First Paper Instructions:
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First paper on two films
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Focusing on how they are related to what we have been covering in the course. (I
already attached my course PPT and readings. You should them as references.)
Your brief should not be merely a description of the films; you should analyze
them in relation to the historical and analytical themes of the course and the course
readings and lectures. (I already attached my course PPT and readings.)
I expect you to employ in your essay the terms, concepts, theories, and insights
⚫
⚫
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garnered from the course.
This should be a sociological paper not a film review. You should make
reference in the brief, with appropriate citations, to class lectures and readings.
GENERIC GUIDELINES FOR PAPER
1. Your assignments should have strong, coherent thesis statements at the
beginning of the paper. The thesis statement should be specific and clear. It
should tie together the different points you will address in the paper.
2. Description is necessary, but not sufficient. You are advised to include a
brief but specific summary of what you are writing about (eg, a film, a
book, a website) that introduces the features on which your analytical
arguments will focus. There is relevant and irrelevant information about your
topic of discussion (e.g, a film); make sure that the information you include in
your summary is relevant to
a) explain the overall premise of what you are discussing in relation to
the course and
b) ground your analytical argument.
DO NOT let description and summaries dominate your paper!
3. Instead, the bulk of your papers should be comprised of a serious analysis of
the particular topic in relation to the course. Here you will want to employ
the terms, concepts, theories, and insights garnered from the course in
your analysis.
a. What insights into globalization does the film, or website, or reading
reflect?
b. What concepts or terms doe the it illustrate, and how?
4. Citations should always include the author’s last name, year of publication,
AND PAGE NUMBER.
5.
Please use 12 point, Times New Roman font, and 1” margins, 3FULL PAGES, Double-spaced
⚫ There is list for films, you can choose any of TWO
The Last Emperor
Lumumba;
Central Station;
The Violin (El Violín)
Bread and Roses (the one that deals with the struggle of janitors to unionize);
Roger and Me;
Children of Heaven
Khandahar
Rabbit Proof Fence
Salan Bombay
Hotel Rwanda
The Agronomist
El Norte
Darwin’s Nightmare
The Day I Became a Woman
Taste of Cherry
The Circle
Quinceneira
Sicko
Sleep Dealer
Bordertown
Paradise Now
Even the Rain
HUMANKIND AS ONE TOTALITY
The powers that be want
you to have historic
amnesia.
The victors in historic
battles write the history
books. Their version of
history becomes “history”.
The struggle over memory
is part of the struggle for
emancipation.
If you do not know your
own history and if you do
not know what is going on
in the world then you have
set yourself up to be
controlled and
manipulated by those in
power.
THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 1400
▪ “EUROPE AND THE PEOPLE WITHOUT HISTORY”
▪ THREE PREMISES:
1) HUMANITY LINKED ACROSS THE PLANET
2) HUNTERS AND GATHERERS DISAPPEARED
MILLENIA AGO
3) INEQUALITIES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS
CREATION OF MODERN (CAPITALIST) WORLD
▪ HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE DOMINANT GROUPS
▪ EUROPEAN CENTERED WORLD HISTORY LEFT
MOST OF HUMANITY WITHOUT THEIR HISTORY
THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 1400
▪ COLONIAL ORIGINS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
▪ “TRIBES” AS COLONIAL CREATIONS, FIGMENTS OF EUROPEAN
IMAGINATIONS. WEBSTERS:
1. “A BAND OF HUNTERS AND GATHERERS
2. “AN AGGREGATE OF PEOPLE UNITED IN COMMON
ANCESTRY, INTERMARRAIGE, OR ALLEGIANCE”
▪
WHAT “ANTHROPOLOGISTS” DID NOT UNDERSTAND IS: EXAMINGING
NOT ISOLATED SOCIETIES BUT GROUPS LONG CAUGHT UP IN
GLOBAL RELATIONS…
AND SINCE 1400, CAUGHT UP IN GREAT CHANGES
WROUGHT BY EUROPEAN POWERS
▪
“HOLMBERG’S MISTAKE”:
▪ ALLAN HOLMBERG, SIRONO (BOLIVIA, 1950, “Nomads of the Longbow),
“BAREFOOT AND STARVING”, AMONG MOST CULTURALLY IMPOVERISHED
ON EARTH…
▪ HISTORIC REGRESSION, E.G., JEWS IN CONCENTRATION CAMP
▪ BENI – VAST CIVILIZATION IN TODAY’S EASTERN BOLIVIA)
COLONIAL MYTH OF “HUNTER GATHERERS”
GLOBAL RELATIONS; EUROPEAN EXPANSION
▪ GLOBAL WEBS SOWN BY EUROPEAN EXPANSION;
▪ INDIAN TEXTILES, CHINESE PORCLAIN, NATIVE
AMERICAN CHOCOLATE AND TOBACCO, ARABIC
NUMERALS
▪ INTERCONNECTIONS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS
▪ EXAMPLE OF NORTHEAST INDIAN NATIONS AND
GLOUCHESTER VALLEY
▪ GLOBAL CLASS FORMATION; GLOBAL LINKAGES;
GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS
▪ SLAVE TRADE, 16TH CENTURY AND ON, LINKS AFRICA
WITH EUROPE AND AMERICAS, LATER ASIA, ETC…
ROUTES OF NORTH AMERICAN FUR TRADE
CREATION OF SINGLE GLOBAL CIVILIZATION
PRESUPPOSITION:
FOR PAST 500 YEARS, ANY HUMAN GROUP CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD IN ITS RELATION TO CENTRAL
DYNAMIC OF MODERN PERIOD, STARTING SYMBOLICALLY IN 1492: EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND
CREATION OF SINGLE GLOBAL CIVILIZATION
EUROPEANS DAZZLED, LEFT SPEECHLESS BY GRANDIER CIVILIZATIONS THEY ENCOUNTERED:
MARCO POLO (NOTE-TAKER FOR UNCLES NICCOLO AND MAFEO), LEAVE VENICE 1271, ARRIVE
SEVERAL YEARS LATER CHINESE CITY OF HANG-CHOW, THEN IN DECLINE:
“HOW COULD SUCH A MAGNIFICENT CIVILIZATION REMAIN UNKNOWN TO US? THE
CITY IS A HUNDRED MILES IN CIRCUIT (WITH) TEN PRINCIPAL SQUARES OR MARKET PLACES,
BESIDES INNUMERABLE SHOPS ALONG THE STREETS. EACH SIDE OF THESE SQUARED IS HALF
A MILE IN LENGTH….THE STREETS ARE ALL PAVED WITH STONES AND BRICKS…THE WHOLE
CITY MUST HAVE CONTAINED ONE MILLION SIX-HUNDRED THOUSAND FAMILIES”
13TH CENTURY, EUROPE STILL INSECURE BACKWATER, YET 3 CENTURIES LATER, SPANISH
CONQUERERS ASTOUNED UPON ARRIVING IN ITZTAPALAPA, NEAR TENOCHITALN. BERNAL DIAZ:
IT
“WHEN WE SAW SO MANY CITIES AND VILLAGES BUILT BOTH IN THE WATER AND ON DRY
LAND, AND THIS STRAIGHT, LEVEL CAUSEWAY, WE COULDN’T RESTRAIN OUR ADMIRATION.
WAS LIKE THE ENCHANTMENTS TOLD ABOUT IN THE BOOKS OF AMADIS, BECAUSE OF THE
HIGH TOWERS, TEMPLES, AND OTHER BUILDINGS, ALL OF MASONRY, WHICH ROSE FROM THE
WATER. SOME OF OUR SOLDIERS ASKED IF WHAT WE SAW WAS NOT A DREAM…
“THEN WHEN WE ENTERED IZTAPALAPA, THE APPEARANCE OF THE PALACES IN WHICH THEY
QUARTERED US! THEY WERE VAST, AND WELL MADE OF CUT STONE, CEDAR, AND OTHER
FRAGRANT WOODS, WITH SPACIOUS ROOMS AND PATIOS THAT WERE WONDERFUL TO SEE,
SHADED WITH COTTON AWNINGS…
“AFTER WE HAD SEEN ALL THIS, WE WENT TO THE ORCHARD AND GARDEN, AND WALKED
ABOUT. I NEVER TIRED OF LOOKING AT THE VARIETY OF TREES AND NOTING THE SCENT
EACH OF THEM HAD. THE WALKS WERE LINED WITH FLOWERS, ROSEBUSHES OF THE
COUNTRY, AND FRUIT TREES….
“TODAY, ALL THAT WAS THERE THEN IS IN THE GROUND, LOST, WITH NOTHING LEFT AT
ALL…”
THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 1400
▪
WORLD IN 1400:
1)
RISE OF MAJOR TRIBUTARY EMPIRES (EUROPEAN
FEUDALISM, OTTOMAN EMPIRE, IMPERIAL/
DYNASTIC CHINA, MOGHUL EMPIRE IN INDIA, NORTH
&WEST AFRICA
TRADING EMPIRES, AZTEC AND INCA
EMPIRE, ZIMBABWEAN/ROZWI
DYANSTY)
[AGRICULTURE
INVENTED INDEPENDENTLY IN
AT
LEAST 5 GLOBAL LOCATIONS)
2)
INCREASES IN AGRICULTURAL
PRODUCTIVITY, MANUFACTURING (ESP.
METALURGIC AND
TEXTILE);
3)
EXPANSION OF GLOBAL TRADE – THROUGH
BREADBASKETS, STEPPS, AND DESERT TRADING
ROUTES
4)
CONFLICTS AT EDGES OF EMPIRES
WORLD TRADE IN AGRICULTURAL SURPLUSES AND LUXURY GOODS, IN CERIALS AND
MEATS, SILKS, TEXTILES, PORCLAINS, SPICES, PRECIOUS METALS, BEADS, GLASS, COPPER,
HORSES, LEATHERS, DYES AND ARTWORKS.
WHO WOULD CONTROL WORLD TRADE?
”NEAR & MIDDLE
EAST & NORTH
AFRICA::
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
(POST ARAB
EMPIRES)
VAST CENTRALIZED
TRIBUTARY EMPIRE
DOMINANT
CLASSES: SULTAN,
RELIGIOUS NOBLES,
LOCAL LANDLORDS,
MILITARY NOBLES
EXPLOITED
CLASSES: PEASANTS
AND PASTORALISTS
FIERCE
COMPETITION WITH
EUROPE OVER
CONTROL LONG
DISTANCE TRADE
(“CRUSADES”)
NORTH, WEST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
NORTH AND WEST: STRING OF AUTONOMOUS CITY-STATES AND REGIONS,
CONNECTED INTO SINGLE TRADE EMPIRE WITH PRINCIPAL CENTERS:
TIMBUCTU, KANO/HAUSA KINGDOM, FEZ, DJADO, KINGDOMS OF AUKAR ,
YORUBA , GHANA, KANGABA, ETC.
MULTIPLE TRADE RELATIONS - FOREST ZONES, SOUTHERN AFRICA, OCEAN
TRADE WITH ARABIA, INDIA, VIETNAM, BURMA, CHINA
GOLD MINES OF WEST AFRICA, AGRICULTURE, METALWORKS, TEXTILES, ETC.
IDEOLOGY: ISLAM AND AFRIAN GENEOLOGIES
MODE OF PRODUCTION: KINSHIP, SLAVE, TRIBUTARY
DOMINANT CLASSES: PATRILINEAR CHIEFS (KINSHIP), NOBILITY OF TRIBUTARY
STATES AND KINGDOMS
EAST AND SOUTHER AFRICA: BANTU-SPEAKING POP. MIGRATES 2,000-1,000 BC.
FROM CAMAROONS
ZIMBABWE KINDGOM
RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE
(ROZWI DYNASTY)
INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
4,000 YEAR OLD CIVILIZATION
13TH CENTURY MOGHUL INVASION, CENTRAL ISLAMIC AUTHORITY
CASTE SYSTEM: VAST TRIBUTARY MODE
LOCAL RULERS (RAJAS) AND CENTRAL AUTHORITY
VAST SYSTEM OF PUBLIC WORKS (HYDROLIC AND IRRIGATION)
RULING CLASSES: UPPER CASTES, RAJAS, CENTRAL AUTHORITIES
EXPLOITED CLASSES: PEASANTRY IN LOWER CASTES,
UNTOUCHABLES (DIVERSE MANUAL LABOR)
IMPORTANT ARTISAN AND MERCHANT CLASS
TEXTILE CENTER OF OLD WORLD, SPICES, ARTISANRY, BEADS,
ETC…… WEAVING LOOM…
CHINA: “THE MIDDLE KINGDOM”
▪ OLDEST, LARGEST, LONGEST RUNNING
WORLD CIVILIZATION, 4,500 YEARS
▪ VAST TRIBUTARY MODE, ROYAL FAMILY,
MANDARINATE BUREAUCRACY
▪ CENTRALIZED EMPIRE, CONFUSIONIST
IDEOLOGY, STATE HYDRALIC, HIGHWAYS,
IRRIGATION, ETC.
