Northern and
central Gaza have been hit by Israeli airstrikes this week as troops return to
battle Hamas fighters in areas they claimed to have cleared many months ago.
The intensified military offensive unfolded just days after mediators thought
they were making headway in negotiations for a ceasefire. On Friday, Hamas
reportedly dropped its insistence on a “complete” ceasefire as a prerequisite
for talks.
But hope of
progress was brought to an abrupt halt. It emerged that an Israeli delegation
led by spy chief David Barnea had travelled to Doha not to finalise a ceasefire
deal, but to instead issue further demands on Hamas. Since then, the group has
said that Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza City could “reset the negotiation
process to square one”.
Ceasefire plans
are yet again hanging by a thread. According to Paul Rogers of the University
of Bradford, this is not a surprise. He argues that the chances of reaching a
ceasefire deal are, and always have been, slim.
Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemingly learned shortly after the start of the
war that the complete destruction of Hamas would not be possible – a fact now
being proved regularly as the group resurfaces in some of Gaza’s hardest-hit
areas. But he has pressed on with the military campaign anyway.
Rogers argues
that continuing with the war is the only way Netanyahu can maintain support
from influential factions within his government. Two of his ministers, Bezalel
Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose parties help Netanyahu’s coalition secure a
small majority in parliament, remain steadfast in their opposition to striking
any deal before Hamas is destroyed. On July 8, Smotrich took to social media to
say that making a ceasefire deal now would be “senseless folly”.
Smotrich, who is
finance minister and the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionist
party, has gained huge influence over government policy over the past couple of
years. As Dalia Alazzeh of the University of the West of Scotland and Shahzad
Uddin of the University of Essex explain, Smotrich has used his influence to
cripple the Palestinian economy.
He has blocked
the transfer of – and has made deductions to – the tax revenue that Israel
collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The result of these measures
has been devastating.
The Palestinian
Authority is facing a huge gap between incoming revenue and the amount needed
to fund public expenditures. At the time of writing, it is only able to pay
public sector workers up to 70% of their salaries, and famine is spreading
throughout the Gaza Strip.
Alazzeh and
Uddin point to a World Bank report that suggests the financial situation of the
Palestinian Authority “dramatically worsened” in the three months leading up to
May, raising the prospect of an “imminent fiscal collapse”.
Palestine’s
beleaguered economy does, however, look set to be given a brief reprieve. In
late June, Smotrich announced that he would finally unfreeze tax revenue and
extend a waiver that allows cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian banks.
But there would
be a catch. This would come in return for approving five outposts – or Israeli
settlements – in the occupied West Bank that are widely regarded as illegal
under international law.
Meanwhile, it
was made public on July 3 that Israel had approved its largest seizure of land
in the West Bank in over three decades. The move follows a series of similar
land grabs that have happened so far this year.
According to
Serag El Hegazi from the University of Bradford, these actions are part of a
strategy to expand Israel’s control over the West Bank and choke off the
possibility of a Palestinian state. This is something Smotrich is all too happy
to admit. He has previously described thwarting the establishment of a
Palestinian state as his “life’s mission”.
Britain’s
unclear position
The stance of
Smotrich towards Palestine is clear. But the same cannot be said for the Labour
party in the UK, which swept to power last week. As James Vaughan from
Aberystwyth University explains, the Labour party has a complex historical
legacy when it comes to Israel and Palestine. The new prime minister, Keir
Starmer, has a difficult line to tread.
On we go
So, with
tensions as high as they have been at any point in the war, what might happen
next? Rogers argues that the war in Gaza will probably rage on.
Israel looks
increasingly unlikely to be able to defeat Hamas and end the war on its own
terms. And, given the deep anger directed at Israel, ending the war on almost
any terms is not as paramount among Palestinians as one might think.
The US has
leverage and could force Israel to accept a ceasefire. But that is unlikely due
to the support Israel has within the US, as well as the fact that Biden finds
himself preoccupied with speculation over his fitness to run for a second term.
There are other
issues that could influence the likelihood of a ceasefire too, says Rogers.
These include the position of the new Iranian government. According to Arshin
Adib-Moghaddam of SOAS, University of London, the election of a known democrat
in Masoud Pezeshkian should be seen as a positive development in the sphere of
foreign affairs.
