. I found out that an atheist isn't someone who doesn't believe in God, but rather someone who doesn't believe a god. So, to a Hindu, a Christian is an atheist and vice-versa. Of course, this meant that I was going to these Bible study evenings with a whole group of atheists – the only difference being that I believed in one less god than they did. So what did that make me? Well, it turns out that I must be a Humanist, believing in the ability to lead a moral life without a deity or ancient scriptures. So now I find I've got a label too! How did that happen? When I first met Wana, she asked me if I believed in God. My answer was “No, but I do believe in good”.

I can feel a song coming on! Join in if you know the words -

“I'm an ape man, I'm an ape, ape man
Oh, I'm an ape man...

Free speech and scepticism

2009-06-18T14:48:00.017+03:00

I was interested by Searchlight's repetition that "we don't support free speech for fascists" in the wake of the Nick Griffin egging event the other day.

At first I thought this was going to trigger an internal war between my irrepressibly liberal Mr Hyde and my communitarian (if anti-state) socialist Dr Jekyll. Turns out they agreed.

Contra Searchlight, my ideological opinion is that free speech should be an absolute right although I would also support the right of hecklers to intervene in anyway that does not pose any physical danger to the speaker. Eggs are most appropriate. Incidentally, and more controversially, I don't believe incitement should be a crime either, only the physical violence that it may provoke.

In any case, my main objection is that restricting free speech removes the opportunity to negate ridiculous, false and dangerous arguments. Of course there will always be some with bizarre views, and I do think all of us are inclined to believe some things simply because we want them to be true.

But, recklessly to adapt the adage, some of us fool ourselves some of the time but we all can't fool ourselves all of the time.

For example, consider the bizarre chunnerings of Bjoern Lomborg, a political scientist, economist and writer who became very rich by denying, audaciously with no relevant expertise, the overwhelming consensus of peer-reviewed climate science and who writes in today's Guardian that we shouldn't overemphasise man-made climate change because it scares kids.

The fact is, his views are relatively common despite all the evidence.

If there were scientific disagreement on the reason for the death of the canary in the mine, I would still be pretty inclined to take radical policy steps to avoid the 50% chance that it was all about to blow up. That there is barely any disagreement of this sort makes our governments' inaction - and our complicity - utterly scandalous.

We are a public that is willing to disregard the views of those who have actually studied this because the effects of climate change constitute, to coin a phrase, an inconvenient truth.

Now Searchlight may say: that's what happens when you allow people with dangerous views a platform.

I would counter that it's precisely because the relevant contextual facts about climate science are largely absent in the public discourse: not simply what's happening, but the how and whom of our arrival at these facts.

We may hear reports of another bleak climate forecast, and I have no reason to doubt it, but we are rarely given an insight into the extent the research behind the forecast conformed to academic standards or where it fits with the existing consensus - or the esteem in which a report's authors are held amongst peers.

Likewise, the current conflict in Iran. The internal politics of Iran isn't an area of particular expertise for me, and I was uncomfortable with the fact that, from listening to and reading the mainstream media, I had heard very few hard facts about vote-rigging. There seemed to be an automatic leap from 'Ahmadinejad is bad' to 'Mousavi represents the disenfranchised majority in the country', assuming that we don't need any evidence to make the leap. I became increasingly suspicious of the mainstream media's line, until I spoke to an Iranian friend who pointed me in the direction of some useful material which makes a pretty compelling case.

The fact is the evidence is there, and it ought to be presented. If it's not, scepticism is inevitable.

Is this too much to ask of popular news? No I really don't think it is. During the American elections I raved about the Truth-o-Meter at the St Petersburg Times. I'm glad to say they have kept it up. It provides pithy analyses of statements made by public figures with additional background information and research. It makes getting to the context easy, and gives enough information to allow me to disagree if necessary with their conclusions.

Whether regarding climate science, the EU, immigration or the economy, I believe people will in general ask of everything they hear on the news: why should I believe that? Because politicians and the media actively prevent us from having all the facts on contentious issues, we are denied them through habit on uncontentious issues.

In fact this sceptical question should be encouraged from the very youngest age. But, when we have good reason to believe something, it should also be answered.