▪ INTENSE INTERNAL TRADING, HIGH LEVELS
OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
▪ OCEANIC EXPLORATION & TRADE TO EAST
AFRICA, EXPEDITION TO “NEW WORLD”
PRIOR TO EUROPEAN CONQUEST
▪ EXPORTS: SILK, SPICES, PORCLAIN
[“CHINA”], GLASSWARES AND OTHER
LUXURY GOODS – AS FAR AWAY AS INDIA,
MIDDLE EAST, EAST AFRICA &
MEDITERRANEAN
▪ NO NEED FOR IMPORTS – SELF SUFFICIENT
▪ ON VERGE OF PASSAGE INTO CAPITALISM
(LIFTING OF SERFDOM, CAPITALIST
AGRICULTURE)
▪ 1400S – MING DYNASTY
AMERICAS, WESTERN HEMISPHERE
▪
▪
▪
LAST CONTINENT TO BE PEOPLED
DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS – 6,OOO BC
CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION 1400: MESOAMERICA, ANDES, AMAZONIA, MISSISSIPPI
INCA EMPIRE
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
FORGED 1400s OUT OF CUZCO, 3,000 MILES
INTENSIVE CULTIVATION (MAIZE, PEPPERS,
POTATOES, QUINOA, COCA)
DOMESTICATION OF LLAMAS
LARGE SCALE CANALS, IRRIGATION,
TERRACING
SEMI-URBAN EMPIRE, DENSLY POPULATED
MANUFACTURING – TEXTILES, BRONZE AND
COOPER IMPLEMENTS, ETC.
MINING COMPLEXES – GOLD, SILVER, SALT,
COPPER
COMPLEX HIGHWAY SYSTEM
HIGH-SPEED MAIL MESSAGE SYSTEM
BRAIN SURGURGY
POWERFUL CENTRAL STATE, OUTWARD
CONQUEST
STATE MANAGED FOOD AND TEXTILE
DISTRIBUTION
EXTENSIVE TRADE IN 3 DIRECTIONS: 1)
AMAZONIAN GROUPS; 2) MAPUCHE; 3)
MESOAMERICA; 4) POSSIBLY WITH ASIA
TRIBUTARY SYSTEM WITH RULING ELITE
EXPLOITED CLASSES: PEASANTRY, STATE
WORKERS
MESOAMERICA
▪ MAYAN AND AZTEC
▪ LITERATE, ADVANCED CANAL AND IRRIGATION,
HIGH AGRICULTURAL SURPLUSES, CALENDARS,
MATHEMATICS, ASTROLOGICAL EXPLORATION,
BRONZE AND METALWORKS, TEXTILES, MASTER
ARQUITECTS
▪ AZTECS – 1325, TENOCHITLAN – CENTER OF
VAST TRIBUTARY EMPIRE (PREVIOUS –
OLMECAS, TELTECAS, MAYAN)
▪ RIGID CLASS SOCIETY – PATRIARCHIAL (ALL OF
THESE!!!), VASSALS – MIXTECA, OAXACA,
HUASTEC, TOTANAC, CHIAPAS, ETC…
▪ STRATIFIED: KING (TLAHTOANI), PIPITLIN,
MACEHUATLIN, MAYEQUEH, SLAVES,
MERCHANTS AND ARTISANS (POCHTECAH)
TENOCHITLAN
MISSISSIPPIAN, ETC.
THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT,
UNDERDEVELOPMENT, & GLOBAL INEQUALITIES
HOW DID GLOBAL INEQUALITIES COME ABOUT?
► HOW DE WE DIVIDE UP WORLD’S NATIONS AND REGIONS?
“FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD WORLDS”
DEVELOPED AND UNDERDEVELOPED/DEVELOPING
NORTH AND SOUTH
LOW, MIDDLE, AND HIGH INCOME COUNTRIES
CORE-PERIPHERY-SEMIPERIPHERY
►
►
►
►
►
►
►
►
INEQUALITY & DEVELOPMENT ABOUT POWER
“THIRD WORLD” – ORIGINS OF TERM (ALFRED SUAVY, J.P. SARTRE,
FRANZ FANON)
WHO CONTROLS RESOURCES?
WHO DECIDES TO WHAT PURPOSE RESOURCES WILL BE PUT?
IS UNDERDEVELOPMENT A NATURAL STATE OR A SOCIAL RELATION
OF INEQUALITY?, A GLOBAL POWER RELATION?
WAS AFRICA, ASIA, LATIN AMERICA, MIDDLE EAST MIRED IN
POVERTY?
IN FACT, HISTORY TELLS US MASS IMPOVERISHMENT ASSOCIATED
WITH IMAGES OF “THIRD WORLD” A RECENT PHENOMENON OF
WORLD CAPITALISM
CRITICAL THEORIES OF
UNDERDEVELOPMENT
►
►
►
►
►
►
►
NEW GENERATION OF THIRD WORLD LEADERS, INTELLECTUALS,
ACTIVISTS
MARX’S ANALYSIS OF CAPITALISM, AND EMPHASIS ON
COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM
CAPITALISM AS SOCIAL SYSTEM REQUIRES ACCESS TO NEW
SOURCES OF CHEAP LABOR, LAND, RAW MATERIALS (CROPS AND
MINERALS), AND MARKETS
CAPITALISM IS AN EXPANSIONARY SYSTEM AND LED TO PERIOD
KNOWN AS COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM, OR OUTWARD
EXPANSION FROM EUROPE, CONQUEST, & SUBJUGATION OF OTHER
PEOPLES AND SOCIETIES
LATIN AMERICA (1492-1530s, SEMI INDEPENDENT FROM 1820s),
ASIA, 1500-1880s, AFRICA, 1500-1890Ss-1960s, MIDDLE EAST, 18TH
TO POST-WWII
THIS 500 YEAR PROCESS OF COLONIZATION EXTREMELY VIOLENT.
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE LOST THEIR LIVES IN
COLONIAL WARS OF CONQUEST. MANY RACES AND ETHNIC GROUPS
LITERALLY DISAPPEARED, EXTERMINATED. ENTIRE SOCIETIES
DISRUPTED & TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
THIS COLONIZATION AN HISTORIC FACT NOT ACCOUNTED FOR IN
MODERNIZATION THEORY
CRITICAL THEORIES OF
UNDERDEVELOPMENT, CONT…
THROUGH COLONIZATION = MEANS OF PRODUCTION
EXPROPRIATED, ESP. LAND AND LABOR (NUMEROUS FORMS OF
COERSED LABOR)
► PRODUCTIVE STRUCTURES REORIENTED TO MEETING NEEDS OF
COLONIAL POWERS
► E.G., EXPORT-PRODUCTION IN LATIN AMERICA, CHANGEOVER IN
INDIA FROM FOOD AND TEXTILES TO EXPORT PLANTATIONS, SAME
IN AFRICA, ETC.
► SURPLUS SYPHONED OUT (REMEMBER CRUCIAL ROLE OF SURPLUS)
► “ORIGINAL SIN”: PRIMATIVE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL
► DIVISION OF WORLD INTO CORE AND PERIPHERY
► FORCED INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR
► CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH IN FIRST WORLD
► “DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT”
► PEOPLES LOSE CONTROL OVER MEANS OF PRODUCTION,
AUTONOMY, SELF DETERMINATION --- “DEPENDENCY”
► NEO-COLONIALISM AND THIRD WORLD ELITES
► INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF ELITES
►
DEVELOPMENT AND
UNDERDEVELOPMENT:
CONDITION OR SOCIAL RELATION?
ARE THESE REALITIES
UNCONNECTED?
TWO WORLDS?
OR FLIP SIDES OF SAME WORLD
BUT DON’T THE RICH COUNTRIES GIVE AID TO
THIRD WORLD TO HELP THEM DEVELOP?
“Economic aid should be the principle means by which
the West maintains its political and economic dynamic
in the underdeveloped world”
“Our foreign aid programs constitute a distinct benefit
to American business. The three major benefits are: 1)
foreign aid provides a substantial and immediate market
for United States goods and services, 2) foreign aid
stimulates the development of new overseas markets
for United States companies, 3) foreign aid orients
national economies toward a free market enterprise
system in which United States firms can prosper”
Eugene Black, 1960, then World Bank President
(as cited in Prashad, 2007, pp 9, 71).
SOME LEADING SCHOLARS OF CRITICAL
THEORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
(ALL ORGANIC)
OTHER DISCUSSION POINTS
► HOW
DID WORKING MIDDLE CLASS ARISE IN RICH
COUNTRIES?
► REMEMBER TENDENCY FOR CAPITALISM TO
CONCENTRATE WEALTH, IMMIZERATE POPULATION
► CYCIL RHODES:
“I WAS IN THE EAST END OF LONG YESTERDAY AND ATTENDED A MEETING OF THE
UNEMPLOYED. I LISTENED TO THE WILD SPEECHES, WHICH WERE JUST A CRY FOR
‘BREAD’, ‘BREAD’, AND ON MY WAY HOME I PONDERED OVER THE SCENE AND I
BEAME MORE THAN EVER CONVINCED OF THE IMPORTANCE OF
IMPERIALISM….MY CHERISHED IDEA IS A SOLUTION FOR THE SOCIAL PROBLEM,
I.E., IN ORDER TO SAVE THE 40,000,000 INHABITANTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM
FROM A BLOODY CIVIL WAR, WE COLONIAL STATESMEN MUST ACQUIRE NEW
LANDS TO SETTLE THE SURPLUS POPULATION, TO PROVIDE NEW MARKETS FOR THE
GOODS PRODUCED IN THE FACTORIES AND THE MINES. THE EMPIRE, AS I HAVE
ALWAYS SAID, IS A BREAD AND BUTTER QUESTION. IF YOU WANT TO AVOID CIVIL
WAR, YOU MUST BECOME IMPERIALISTS.
► STRATIFICATION
WITHIN WORLD-WIDE WORKING
CLASS DIVIDED BY CORE AND PERIPHERAL
REGIONS
HISTORICAL MECHANISMS OF
SURPLUS TRANSFER
►
NUMEROUS MECHANISMS FOR SURPLUS
TRANSFER. CREATION OF GLOBAL EXPLOITABLE
LABOR POOLS AND INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF
LABOR IMPOSED OVER 500 YEARS SETS IN
MOTION SURPLUS TRANSFERS
DIRECT COLONIAL PLUNDER
COERSED LABOR
► UNEQUAL EXCHANGE/ DETERIORATION OF TERMS
OF TRADE
► TECHNOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE
► FINANCIAL DEPENDENCE
► SUPER EXPLOITATION OF WAGE LABOR IN
PERIPHERY
► PROFIT REPATRIATION
► NOTE: MANY THINGS CHANGE UNDER
►
►
GLOBALIZATION, E.G.:
OTHER DISCUSSION POINTS,
CONT…
► IS
THIS GLOBAL NORTH-SOUTH
DIVIDE STILL VALID?
► STRUCTURE OF INTERNATIONAL
TRADE – RAW MATERIALS AND
INDUSRIAL GOODS (NOTE: THIS IS A
FORCED INTERNATIONAL DIVISION
OF LABOR!!)
► HISTORIC DEINDUSTRIALIZATION OF
SOUTH
International
Monetary Fund:
Transnational
State
Apparatuses
CRUCIAL CONCLUSIONS
TWO KEY POINTS:
FIRST, LOOK AT BIG PICTURE. BIG PICTURE IS
SUBVERSIVE!! IT FOCUSES ON THE STRUCTURAL
CONNECTIONS USUALLY MISSING FROM
MAINSTREAM ACCOUNTS, GIVES CONTEXT FOR
EVERYDAY AND MICRO-LEVEL INEQUALITIES.
GLOBAL INEQUALITIES SET BASIS FOR OTHER
LEVELS OF INEQUALITY
SECOND, KEY POINT: TO ACHIEVE MORE
EQUITABLE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF SURPLUS
AND WEALTH WE NEED TO BRING ABOUT
FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN GLOBAL
SYSTEM
How did we
come to live
in such an
irrational
system?
GLOBAL INEQUALITIES
LECTURE 1: SOCIAL INEQUALITY, POVERTY,
DEVELOPMENT, & UNDERDEVELOPMENT GLOBAL SYSTEM
GLOBAL INEQUALITIES, LECTURE 1: SOCIAL
INEQUALITY, POVERTY, DEVELOPMENT, AND
UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN THE GLOBAL SYSTEM
THEMES:
•
•
•
•
•
•
INEQUALITY IN HUMAN SOCIETIES, INEQUALITY AS
SOCIAL SCIENCE CONCEPT, POWER, PRODUCTION &
INEQUALITY
EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW 21ST CENTURY WORLD
INEQUALITIES
HOW CLASSIFY GLOBAL INEQUALITIES?