But, ultimately,
the main challenge to Netanyahu may come from senior members of his military,
who are becoming convinced that the war is unwinnable and increasingly wary of
escalation with Hezbollah.
It
began with Aaron Bushnell and a visceral response of mine: Why would anyone do
such a thing?
Bushnell
was the 25-year-old active-duty airman who set himself ablaze on February 25th
in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest that country’s
brutal war in Gaza. The first question was tough enough, but his dramatic and
deadly action also brought to mind other questions that have occupied my
thinking, research, and writing in these last several years: What spurs someone
to such an unyielding, ultimate commitment to a cause? What kind of political
action is actually effective?
When
the campus protests over the bloodbath in Gaza exploded shortly after
Bushnell’s act, those questions came to seem even more pressing to me.
And
not only was I not alone in my interest in Bushnell’s act, he wasn’t even the
first American to self-immolate over the fate of the Palestinians. Last
December, an unidentified woman set herself on fire outside the Israeli
consulate in Atlanta, apparently in a similar protest. She survived, just
barely. (In April, a man who self-immolated across from the courthouse in
Manhattan where Donald Trump was on trial for illegally trying to influence the
2016 election seemed aggrieved about other things.)
Three
incidents, of course, do not an epidemic make, but they do attract attention.
So, the phenomenon of self-immolation stayed in the news for a while.
Bushnell
live-streamed his action, which was quickly posted on the social media platform
Twitch (though that video was soon taken down there). As of this writing,
however, it’s still up at Reddit. It opens on the early afternoon of a clear
February day, with Bushnell in combat fatigues walking resolutely toward the
Israeli embassy. He had emailed some independent news outlets about his protest
and, as he walks, he says, “I am an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force,
and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an
extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in
Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.”
He
then props up his cell phone on the pavement, pours some flammable liquid over
his head, pulls his cap down, and flicks a lighter on around his ankles. When
his uniform doesn’t ignite, he lights the pool of liquid surrounding him. It
erupts into flames, which climb his body. Yelling “Free Palestine,” he bucks
and moans in what must be unbearable pain before collapsing on the ground.
Police and Secret Service agents rush over with fire extinguishers. One points
a gun at the crumpled, still-flaming body and yells at him to get on the
ground. Off-camera, another responds, “I don’t need guns, I need fire
extinguishers!” After the video ends, Bushnell will be loaded into an ambulance
and taken to a hospital, where he will soon die. In its only response, it seems, the Israeli
embassy will report that none of its staff were injured.
In
the following weeks, third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill
Stein will express solidarity with Bushnell; vigils honoring him will be held
in several American cities, including Portland, Oregon, where members of the
antiwar veterans group About Face will burn their uniforms in his memory; the
Palestinian town of Jericho will name a street after him; another active-duty
airman will be inspired to stage a hunger strike in front of the White House
and, when he’s ordered back to his base in Spain, two fellow members of
Veterans For Peace will begin a hunger strike in his stead.
Admirable?
Unhinged?
The
initial media coverage of Bushnell’s action was straightforward enough, though
often giving as much space to the history of self-immolation as to the politics
of his protest. A notable exception was a Washington Post column by Shadi
Hamid, who considered Bushnell’s position on the U.S. government’s support for
Israel and concluded that while his act might have been unreasonable, his sense
of powerlessness was not.
It
didn’t take long, however, for the focus to shift to the psychology of
self-immolation, then to Bushnell’s background and the implication that he was
distinctly damaged. About six weeks after the event, the Boston Globe ran a
feature on the Community of Jesus, a monastic community on Cape Cod, where the
young Bushnell was raised and home-schooled. The story relied heavily on
disgruntled former members — one characterized it as a cult — who recalled
harsh, group-enforced discipline, practices meant to undermine family bonds,
humiliations, and verbal assaults. The article did include a disclaimer toward
the end – “It’s unclear what, if any, connection Bushnell’s upbringing had on
his final protest.” – but all too clear was a striking skepticism about his psychological
stability.