What now for the one-state solution?

2009-06-18T13:12:00.006+03:00

As Heathlander points out, Khaled Meshaal's two-state concession is way, way more original and significant that Netanyahu's widely-covered speech last week repeating the old Bantustan 'solution' - of which, happily, the non-Zionist Israeli blogosphere was unanimous in its derision.

Those who worry that Meshaal's statement undermines the binational one-state solution may have a point, and there are now no major parties in Palestinian politics calling actively for a binational solution. But it has long been my belief that if ever we are to reach a single democratic binational state, a Holy Land federation, the necessary interim is two states coexisting for some time, perhaps some considerable time.

That this preserves the current and historical conflict is undoubtedly true. But it also levels the playing field upon which future engagement can be carried out.

Hamas have again siezed the initiative and seem to be the only actor in the conflict currently making meaningful gestures towards a long-term and just peace.

Steph Macleod wins Troubadour

2009-06-13T16:14:00.004+03:00

Delighted to hear that Steph won the Troubadour competition in Berlin last night. You can hear him play a couple of songs for free in Inverurie this Friday, from 8pm at the Acorn Centre!

Grassroots organisation within the system?

2009-06-10T14:43:00.002+03:00

Ex-NF man, now community leader Phil Andrews, offers this useful reflection on stopping the BNP.

Belated reflections on Obama's Cairo speech

2009-06-09T19:06:00.015+03:00

There is reason to be encouraged by Obama's speech in Cairo last week, and there are causes for concern. The fact that this sentence could have been written by Zionists, Islamists, militants, liberals, conservatives and pretty much anyone is testimony to his oratory if nothing else, but it's also evidence of the statement's truth.

The biggest thumbs-up from me is once again for his approach: respectful, dignified and humble. That the bemused Wall Street Journal could find nothing new in Obama's speech compared to Bush policy is worthy of further reflection, which I'll give below, but is largely to miss the point.

Few Arabs I spoke to ever despised Bush because he wanted to get rid of Saddam or Osama bin Laden, or even that he had a rather elevated absolutist view of parliamentary democracy. Rather, they hated his arrogant "New Middle East" agenda that failed ever to convey respect or esteem for the Middle East that already exists in its compelling diversity, proud history and rich culture. Bush's blinkered engagement with the region spoke only of American supremacy despite the very chequered history of US involvement in the region.

In contrast, from the outset Obama spoke in the careful but robust language of respect-despite-difference that one might encounter in one of Cairo's maqhas. He spoke of being honoured by the platform at Al-Azhar, he wished the audience (God's) peace in Arabic, he listed the achievements of Islam, the historical record of which for racial equality and religious tolerance soars above that of Christendom.

He avoided patronising generalisations such as Bush's "Islam is a religion of peace", and spoke eloquently of shared specifics. He quoted the Qur'an in a manner that took account of the context of the quotes, rather than simply as debate fodder.

This is not meaningless window dressing. To have made this effort is to invite engagement; to have delved into culture and history is to provide the kind of context, the necessary story, that moderates gut reactions and stalls prejudice.

When it comes to intercultural dialogue, the medium is probably the most important part of the message.

But, following the Wall Street Journal, we should certainly take note of the content. They are not correct to say there was no substantive difference in comparison to Bush. Notably, there was some sympathetic and quite aposite analysis of the troubled relationship between the US and Islam, tying it fairly to globalisation and American economic dominance. He also explained why American Islamophobia has strengthened in the wake of 9/11 whilst explicitly condemning it.

And then he addressed areas of difference specifically. This is of course where I become more ambivalent, and where the Journal's comparison becomes more valid. He began by looking at American 'engagement' in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then moved on to Palestine.

The juxtaposition was unfortunate:

We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case. And that's why we're partnering with a coalition of 46 countries.

Versus:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed... Hamas must put an end to violence.

Wince. If one excepts violence by states (which I don't) one can not simply dismiss violence by non-state actors. Were Obama to lay down American arms, cut American defence budgets and remove American imperial troops from strategic locations such as Saudi Arabia, then he could arguably legitimately lecture the Palestinians on violence (and, notably, would take the US out of Osama bin Laden's line of fire) but until then he would be better not to advocate nonviolence to the weak from a position of strength.