WORLDWIDE SOCIAL INEQUALITY AS OUTCOME OF
STRUCTURE
CONCEPT OF UNEQUAL PARTICIPATION IN WORLD
ECONOMY (INT. DIVISION OF LABOR)
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRUCTURE OF WORLD
ECONOMY & EXERCISE OF POWER IN GLOBAL SYSTEM
INEQUALITIES IN HUMAN
SOCIETIES
WHY COURSE IN SOCIAL INEQUALITIES?
•
•
•
•
•
MEMBERS OF OUR SPECIES DO NOT FACE SAME
CONDITIONS OF LIFE (UNLIKE OTHER SPECIES)
WE LIVE IN SOCIAL HIERARCHIES & DIFFERENT
SYSTEMS OF STRATIFICATION (STRATA/INEQUALITY)
INEQUALITY AS A FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL RELATION
INEQUALITY IS RELATED TO EVERY ASPECT OF THE
STRUCTURE OF HUMAN SOCIETY, TO GLOBAL SOCIETY &
AND THE INT. SYSTEM
LINKED TO SOCIAL CONFLICT – AT HEART OF SOCIAL
CONFLICT
QUESTION: HOW LONG HAVE SOCIAL INEQUALITIES BEEN
AROUND?
MYTH: “INEQUALITIES ALWAYS EXISTED”: 90% OF TIME OUR ANCESTORS INHABITED PLANET AS
SMALL GROUPS OF FORAGERS WITH ONLY SMALL DIFFERENCES OF STATUS AMONG INDIVIDUALS;
SIGNIFICANT SOCIAL INEQUALITIES A RECENT PHENOMENON
CRUCIAL: IF INEQUALITIES ARE INSTRINSIC TO HUMANITY, WE CANNOT ERADICATE THEM; IF THEY
ARE PRODUCT OF A SPECIFIC TYPE OF SOCIETY, THEN WE CAN
ANALYTICAL FOCUS ON 3 ASPECTS
•
•
•
TO UNDERSTAND INEQUALITIES, 1: RISE OF CLASS SYSTEMS
TO UNDERSTAND INEQUALITIES IN MODERN PERIOD, 2: RISE
OF CAPITALISM
TO UNDERSTAND 21ST CENTURY INEQUALITIES: 3: RISE OF
GLOBALIZATION
NOTE: GLOBAL INEQUALITIES (NOT SOCIAL INEQUALITIES)
BEGIN WITH RISE OF CAPITALISM AS A WORLD SYSTEM:
THEREFORE TO STUDY GLOBAL INEQUALITIES IS TO STUDY
HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM
“SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY” (WHAT IN ENVIRONMENT OR SYSTEM
CAUSES A CONDITION?)
E.G, MEDICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY: PLASTICS/CHEMICALS =
CANCER
WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOCIAL ORDER TO GENERATE
INEQUALITIES?
HOW DO INEQUALITIES ARISE:
WEALTH AND SURPLUS
◼
◼
◼
WEALTH = THINGS WE PRODUCE WITH
OUR LABOR THAT ARE NECESSARY AND
DESIRABLE [our “species being”]
[HOW WE PRODUCE THESE THINGS AND WHAT TYPE OF SOCIAL RELATONS
DO WE ENTER INTO AS WE PRODUCE
THESE THINGS - CONSTITUTES OUR
MODE OF PRODUCTION, OR MODE OF
LIFE]
SURPLUS = “EXCESS WEALTH”
EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL SURPLUS [IN
RESPONSE TO DIFFICULTIES, EG,
MAMMOTHS, FORAGERS IN RAIN FORESTS]
HOW DO INEQUALITIES ARISE?
SOME CONCEPTUAL MATTERS
◼
◼
◼
◼
“SOCIAL HISTORY” – HUMAN BEINGS HAVE A
SOCIAL HISTORY, NOT JUST NATURAL
SOCIAL HISTORY =
MODE OF INTERACTION BETWEEN OUR
SPECIES AND ENVIRONMENT & THE SOCIAL
RELATIONS WE DEVELOP IN OUR
INTERACTION WITH THE ENVIRONMENT
THIS MODE IS: “MODE OF PRODUCTION/MODE OF
LIFE”
TO UNDERSTAND INEQUALITIES WE MUST STUDY
THIS MODE
SURPLUS: FUNDAMENTAL
HISTORICAL SOURCE OF
SOCIAL CHANGE
WHO CONTROLS SURPLUS?
◼
◼
◼
SURPLUS ALLOWS DIVISION OF LABOR – DISTINCT RELATIONSHIP TO
PROCESS OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION…DIFFERENTIATION,
DEVELOPMENT, ETC.
SOME WITHDRAW FROM DIRECT PARTICIPATION IN PRODUCTION OF FOOD
AND OTHER SOCIAL NECESSITIES…. LIVE OFF SURPLUS THAT OTHERS
PRODUCE
THESE PEOPLE BEGIN TO ACQUIRE SPECIAL PRIVILEGES – STRATA, FROM
RANK TO SOCIAL CLASS
◼
THESE GROUPS BEGIN TO CONTROL LABOR PROCESS OF OTHERS AND
SOCIAL SURPLUS
◼
EMERGENT DOMINANT GROUPS UTILIZE CONTROL OF OTHERS’ LABOR
AND SURPLUS TO EXERCISE POLITICAL POWER
◼
PRIVILEGE BECOMES INSTITUTIONALIZED IN POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL
SYSTEMS (STATES AND DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES)
◼
FROM RECIPROCITIES TO EXCHANGE AND CONTROL, FROM “BIG MAN” TO
DOMINANT GROUPS
From “big man” coordinating exchange (status)
to control & appropriation of surpluses
(rank to class)
Coordinating exchange to
Controlling surplus
The Rise of the
State (Engels)
“Alongside this process of formation of classes
another was also taking place. As the state arose
from the need to keep class antagonisms in check,
but also arose in the thick of the fight between
classes, it is normally the state of the most
powerful, economically ruling class, and so acquires
new means of holding down and exploiting the
oppressed class. The ancient state was, above all,
the state of the slave-owners for holding down the
slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the
nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and
bondsmen, and the modern representative state is
the instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital.
WHAT IS INEQUALITY?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
WEBER: THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION AMONG MEMBERS OF
SOCIETY OF 3 SOCIAL REWARDS OF WEALTH, POWER, &
STATUS/PRESTIGE
WEALTH: NECESSARY AND DESIRED RESOURCES THAT SOCIETY
PRODUCES COLLECTIVELY
POWER: THE ABILITY TO ISSUE COMMANDS AND HAVE THEM
OBEYED; ABILITY TO CONTROL BEHAVIOR OF OTHERS
STATUS: AMOUNT OF SOCIAL PRESTIGE THAT ONE COMMANDS,
AND THE AUTHORITY THAT SUCH PRESTIGE BRINGS
THIS UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION BECOMES INSTITIONALIZED……
SYSTEMS OF STRATIFICATION/INEQUALITY = STRUCTURES
THROUGH WHICH ENTIRE CATEGORIES OF PEOPLE HAVE
DIFFERENT ACCESS TO THREE SOCIAL REWARDS, AS RESULT
OF LOCATION IN THESE SOCIAL HIERARCHIES
THESE ARE PATTERNS…. THESE STRUCTURES ARE NOT
ARBITRARY:
MEN AND WOMEN
CLASS
RACE/ETHNICITY
NATION
ETCETERA
KEY = CATEGORIES/SETS OF RELATIONS, NOT INDIVIDUALS
“LIFE CHANCES”
◼
DEPENDING ON ONE’S LOCATION IN SYSTEM OF
INEQUALITY, CERTAIN CATEGORIES OF PEOPLE
HAVE DISTINCT PROBABILITIES OF BENEFITTING
FROM – OR SUFFERING – AS A RESULT OF THE
OPPORTUNITIES OR DISADVANTAGES THAT
SOCIETY OFFERS
◼
PEOPLE FROM SAME STRATA TEND TO SHARE
SIMILAR LIFE CHANCES
◼
E.G. EDUCATION, DIET, CLOTHING, HOUSING,
CULTURAL REALIZATION, DEVELOPMENT OF
TALENTS, ETC.
◼
E.G, NEW MEDICAL DISCOVERIES (AIDS, CANCER,
ETC.), UNIVERSITY EDUCATION, GLOBAL
TOURISM, ETC.
◼
PRIVILEGED – TEND TO ASSUME THEY HAVE
SOME SUPERIOR ATTRIBUTES THAT ACCOUNT
FOR THEIR LIFE CHANCES
INEQUALITY & SOCIAL HEREDITY
DISPELLING DOMINANT MYTHS AND LEGITIMATING
IDEOLOGIES
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
INEQUALITY IS SOCIAL HEREDITY, NOT RESULT OF INDIVIDUAL
CHOICE
THIS KIND OF INEQUALITY ACTUALLY BUILT INTO SOCIAL
STRUCTURE
ATTRIBUTE OF SOCIAL ORDER, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL
“ASCRIBED” TRAIT, INHERITED BY BIRTH, “SOCIAL HEREDITY”
WHERE BORN INTO STRATIFICATION SYSTEM – BIRTH DETERMINES
POINT OF ENTRY (NO CONTROL OVER WHAT WOMB WE COME OUT
OF)
WEALTH, POVERTY, DOMINATION AND SUBORDINATION – EXIST
BEFORE WE ARE BORN…
WE IMMEDIATELY BEGIN EXPERIENCING EFFECTS OF OUR
LOCATION IN STRATIFICATION SYSTEM, SHAPES OUR LIFE
CHANCES FROM EARLIEST YEARS
MYTHS OF INDIVIDUALISM – “YOU ARE WHAT YOU MAKE OF
YOURSELF” – LEGITIMATING IDEOLOGY
KEY DETERMINANT OF INEQUALITY = ANCESTRY, OVER WHICH WE
HAVE NO CONTROL…. DETERMINES OUR POINT OF ENTRY INTO
SYSTEM
IF YOU BORN ON LEFT WILL YOU HAVE
SAME LIFE CHANCES AS BORN ON RIGHT?
MORE ON SOCIAL HEREDITY
◼
◼
◼
◼
IMPORTANCE OF BEING BORN INTO WEALTH FOR ONE’S LIFE
CHANCES, 1986, FORBES: 90 FAMILIES IN U.S. WORTH MORE THAN
$500 MILLION, ALL 90 INHERITED ALL OR PART OF THEIR WEALTH
BORN INTO PRIVILEGE SETS STAGE FOR SCHOOLING,
OCCUPATION, INCOME, HEALTH
BORN INTO POVERTY ALSO SETS THIS STAGE
WHAT IS INHERITED?
PROPERTY AND WEALTH
SOCIAL STATUS/CASTE
EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS
SOCIAL NETWORKING
DIFFERENTIAL SOCIALIZATION AS “CLASS”
AND GENDER TRAINING (FAMILIES & PARENTING,
GUIDANCE COUNSELORS, MEDIA, TEACHERS, POLICE,
ETC.)
NATIONAL LOCATION
NUMEROUS OTHER LIFE CHANCES FACTORS
(HEALTH, MENTAL STIMULATION, DIET & NUTRITION,
SELF ESTEEM AND CONFIDENCE, CLASSTRANSMITTED MOVITATION TO “DO WELL”, ETC.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
CHARACTERISTIC SOCIETY,
NOT FUNCTION INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES: TITANIC
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
◼
1522 OF 2227 PASSENGERS DIED
SHIP BUILT TO HOUSE PEOPLE LIVING IN INEQUALITY (1ST, 2ND, 3RD CLASS)
SOME CATEGORIES OF PASSENGERS MUCH BETTER ODDS OF SURVIVAL
THAN OTHERS
SOCIAL CLASS DEEPLY AT WORK: RICH, 1ST CLASS PASSENGERS HAD
MUCH BETTER CHANCE OF SURVIVAL
CREW BORDED UP LOWER DECKS
MORE THAN 60% 1ST CLASS SAVED; ONLY 36% 2ND CLASS, ONLY 24% 3RD
CLASS PASSENGERS ON LOWER DECK SURVIVED
CLASS TURNED OUT TO BE MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
SURVIVORS BETTER SWIMMERS?? SURVIVAL RATE RESULT OF SOCIAL
PRIVILEGE
1ST CLASS - $4,350 TICKET, EQUIVALENT TODAY $50,000
CRITICAL SOC. OF “NATURAL DISASTERS”: SURVIVING EARTHQUAKES AND
OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS
TSUNAMI, HURRICANES, CLASS QUAKES
SIMILARLY – IF SOME FARE BETTER IN SOCIETY, NOT BECAUSE SUPERIOR
SWIMMERS IN SOCIETY, BUT BECAUSE SOCIETY CONFERRED UPON THEM
SOCIAL PRIVILEGE (E.G, RIVER)
SYSTEMS OF INEQUALITY
THREE ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS
•
SOCIAL INEQUALITIES EXIST OVER
GENERATIONS
DURABLE SYSTEMS THAT ARE
REPRODUCED
MECHANISMS OF REPRODUCTION
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND
STRUCTURAL MOBILITY (GROUPS,
NOT INDIVIDUALS)
•
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION UNIVERSAL BUT
VARIABLE
BEYOND COMMUNAL STAGE, SOME
UNIVERSAL CHARACTERISTICS
(GENDER & CLASS DIVISIONS)
PARTICULAR PATTERNS VARY
SOCIETY TO SOCIETY
(E.G., GUATEMALA) (“people of
color”
•
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION INVOLVES NOT JUST
INEQUALITIES BUT BELIEFS AND IDEOLOGIES
THAT JUSTIFY OR LEGITIMATE INEQUALITIES
WHAT MAINTAINS INEQUALITIES?