The
need to understand and explain (or explain away) such an extreme,
self-abnegating act is anything but unusual, nor is the linking of
self-immolation to mental disturbance. Bushnell was explicit about his distress
over the situation in Gaza and it sounded as if he was also dealing with a
sense of moral injury, a malady of the heart as much as the head, but none of
that was proof of derangement. Setting yourself on fire for whatever reason is
inarguably an act of suicide, yet the mental state of someone at that moment is
ultimately unknowable since such suicides almost invariably take their secrets
to the grave. When it comes to self-immolation, I’m inclined to take people at
their word. Apparently, that puts me in the minority.
“I
won’t speculate on the dead man’s mental health,” wrote Graeme Wood in a snotty
op-ed for The Atlantic. “He grew up in a cult, described himself as an
anarchist, and generally eschewed what Buddhists might call ‘the middle way,’ a
life of mindful moderation, in favor of extreme spiritual and political
practice.” Fanaticism, he suggested, was Bushnell’s “default setting.”
It
wasn’t just those who were unsympathetic to Bushnell’s act for whom the state
of his psyche took precedence over the purpose of the protest. It may, in fact,
be a particular genius of American democracy that it can absorb dissent and, in
that way, blunt revolt, but that seemingly benign tolerance can push activists
to ever more radical acts in a bid to focus attention on their cause. Sadly
enough, though, when a dissident’s striking (even, in Bushnell’s case,
ultimate) political act is reduced to a set of personal maladies, his or her
message can be all too easily massaged away.
Probably
More Than You Want to Know About Self-Immolation
Self-immolation
is a low-cost, low-tech, readily documentable act that’s easy to do without
significant planning, assistance, or much forethought. Of course, “easy” might
be the wrong word for it, and self-immolation is an exceedingly rare, singular,
and extreme form of political protest. Unlike marches or strikes, it involves
only one person. Unlike suicide missions, the harm is intended to be inflicted
only on yourself. Unlike the slow, wasting away of a hunger strike, it’s seldom
reversible and usually fatal. Unlike most public protest, it doesn’t rely on an
authority’s response to have an effect. And while most people wouldn’t consider
it an option, to those who would set themselves aflame, sooner or later it
becomes the only option.
Self-immolation
is also heart-stoppingly dramatic, capturing the public’s attention, emotions,
and imagination despite, or maybe because of its inherent contradictions. It is
at once an act of despair and of defiance, of purity and of bravado. Above all,
it defies any idea of acceptable risk. Moreover, as a form of nonviolent
protest, it’s shockingly violent, and though our normal urge as humans is to
look away from such suffering, the image remains irrepressible.
As
it happens, self-immolation as protest has an ancient history. It appears in
Hindu tales, Greco-Roman myths, the early Christian era, fourth-century China,
and seventeenth-century Russia. It’s happened in protests against America’s war
in Vietnam; against the Soviet, Indian, and Sri Lankan governments, as well as
Chinese policies in Tibet; and recently in the U.S. over climate change.
According
to Michael Biggs, a sociologist who conducted an extensive study of the
subject, the motivations and rationales of self-immolators range from the
selfless and strategic to the psychological and egocentric. Such an array of
reasons is on display in The Self-Immolators, testimony compiled from
protesters around the world who set themselves on fire between 1963 and 2013.
It makes for sad reading: so many lives, so much anguish, so little effect.
Historically,
the effectiveness of such awe-inspiring protest is, at best, unclear. There
were certainly cases that did gain widespread attention and so influenced
events and policies. As a threesome, consider Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese
monk in the iconic photograph, who self-immolated to protest his government’s
mistreatment of Buddhists; Norman
Morrison, the American Quaker who self-immolated under then-Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara’s Pentagon window to protest America’s war in Vietnam (McNamara
was reportedly “horrified,” while President John F. Kennedy exclaimed, “Jesus
Christ!”); and Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor in Tunisia, whose
self-immolation protesting corruption was considered a catalyst for the Arab
Spring uprising.
Sadly,
however, Bushnell’s action, far more typically, didn’t make a dent in Israel’s
belligerence or limit the weaponry and intelligence his country still sends
Israel. And the shock of the act, of the image of him burning to death seemed,
if anything, to blot out the purpose. Maybe witnessing someone dying in flames,
even online, is simply too disturbing to let witnesses easily absorb its
intended message. Or maybe the intensity of Bushnell’s moral obligation shamed
those who agreed with him and did nothing for those who didn’t.