But it got better. His statement of support for Israel was a statement of fact more than anything, and with Ahmadinejad in his sights, he reiterated the importance of grasping the "tragic history" of the Jewish people. It is wholly fair to tie this to the Zionist impulse, whatever one thinks about Zionism itself. He was also relatively robust in his assertion of Palestinian rights, short of recognising the legal right of armed resistance.

He stated his belief in nuclear non-proliferation for all, and even more boldly decried the Arab regimes' use of Israel as a Macguffin and urged democratic reform rooted in common human aspirations rather than Western Enlightenment utopianism. "The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems" he had said earlier.

This delighted his audience, who burst into applause as soon as he came - conscious of his anti-democratic host - to points four and five, democracy and religious freedom.

The Wall Street Journal editorial stated that there wasn't clear policy daylight between Bush and Obama, and in so much as both called for democratisation, religious freedom and a rejection of non-state violence they're correct. In fairness, we shouldn't forget that Obama and Bush represent roughly the same long term economic interests.

However, the fact that Obama has forsaken the attitude of imperial bully means that it's far less likely that US interventions will lead to bloodshed, or that support will rally behind extremist groups.

A rant

2009-06-08T17:45:00.007+03:00

I have never come so close to not voting. I voted half-heartedly in the end, and I would suspect that among the 34% of the registered electorate who voted last week, I was not alone.

The response from incumbent policy makers has been the usual: "The public are saying they are dissatisfied so we need to start listening..."

No, no, no. You say that after every election when the number of votes cast drops even further, and each time you maintain the status quo with a supposed mandate. You do not have a mandate either to govern or to oppose, you are all minority parties.

The current electoral regime cannot command a turnout even approaching a pitiful 50% for most elections, and little more than that for Westminster elections.

And don't blame the electorate for "letting" the BNP in. The fact is that half of the country doesn't seem to think a few BNP policy makers would be much worse than the current lot in the current system, so perhaps its worth pointing the finger back at yourselves.

If you were really listening to the voice of the absent majority, you would be doing some serious work on making the political regime relevant and decision making processes inclusive. You would empower local community groups, encourage participation in grassroots activity (rather than ignoring it in favour of vested party interests) and encourage those outside of your entrenched parties to participate in the policy-making process.

Resisting change won't benefit anyone in the long run, except those who feed off dissatisfaction. It's time to give a bit of power away. Please.

What Mandy would have told the waverers?

2009-06-08T16:14:00.008+03:00

The parliamentary Labour party would be mad to dispense with Brown right now. A change of leader would make the calls for an immediate general election absolutely deafening, and holding one this summer would be infinitely worse for Labour than holding one in a year's time.

Were the Tories to take over now, a visionless and vacuous right would enjoy the political fruits of the now pretty inevitable economic turnaround, and Labour would be finished, perhaps for good. The left would be resurgent, the right would be intransigent, the party would become even more irrelevant.

Which is why the more intelligent Blairites have not jumped on the bandwagon of would be assassins, currently populated by - how to put it? - people of unproven ability. For Mandelson and others, the risk of a big swing left and political obscurity is just too great to be countenanced.

Of course, the press makes it look like Brown is just digging in because he's a control-freak oblivious to the popular will. In fact, his resolve is actually rather astute and, regardless of whether his own credibility can be restored, probably works in the whole party's favour.

All that said, Labour still have to do a huge amount of work if it is to restore to itself any semblance of a popular movement.

A couple of other things to reflect on in the light of the EU election results. Only UKIP and the SNP can really claim to have had a fantastically good night. The Greens' laudable 2.4% increase in vote share hasn't translated into seats. The Tories' progress is very limited. There is no rising tide of support for Cameron and no reliable thumbs up for anyone except Salmond's lot. (In fact, the SNP had a 0.72% rise in the share of the UK-wide vote, only 0.01% lower than the Tories' increase.)

The Tories have not really capitalised on Labour's predicament. It is therefore still conceivable that Labour will make up a hefty minority of MPs in the next parliament, providing it is their government that sees the UK through the next few months.

To fear the BNP?