CONTROL OVER RESOURCES AND
DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES (RELIGION,
RACIAL, INDIVIDUALISM, SOCIAL
DARWINISM, ETC)
POWER, PRODUCTION, AND
INEQUALITY
◼
◼
◼
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
MATERIAL BASIS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY (NOT DUE TO
ATTITUDES, CULTURE, OR PSYCHOLOGY)
REMEMBER: MODE OF INTERACTION OUR SPECIES WITH
ENVIRONMENT AND WITH EACH OTHER = MODE OF PRODUCTION,
MODE OF LIFE
4 BASIC PROPOSITIONS:
COLLECTIVE PRODUCTION OF NECESSITIES BASIS OF HUMAN
SOCIETY
SOCIAL INEQUALITY GROUNDED IN THESE PRODUCTIVE
PROCESSES (PROD. AND REPROD)
SOCIAL GROUPS PARTICIPATE UNEQUALLY IN THESE
PRODUCTIVE PROCESSES
CONTROL OVER ECONOMIC (OR PRODUCTIVE) RESOURCES IS
THE SOURCE OF SOCIAL POWER; AND POWER IS USED IN ORDER
TO SUSTAIN CONTROL OVER PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES
E.G., STATE POWER TO PROTECT PRIVATE PROPERTY
INTERVENTION TO CONTROL NATURAL RESOURCES
ECONOMIC RESOURCES IN THE FAMILY
ANALYSIS OF POWER
◼
WHY DOES POWER
INTEREST US? WHY DOES
POWER SUSTAIN
INEQUALITIES
◼
POWER DETERMINES: HOW
HUMAN LABOR AND
NATURAL RESOURCES WILL
BE UTILIZED AND DISPOSED
OF
◼
WHO DOES WHAT? WHO
GETS WHAT? AND HOW?
◼
“POWER” AND “POWER
OVER”
ANALYSIS OF POWER, CONT…
◼
DEFINITION OF POWER = ABILITY TO ACHIEVE DESIRED ENDS OR OUTCOMES; TO
SATISFY ONE’S OBJECTIVES AND INTERESTS
LIMITED BY NATURE AND BIOLOGY
E.G. POWER TO FETCH WATER
POWER TO PRODUCE – PRODUCTIVE
LABOR, OUR “SPECIES POWER”
IF YOU CANNOT UTILIZE YOUR ABILITIES TO ACHIEVE DESIRED ENDS
AND SATISFY INTERESTS YOU DO NOT HAVE POWER
YOU ARE DISEMPOWERED
HOW DOES DISEMPOWERMENT COME ABOUT
HISTORICALLY?
HOW RELATED TO INEQUALITY
◼
DEFINITION OF POWER OVER (SOCIAL POWER, DOMINATION) = ABILILITY TO
INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR OR ACTIVITY OF OTHERS (INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS) IN ORDER
TO ACHIEVE ONE’S ENDS, OBJECTIVES, OR INTERESTS
POWER TO FORCE OTHERS TO BRING YOU WATER OR GROW FOOD
POWER IS DETERMINED IN CONTEXT OF SOCIAL RELATIONS, SOCIAL
STRUCTURE
SOCIAL POWER/DOMINATION IS A SOCIAL RELATION
E.G., POWER TO PRODUCE FOOD, SOCIAL POWER TO FORCE OTHERS
TO PRODUCE FOOD FOR YOU (FEUDAL LORD)
PRODUCE FOOD OR AGROEXPORTS?
CRUCIAL: SOCIAL POWER = POWER TO MOLD, SHAPE, AND DETERMINE SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC STRUCTURES, E.G. WAR OR HEALTH & EDUCATION
UNEQUAL POWER RELATIONS – MATERIAL INEQUALITIES
3 TYPES OF SOCIAL
POWER
COERSIVE (DIRECT) – “DOMINATION OVER”, EG, ROMAN
LEGIONS, COLONIAL CONQUEST,
MILITARY INTERVENTION
FORCE NOT NECESSARY ACTIVATED TO REALIZE
COERSIVE POWER, LATENT THREAT
COERSIVE POWER SHAPES AND MOLDS
STRUCTURES
IDEOLOGICAL (INDIRECT) – CONTROL OVER MINDS, POWER
PEOPLE THINK AND SEE WORLD, ABILITY TO
ESTABLISH AGENDAS, FRAME IDEAS AND
ACTIONS:
CAMPESINOS IN TRIBUTARY SYSTEMS
IN U.S., MOST PEOPLE DEFEND PRIVATE
PROPERTY (MCGOVERN)
MAJORITIES ACCEPT THAT DOMINANT MINORITIES
HAVE RIGHT TO THEIR PRIVILEGES
CULTURAL HEGEMONY
STRUCTURAL POWER – CONTROL OVER RESOURCES
IMF POWER TO IMPOSE SAPs, HENCE INFLUENCE
BEHAVIOR OF AFFECTED POPULATION
OPEC AND OIL SUPPLY
TNCs RELOCATING
BRAZILIAN ELECTIONS, HAMAS
IN FAMILY – GENDER INEQUALITY AND MALE
CONTROL OVER FAMILY’S ECONOMIC
RESOURCES
ANALYSIS OF POWER:
DISCUSSION POINTS
◼
3 FORMS OF POWER GO HAND-IN-HAND
E.G., CAMPESINOS DON’T INVADE LAND BECAUSE: 1)
LANDLORDS HAVE COERSIVE POWER OF STATE; 2)
MAJORITY IDEOLOGICALLY ACCEPT PREVAILING
DISTRIBUTION OF LAND; 3) STRUCTURE OF CREDITS,
INCENTIVES, EC., A STRUCTURAL POWER THAT
IMPEDES USE OF LAND BY SOME GROUPS AND
FACILITATES FOR OTHERS
◼
STRUCURAL POWER BASED ON & BACKED BY COERSIVE POWER
CONQUEST & VIOLENCE ESTABLISHES CONTROL OVER
RESOURCES & VICE-VERSA (L.A., ENGLAND 1066)
IN TURN, POWER IMPOSE IDEAS & IDEOLOGY USUALLY
RESTS ON CONTROL OVER MATERIAL RESOURCES
MEANS OF SYMBOLIC PRODUCTION & DISSEMINATION
◼
“STATE POWER” REFERS TO POWER OF INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS TO
UTILIZE RESOURCES OF STATE (INC. COERSIVE APPARATUSES)
LANDLORDS UTILIZE ARMY
UTILIZING STATE APPARATUS REPRESS T.N. MIGRANTS
TNCs CHANGE TAX & OTHER LAWS
INVASION OF IRAQ & MIL-IND-PETRO-CONST MATRIX
POWER
CRUCIAL
CONCLUSIONS
POWER IN GLOBAL SYSTEM ASSYMETRIC & IS A
(MAYBE THE) KEY FACTOR IN GLOBAL INEQUALITIES
•
INCOME & OTHER QUANTITATIVE MEASURES OF INEQUALITY (OR
POVERTY) NOT REAL ISSUE. MORE IMPORTANT: POWER RELATIONS
THAT UNDERGIRD INEQUALITY
•
POVERTY = INABILITY TO MAKE CHOICES: HIGHLIGHTS SOCIAL
RELATION OF POWERLESSNESS
•
POVERTY LESS INERT STATE THAN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP OF POWER
AND POWERLESSNESS
POOR PEOPLE ARE POOR BECAUSE THEY HAVE
BEEN DISEMPOWERED. ESSENCE OF POVERTY IS
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POOR & RICH, & ESSENCE
OF THAT RELATIONSHIP IS POWER
HOW DO WE CLASSIFY GLOBAL
INEQUALITIES?
◼
4 MAJOR DIMENSIONS/AXES SYSTEM OF GLOBAL
INEQUALITIES:
1) CLASS;
2) GENDER;
3) RACIAL/ETHNIC;
4) COUNTRIES
◼
UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL REWARDS ON
BASIS OF THESE DISTINCT CLEAVAGES
◼
EACH DIMENSION IMPLIES DIFFERENTIATED
RELATION TO PRODUCTIVE PROCESS
WORLDWIDE
SOCIAL CLASSES
◼
SOCIAL CLASS = GROUP PEOPLE WHO PLAY SIMILAR ROLE ECONOMY
◼
IN CLASS SYSTEMS:
1) DOMINANT CLASSES;
2) INTERMEDIATE STRATA (MIDDLE CLASSES);
3) SUBORDINATE (EXPLOITED) CLASSES
◼
DOMINANT CLASS DEFINED BY CONTROL OVER SOCIETY’S RESOURCES
& USUALLY EXERCISES POL. POWER (CONTROL OVER STATE)
◼
CLASSES ONLY EXIST IN RELATION TO THEIR OPPOSITES - CLASS
RELATIONS/RELATIONAL. E.G., SLAVES AND SLAVE OWNERS,
CAMPESINOS AND TRIBUTARY STATE; SERFS AND LORDS, CAPITALISTS
AND WORKERS
◼
STRATIFICATION WITHIN CLASSES, E.G. SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE
CAPITALISTS; SKILLED AND UNSKILLED WORKERS
◼
OTHER CLEAVAGES WITHIN CLASSES, E.G. NATL. & T.N. FRACTIONS,
RACE/ETHNIC DIVISIONS
◼
DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES LEGITIMATE OR JUSTIFY SOCIAL HIERARCHY
(E.G. EGYPT, CHINA, EUROPE, AZTEC, CAPITALIST)
IMAGES
OF
SOCIAL
CLASS
(SUMER, ROME,
EGYPT,
CAPITALISM
GENDER
INEQUALITIES
◼
OLDEST FORM OF INEQUALITY
◼
FIRST DIVISION OF LABOR SEXUAL, I.E., MEN &
WOMEN HAVE DISTINCT RELATIONS TO
PRODUCTIVE PROCESS, AND ACCESS TO OR
CONTROL OVER RESOURCES AND POWER
◼
FROM BIOLOGICAL TO SOCIAL DIVISION OF
LABOR
◼
PLOW THEORY, MILITARY THEORY, FROM
MOTHER RIGHT TO FATHER RIGHT
◼
GENDER INEQUALITY BECOMES INTEGRAL
PART OF GLOBAL SYSTEM – CULTURAL,
SOCIAL, POLITICAL, & PSYCHOLOGICAL
DIMENSIONS – “GENDER SYSTEM”
ETHNIC/
RACIAL
INEQUALI
ETHNIC/RACIAL OPPRESSION IN FUNCTION OF
ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION
TIES
KEY = CONTROL OVER RESOURCES AND LABOR
POWER OF ETHNICALLY OR RACIALLY DISTINGUISHED
GROUPS (EG, COLOR-BASED SLAVERY, T.N.
MIGRATION, IRELAND/ENGLAND, TAMIL TIGERS)
WHEN SYSTEMS OF PRODUCTION AND POWER
DISTINGUISH AMONG PEOPLE ON BASIS OF ETHNIC OR
RACIAL IDENTITY (PHYSICAL OR CULTURAL MARKERS
TO DISTINGUISH AND EXPLOIT)
NOTE CONFUSION (REIFICATION, MYSTIFICATION,
CONFUSION): NOTHING INHERENT IN PHYSICAL
DIFFERENCES THAT GENERATES INEQUALITIES
STUART HALL: “RACE IS THE MODALITY THAT CLASS IS
LIVED”
INEQUALITY AMONG
NATIONS & REGIONS
IN GLOBAL SYSTEM
◼
RESTS ON DIFFERENTIATION AND UNEQUAL PARTICIPATION
IN WORLD PRODUCTIVE PROCESS, IN WORLD ECONOMY
◼
STRUCTURES OF WORLD ECONOMY ARE MAINTAINED
THROUGH EXERCISE OF POWER IN GLOBAL SYSTEM
◼
GLOBAL INEQUALITIES SPAN THESE 4 DIMENSIONS, WHICH
CANNOT BE SEPARATED
PRINCIPAL FOCUS THIS COURSE: INEQUALITY AMONG
NATIONS AND REGIONS
CRUCIAL CONCLUSIONS:
SOCIAL INEQUALITY AS
CONSEQUENCE OF STRUCTURE
OF WORLD ECONOMY
◼
CONCEPT OF UNEQUAL PARTICIPATION IN INT. DIVISION OF LABOR
◼
BASIC PROPOSITIONS:
(1)
COLLECTIVE PRODUCTION OF NECESSITIES BASIS OF HUMAN
SOCIETY
SOCIAL INEQUALITY GROUNDED IN THESE PRODUCTIVE PROCESSES
(PROD. AND REPROD), EG, CLASSES, GENDER, NATIONS.
