[Peace-discuss] Jensen article

[Brussel]

David's comments and Jensen's remarks are not contradictory. --mkb


On Jan 13, 2009, at 10:25 AM, David Green wrote:

>
>
> This is a fine article, but I find myself not in complete agreement  
> with Jensen's evaluation of "the American people's"  willingness to  
> support violence. It's true that they (we) are easily  
> propagandized, whipped up, and frightened. And I also agree about  
> his criticism of the ifamericansknew website (Alison Weir)  
> regarding her faith in the people to do the right thing being  
> somewhat naive. Nevertheless, recent polling about Gaza shows that  
> in spite of mainstream media coverage, and likely because of  
> broader sources of information, increasing numbers of Americans  
> (and especially Democrats) are no longer on the U.S.-Israel  
> bandwagon in relation to the current campaign. There's reason to  
> believe that the truth does make a difference, and that the central  
> problem is therefore the general feeling of alienation and  
> powerlessness to influence events, especially regarding foreign  
> policy.
>
>
> Beyond grief and rage: Palestine and the politics of resistance
>
> Jan 12, 2009 By Robert Jensen
>
> Robert Jensen's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
>
> [A version of this essay was delivered to the "Day of Action for  
> Gaza" gathering
> in Austin, TX, on January 10, 2009.]
>
> We need to analyze and strategize about political realities, but  
> let's begin
> with an emotional reality: For the past few weeks the scenes from  
> Gaza have been
> driving many of us mad.
>
> For all the horrors in the world, there has been something  
> especially brutal and
> barbaric about Israel's use of fighter jets and other sophisticated  
> weapons to
> pound this small strip of land, to target the 1.5 million people  
> crowded there,
> to destroy a society. Out of that grief flows rage, not just at the  
> sadistic
> Israeli violence but also at the "we must stand with Israel"  
> declarations coming
> from Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
>
> The grief is achingly real, and the rage is morally justified. But  
> it's also
> true that for anyone who is aware of the suffering of this world,  
> such emotions
> are part of daily life. To know -- to make the choice to know --  
> about the
> extent of injustice and the depth of misery all over the planet is  
> to accept
> that we will wake every morning to that grief and rage.
>
> Our task today is to think about how to channel the power of those  
> emotions into
> effective political action. That is no small task after so many  
> years of
> struggle and so many failures to change our government's policies.
>
> Let's start by remembering the other places where that suffering  
> has been so
> intense: Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, southern Africa,  
> southeast Asia. I
> mention those places in particular because much of the suffering  
> there has been
> a result, directly or indirectly, of U.S. economic, military, and  
> foreign
> policy. Those are some of the places that have borne the brunt of  
> the U.S.
> empire's violence since the end of World War II. As a U.S. citizen,  
> those are
> the places to which I have the clearest moral connection; those of  
> us who claim
> the United States as home must come to terms with that suffering.
>
> "The West" has been involved in empire-building for 500 years, and  
> for the past
> 60 years the United States has led that imperial project. It is a  
> project soaked
> in blood. One of the great apologists for the empire, the late  
> political
> scientist Samuel Huntington, was at least honest in acknowledging  
> that: "The
> West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or  
> religion (to
> which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather  
> by its
> superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget  
> this fact;
> non-Westerners never do."[1]
>
> Our first task is to refuse to forget, which means recognizing  
> that, in the
> context of U.S. policy, there is nothing special about Palestine.  
> It is one
> place where the West and its surrogates have used organized  
> violence to achieve
> political and economic aims. U.S. support for Israel's occupation  
> of Palestine
> has to be seen as part of that imperial project; those of us in the  
> United
> States who want to defend Palestine have to resist the U.S. empire.
>
> Too often activists in the United States have ignored this. For  
> example, the
> group "If Americans Knew" has done fine work to distribute  
> information about the
> occupation, but consider this sentence from its mission statement:  
> "It is our
> belief that when Americans know the facts on a subject, they will,  
> in the final
> analysis, act in accordance with morality, justice, and the best  
> interests of
> their nation, and of the world."[2]
>
> If only that were true. In fact, many Americans routinely endorse  
> actions in
> support of the U.S. empire that are immoral and unjust but which  
> they believe
> are in their best interests, the world be damned. Many others work  
> hard not to
> know -- a willed ignorance -- in order to avoid having to face  
> difficult issues.
> To trust in the moral sensibilities of the U.S. public is to ignore  
> history; in
> the realm of moral vision, Americans are not special.
>
> Let's recognize that resisting the U.S. empire puts us in conflict  
> not only with
> the politicians from the major political parties but also with the  
> majority of
> U.S. citizens. The problem is not simply that many Americans do not  
> know the
> real history of the Israel/Palestine conflict (though it's true  
> that they don't)
> or that the U.S. corporate news media outlets present a  
> consistently distorted
> view of the conflict (though it's true that they do). The problem  
> goes deeper,
> to the core of this country and to the lies we tell ourselves about  
> ourselves.
>
> So, to work for justice for Palestine is to work against the U.S.  
> empire. And to
> work against the U.S. empire is to dig in for the long haul. Our  
> task is not to
> play to Americans' sense of being special, but to help this country  
> come to
> realize that if there is to be a decent future for anyone --  
> indeed, if there is
> to be a future at all -- the United States has to step back from  
> its position of
> arrogance and affluence. We must imagine what it would be like to  
> live as one
> nation in the world, not as an arrogant nation that attempts to  
> dominate the
> world. We must imagine what a good life would look like if we were  
> to give up
> our commitment to affluence and work toward a just and sustainable  
> world at the
> end of the high-energy/high-technology era.
>
> All of that is hard to focus on when Israeli bombs are dropping on  
> Gaza, as the
> U.S. government continues to provide military, diplomatic, and  
> economic support
> to Israel. It is difficult to take the long view as the grief of  
> the people of
> Gaza intensifies by the moment.
>
> But I believe that authentic hope lies in seeing one movement with  
> many fronts.
> The goals must be justice and sustainability, which are inseparably  
> linked. The
> struggle goes on in Palestine and Iraq, in Venezuela and Bolivia,  
> in Oakland and
> Austin. The targets are the empire and economic interests it  
> serves. We have to
> continue to struggle against the corrosive effects of arrogance and  
> affluence,
> in others and in ourselves.
>
> We all have limited time and energy for political work, and we  
> direct that
> energy toward activities that are meaningful to us. One person  
> cannot do
> everything, but each one of us can work within our political groups  
> and
> communities to develop the analysis needed to integrate these many  
> campaigns for
> justice and sustainability, linking our efforts with others'.
>
> With that analysis, there is the possibility of authentic  
> solidarity. And that
> solidarity is our only way to tame the rage, our only way to live  
> with the
> grief.
>
> --------------------------------
>
> Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas  
> at Austin and
> board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His  
> latest book, All
> My Bones Shake, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He  
> also is the
> author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity  
> (South End Press,
> 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White  
> Privilege
> (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim  
> Our Humanity
> (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from  
> the Margins
> to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen can be reached at
> rjensen at ... and his articles can be found online at
> http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.
>
> [1] Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the  
> Remaking of World
> Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 51.
> [2] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/
>
>
>
>
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