2009-06-02T12:19:00.010+03:00

It would be a genuine shock if the bravado talk of the BNP were to materialise as electoral gains this Thursday. While the odd councillor here or there may get in, the fact is their record as councillors is atrocious and, to some extent, speaks for itself.

However, being a Black Countryman I know that shocks happen. Searchlight shows how small changes in turnout could dramatically increase BNP influence in British politics. I even received a BNP leaflet up here in Inverurie of all places.

What's more, things change very quickly. Remember how rapidly the Nazis went from a bunch of brown-shirted thugs in German inner-cities to the popular government of Europe's largest population and the rulers of swathes of this continent?

The absurd Westminster circus is being shown for what it is, while the system of global capital is increasingly looking like an Emperor in the nude. Unsurprisingly people are insecure and looking outside of the discredited mainstream. Alas, when fear prevails so does evil, and the BNP's beliefs are irredeemably evil.

However, there's a tendency to counter the politics of fear with fear. We shouldn't fear. The fact is that the BNP's heritage and essence is manifestly vicious and vile, and our society is not yet so degraded as to embrace it wholesale.

I say this only as a call to ploughshares:

Identify and remove the shoots of hatred in every conversation in which they emerge.
Conspicuously embrace the racial and religious Other such that we stand in the majority with those who would bear the violent brunt of a BNP ascendancy: ethnic minorities, asylum seekers, homosexuals, gypsies, and indeed those who most vociferously oppose the BNP such as anti-fascist campaigners.
Actively campaign against the BNP wherever they stand for election, even if you don't vote for another party.
Recognise the real hardships and legitimate complaints of those who are considered 'natural' BNP voters, particularly in neglected and impoverished housing estates where much of the burden of supporting immigration is endured.
And crucially, fight for local grassroots democratisation such that politics is not confined to the distant arenas of our parliaments, because an irrelevant regime is much easier to hijack.

There is some useful information on this Facebook group page, as well as on Searchlight's website.

Scottish Climate Bull

2009-05-30T23:31:00.005+03:00

No policy debate was of more importance to Scotland's future than that around the Scottish Climate Bill, voted through this week. But to describe it as a missed opportunity is a gross understatement.

In failing to set annual targets now it ties the current government to nothing much at all. Annual targets for the government in power in 2020? Hoorah!

This is the landfill mindset of policy making, the temporal 'out of sight, out of mind' short-termism of parochial conservatism, and also constitutes a scandalous betrayal of previously expressed beliefs by supposedly social democratic members of parliament, such as our First Minister.

That Labour joined the SNP in this is, I suppose no surprise. In fact, I read this from Bob Thomson, the former chairman and treasurer of the Scottish Labour Party, in the current Scottish Left Review:

In my view Labour has actually been saved in Scotland by being forced to go into coalition with the Lib Dems. In my view, if they had been able to, they would have been even more cautious and New Labour. If you look at how Labour in Scotland talks about things it mainly seems to be about how little they could get away with doing before anyone would start to complain.

Amen.

Credit to Alison McInnes and Patrick Harvie for fighting for something a bit more robust at the committee level.

boxthejack on Mars Hill

2009-05-26T13:36:00.002+03:00

Paul Burgin has very kindly asked me to answer his now legendary 20 Questions to a fellow blogger on his Mars Hill blog. I am number 123.

Please don't hold me to my answers about favourite songs and all that though.

Scott Rennie etc.

2009-05-26T01:33:00.017+03:00

First off, I want to disown a couple of arguments that have been made in defence of Scott Rennie's appointment as a minister of the Kirk.

1. God made him homosexual therefore homosexuality can't be wrong therefore it's not an issue. This isn't really an argument unless you are happy to say that every sexual inclination, or even every behaviour to which one may be genetically predisposed, is legitimate. People are born with all sorts of traits, some positive, some negative some neutral. It's just as intelligible to say: 'God made him prone to fits of temper therefore...' or 'God made her a paedophile therefore...' or 'God made them racist therefore...'. Of course, I'm not equating homosexuality with any of the above - I'm just pointing out that innateness isn't proof of rightness.