SOCIAL GROUPS PARTICIPATE UNEQUALLY IN THESE PRODUCTIVE
PROCESSES
CONTROL OVER ECONOMIC (OR PRODUCTIVE) RESOURCES IS THE
SOURCE OF SOCIAL POWER; AND POWER IS USED IN ORDER TO
SUSTAIN CONTROL OVER PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES
(2)
(3)
(4)
THEREFORE, WE STUDY ECONOMIC AND PRODUCTIVE STRUCTURES,
AND UNEQUAL PARTICIPATION IN THEM, IN ORDER TO ANALYZE AND
UNDERSTAND INEQUALITIES
HISTORY OF I.D.L.
◼
◼
◼
◼
PRE-1492: WORLD OF AGRARIAN CIVILIZATIONS,
NO IDL
1492-1945: “COLONIAL INTERNATIONAL DIVISION
OF LABOR”
NOTE: EVEN IN 1990, RAW MATERIAL
CONSTITUTED 90% OF AFRICA’S EXPORTS,
65% OF LATIN AMERICA’S, & 60% OF ASIA’S,
EXCLUDING TIGERS
1945-1970S: “POST-COLONIAL DIVISION OF
LABOR”… DIFFERENTIATION, SOME
INDUSTRIALIZATION IN SOUTH
1970s–2002: “GLOBAL DIVISION OF LABOR….
TRANSNATIONAL INTEGRATION, ETC.
Israeli Apartheid
‘Ben White is a very fine, professional journalist deeply concerned, as all
should be, with human rights regardless of fear or favour.’
John Pilger
‘When Israel is finally put in the dock it will be thanks to people like Ben
White. He describes in authoritative detail the actions – and crimes – of
the state of Israel.’
Ken Loach
‘Ben White is a serious journalist with a deep commitment to human
rights and justice for the Palestinians. He is also a well-informed and
uncompromising critic of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.’
Avi Shlaim
‘This book deals rationally and cogently with a topic that almost always
generates considerable heat even just with book titles. The reader may not
agree with everything that White asserts but it is a highly commendable
effort to throw light on a fraught subject.’
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
‘A very strong and clear voice that does not shun from exposing in full, and
in a most accessible manner, the essence of Zionism and Israeli policies
in Palestine. In a world confused by competing narratives, disinformation and fabrication, this book is an excellent guide for understanding
the magnitude of the crimes committed against the Palestinians and the
nature of their present suffering and oppression.’
Professor Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter, Israeli historian
and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007)
‘This book provides one of the best introductions to the Israel/Palestine
conflict. It reveals what mainstream media in the West seeks to conceal
from the public: that Israel has an apartheid regime which has been
obsessed with demographic racism and ethnic cleansing for six decades.
The book provides an indispensable context for understanding the origins
and consequences of the conflict. It also makes by far the most compelling
case for “peace with justice-not apartheid”.’
Nur Masalha, Reader in Religion and Politics,
St Mary’s University College (UK), and author of
The Bible and Zionism (2007)
‘Is Israel an apartheid state? The answer to this question has enormous
implications for how states and international civil society should act
towards a country that bills itself as the moral guardian of the memory and
lessons of the Nazi Holocaust – that is why it is so heavily contested. But
there is no doubt that Israel is constituted as a “Jewish state”. The problem
is that half the population it controls – the indigenous Palestinians – is
not Jewish. In this carefully researched book, Ben White demonstrates
that indeed Israel could have become and could not continue to be a
“Jewish state” unless it used discriminatory tactics that resemble and often
surpass those of apartheid South Africa. At a time when Israel appears to
regard any action against Palestine’s indigenous people – no matter how
violent and illegal – as justified, this book is essential reading for those
who want to deepen their understanding beyond soundbites and spin.’
Ali Abunimah, Co-founder of Electronic Intifada,
author of One Country (2007)
‘Ben White’s new book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide is a useful
introduction to a vital debate. To understand the challenges of the
current situation in the Middle East we must revisit the long and often
painful journey that led from the creation of Israel to the 40-year-long
occupation of the Palestinians. This challenging new work unpicks some
of the myths of that story and forces us all to look again at the reality of
current Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.’
Crispin Blunt, Conservative Member of Parliament for Reigate
‘There are always those who say the conflict in Palestine is too complicated
for anyone to dare engage with it, much less understand it. Yet here is
the book which answers them, and it does so with a rare intelligence and
fine line of argument. Drawn from a rich range of sources, Ben White’s
Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide takes on the most complex arenas of
injustice and contested history, and renders them accessible, lucid, and
morally compelling. Never compromising on the facts, its narrative both
enlightens and inspires. If you want to learn about Palestine, start here.’
Karma Nabulsi, Oxford University academic
‘An essential guide for understanding the reality of Israeli apartheid – both
the history, and the day to day reality.’
Eyal Weizman, Israeli architect and author of
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (2007)
‘I am impressed by Ben White’s clear-minded journalism and analysis. I
have quoted from an article of his in a speech to the House of Commons.
I feel sure his book will be of value in understanding the attitudes behind
the Middle East division.’
Harry Cohen, Labour Member of Parliament
for Leyton and Wanstead
‘White’s book helps us see much more clearly both what is happening
in Israel/Palestine but also what we must do about it. If you really care
about peace in the Middle East, read this book. Then commit yourself
to supporting non-violent proactive ways to bring justice with peace for
both Israelis and Palestinians.’
Rev. Stephen Sizer, author of Zion’s Christian Soldiers (2007)
‘Ben White provides a lucid and essential account of the roots, nature and
development of Israeli apartheid and the continued resistance – home
grown or international. His work cleverly unites the relevant past to the
unbearable present, and provides a solid presentation of the ongoing
struggle to rid the Zionist state of its racially selective “democracy”. His
writing is dispassionate, clear and thoroughly substantiated, as is the
case with all of his work.’
Ramzy Baroud, editor of the Palestine Chronicle website,
journalist and author of The Second Palestinian Intifada (2006)
‘Ben White presents a book to be used and not only read. It is to be used by
all those who are interested in taking a political and historic journey into
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and who are involved in moving beyond
the historic narratives into creating a future where peace prevails in the
Middle East.’
Sami Awad, Executive Director of Holy Land Trust,
Bethlehem, Palestine
‘This is not a story for the faint of heart but it is a necessary story, rarely
told with such candour. This is also one of those rare books that will
permanently change a reader’s view of the world and inevitably force us
to ask about our own country’s complicity in this occupation.’
Gary M. Burge, PhD, Wheaton College and Graduate School,
author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? (2003)
‘Ben White is an unusually measured and thoughtful commentator on the
Israel/Palestine question. There aren’t many writers on the region whose
work demands attention for the quality of its insight and reliability of its
research, but Ben is one of them.’
Arthur Neslen, author of Occupied Minds (2006)
‘In this book Ben White provides important insights on the history and
emergence of the State of Israel while simultaneously documenting the
suffering, dispossession and dispersion of the Palestinian people from
lands they controlled for hundreds of years. For the earnest scholar and
serious student of the Israel/Palestine question, his research will prove
most valuable.’
Rev. Alex Awad, professor at Bethlehem Bible College
and pastor of East Jerusalem Baptist Church
‘Western governments, including my own – Australia – have largely fallen
for Israel’s “victim” propaganda, and blame the Palestinians for what has
happened. This book is a well documented rejoinder and should be read
by all with a genuine concern for peace with justice for all the peoples
of historic Palestine.’
Dr Kevin Bray, Member of the National Council of
Churches of Christ in Australia, Chair of the Canberra
Ecumenical Working Group on Palestine-Israel and
Chair of Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine
‘This is a very honest, clear and powerful book bringing us face to face
with the reality of what Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinians. It
would be convenient to ignore it. It would be convenient to assume Ben
has got it wrong – that it’s not quite that bad. Sadly it is and we ignore
it at everyone’s peril.’
Garth Hewitt, Canon of St George’s Cathedral, Jerusalem
‘Ben White has a passionate commitment to justice and to facing difficult
facts. This book is likely to produce strong reactions, but it will also
hopefully provoke real thought.’
Simon Barrow, Co-director, Ekklesia (UK-based think tank)
Israeli Apartheid
A Beginner’s Guide
Second Edition
Ben White
First published 2009 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Second edition published 2014
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Ben White 2009, 2014
The right of Ben White to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN
ISBN
ISBN
ISBN
978 0 7453 3463 9
978 1 7837 1026 3
978 1 7837 1028 7
978 1 7837 1027 0
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إلى الصامدين
To the steadfast ones
To the steadfast ones
Contents
List of Maps, Figures and Photographs
Acknowledgements
Foreword by John Dugard
Preface to the Second Edition
Introducing Israeli Apartheid
x
xii
xiii
xvii
1
Part I: Israeli Independence, Palestinian Catastrophe
15
Part II: Israeli Apartheid
44
Part III: Towards Inclusion and Peace – Resisting Israeli
Apartheid
110
Frequently Asked Questions
Glossary
Israeli Apartheid: A Timeline
Resources
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
126
142
150
151
158
189
195
Maps, Figures and
Photographs
Map 1 General map of Palestine/Israel
Map 2 Palestinian villages depopulated in 1948 and
razed by Israel
Map 3 Settlements established and evacuated
1967–2008
Map 4 Israel’s Wall and settlements (colonies),
February 2007
Map 5 Projection of Israel’s West Bank Partition
Plan – 2008
Map 6 Disappearing Palestine
Map 7 Access 2013
xix
37
67
78
104
106
108
Figure 1 Palestinian population, 1880–1947
17
Figure 2 Palestinian population by subdistrict in 1946
23
Figure 3 Settler population growth in the OPT,
1990–2005
69
Figure 4 Births at military checkpoints
75
Figure 5 Second Intifada deaths,
29 September 2000–31 December 2000
91
Figure 6 Second Intifada deaths, 2000–06
91
Figure 7 Exports from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank,
2000–12
99
Figure 8 Gaza ceasefire attacks,
November 2012–February 2013
100
x
maps, figures and photographs
Photograph 1
Palestinians leaving their homeland after
the Arab-Israeli war of 1948
Photograph 2
Palestinian refugees in Jordan, in the
aftermath of the 1967 war
Photograph 3
28
38
Some of the tens of thousands of
Palestinian refugees who fled the West
Bank for Jordan in 1967
41
Photograph 4
Dheisheh refugee camp, West Bank
43
Photograph 5
Palestinians in Israel on an ADRID
march in May 2008
Photograph 6
Har Homa settlement, outside
Bethlehem in the West Bank, May 2008
Photograph 7
72
Palestinian man with his ID and Israeli
military travel permission slip
Photograph 9
69
Bypass road south of Jerusalem, with
olive trees ready for removal, July 2006
Photograph 8
54
72
Rubble placed by the IDF to block
Palestinian access, west of Bethlehem,
May 2008
73
Photograph 10 The Separation Wall in Bethlehem,
September 2005
81
Photograph 11 The morning after an Israeli raid,
Balata refugee camp, near Nablus,
September 2006
96
Photograph 12 Qalandiya checkpoint near Ramallah,
September 2005
xi
103
Acknowledgements
A lot of people have worked hard to make this book what it
is, and for that I am very grateful. I cannot thank everyone
here as much as I would like, and there are many dear friends
and family who helped simply with their friendship and
support. An especial thanks though to the following who gave
invaluable assistance, advice and encouragement:
Roger van Zwanenberg and all the team at Pluto Press –
particularly Robert Webb.
Andy Sims, Alex Awad, Lizzie Clifford, Jonathan Cook,
Ilan Pappe, Khaled Hroub, Glen Rangwala, Jonathan Kuttab,
Arthur Nelsen, Suhad Bishara at Adalah; John Dugard, Paul
Higgins, Penny Julian, Karma Nabulsi, Isabelle Humphries,
Ramzy Baroud and the Palestine Chronicle; Philip Rizk,
Colin Chapman, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
(WRMEA); Daoud Badr at the Association for the Defense of
the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons in Israel (ADRID);
Stephen Sizer, Shaza Younis, Daoud Nassar, Institute for
Middle East Understanding (IMEU); Professor Gary Burge,
Juliette Bannoura at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem
(ARIJ); Muzna Shihabi and Ashraf Khatib at the Negotiations
Affairs Department; the Palestinian Academic Society for the
Study of International Affairs (PASSIA); Waseem Mardini
and the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP); Amnesty
International; the United Nations Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs in the OPT (OCHA); and Sami
Mshasha at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Jerusalem.
xii
Foreword
John Dugard
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Israel/Palestine conflict
is that it is so little discussed in the West, particularly in the
United States. Unlike the human rights situation in Zimbabwe,
Sudan, Burma, Tibet and Cuba it is a taboo topic in most
quarters. Whereas human rights in apartheid South Africa
was vigorously debated in the media, universities, churches,
shareholders meetings and social and professional gatherings
the subject of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory (OPT) is studiously avoided. This contrasts with
the position in Israel itself, where all issues are examined and
debated in the media and public life. As Special Rapporteur
to the Human Rights Council (previously Commission for
Human Rights) on the Human Rights Situation in the OPT,
I spoke in Israel to the Knesset on house demolitions, at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem on human rights violations
in the OPT and at other meetings on controversial aspects of
the conflict. But in the West one is not so welcome to express
opinions on this subject. It seems that one can address real
issues in Israel itself without the risk of being labelled as
anti-Semitic but in the West it is not so. In many quarters
any frank criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is
viewed as anti-Semitic.