Too
Bad for Words
While
it’s hardly burning yourself to death, all those students who camped out last
spring, erecting tents on university lawns, defying administrators, and
dominating the news narrative for weeks, also faced risks. Though no student
protestors died, by demanding institutional responses to Israel’s war in Gaza,
some were barred from graduating, denied job offers, summarily kicked out of
their housing, physically attacked, and arrested.
And
then, as with Aaron Bushnell, we changed the subject. The issue wasn’t this
country’s, or any individual university’s role in the war in Gaza — so insisted
school authorities, opportunistic politicians, and an obliging media — but free
speech and the function of higher education.
In
contrast to self-immolation, which is always about the image, language was
all-important in those campus protests and became a minefield. The hotly
debated meaning of terms and slogans, the name-calling that stopped discussion,
the debate over who controlled the debate, the mutual misunderstandings, and
the alarming tolerance of intolerance were all exacerbated in the
self-enclosed, pressure-cooker communities that college campuses generally are.
Quickly,
the “sides” were slotted into pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian categories,
flattening any nuance among the protesters, even though a range of sentiments,
perspectives, demands, and goals were apparent. That reduction also undermined
the prospect for critical analysis, any true exchange of views, or the
possibility of minds being changed — everything, in other words, that’s
supposed to underpin a liberal education. And whatever happened to the idea of
being pro-peace? I don’t remember that label ever being applied to the
protests, although the one area most protestors agreed on was the need for a
ceasefire in Gaza.
In
his keynote speech at MIT’s graduation, entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan acknowledged
the students’ pain over the tragic
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and rued his own lack of answers on the subject,
concluding, “But I do know this: having conviction should not be confused with
having all the answers.”
I
have a certain sympathy for that sentiment, though I doubt I did when I was a
student with my own set of demands over a different tragic conflict, which
leaves me sympathetic to the student activists, too. After all, you don’t need
answers to pinpoint a problem accurately or to believe peace is a precondition
for finding such answers. Protest isn’t supposed to be nice. Dissent courts the
heterodox. The point of a political action is to get in people’s faces, disturb
complacency, and command a response. Protest that doesn’t challenge our norms,
or at least get people to think about other possibilities, is just spectacle.
Of
course, dissent also threatens authority, and the kneejerk reaction of
authorities fearing that they’re losing control is to try to take ever more
control. Insisting that the students and their organizations were being
punished not for their speech but for breaking the rules, university
administrators suspended anti-Zionist groups, breached principles of academic
freedom, opened the way for violence by ushering the police onto campus, and
caved to financial pressure from donors and alumni. And what to make of the
suggestion of a Harvard dean, who, “look[ing] forward to calmer times on
campus,” argued that the solution was for faculty members to just shut up?
You’d
think such beleaguered university administrators would learn. Clampdowns
usually backfire and severe punishments hardly make for calmer campuses. The
repression, in fact, succeeded mainly in turning the conversation from core
issues like war and human rights to an assessment of free speech and the very
nature of academia — not to mention good old American anti-intellectualism.
Educational leaders were called before Congress to confess; university
presidents were fired; hate speech codes, mostly moribund in this century, got
renewed attention; and the crisis became focused on campuses riven by
incivility and bad words.
Dissension
at educational institutions over what kinds of expression are acceptable, no
less desirable, has a long history and merits periodic revisiting. I suspect,
though, that there’s another reason what we say has bested what we do as the
issue du jour: that is, a lot of Americans find it easier to champion the idea
of free speech than to demand that Israel get out of Gaza or that the Biden
administration rethink its military aid policies.
About
20 years ago, when I wrote a book about free expression controversies, I saw
repeatedly how words make convenient scapegoats. Arguments over language are
often a way to avoid arguments we’d prefer not to have, even if working through
those very arguments could produce the resolutions we want to reach. As
paramount as free speech is to me in the pantheon of human rights, I wish in
this case — and in Aaron Bushnell’s memory — we hadn’t relegated war to just a
background hum but had assessed the validity of the protesters’ demands and
dealt with them, as fraught and frightening, involved and painful as that
process would inevitably have been.
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