2. Christian unity is too important to sacrifice therefore we must put aside our personal convictions. This is another argument that few would follow to its logical conclusion. If I belonged to a church organisation and it were to nominate a leader who believed that the unfettered pursuit of wealth was legitimate - as many, many do - I would speak out, and if I wasn't heard I may have to leave. It's not a takfir against the church or the leader. In an organisational expression of church in which you allegedly belong to something more than each other (a post for another time!) you can't last long pushing against the tide, whatever the issue.

So. The basic question is this: should a church accept homosexual practice among those who identify with it, and among those tasked with leading others under its auspices?

My thoughts:

The big texts

Those who say 'no' would likely reach for proof texts such as this from 1 Corinthians and this from Romans. I'm not satisfied by this approach. For a start, as some have explained it with reference to the Corinthian sex market, male homosexuality in New Testament times was an expression of domination over the vulnerable, such as slaves. Paul doesn't condemn female homosexuality, you Greek scholars may notice, but arsenokoitai, a male homosexual practice. What is in his sights here? Two men in lifelong covenant one to another? I hardly think so.

Similar arguments can be made even more easily when looking at Lot, Sodom and all that.

The bigger Text

But before we know it, we've moved from exegesis to hermeneutics, and that's where most of my energies will be directed. There is a tendency in the evangelical churches in particular, but actually throughout the church whenever it suits us, to take texts on a supposed 'face value' that actually deprives them of meaning.

Whenever you hear of 'plain literal meaning' or 'face value', beware. This is almost always selective. For example, I have never once heard a Christian say that eating rare steak is wrong. That verse about blood is 'cultural' apparently, as if other verses are acultural, and carry their full meaning even when isolated and embroidered onto a flowery wall hanging.

In fact, all scripture is the product of and in dialogue with a specific culture - aye, even the 10 Commandments. Perhaps the truth and beauty of some texts seem closer to the surface, but there's always some mining to be done. I don't dismiss the 10th Commandment because it aims at those who covet their neighbour's donkey rather than me. Of course not. I attempt to ascertain what attitude of the heart is being challenged, or what attitude is being promoted.

So for example, in a game of proof-text tennis I could win an ace against divorce because Jesus said: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Job done. Divorce is wrong.

Nonsense. Surely we should bear the question in mind as we read the answer. Jesus is responding to a manipulative question by saying: 'you're using the law to legitimise your selfishness at whatever cost to the woman you abandon. If you want to know what that selfishness looks like to God, it's the same as the adultery you'd be so quick to condemn as deserving of death.'

And the challenge is this, in full resonance with the bulk of scripture: you who are so quick to attack sexual deviance, actually it's your use of power in the most intimate relationships that is deviant.

He holds a mirror up to his interlocutors and stops them in their tracks. Taken in the context of the dialogue with the Pharisees, the most obvious truth of this statement is not in fact 'divorce is wrong', regardless of whether it is in fact right or wrong. That doesn't seem to be Jesus' point. The truth of this statement is in his exposing the attitude of those posing the question.

Jesus, laws and the law

Incidentally, that is why it is also missing the point to suggest that Jesus overturns the Old Testament law. He doesn't. Jesus just points out that the law is not a transcendent thing at all, but a localised expression of the transcendent God's broken heart for his creation. When Jesus tells people effectively to ignore the law, it's not a problem with the law he's got, but a problem with their use of it, which elevates adherence to laws above adherence to the law as an expression of God's heart.

The New Testament writers therefore follow Jesus' lead in saying: 'OK, this isn't about law, it's about grace.' How should we live if we are seeking first the Kingdom, the heart of God for his world?

God's best?

Here we may encounter the most compelling argument against the appointment of a homosexual pastor. An argument can be made from biology that, if sexuality is at all related to procreation, God's 'best' is covenantal and exclusive heterosexuality. Lifelong monogamy. Now, from scripture you could argue against the exclusive bit. The patriarchs had a few wives to choose from after all. But this notwithstanding, let's say God's original design was heterosexual marriage.

We do not live in Eden. From scripture, it was not God's design that we should eat the dead bodies of other animals, that we should wear clothes, or that we should ever have to struggle. However, I think feasting on meat can be a great thing, and something that can honour God. Likewise our fashion choices. Likewise our struggling.