The failure to discuss and debate the conflict presents a
serious problem as until it is fully aired the conflict will not
be resolved. Herein lies the value of the present work. Unlike
the many available comprehensive and scholarly studies of the
xiii
israeli apartheid
conflict which inevitably have a limited readership, this book
highlights the key issues of the conflict in a short and highly
readable study, in which brevity is not achieved at the expense
of a serious analysis of Israeli law and practice or a proper
treatment of the historical record. All the principal topics at the
heart of the conflict are addressed: the treatment of Palestinians
both within Israel itself and the OPT, why Palestinians reject
the notion of a ‘Jewish state’, is Israel a democracy, is Gaza
still occupied by Israel, the plight of Palestinian refugees, the
expansion of settlements, the Wall presently being constructed
in the OPT, checkpoints etc., etc. In short the book is an ideal
reader for informed debate about the conflict.
Many will take issue with the comparison with apartheid.
Ben White does not, however, say that apartheid and Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians are exactly the same. What he says
is that they have certain similarities, that they resemble each
other. That is why he calls it Israeli apartheid. It is Israel’s own
version of a system that has been universally condemned. Of
course there are differences, as White freely admits. Apartheid
in South Africa was a regime of institutionalised race
discrimination in which a white minority sought to maintain
domination over a black majority, whereas Israeli apartheid is
concerned with the discriminatory treatment of a minority of
Palestinians in Israel itself and the discriminatory treatment of
Palestinians in the OPT under a regime of military occupation
that, unlike apartheid, is tolerated by international law. But,
as White points out, there are similarities. He rightly says that
‘The common element of both legal systems is the intention to
consolidate and enforce dispossession, securing the best land
control over natural resources for one group at the expense of
another.’ Control is achieved in Israel/Palestine by many of the
xiv
foreword
same devices employed in apartheid South Africa: colonisation
or the settlement of land owned by the indigenous population;
territorial fragmentation of the OPT by a process of Bantustanisation; restrictions on movement by a strict system of permits
and checkpoints that brings to mind the much-hated pass
system of apartheid, but probably exceeds the pass system in
severity; house demolitions, military brutality and the arrest
and imprisonment of political opponents. Control is also
achieved by means not employed by the apartheid regime: a
wall/fence/barrier (whatever you like to call it) that divides and
separates people; a system of separate and unequal roads for
Israelis (who get the best roads) and Palestinians (who get the
poor roads); and a deliberately manufactured humanitarian
crisis that has reduced the Palestinian people to a state of
poverty and despair. This last difference is perhaps the most
striking. Whereas the Israeli military occupation of the OPT
has resulted in the destruction of houses, agriculture and
businesses, the impairment of schools, universities, hospitals
and clinics, damage to electricity plants, water supplies and
other amenities, and the subjection of the Palestinian people to
poverty, the apartheid state, in order to promote a pretence of
equal treatment, built houses, schools, universities, businesses,
hospitals, clinics and provided water to the black population.
It sought to advance the material welfare of the black people
while denying political rights. Israel, on the other hand, denies
political rights to Palestinians and at the same time undermines
their material welfare – in violation of its obligations as an
occupying power under international humanitarian law.
Israel has been condemned for its policies in the OPT by
numerous United Nations resolutions and by the International
Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion of 2004 in which
xv
israeli apartheid
it held that the wall Israel is constructing in Palestinian
Territory is illegal and should be dismantled. But no serious
attempt is made by the West to compel Israel to comply with
its international obligations. As White correctly states ‘Israel
has been exempted from sanction for breaking international
legal norms.’ In this respect the response of the international
community differs substantially from its response to apartheid.
The General Assembly of the United Nations called for
widespread economic sanctions on South Africa, the Security
Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo, every effort
was made to compel South Africa to comply with an advisory
opinion of the International Court of Justice condemning
apartheid in Namibia, and states, corporations and civil society
imposed various forms of sanctions. This too is an issue that
must be addressed if the credibility of the Rule of Law is to be
maintained.
Ben White’s book is no stranger to controversy. It considers
issues that many in the West would like to see swept under
the carpet. But the Palestinian issue is one that threatens
international peace and cannot be avoided. The present
book, by presenting the issues that need to be considered in
a readable, but highly informative, manner will, it is hoped,
stimulate an awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people.
Until this is fully understood and appreciated a just settlement
of the conflict will remain as elusive as ever.
John Dugard
Professor of Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria;
Visiting Professor of Law, Duke University, North Carolina; Former
Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council on the Human
Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
xvi
Preface to the Second Edition
Just weeks after I had finished writing the manuscript for
Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide in 2008, Israel launched
an unparalleled attack on the Gaza Strip, pummelling the
fenced-in enclave for three weeks. The impact of this massacre,
both at the time and as the war crimes were documented
and published, was to spur many in trade unions, faith
communities, on campuses and elsewhere to mobilise against
Israeli apartheid for perhaps the first time.
Since then, the situation on the ground has continued to get
worse, while internationally, solidarity with the Palestinians
has grown and pressure on Israel in various government and
non-governmental contexts has increased.
This new, updated edition of the book is intended to reflect
these developments. In the last half decade, Israel has continued
to build in and expand its network of illegal settlements in the
West Bank, the Apartheid Wall remains, and Palestinians are
being pushed off their land in places like the southern Hebron
Hills and the Jordan Valley. The Gaza Strip remains largely cut
off from the West Bank, subject to blockade by both Israel and
to a lesser extent Egypt.
Inside the pre-1967 borders, Palestinian citizens of
Israel have been the target of explicitly nationalistic and
discriminatory legislation, shining on a light on Israeli
ethnocracy and everyday racism (the topic of a second
book I have since written, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation,
Discrimination and Democracy). Worse still, tens of thousands
xvii
israeli apartheid
face forced expulsion in the Negev, victims of Israel’s long
standing policies of ‘Judaisation’.
Meanwhile, the call from Palestinian civil society in 2005
for a global campaign of Boycott Divestment Sanctions
(BDS) has been heard and taken up by students, charities and
unionists with a speed that has greatly alarmed Israel and its
lobbyists. The last few years have also seen a development
of, and increased familiarity with, an analytical framework
of apartheid and colonialism, reflected here in an expanded
introductory chapter.
A new edition also provides the opportunity to update
statistics and sources, as well as cover important changes,
particularly with regards to the Gaza Strip. But all the elements
of the first edition that were most appreciated remain, such as
the Frequently Asked Questions section.
More and more people are seeing Israel’s policies for what
they are: forms of segregation and structural discrimination
that need to be resisted not excused. The best feedback I had
after the 2009 publication of the first edition was from people
who said that the book had helped them understand the issues
with a new clarity, and that they wanted to do something
in response.
Today, that is exactly what I hope this new edition will also
achieve – introduce the past and present of Israel’s apartheid
regime and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, point towards a
better future based on decolonisation, return and equality,
and act as a springboard for readers to take action in their
own communities.
xviii
Map 1 General map of Palestine/Israel
Source: Keith Cook, in Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion,
London: Pluto Press, p. xv.
xix
Introducing Israeli Apartheid
Supporters of Israel present Zionism as an ideology of
liberation of the Jewish people, but for Palestinians, Zionism,
as it has been practiced and as they have experienced it, has
been precisely apartheid.1
Approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the first time
can be a confusing experience. There seem to be such widely
varying points of view, contradictory versions of history, and
utterly opposing explanations for the root of the problem. Why
is this? One of the main reasons for this difficulty is the fact
there are disagreements over Israel’s origins.
In this book, the truth of Israel’s past and present is laid bare;
the ethnic cleansing, land grabs, discriminatory legislation
and military occupation. This reality is very different from
the typical tale of a small, brave nation, forced from the very
beginning to fight for survival against implacable, bloodthirsty
enemies; a country that has made mistakes but has always done
its best to achieve noble aims with pure means.
What can explain such a profound difference? Pro-Israeli
propaganda in the West has had a huge impact, but there is a
more fundamental reason. ‘Security’ has been the justification
for all manner of Israeli policies, from the population expulsions
in 1948, to the Separation Wall over 60 years later. Defence, so
it goes, is why Israel is forced to take certain measures, however
unpleasant they may be.
Indeed, Israel argues, it alone is a country that fights for
its very survival. Even putting aside Israel’s vast military
1
israeli apartheid
strength, why would Israel’s existence as a Jewish state be so
objectionable to Palestinians? Unlike today’s slick apologists,
the early Zionists were refreshingly honest about the reality of
their mission, as we will see more of in Part I.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky was one of the foremost Zionist leaders
and theoreticians, a man who has more streets in Israel named
in his honour than any other historical figure.2 In perhaps his
most famous essay written in 1923, Jabotinsky was clear about
one thing: ‘Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must
either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of
the native population’.3 Why? Simply put, history shows that
‘every indigenous people will resist alien settlers’.4
This book has been written in order to describe clearly and
simply what Zionism has meant for the Palestinians, how
Israeli apartheid has been implemented and maintained,
and suggestions for how it can be resisted. In this task, I am
indebted to the many academics, writers and journalists who
have researched, documented and witnessed the unfolding of
Israeli apartheid in Palestine.
Part I begins with a concise history of the development
of Zionist settlement and theory, particularly with how it
related to the Palestinians. There is then a summary of the key
historical events of the Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of
1948, when the aim of a Jewish state in Palestine was realised.
Part II will clearly define the main areas of Israeli apartheid
and the contradictions of a so-called ‘Jewish democratic’ state.
Dispersed through Parts I and II will be small ‘stand alone’
boxes with personal stories of how individual Palestinians are
affected by a given aspect of Israeli apartheid.
Part III is the section in which ways to resist Israeli apartheid
are discussed, with details of existing initiatives that should
2
introducing israeli apartheid
hopefully encourage you, the reader, to think of your own
ideas. Finally, the book concludes with a ‘Frequently Asked
Questions’ section in which doubts or criticisms of the book’s
main thrust will be asked and answered. But first, we are going
to take a look at the definition of apartheid in international
law, and the similarities and differences between South African
apartheid and Israel.
d e fi n i n g aparth e id
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the
crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies
and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as
practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following
inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and
maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any
other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them
… [emphasis added]5
Article II, International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, UN General Assembly
Resolution 3068, 30 November 1973
While South Africa is most associated with apartheid (and is the
context from which the term originates), the crime of apartheid
actually has a far broader definition. This is important in the
case of Israel, since even putting aside the similarities and
differences to the South Africa case specifically, we have some
kind of measure by which to assess Israel’s policies past and
present towards the Palestinians.
In 1973, the UN’s General Assembly adopted the
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment
of the Crime of Apartheid, which meant agreeing on a detailed
3
israeli apartheid
description of what exactly ‘the crime of apartheid’ looked like.
From this list of ‘inhuman acts’, there are some particularly
worth highlighting:
groups of the right to life and liberty of person … by the
infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups
of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement
of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to
torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment.
to prevent a racial group or groups from participation
in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the
country … [including] the right to leave and to return
to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to
freedom of movement and residence …
divide the population along racial lines by the creation of
separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial
group or groups … the expropriation of landed property
belonging to a racial group …
As will be described in Parts I and II of this book, Israel has
been, and continues to be, guilty of these crimes, which are all
the more serious for having been ‘committed for the purpose of
establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group
of persons over any other racial group of persons’.
There are other reference points for a legal framework for
apartheid. The International Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1969 – to which Israel
4
introducing israeli apartheid
is a signatory – condemns ‘segregation and apartheid’ and
state parties ‘undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all
practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction’.6
Then there is the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva
Conventions which in Article 85 includes within a list of ‘grave
breaches’ the ‘practices of “apartheid” and other inhuman and
degrading practices involving outrages upon personal dignity,
based on racial discrimination’.7
More recently, the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted in 1998 at an international
conference.8 Israel was actually one of seven countries (out of
148) to vote against the statute. The ICC Statute includes the
‘crime of apartheid’ in a list of ‘crimes against humanity’, going
on to describe apartheid as:
inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination
by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and
committed with the intention of maintaining that regime …
Therefore, even before a consideration of the similarities and
differences between Israel and apartheid South Africa, there is
a clear set of criteria for what constitutes the crime of apartheid
under international law with which we can assess Israel’s
policies since 1948.
