Ideas versus harsh reality

I watched ‘The Help’ a week or so ago. I found it quite a powerful movie, although I appreciate why African-Americans criticize the way the black women are less at the centre of this story than they should be. It can at times be about a young, white woman’s search for salvation, rather than a struggle for justice.

I was struck, though, by how hard it is to be courageous when there is no community to help you have courage. It is hard to stand up against things like racism when all the people around you are racist, and will leave you socially isolated if you disagree. You need a community and another story to sustain any courage.

But I was also struck by what a strange and uneven contest the fight against racism can be. Racism isn’t simply a nice idea or a playing around with mental constructs about human nature. Racism is about the defence of the social and economic benefits enjoyed by a few, or a way for some people to keep themselves off the absolute bottom of the community.

Racism justifies slavery, poor pay and conditions, and leaving people with all the hard and menial tasks in a community. Racism justified high risk and poor worker protection, keeping costs down to maximize profits for a few.

The unevenness of the contest is that churches and other bodies try to explain why racism is wrong. It is a conversation about morality and values, a battle over ideas, when racism is about daily realities. It’s a contest of good ideas versus benefits, and benefits will nearly always win.

That is why people talk about trade boycotts when faced with racism and injustice. Boycotts say: actually we are going to make sure that there are less benefits to you continuing to act unjustly. We will not talk about the wrongness of racism, and then keep buying your goods that are produced in a racist economy.

That’s why the decision of the US Presbyterians to discuss disinvestment in companies that deal with Israel is important. All the talking and the moralizing, all the discussions about international law and justice, are wasted. There are benefits for Israel in denying Palestinian autonomy, destroying homes, stealing water, and taking land. While the US has clearly decided that it will prop up Israel and its racist regime forever, it is time for those working in the wider civil society to remove some of the benefits, Nice ideas and arguments will not create change, only different practices.

The Olive trees

I am sure there are lots of things I don’t know about the conflict between Palestinian people and the state of Israel. I know I don’t feel the history, the pain, the impact of the holocaust and its deadly racism, and the feeling of being surrounded by people who don’t always want you to exist. Of course I also haven’t experience 60 years of exile and living in refugee camps, denial of statehood, abuse of human rights, or having my land stolen from me.

I don’t understand the denial and mythology, the pretence that the land was not occupied (a form of terra nullius). I don’t understand how an agreement by the UN can be honoured by the establishment of the State of Israel, but the promise of a Palestinian state can be denied year after year. I don’t understand the moral outrage against Iraq or other countries for breach of UN resolutions while settlements go on without condemnation and real action to stop them.

I don’t understand how people think they can have safe and secure borders and good relationships with their neighbours when thousands of people have lived in refugee camps for 60 years, ore when illegal settlements continue to encroach on other people’s land or state. How can you keep stealing people’s land and livelihood and expect them to make peace?

I do not understand how a people so harmed by racism can build a racist state where Palestinians are not equal citizens and, increasingly, where Palestinians are treated as less than fully human. I don’t understand the killing of the children, and the petty, bloody-mined and, at times, life-threatening road blocks and check points. I don’t understand how people can steal another’s community’s water, or pollute their water supply and expect to build a future. I don’t know how that sort of community claims to be a democracy, or claim to be interested in human rights.

Most of all, though, I don’t understand the Olive trees! I don’t understand how people can tear out and burn down ancient Olive trees; the wanton, callous destruction of people’s livelihood and the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the struggling Palestinian economy.

Somehow the Olive tress strike me as a symbol of it all – stolen land, illegal settlements, pointless and wanton destruction, disregard for ordinary human beings trying to live, and a state that has no respect for international law, genuine peacemaking, or the rights of all citizens, and which shows a willingness to turn a blind eye to the sort of racism that has harmed so many of its own citizens.

Can someone help me understand how a people with Amos and Micah in their holy book can do this?

Please remember if you respond. This is a critique of the policies and actions of the state of Israel. Don’t accuse me of anti-Semitism, because as a follower of the Jewish Jesus it is not true. Just help me understand how this terrible injustice continues and can be defended.