Language: November 2007 Archives

When I asked Elana Shohamy if I could reference her in my talk and blog she said, “I don’t own the words.” Later, when I asked about pronunciation, she carried it even further, “I don’t own my name.” This is true. We say what we say and others do what they will with our words, just as we – and me, quite explicitly – do what we will with the words we hear.

There were two points of contention during my presentation yesterday afternoon. A spontaneous dialogue burst out in the middle concerning my use of “we” to refer to participants at both DUO conferences (last year in Chicago and this year in Abu Dis) and my assertion that we need to be in dialogue with the military.

Aide, Shelley and I had quite a conversation about this (interrupting my blogging! Ah, the nerve!) prior to Friday morning’s final plenary. :-) We need to be engaging the military argument directly so that we can learn to articulate our own argument. How do pacifists persuade people that another framework for security is possible? We take for granted that we, in attendance, are all in agreement that peace is the answer and non-violence the strategy. We do not have to explain our reasons to each other; hence, we lack the language for persuading others. Even as we describe the dilemma we utilize military terminology. I am reminded of a supremely ironic moment at DUO I, when one of the most vocal advocates for justice mimed hitting me in the face while telling me if those opposing her point-of-view did not hurry up and come around to implementing her recommendations she’d “punch them in the nose.”

Palestinian and Jewish participants challenged my insistence at combining last year’s conference attendees with this year’s, questioning the attendant implication that there is a kind of continuity between what was talked about last year and what has been discussed this year. Obviously the context here in Palestine is radically different than the context in the midwestern United States: this is reflected in the content of the conference program. For instance, “peace” is a much more significant thread of the discourse here than it was in last year’s conference, and the focus is narrower because the urgency of immediate occupation reduces the relevance of many of the topics that were embraced in Chicago. Nonetheless, one aspect of community-building is to claim members: I would very much like to belong with all those who attended last year and this year's conferences as participants in the task of enacting dialogue under - within, through, despite, and/or because of - occupation.





How to build these conferences into a movement, into "a small group....that could change the world" as Khader Abu-Alia reminded us with Margaret Mead's famous quote, is a tangible, material activity. The idea of preparing some kind of "statement" on behalf of the conference was raised; since then I've been considering what principles might guide such an endeavor. During my presentation I suggested that we should attend to the ritual functions such a statement might serve: how could a few sentences enhance our sense of membership and belonging with and to each other? What would such a statement celebrate?

I suggest three guidelines:

1. global application
2. non-exclusionary language
3. no military symbolism

First, no identity politics. The act of naming any group or cause necessarily excludes other groups and other causes. A statement from the conference membership of DUO ought to be able to be used to understand a broad range of "occupations" - from the literal and specific to the ideological and subjective.

Second, by refusing to name or list even the most egregious occupations, we shift the focus of the struggle from the conditions of occupation (the symptoms, if you will) to its causes, which are ideological.

Third, by rejecting the terminology of war we establish the foundation for another vocabulary.

In sum, we craft a statement that will lead us into the future we want by claiming that future now. We (and I index "us" on purpose) cannot shy from confronting the ironies in our own efforts to establish non-violence as

• the only sane and humane way to resolve conflict and


• a more secure solution than violence.

For instance, I am as "smitten" with Sulaiman Al Hamri as Dahlia but the title of his organization - "combatants" for peace - operates within the monologic of war. (In addition to running his own organization, Sulaiman works with the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, among others. See Viewing the Occupation Up Close.)

Likewise, the challenge of those who “break the silence” is not only to implicate the rest of us as bystanders, but also to situate those who did not/have not confessed their own complicity in contrast with those who choose to tell. The refusers model for us all a higher ethic to which we might seek to strive: especially that small minority who take the ultimate stance of claiming shared humanity as the sole determinant of nonparticipation.

Prior to the closing panel on the last day of the conference, the membership had a conversation about where to hold the next conference. Many people would like us to return here, especially those who live here. Of course they want and need the stimulation, the infusion of energy and attention from the outside. In addition to the cost of travel is the denial of the right to travel. We heard an incredible presentation by Hagit Ofran of Peace Now's project called Settlement Watch, in which she detailed the enforced closure of Gaza and the persistent establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank/Palestine. Obviously, if we hold next year's conference somewhere else most Palestinians - unless there is a seismic shift in the political situation - will not be able to attend.

I argue that if DUO intends to intervene against the monologic of war, then we need both breadth of historical and contemporary content and depth of specific conflict in order to develop the conference as a tool for building alliances across movements and develop a larger rhetoric to counter military logic's absurd rationale that violence equals security. To this end, the privileges of citizenship must be utilized strategically and the luxury of free movement wielded as a deliberate tool.