Recently, the apartheid analysis has gained traction in a
number of quarters. Palestinian activists have been promoting
a combined apartheid-colonialism-occupation analysis,
exemplified by a 2008 paper produced by the Boycott National
Committee (BNC).9 The following year, the Human Sciences
Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) published an
5
israeli apartheid
extensive study conducted by a group of international scholars
and legal practitioners titled ‘Occupation, Colonialism,
Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied
Palestinian territories under international law’.10
In 2011, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine held its South
Africa session – the third of four total hearings conducted by
the popular court between 2010 and 2012. The focus was on
whether Israel’s policies amounted to a system of apartheid, an
assessment that was made on the basis of three main elements
drawn from international law: two distinct racial groups,
inhuman acts, and systematic, institutionalised domination.11
One of the expert witnesses, Dr David Keane, has written
usefully about the nature of the ‘racial groups’ definition from
the point of view of international law:
the meaning of a racial group for the purposes of the
[International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination] is a broad and practical one. If a
group identifies itself as such, and is identified as such by
others, for example through discriminatory practices, then it
comes under the protection of the Convention … Ultimately
who is or is not a racial group under international law is not
a scientific question, but a practical one.12
Another significant NGO to develop a case for apartheid
has been Ramallah-based legal centre Al-Haq, who in their
2013 report on discriminatory water policies concluded that
‘the threshold for apartheid is met because the inhuman acts,
committed against Palestinians through the denial of access to
water in the OPT, are carried out systematically in the context
of an institutionalised regime with the intent of establishing
6
introducing israeli apartheid
and maintaining Jewish-Israeli domination over Palestinians
as a group’.13
Finally, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) in its March 2012 conclusions, issued
as part of a periodical review, slammed Israel for a variety of
policies on both sides of the Green Line – demarcating between
Israel and the post-1967 Occupied Territories – and noted
the existence of ‘segregation between Jewish and non-Jewish
communities’, a lack of ‘equal access to land and property’,
and ‘home demolitions and forced displacement’.14 CERD’s
report said:
The Committee draws the State party’s attention to its
General Recommendation 19 (1995) concerning the
prevention, prohibition and eradication of all policies and
practices of racial segregation and apartheid, and urges
the State party to take immediate measures to prohibit
and eradicate any such policies or practices which severely
and disproportionately affect the Palestinian population in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory and which violate the
provisions of article 3 of the Convention.
This was the first such condemnation made by CERD since the
apartheid era in South Africa.
Interestingly, Israeli leaders have also talked in terms of
apartheid, but as a way of warning about what might happen in
the future.15 Yet the situation they describe is actually already
happening, and has been happening, since the post-1967
occupation began. See, for example, remarks made by
then-Defence Minister Ehud Barak in 2010:
7
israeli apartheid
As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is
only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either
non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of
Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.16
the s o u th afr i ca co m par i s o n
If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state
subject to economic sanctions led by the United States.17
Observer, October 2000
White settlers in South Africa, like Zionist pioneers,
colonised a land already inhabited. As in South Africa, the
settlers in Palestine expelled the indigenous population,
some two-thirds of the Palestinians in the land that became
Israel in 1948, took possession of their properties and legally
segregated those who remained.18
Leila Farsakh, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2003
It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians
to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case.
The whites did not want the blacks to disappear.19
Mondli Makhanya, editor-in-chief of the
South African Sunday Times, July 2008
Israel was compared to South African apartheid long before
Jimmy Carter wrote his bestseller Peace not Apartheid. While
the legal infrastructure that enforced apartheid South Africa
differs substantially from the relevant Israeli legislation,
there are also strong similarities.20 The common element of
both legal systems is the intention to consolidate and enforce
8
introducing israeli apartheid
dispossession, securing the best land control over natural
resources for one group at the expense of another.
Architect and academic Lindsay Bremner has observed that
while in the popular imagination apartheid in South Africa
meant walls, fences and barbed wire separating blacks and
whites, in fact:
it was the countless instruments of control and humiliation
(racially discriminatory laws, administration boards,
commissions of inquiry, town planning schemes, health
regulations, pass books, spot fines, location permits, police
raids, removal vans, bulldozers) … that delineated South
African society during the apartheid years and produced its
characteristic landscapes.21
As will be seen in Part II, this kind of description is all too
familiar for Palestinians inside Israel, and the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT), for whom – like black South
Africans – ‘daily acts and rituals’ become ‘acts of segregation
and humiliation’.22
In a bitter irony, important parts of the so-called ‘peace
process’ of the 1990s, which saw limited Palestinian ‘self rule’ in
a small percentage of the OPT, have actually strengthened the
comparison with apartheid South Africa. In 1959, South Africa
passed a law designed to promote ‘self-government’ amongst
blacks in sealed-off ‘reservations’.23 Reading this description by
the late Israeli journalist Tanya Reinhart, the similarities with
the situation in the OPT since the 1990s are striking:
The power in each of these entities was bestowed to
local flunkies, and a few Bantustans even had elections,
9
israeli apartheid
Parliaments, and quasi-governmental institutions … The
Bantustans were allowed some symbols of sovereignty: a
flag, postage stamps, passports and strong police force.
In 1984, Desmond Tutu noted that the Bantustans, in
territory ‘arbitrarily carved up for them by the all mighty
White Government’ deprived of ‘territorial integrity or any
hope of economic viability’ were basically intended to ‘give a
semblance of morality to something that had been condemned
as evil’.24 ‘Fragmented and discontinuous territories, located
in unproductive and marginal parts of the country’ with ‘no
control’ over natural resources or access to ‘territorial waters’
– as we shall see, this is a frighteningly spot-on description of
the OPT today.25
It is not just the policies and tools of repression and control
where there are parallels. Modern-day Israel also echoes
Pretoria’s diplomats of decades gone by when it comes to
propaganda and defending the indefensible. Like South African
diplomats of the 1980s, Israel’s representatives today claim
that a boycott hurts Palestinian workers.26 In addition, Israeli
leaders today sound the alarm about Palestinian birth-rates
and the prospect of a democratic one-state solution in the same
sort of ‘national suicide’ discourse as once used by apartheid’s
defenders in South Africa.27
However, to describe Israel as an apartheid state ‘does
not mean equating Israel with South Africa’.28 Indeed,
any comparison should highlight both ‘corresponding
developments’ as well as ‘obviously different circumstances’.29
One particularly striking difference is the fact that the apartheid
regime in South Africa meant the rule of a white minority over
a sizeable black majority; in 1913, when ‘the first segregation
10
introducing israeli apartheid
laws were passed’, the indigenous blacks made up ‘more than
75% of the total labour force’.30
The other main difference is that Israel has not practised
so-called ‘petty’ apartheid – in other words, there are no public
toilets marked ‘Jews’ and ‘Non-Jews’. Palestinian citizens of
Israel have full voting rights and there are a small number of
elected Palestinians in the Israeli legislature (the Knesset). This
is because had the ‘discrimination against Palestinians been
written into Israeli law as specifically as discrimination against
Blacks’ was written into South African law, then ‘outside
support would surely be jeopardized’.31
There is one key difference between Israel and apartheid
South Africa that Zionists definitely do not trumpet. While
in apartheid South Africa, the settlers ‘exploited’ the ‘labour
power’ of the dispossessed natives, in the case of Israel, ‘the
native population was to be eliminated; exterminated or
expelled rather than exploited’.32 It could be said that Zionism
has been worse for the indigenous population than apartheid
was in South Africa – Israel needs the land, but without
the people.
In a conversation between Israeli historian Benny Morris
and Palestinian American academic Joseph Massad, the latter
compared Israel to South Africa by way of its ‘supremacist
rights’.33 Morris said this was ‘ridiculous’, responding that
throughout Zionism’s history, Zionists ‘would have much
preferred Palestine to be empty of Arabs with therefore no
need for Jews to be supreme over anybody. They simply wanted
a Jewish state.’
Morris’s objection to the term ‘supremacist’ is revealing,
as it flags up the problem that has haunted Zionism until
today. South African apartheid had a critical internal
11
israeli apartheid
contradiction: while aiming ‘at setting racial groups apart’, it
also ‘acknowledged their dependency’.34 Zionism, on the other
hand, has tried ‘disappearing’ the Palestinians from Palestine
in theory and in practice, yet they are still there.
the fr i e n ds h i p b e t we e n i sr ae l an d aparth e i d
s o u th af ri ca
Over the years there was a good deal of warmth between the
respective leaders of the South African apartheid regime and
Israel. South Africa’s Daniel Malan was the first prime minister
to visit Jerusalem in 1953, but long before Israeli statehood was
proclaimed, a personal friendship had thrived between Chaim
Weizmann, who became Israel’s first president, and Jan Smuts,
South African prime minister and senior military leader for the
British.35 Weizmann often turned to Smuts in times of crisis –
and ‘both men took for granted the moral legitimacy of each
other’s respective position’.36
Israel’s warm ties with the apartheid regime began in earnest
in the mid 1970s, with military technology and intelligencesharing central to the alliance.37 Over a period of about 15
years, examples of the close relationship included a 1975
pact signed by Shimon Peres and then-South African defence
minister P.W. Botha, while in the mid 1980s, the Israeli defence
industry was helping the isolated apartheid regime circumvent
international sanctions.
Israel’s ‘collaboration with the racist regime of South Africa’
eventually led to a 1984 UN General Assembly Resolution
specifically condemning ‘the increasing collaboration by
Israel with the racist regime of South Africa’.38 While many
countries supported apartheid, what is interesting in the case
of Israel is the extent of the shared empathy. In the early 1960s,
12
introducing israeli apartheid
for example, Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime
minister, shared his own view that ‘the Jews took Israel from
the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years.
Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.’39
In 1976, then-South African Prime Minister John Vorster – a
man who had been a Nazi sympathiser in World War II – was
afforded a state banquet during a visit to Israel. At the official
welcome, Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin made a toast to ‘the ideals
shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and
peaceful coexistence’.40 The following year, the Official Yearbook
of the Republic of South Africa noted that ‘Israel and South Africa
have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated
in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.’41
i n co n cl u s i on
Increasingly, Israelis, Palestinians, South Africans and
international observers are pointing out the parallels between
apartheid South Africa and Israel. Several prominent South
Africans have expressed their solidarity with the Palestinians,
denouncing what they see as a similar (or worse) structure
of oppression to the apartheid regime many of them
fought against.
In 2002, veteran anti-apartheid figure and human rights
campaigner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu made headlines with
his article ‘Apartheid in the Holy Land’.42 Describing himself
as ‘deeply distressed’ after a trip to Palestine/Israel that had
reminded him ‘so much of what happened to us black people
in South Africa’, the Archbishop affirmed that ‘Israel will never
get true security and safety through oppressing another people.’
In 2007, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur John Dugard,
South African legal professor and apartheid expert, said that
13
israeli apartheid
‘Israel’s laws and practices in the OPT certainly resemble
aspects of apartheid’, echoing other South African trade union
leaders, politicians, church groups and academics.43 Western
media correspondents have also made the comparison.44
Even Israeli politicians and commentators are now talking
about apartheid, or more specifically, the risk of Israel facing a
similar civil rights struggle that eventually prevailed in South
Africa.45 Indeed, albeit from quite a different perspective on
the matter, Israel’s foreign ministry predicted in 2004 that if
the ‘conflict with the Palestinians is not resolved’, Israel ‘could
turn into a pariah state, on a par with South Africa during the
apartheid years’.46
It is important to realise, however, that to compare the
situation in Palestine/Israel to apartheid South Africa is not to
try and force a ‘one size fits all’ political analysis where there
are clear differences, as well as similarities. Rather, any such
comparison is useful in so far as it helps sheds light – in Israel’s
case – on a political system that is based on structural racism,
separation and dominance.
Moreover, as the rest of this book explains, even leaving
aside the specific comparison with South Africa, Israel’s past
and present policies towards the indigenous Palestinians fully
meet the aforementioned definition of apartheid laid out in
international law – and urgently need to be treated as such by
the international community.
14
Part I: Israeli Independence,
Palestinian Catastrophe
We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land
to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from
people inhabiting it.1
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second prime minister
‘Ben-Gurion was right …Without the uprooting of the
Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.’2
Benny Morris, Israeli historian
In August 1897, in the Swiss city of Basle, a meeting took
place that would have profound and disastrous consequences
for the Palestinians – though they were not present at the
event, or even mentioned by the participants. The First Zionist
Congress, the brainchild of Zionism’s chief architect Theodor
Herzl, resulted in the creation of the Zionist Organization
(later the World Zionist Organization) and the publication of
the Basle Programme – a kind of early Zionist manifesto.