Likewise monogamous homosexuality. Is it not possible that the God of the Bible can be pleased by a homosexual covenantal relationship, by love lived out sacrificially and exclusively? Does God not delight in a relationship between two men or two women where love such as that described elsewhere in 1 Corinthians is outworked? Is it not abuse that grieves him, the subjugation of the vulnerable by the powerful, the exploitation of intimacy for the satisfaction of one's own desires?

From the sheer weight of texts from every possible context, and with all necessary exegetical mining undertaken, these things are seriously dark, and seriously everywhere.

And aren't these the things that we are all in danger of missing in our own relationships when we focus on law enforcement? What would be Jesus' reply to our question: is it lawful?

This all may or may not mean that Scott Rennie is an appropriate pastor for his church. That's not for me to say. But I agree with the Kirk's provisional decision: his current living arrangement is not to be a barrier.

Qunfuz

2009-05-25T15:39:00.004+03:00

Regarding Obama's forthcoming visit to Cairo, I thought this comment by Qunfuz on Maysaloon was worthy of a post of its own:

Here comes the Grand Obama Muslim World Peace Hug Initiative, in which backward peoples will proclaim in concert the righteousness of zionist claims to Palestine, and Israel will allow the establishment of a thriving Arab state on a football pitch outside Nablus. Hoorah!

un|broken: personal reflections

2009-05-20T13:40:00.003+03:00

So the album's out, and I am well pleased. I knew the songs were carefully chosen and the production team (of Colin Peckham, Dave Biddulph and Euan McRae) highly creative, but there were no guarantees the album would work as a unit.

It really does. Rebecca Hardie's Do you not know? made me weep; Steph's Little by little almost caused me to veer off the road in Dundee. My songs - well, I spend my whole time critiquing the vocal performance so can't really judge. But that it holds together so well is remarkable.

Euan put hundreds and hundreds of hours into making this happen in a matter of weeks, and he will get a pint the next time I see him. Dave takes enormous credit for making the thing happen in the first place, taking the songs and suping up their engines with his band of beat mechanics, and for keeping the project together.

Meanwhile Colin's arrangements are truly awesome - at times breathtaking. They don't just add depth and nuance, they are hugely sensitive interpretations of the originals that demonstrate a poetic sensibility as well as simply a keen grasp of harmony. His arrangements accentuate and elaborate the songs' meanings as well as adding depth to the sound.

But more than anything it's a collaboration wherein ownership over the music has been very widely shared. For some songs, the arrangers list could have been seven or eight people long; sometimes arrangers became almost co-writers. My song Thirteen, for example, owes much to playing versions of it with Steph acoustically last year.

Hence, in letting go of our songs, they've come back to us richer. They may have individual names next to them, but they're the product of a creative engagement that must be pretty rare indeed.

Anyway, you can buy it here. Hope you like it.

Euro elections: check or bet?

2009-05-13T16:24:00.004+03:00

Scandalous as the expenses debacle has been - and so much more scandalous following the indignant response of so many of the dramatis personae - this is not in itself a reason to wash one's hands of the entire system. It is by no means inconceivable that parliament will now reform itself such that this can't happen again, and perhaps the MPs returned at the next general election will do less to dishonour the reputation of the House than the incumbents.

That said, it does no harm to the views of those who would argue that our UK liberal democratic system is a sham, wherein the process is symbolic, the decision-making distant, and the arena of debate restricted and inaccessible. These are views put most robustly by libertarian communists and other anarchists who would wish either to live regardless of the law or to engage the system towards its downfall.

These are views for which I have some considerable sympathy. Having worked in the office of an excellent MSP, I would nevertheless struggle to affirm the process in which she works. Political parties representing membership cliques set the agendas, such that well-meaning politicians direct their energies towards the promotion of an already finished programme, rather than towards fulfilling the expressed aspirations of their constituents. A robust contest of visions in the political arena is quite unheard of - it's rather more like listening to a bunch of mechanics discuss how best to tinker with an under-performing engine.

It might be argued, then, that voting provides a bankrupt system with the dinner dress it needs to maintain the sham.