The boundary of the contest is ideology itself: the logic of war justifying occupation must be engaged with a comprehensive logic of the nonviolent resolution of all differences, without exception. I offer something like the following as a possibility:

The Dialogue under Occupation conferences establish a temporary haven for critical creation and re-creation of nonviolent strategies and solutions to endemic problems. Members engage intensive self-reflection on the depth of our own complicity within the institutional systems and structures perpetuating war, and renew ourselves and each other to the logic of peace.

Thus Dr. Hassam Dweik wecomed us to Al Quds University in Abu Dis, Palestine, for the second international conference on Dialogue under Occupation.





Sabri Safadi wasted no time challenging our gathering of academics concerned with matters of occupation – literally and metaphorically. He was informative, calm, and measured in tone; this allowed most of the audience to listen. Essentially, he asked us: “What are you doing here?” Later in the day, Julia Schlam-Salman approached her study through a social constructionist lens. “The school,” she said, “is just a school”; it is guided by an educational ideology which is institutionalized and thus – metaphorically if not literally – determines things that you can and cannot do within the educational setting. The same applies to us, I thought: “the conference is just a conference”, we operate within a professional-academic ideology that is also deeply institutionalized. Julia went on to describe the additional burden of literal occupation on the inevitable educational occupation, while I reflected on how our conference itself is limited by form and the expectations of form.

Take Sabri’s questions. We have listened to the introductory logistics and official welcome, and have come to the end of the first presentation. The moderator, Dr. Munther S. Dajani, has responded and opened the floor to questions from the audience. In fact, Sabri spoke up at the first point in the structure of an academic conference in which audience members are explicitly invited to speak. (He told me his name means “patience.”)

1) What do we mean by "dialogue" in the title of the conference?
2) Do we have the transparency and the courage to speak out loud?
3) Are we legitimizing the occupation or do we want to end the occupation through this dialogue?
4) What happened to the initial, critical U.S. journalistic responses to the first Intifada that questioned what Israel was doing?


How did we (DUO participants) respond to these questions? We enacted group-level dynamics that established the primacy of academic discourse as the main mode of the conference, not dialogue. How did we do this? First, as moderator, Dr. Dajani acknowledged the importance of Sabri’s questions: “Very difficult questions you are asking!” The audience laughed in agreement. Sabri continued. Politely. At the end of his turn, the next woman returned to the official presentation with what she characterized as a "small question.” Twice, Sabri Safadi and his “very difficult questions” were discursively cut off. I am not advocating that we – those of us in the auditorium at this moment – ought to have done something different, only that we must learn to notice when we derail dialogue, no matter the reason. Only when we realize how we undercut ourselves can we begin to experiment with other tactics that may lead to political solutions.

I was fortunate to sit with Dr. Dajani during lunch. I asked him about his comment concerning the closure of universities for three days of mourning. "“There is another side of this, also to avoid any clashes between the students, we didn’t want the students to carry those problems to campus.” Was this an admission that the University lacked staff able to guide the students in dialogue? Is this a failure of the education system that they shunt the problem to the streets? "You do not understand the culture," he explained. The cultural values of friendship and agreement are intertwined. To the extent one agrees with another, the closer a friendship. The fewer areas of agreement, the weaker the friendship. "If you disagree, you are my enemy." Dr. Dajani described this as “my cousin against my neighbor, my brother against my cousin.”

Few people in Palestinian society, percentage-wise, have learned to recognize this cultural frame, let alone develop perspectives that enable different choices. The strategy, therefore, for addressing a potentially volatile situation are therefore unconventional.

University representatives (I am not sure who, I guess a mix of administration and faculty) met for seven hours on Tuesday with students from Fatah and Hamas, persisting from three in the afternoon until ten pm that night, when the students finally began to joke with each other and laugh, realizing and agreeing that the problem in Gaza was not a problem to bring to campus. I would like to know the moves in the talk that drew these youths along a path from the culture view equating disagreement with enemy and friendship with agreement. Imagine the perseverance, the commitment of time, energy, and patience required to sit in a room together and talk, and talk, and keep sitting, and talk some more . . .

The last event of the day was a viewing of Occupied Minds, followed by a discussion with journalist and co-producer "Jamal Dajani, a Palestinian-American, and David Michaelis, an Israeli citizen, who journey to Jerusalem, their mutual birthplace, to explore new solutions and offer unique insights into the divisive Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (Link TV program information). Dajani stunned the audience by telling us a one-state solution is the most practical political resolution because it reflects "the reality on the ground." Occupied Minds shows how the preoccupation with ideas one has already been taught - an "occupation of the mind" - is the greatest barrier to peace. Watch and you will witness some of the limits of imagination that lock the peoples of this "bi-national country" in futile animosity.