Just the year before, Herzl had published ‘The Jewish State’,
in which he laid out his belief that the only solution to the
anti-semitism of European societies was for the Jews to have
their own country. Writing in his diary a few days afterwards,
Herzl predicted what the real upshot would be of the Congress:
At Basle I founded the Jewish State. If I said this aloud
today, I would be answered by universal laughter. In five
15
israeli apartheid
years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will
perceive this.3
Herzl’s Zionism was a response to European anti-semitism
and, while a radical development, built on the foundations of
more spiritually and culturally focused Jewish settlers who had
already gone to Palestine on a very small scale. At the time,
many Jews, for different reasons, disagreed with Herzl’s answer
to the ‘Jewish question’. Nevertheless, the Zionists got to work;
sending new settlers, securing financial support and bending
the ear of the imperial powers without whose cooperation, the
early leaders knew, the Zionist project would be impossible
to realise.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the population
of Palestine was around 4 per cent Jewish and 96 per cent
Palestinian Arab (of which around 11 per cent were Christian
and the rest Muslim).4 Before the new waves of Zionist settlers,
the Palestinian Jewish community was ‘small but of long
standing’, and concentrated ‘in the four cities of religious
significance: Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron’.5 As new
Zionist immigrants arrived, with the help of outside donations,
French experts were called upon to share their experience of
French colonisation in North Africa.6
An early priority for the Zionists was to secure more land
on which to establish a secure, expanded, Jewish community.
In 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was founded, an
organisation ‘devoted exclusively to the acquisition of land
in Palestine for Jewish settlement’.7 The JNF was destined to
play a significant role in the history of Zionism, particularly as
the land it acquired, by definition, ‘became inalienably Jewish,
never to be sold to or worked by non-Jews’.8
16
israeli independence, palestinian catastrophe
100
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60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Arabs
Jews
1880
1917
1922
1931
1936
1945–46
1947
Figure 1 Palestinian population, 1880–1947
Source: Facts and Figures About the Palestinians, Washington, DC:
The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, 1992, p. 7.
The land purchased by the JNF was often sold by rich,
absentee land-owners from surrounding Arab countries.
However, much of the land was worked by Palestinian tenant
farmers, who were then forcibly removed after the JNF had
bought the property. Thousands of peasant farmers and their
families were made homeless and landless in such a manner.9
The Zionists knew early on that the support of an imperial
power would be vital. Zionism emerged in the ‘age of
empire’ and thus ‘Herzl sought to secure a charter for Jewish
colonization guaranteed by one or other imperial European
power’.10 Herzl’s initial contact with the British led to
discussions over different possible locations for colonisation,
from an area in the Sinai Peninsula to a part of modern day
Kenya.11 Once agreed on Palestine, the Zionists recognised, in
the words of future president Weizmann, it would be under
Britain’s ‘wing’ that the ‘Zionist scheme’ would be carried out.12
The majority of British policy-makers and ministers viewed
political Zionism with favour for a variety of reasons. For an
17
israeli apartheid
empire competing for influence in a key geopolitical region of
the world, helping birth a natural ally would reap dividends.
From the mid nineteenth century onwards, there was also a
tradition of a more emotional and even religious support for
the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine amongst Christians in
positions of influence, including Lord Shaftesbury and Prime
Minister Lloyd George.13
Britain’s key role is most famously symbolised by the
Balfour Declaration, sent in a letter in 1917 by then Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The Declaration
announced that the British government viewed ‘with favour the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people’ and moreover, promised to ‘use their best endeavours
to facilitate the achievement of this object’. At the time, Jews
were less than 10 per cent of Palestine’s population.14
In the end, the role of the imperial powers proved crucial. For
all the differences between some in the British foreign policy
establishment and members of the Zionist movement – as well
as the open conflict between radical Zionist terror groups and
British soldiers – it was under British rule that the Zionists
were able to prepare for the conquest of Palestine. Ben-Gurion
once joked, after visiting the Houses of Parliament in London,
‘that he might as well have been at the Zionist Congress, the
speakers had been so sympathetic to Zionism’.15
Differences between the Zionist leaders of various political
stripes were essentially tactical. As Ben-Gurion explained,
nobody argued about the ‘indivisibility’ of ‘Eretz Israel’ (the
name usually used to refer to the total area of the Biblical
‘Promised Land’).16 Rather, ‘the debate was over which of
two routes would lead quicker to the common goal’. In 1937,
Weizmann told the British high commissioner that ‘we shall
18
israeli independence, palestinian catastrophe
expand in the whole country in the course of time … this is
only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years’.17
a l an d with o ut a p e o p le …
There is a fundamental difference in quality between Jew
and native.18
Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president
The Zionist leadership’s view of the ‘natives’ was unavoidable
– ‘wanting to create a purely Jewish, or predominantly Jewish,
state in an Arab Palestine’ could only lead to the development
‘of a racist state of mind’.19 Moreover, Zionism was conceived
as a Jewish response to a problem facing Jews; the Palestinian
Arabs were a complete irrelevance.
In the early days, the native Palestinians were entirely
ignored – airbrushed from their own land – or treated with
racist condescension, portrayed as simple, backward folk who
would benefit from Jewish colonisation. One more annoying
obstacle to the realisation of Zionism, as Palestinian opposition
increased, the ‘natives’ became increasingly portrayed as
violent and dangerous. For the Zionists, Palestine was ‘empty’;
not literally, but in terms of people of equal worth to the
incoming settlers.
The early Zionist leaders expressed an ideology very similar
to that of other settler movements in other parts of the world,
particularly with regards to the dismissal of the natives’ past
and present relationship to the land. Palestine was considered
a ‘desert’ that the Zionists would ‘irrigate’ and ‘till’ until
‘it again becomes the blooming garden it once was’.20 The
‘founding father’ of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote in
1896 that in Palestine, a Jewish state would ‘form a part of a
19
israeli apartheid
wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization
against barbarism’.21
Many British officials shared the Zionist view of the
indigenous Palestinians. In a conversation, the head of the
Jewish Agency’s colonisation department asked Weizmann
about the Palestinian Arabs. Weizmann replied that ‘the
British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes
and for those there is no value’.22
Winston Churchill, meanwhile, explained his support
for Jewish settlement in Palestine in explicitly racist terms.
Comparing Zionist colonisation to what had happened to
indigenous peoples in North America and Australia, Churchill
could not ‘admit that a wrong has been done to those people by
the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate,
a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and
taken their place’.23
The Zionist movement was passionately opposed to
democratic principles being applied to Palestine, for obvious
reasons. As first Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion admitted
in 1944, ‘there is no example in history of a people saying we
agree to renounce our country’.24 At the beginning of British
Mandate rule in Palestine, the Zionist Organization in London
explained that the ‘problem’ with democracy is that it
too commonly means majority rule without regard to
diversities of types or stages of civilization or differences of
quality … if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy
were to be applied now or at some early stage in the future to
Palestinian conditions, the majority that would rule would
be the Arab majority …25
20
israeli independence, palestinian catastrophe
As late as 1947, the director of the US State Department
Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs warned that the plans
to create a Jewish state ‘ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule’, an opinion shared by ‘nearly every
member of the Foreign Service or of the department who has
worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems’.26
th e ‘ tr an s f e r’ con s en s us
‘Disappearing’ the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream,
and was also a necessary condition of its realization.27
Tom Segev, Israeli journalist and historian
If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred
to some other place. We must take over the land.28
Menahem Ussishkin, chairman of JNF,
member of the Jewish Agency, 1930
There was a logical outcome to the Zionist view of the
indigenous Palestinians. As Israeli historian Benny Morris
described it, ‘from the start, the Zionists wished to make the
area of Palestine a Jewish state’.29 But ‘unfortunately’ the
country already ‘contained a native Arab population’. The
‘obvious and most logical’ solution was ‘moving or transferring
all or most of the Arabs out of its prospective territory’.30
How this ethnic cleansing was achieved is described later on,
but for now, it is important to realise just how central the idea
of ‘transfer’ (the preferred euphemism) was to Zionist thinking
and strategising. The need to ethnically cleanse Palestine of
its native Arabs was understood at all levels of the Zionist
leadership, starting with Ben-Gurion himself. More than a
decade before the State of Israel was born, the Zionist leader
21
israeli apartheid
told the 20th Zionist Congress that ‘the growing Jewish power
in the country will increase our possibilities to carry out a
large transfer’.31
Forcing out the Palestinians was only a problem for
Ben-Gurion in terms of practicalities, as he did ‘not see anything
immoral’ in ‘compulsory transfer’.32 By 1948, Ben-Gurion was
‘projecting a message of transfer’, and had created a consensus
in favour of it.33 A few months after becoming Prime Minister
of the new state, Ben-Gurion said that ‘the Arabs of the Land
of Israel’ had ‘but one function left – to run away’.34
Ben-Gurion was not the only leader explicit about the need
to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Joseph Weitz, JNF Director
of Land and Forestry for 40 years, was passionate about the
need for transfer. In a meeting of the so-called ‘Committee for
Population Transfer’ in 1937, Weitz pointed out that:
the transfer of Arab population from the area of the Jewish
state does not serve only one aim – to diminish the Arab
population. It also serves a second, no less important aim
which is to evacuate land presently held and cultivated by
the Arabs and thus to release it for the Jewish inhabitants.35
Weitz was a key influence on pre-state Zionist ‘thinking
and policy’, ‘well-placed to shape and influence decision-making regarding the Arab population on the national level and
to oversee the implementation of policy on the local level’.36
Others with powerful positions in the Zionist movement
expressed their support for transfer, such as the director of
the Jewish Agency (JA)’s immigration department, who told
a JA Executive meeting in 1944 that the ‘large minority’ (the
Palestinian Arabs) set to be inside Israel ‘must be ejected’.37
22
israeli independence, palestinian catastrophe
That almost ‘none of the Zionists disputed the desirability
of forced transfer – or its morality’ should not be a surprise:
‘transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism – because
it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’
state’.38 It explains the ‘virtual pro-transfer consensus’ in the
JA Executive, and indeed, the support for transfer amongst
the Zionist leadership’s leading lights in the 1920s, 1930s
and 1940s.39
In fact, the historical evidence that we do have regarding the
Zionist desire for ‘transfer’ probably only represents a fragment
of the total amount. Early on, Zionist leaders learned that
‘under no circumstances should they talk as though the Zionist
program required the expulsion of the Arabs’ since ‘this would
cause the Jews to lose the world’s sympathy’.40 Thus while in
public, ‘discretion and circumspection’ were necessary, ‘in
private, the Zionist leaders were more forthcoming’.41
Sometimes, there was more overt self-censorship. For
example, the Jewish press coverage of the 20th Zionist Congress
‘failed to mention that Ben-Gurion, or anyone else, had come
100
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Ac
re
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fed
Ha
Na ifa
za
ret
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eri
as
Be
isa
n
Jen
in
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lka
rm
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blu
s
Jaf
fa
Ra
ml
Ra eh
ma
Jer llah
us
ale
m
Ga
z
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bro
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ers n
he
ba
Arabs
Jews
Figure 2 Palestinian population by subdistrict in 1946
Source: Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, Washington, DC:
Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984, p. 239.
23
israeli apartheid
out strongly in favour of transfer’, and when the Zionist
Organization published the official text of the addresses given
at the Congress, ‘controversial’ sections were omitted.42 Those
taking minutes in meetings of Zionist organisations could be
asked to ‘take a break’ ‘and thus to exclude from the record
discussion on such matters’ such as ‘transfer’.43
the calm b e fo re th e sto r m
By the time that Britain had decided to get out of Palestine
and hand the problem over to the United Nations, the
Zionists were ready for the revolutionary moment they knew
was necessary to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Effective
Zionist lobbying, particularly in the USA, combined with an
ineffective strategy from the Arabs, meant that when it came to
the vote, 33 nations voted in favour of partition, 10 abstained
and 13 rejected the plan.44
Partition was not the reasonable compromise it can sound
like. The Palestinian Arabs were more than two thirds of the
population of Palestine, and were a majority in all but one of
the 16 subdistricts (Figure 2).45 Jews owned around 20 per cent
of the cultivable land, and just over 6 per cent of the total land
of Palestine.46
Despite the fact that Jews were a clear minority in terms
of both population and land ownership, the Partition Plan
handed over 55.5 per cent of Palestine to the proposed Jewish
state (Israel would later increase that by strength of arms to 78
per cent). The Palestinian Arabs would make up almost half
the population of the new Jewish state, territory even set to
include the Negev which was 1 per cent Jewish.47 The Jewish
state would include prime agricultural land and ‘40 percent
of Palestinian industry and the major sources of the country’s
electrical supply’.48
24
israeli independence, palestinian catastrophe
Given that the indigenous Palestinians, without their
consultation, were set to lose more than half their country to
a settler population who explicitly wished to alienate the land
from the Arabs forever, it has taken quite a fea...
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