Abstaining is the equivalent of holding onto one's cards believing that aspirations for an wholly differnt polity are worth retaining against the shoddy hand of the status quo. But there are a couple of reasons why I may yet vote in the Euro elections:

It is possible, particularly at European Parliament elections, to vote for parties that believe in a transfer of power away from the centre towards decision-making strata at which more people can exercise power effectively.
The aspiration of genuinely local, democratic and organic grassroots organisation is something that can happen extra to the system that discourages it, so we are not yet at a position of no compromise with the system.
We may, by not voting, allow out and out fascists into positions of influence because they're willing to play the game. Perhaps we should swallow our pride.

Statist socialism or liberlaism isn't for me. As such, I expect I will be voting Green next month, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Speaker/silencer

2009-05-13T01:03:00.005+03:00

Last week, in conversation with an outraged friend, I expressed my thoughts much along the lines of Stephen Fry's opinion regarding this whole expenses fiasco.

So politicians are much like everyone else - it's just they haven't regulated themselves to the same extent as they've regulated the public. That's what happens when power is located in so few hands.

But the last couple of days' parliamentary proceedings have been something else. The politician who suggests that it's rather missing the point to investigate a leak revealing widespread malpractice, gets personally attacked by the institution's supposedly aloof figurehead. It reminds me of the attitude of the NHS in the Margaret Haywood saga.

Then, when a veteran colleague implies that the Speaker spoke out of turn, he's told to consider resigning.

Michael Martin is a very, very appropriate public face for our parliament just now, and while it's perhaps appealing to imagine him dragged from the chair, it may be better to leave him there - that would surely hasten the day we can convert Westminster Palace into a profitable museum.

un|broken: what's it all about?

2009-04-30T14:28:00.003+03:00

I've contributed five songs to an album due out next month released by the Exile band. I wrote this initially for the new un|broken Facebook group.

ON A THUNDERY day in Mull, while the rest of the band were in the studio laying down similarly thunderous drums, growling bass lines, and tuning Steph's guitar, Colin and I sat down to discuss the message - what's this album about?

A number of key themes characterised the material that made it onto the album: light and dark, hope and doubt, repentance and resistance, elation and despair, God's presence and absence.

As we discussed what brought these themes together the image of Jacob wrestling God at Peniel was in my mind, alongside the words of Jesus quoting Isaiah: "a bruised reed I shall not break".

For me, these scriptures speak of a God who engages with the honestly wrestling, the honestly doubting, the honestly praising.

What could it possibly mean that God "could not overpower" Jacob? Perhaps it has something to do with Divine refusal to break the bruised - his preference for the seeking, knocking, and hungering over the Pharisee with only unbending legalistic certainty.

So un|broken? Colin suggested dividing up the word to convey the core tension - unbrokenness being a function of brokenness. Restoration arises out of the very brokenness that invites and presages engagement with God.

As it happens, the next day Colin opened his Bible for personal devotions to find both Genesis 32 (Peniel) and Matthew 12 (bruised reed) on the menu. The name stuck.

[Advance copies of un|broken will be available from www.inexile.net from 18 May, and from Wesley Owen and the Faith Mission bookshops in Edinburgh.]

Holy Saturday: Be Afraid

2009-04-11T12:47:00.002+03:00

So the stone has been rolled over the entrance to the tomb, and we have walked away: the final failure of God.

With our rabbi we buried our hope, and without hope there's only the voice of Empire, unchallenged, saying: "Be afraid, be afraid."

Be afraid of terrorism. Do not risk freedom.

Be afraid of moral degradation. Do not risk engagement.

Be afraid of economic meltdown. Do not risk an economy of grace, justice and codependency.

Be afraid of losing. Do not risk walking with the last.

Be afraid of poverty. Do not risk self-sacrifice for the whole.

Be afraid of Them. Do not risk hospitality.

Be afraid of death. Do not risk life to the full.

Be afraid of anything that isn't this. Do not risk anything else.

On Holy Saturday, there is no Psalm 46.

ADL: Puh-lease!

2009-03-27T13:35:00.004+03:00

Those chaps at the Anti-Defamation League have excelled themselves. Apparently this is "hideously anti-semitic".