I was certainly not the only one who had never learned that the Palestinian people are more interested in equality (fair treatment under law) than a separate state. Oddly, the idea has been around at least since 2003 (see this article from The Nation; and this article from The Guardian). Our host later inquired whether we, as non-Israelis, found the idea as "difficult" as she did, admitting that she knew her reaction was irrational and being aware that she is relatively "awake" compared with many (if not most) of her compatriots. Her self-reflection is evidence, I think, of a partial response to Sabri's searing inquiry: are we - the participants of this conference - here to make a difference or simply to ride an intriguing academic current? It seems we desire to make a difference, even if we are unsure exactly how.

This is my question; perhaps it is my quest. I was inspired at last year's first conference on Dialogue under Occupation by the incredible range of subjects and breadth of expertise. Presentations ranged through historical military occupations to the present-day, literal, metaphorical, and legal, across various communication technologies such as newspapers, propaganda films and weblogs. The attendees included peace activists, military personnel, and academics from many countries. We could have talked with each "better" last year, but we did - at least! - talk with each other enough to sustain the momentum for a second conference in a region where occupation is configured in every way one can imagine.

We are all occupied - by institutional discourses, political ideologies, spiritual passions - none of us is exempt from the talk and images of our time. Trying to hold such a conference in a setting rife with discourses that are in direct, deliberate, and overt competition with each other is an endeavor of great ambition (or huge insanity - time will establish the verdict).

How identities are established - how "you" come to understand yourself as (for instance) "American," or "Palestinian," or "Israeli" - is not much of a mystery anymore. Nationalistic identities are established by nationalistic discourses. Individuals (to the extent such subjective entities actually exist) absorb the attitude of nationalism from those who express patriotic sentiments. Individuals (you, me) give the attitude back - reinforcing and recreating it - to those with whom we interact, preparing our children to embrace a similar (if not the exact same) orientation-to-country to carry forth into the future.

We're born into streams of discourse that carry us along; we learn to swim in them, sometimes against the current but more often with the flow - because going upstream or crosscurrent takes much more effort. Occasionally we even float. :-) To get out of a stream, to travel across a completely foreign and disorienting landscape until we are immersed in another stream, is a challenge. We might want out, but the power of the moving water sucks us back....we might be spit out, sprayed up into space and a different place over a fallen tree or partially-submerged boulder...ouch! Whichever way it happens, moving between streams is gonna have moments that are wicked uncomfortable.

Trying to do things differently is hard.

So, here we are, ten days away from the opening of Dialogue under Occupation II in East Jerusalem. There have been changes to the conference program, cancellation of a pre-conference event, periodic messages from participants informing everyone that, after all, they cannot attend. There was a brief email flurry of consternation about citizenship and checkpoints some time back. And now, this: an inflammatory article masquerading as journalism. The author of the piece is described by the Director of Middle Eastern Programming for Link TV as "associated with neo-con groups like Campus Watch led by Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz" and "is considered a joke by most academics and journalists in the Bay Area."

I wish it was so easy.

I found myself uncomfortable in my skin to be accused of anti-Israel desire - just as uncomfortable, I might add, as I would be if accused of anti-Palestinian sentiments. I worried (not so much, but enough to acknowledge), that I do not know, as the conference organizer proffers, how to "protect yourselves if questioned about your destination and purpose for those colleagues having to cross checkpoints, for those entering from international locations, and for those who may suffer reprisals from co-workers."

The most insidious aspect of the skewed (skewing?) op-ed by Kaplan is the triggering of distrust. He writes from a deep part of the river, using an already-established discourse. Culling the program for workshop titles and descriptions that can be interpreted in the way that fits his view, he presents a lopsided view of the conference - what profile is "left behind" or "left out" with all the presenters and sessions he does not name? The damn thing is, and I have been hedging my way toward actually writing it because I do not want "it" to be true - is that Kaplan's assault makes me feel suspicious. Again, this is not a strong concern, but the doubt is present, the question has been evoked. "So, he is not writing about me, and I know what my intentions are, but maybe 'those other conference people' whom I do not know have other agendas?"

I choose to trust my colleagues who have made the commitment to attend this conference. I assume they did not make the decision lightly; I certainly did not. I want to emphasize that I am deciding to trust, I am setting my mind and will to resist the fears and insecurities which so readily turn us to various dis-courses.