“A Petition from the Office of Hasbara and the Diaspora

Citizens of Israel,

Following the stopping of the provocative flotilla, Israel is in the midst of a Hasbara war.

We are confident that you are also feeling frustration given the present situation. This is not the time to say what should have been done. This is the time to act!

Every one of you has the ability to take part in the hasbara, every one according to their ability, their language, and the means standing at their disposal.

In light of the calls for the destruction of Israel, for its isolation and for laying all the responsibility on the IDF, it is necessary to provide a serious and clear response to the issue of the flotilla, the reasoning behind stopping it and the importance of preventing weapons from getting to Hamas.

A summary of the main arguments is as follows:

1. The Palestinian people are not under siege, only the terror regime of the Hamas in Gaza.

2. In the flotilla extremist organizations made cynical use of civilians.

3. It is important to separate between the will to help the residents of Gaza and providing assistance to the Hamas regime and to terror organizations who want to create another channel for weapons coming into Gaza.

There are websites where there are films, photographs and articles. Send them to your friends on the internet. Write letters to the editor, write blogs, articles, respond in talkbalks, radio shows, and post links on the social networks…Tell how life is seen from here.

We will clarify that Israel encourage the freedom of expression and criticism–  for this is the power of a democratic and liberal state. However, the flotilla was made to delegitimize and dehumanize Israel and to cancel its right to exist.

Remember: the fight is no longer at sea. The struggle is about perception and the fight is in the media: in newspaper, the radio, television or the internet.

Given the negative image of Israel, the Hasbara and Diaspora office calls on you, residents of Israel, to invest your human capital in this fight.

Attached are links and different messages for your use.

Thanks for your collaboration,

Ronen Plot

Executive Director of the Office for Hasbara and the Diaspora”

Domination and the Arts of Resistance). Ideological manipulation interested Marx more in relation to the privileged – the self-delusions that they need to continue fulfilling their role. I’ve been thinking about this recently in relation to Israel.

In the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx writes about the bourgeois politicians who initiated the French Revolution to ease restrictions on their trading: “unheroic though bourgeois society is, it nevertheless needed heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war, and national wars to bring it into being. And in the austere classical traditions of the Roman Republic the bourgeois gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions, that they needed to conceal from themselves the bourgeois-limited content of their struggles and to keep their passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy. Similarly, at another stage of development a century earlier, Cromwell and the English people had borrowed from the Old Testament the speech, emotions, and illusions for their bourgeois revolution […] the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles”.

 You don’t always need to articulate what your privileges are, what exactly you are afraid of losing. But to convince themselves, to keep their own “passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy,” people need to dramatize. Americans who are afraid of paying more taxes to provide healthcare for the uninsured tell themselves they are fighting Stalin and Hitler (the record, so far, was set by this comparison of the health reform to the Holocaust, mocked brilliantly by Jon Stewart).

For those supporting the policies of the Israeli government, the equivalent is the battle against Islamic anti-Semitism. This self-presentation is much more prevalent than openly right-wing arguments: a friend was telling me that on a popular Israeli dating site, where people are asked to describe their political views (just like on Facebook profiles), almost no one says they are right-wing. Educated middle-class Israelis like to distance themselves from the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, just as they despised Kahane in the 1980s. Lieberman is vulgar, blatant, embarrassing, not what you would want people to remind you of on your next trip to Europe. So are the settlers – among these circles you will find many more people willing to denounce them than open proponents of the Greater Israel. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and his “freeze” are taken at face value, and seen positively – most people don’t read the fine print about the speeding up of construction in the settlements. So why aren’t these people taking an active stance to bring about this Palestinian state, which they say they support? Because, beyond their general wish for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, these people claim to be pessimists.

Round their dinnertables, Israelis talk obsessively about Islamic fundamentalism. Ahamdinejad’s supposed threat to wipe Israel off the map , the latest provocative statement by Nassralah, the sensible attitude of the Swiss who decided to protect themselves against four very threatening minarets  – all these are staples. But you also hear people developing hypothetical tragic scenarios: what are the present torments of the Palestinian refugees compared to what could possibly happen to Jewish Israelis if they were allowed to return and live with them? What is the prejudice that Arabs face in Israel compared to the terrifying possibility that they’ll have too many babies? There is always a very dramatic air to these dystopias: unlike those naive peace activists who keep getting tear-gassed every week in places like Bil’in, these speakers know everything there is to know about Muslims and Arabs. 1950s Existentialist philosophers recognized that Man must face his own mortality; these disillusioned realists understand that Jews will always face Islamic anti-Semitism. Therefore, there is no point in working for peace and justice.

As it was for Marx’s revolutionary bourgeois, this heroic struggle with anti-semitism makes material benefits too mundane to be mentioned: the fact that most Israeli communities are build on land taken from former Palestinian ones, as this new interactive map shows; the appropriation of water from West Bank aquifers not just for settlers, but for the Tel Aviv metropolitan region ;  Jewish-only roads that cut through the West Bank to lessen traffic jams between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem ; the huge security industry and its many beneficiaries – all these are ignored by the self-styled Emile Zolas who obsess about Haniyeh and Ahmadinejad.