As the Angry Arab points out: "it is not anti-Semitic if you even demonize and denigrate Israel, just as it is not anti-Islamic to demonize and denigrate Saudi Arabia. Personally, I demonize both states and call on everybody to join me, the sound bites of Zionist hoodlums notwithstanding."

Quite. In fact, seeing as I've mentioned him, check out his (As'ad Abu Khalil's) book The Battle for Saudi Arabia.

Textual Occupation

2009-03-26T13:44:00.007+02:00

I was chatting to a Palestinian Christian the other day who said she had stopped going to church because "they use the Old Testament". This was in the context of a discussion about Zionist, especially Christian Zionist, uses of the texts to justify and sanctify a colonialist endeavour.

It was not possible for me to pursue this further with her, but it broke my heart. The occupation of these texts by the oppressor is a violence of far more consequence that that of material theft - it is a seizure of part of her community's heritage, her story. It is profoundly disempowering.

What's more, from a Christian perspective, it is a bitterly ironic victory of Babylon over the dispossessed Covenant people.

Rob Bell's latest book is a wonderfully accessible presentation of a hermeneutic that unleashes the transforming power of the whole Bible as a story of liberation. He also critiques the dominant hermeneutic of Christendom, in which injustice, power and satiation are justified by manipulating the voices of the oppressed, powerless and impoverished.

I wonder whether there exists an indigenous Palestinian hermeneutic that can reclaim this territory for the people on behalf of whom these texts speak? Naim Ateek's Justice and Only Justice may come close to presenting one. I should possibly read it again.

After all, those Palestinians who read the Old Testament as their story are liberating the texts from the shackles of power and oppression, and are restoring holy land to its rightful inhabitants.

Who broke the Gaza ceasefire (part 2)

2009-03-24T14:39:00.002+02:00

The full UN report is here.

Interesting closing recommendation that: "It be recognized that the Palestinian right of resistance under international law within the limits of international humanitarian law continually collides with Israeli security concerns as occupying Power, requiring basic adjustments in the relationship of the parties premised on respect for the legal rights of the Palestinian people; and that sustainable peace in Gaza requires the permanent lifting of the blockade in the short term, and a diplomatic process that seeks peace in accordance with the requirements of international law in the long term."

The return of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad

2009-02-10T11:23:00.002+02:00

If the US hadn't backed Ethiopian troops who toppled Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad in 2006, Somalia might have arrived here rather sooner.

Activist abducted by Egyptian secret police

2009-02-09T22:39:00.004+02:00

From the Middle East Times:

"A German-Egyptian arrested by security forces near Cairo following a non-violent march in support of Gaza has sparked an international conundrum and left protesters and rights groups frustrated over the state's maltreatment of peace activists.

Philip Rizk, a filmmaker and postgraduate student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), had joined 14 others in a 10 kilometer (six mile) march on the outskirts of Cairo on Friday, but his whereabouts are a mystery after he was arrested and transferred to an unknown location.

The activists, part of the "To Gaza" campaign, had been marching in solidarity with Palestinians and to raise awareness about the effects of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Rizk had spent two years working in Gaza before returning to Cairo to study one and a half years ago."

See Ben's blog for more.

There's a great deal of insecurity at the top in Egypt. Favour with the US has been bought at a very high cost.

Fear wins Israeli elections

2009-02-09T20:35:00.011+02:00

Dr Avishai, Haim Watzman and, in particular, Heathlander have more to say.

Who broke the Gaza ceasefire?

2009-01-27T21:30:00.003+02:00

I thought it was generally accepted that Israel broke the ceasefire having allegedly discovered a suspicious tunnel, 4 November, but I've seen the opposite asserted a number of times on article comment threads.

Here's Mark Regev conceding that Hamas hadn't broke the ceasefire at this time.

Rubeiz on Palestinian resistance

2009-01-09T01:58:00.002+02:00

In a very brief article Dr Rubeiz has gotten to the heart of the matter: Palestinians pay the price for Israel's existential fear. Exacerbating it is counterproductive.

Effective resistance will remove the straw man, it will be nonviolent, it will transcend factionalism, it will not be dominated by big men, it will be utterly invincible.

Thank God, some people believe it.