This is not to say that no Arabs or Muslims have anti-Jewish sentiments. But as with Ahmadinejad’s fabricated “wiping off the map” comment, the extent of this hatred is wildly exaggerated by people who hardly take the trouble to visit their Arab neighbors in Jaffa/Yafa, certainly not to join any protests in the territories. This self-imposed segregation makes it is easy to transform every MEMRI-distorted headline (including this famous one about Hamas’ Mickey Mouse ) to a clearcut example of Arab public opinion.

The Israeli government represents its most violent policies as authentic embodiments of Judaism. It used an innocent children’s song about a Hanukka dreidel made of cast lead to provide a catchy name for its murderous operation in Gaza (the same song mentions a mother making latkes for her children – how does correspond to dropping phosphorus shells on  UN-run schools?). Combating anti-Jewish sentiments is impossible if people don’t speak up against such horrible distortions of Judaism.

Breaking any self-imposed isolation from Arabs and Muslims is the best cure for privileged pessimism. Joint political activism gives us the hope to imagine a better, more just Israeli-Palestinian future. There’s no time to waste.

Israel always seems to be somewhere you can’t talk about unless you’re currently there.  Because no one else, least of all American Jews, has enough experience to form an opinion. Maybe it’s time to explode this myth of Israeli Experience.

1. Did you know that Israelis frequently use the experience argument to silence each other? A year ago, I was marching in Tel Aviv with other Israelis protesting the attack on Gaza. People yelled at us that we didn’t know or care about the real suffering of the citizens in Sderot (as if we need to choose between a normal life for them, and the lives of dozens of Gazan children). We were supposed to stay silent because we didn’t live through the Qassam rockets. A few days later, a woman whose house had actually been hit by a rocket published an article against the war. You would think this was enough experience – but in fact it was too much: people commented she had “battered wives’ syndrome”: because her house had been hit she could no longer form an objective opinion. So you can never have enough experience to oppose a war, no matter what you’ve been through.
2. Have you ever heard someone say “as someone who doesn’t live in Israel, I’d support crazy militaristic policies, but maybe I don’t know enough”? The experience mystique only works in one direction.
3. Let me tell you: Jewish Israelis are very deeply ignorant about Palestinian experience. Most people rely on some tired clichés about Islam, and don’t have the foggiest clue about what it’s like to live under occupation. There are settlers who don’t know they live beyond the Green Line. I talked to a soldier who served in Bilin thinking he was protecting the 1967 border, not an annexation wall that runs deep into Palestinian territory (and this is someone who actually saw the reality in the West Bank – many Israelis only see it on TV).  
4. Everyone has an opinion about Iran. People see protestors being bludgeoned to death by the police, and very naturally feel outraged. It’s totally ok for Israelis to form an opinion about that, even if they have never set foot in Iran. Because when it comes to other countries, moral outrage is enough.
5. Most Israelis DON’T live under constant physical threat. Since 2005 there have been very few suicide bombings. Rocket attacks mostly affected areas close to Gaza. Since 1948 Israelis have always enjoyed more security and fewer threats to their lives than Palestinians, better access to food and water, less restrictions on health and education services. It is often more convenient to feel victimized or to bring up hypothetical dangers in order not to discuss actual privileges and complicity with the suffering of others. This moral laxity should never be encouraged.
6. Finally, there is never one unambiguous lesson to be drawn from experience. Take the Holocaust: some people saw it as a justification for a strong army, while others decided to show more solidarity in the struggle against racism. You always need to interpret.

Too often people allow the experience argument to silence them. How about trusting your outrage, and getting involved?

A man once walked into a Black Laundry meeting, a group of radical queers against the occupation in Palestine:

“‘I am not gay, and I do not care much about the occupation.’

So [we asked] ‘What brings you to a group of queers against the occupation?’

‘Well, I am very interested in environmental issues and how military bases pollute our environment . . . I feel as if I cannot talk about this connection in other groups.

When I go to environmental groups they do not want to take on ‘political’ issues and discuss militarization. When I go to anti-occupation groups they do not consider the environment an important priority’”[1].

When the struggle against the budget “crisis” at UCSC turned from protests, walkouts and speeches to occupations of university buildings I was ecstatic. Finally, I thought to myself, something is actually being done. I closely followed the occupation of the graduate student commons, checking the OccupyCA blog multiple times a day, always finding new messages of solidarity from all over the world and analyses of the action by its participants. Having spent the last few months on field study in Israel/Palestine, it was nice to joke around, to call what was happening on campus “my kind of occupation.”

Having not been there to take part, I am not able, like many of my friends at home, to criticize the tactical and strategic choices that were made. However, one thing that I found myself constantly contemplating was the language of the struggle. Calls to “end capital” were prominent among the blog posts, protest signs and speeches; although some analyses of the situation did attempt to explicate the slogan by discussing the privatization of the university within the larger context of neoliberalism, what I would like to question here is the emphasis placed on “end capital” as one of the defining slogans of the struggle. While it is certainly important to contextualize the budget situation as a failure of neoliberalism, if we are calling for an inclusive struggle, it becomes especially important to ask ourselves where and how slogans may be counter-effective and suppress opportunities to foster broader networks of struggle.

A recent article published in City On a Hill Press substantiated my frustrations. The author no doubt agrees with the recent email sent out by “OccupyUCSC”—that the struggle against increased fees and the privatization of education is a collective struggle. But the author also does not hesitate to ask the questions that many in the student body must be thinking, primarily that “this is getting serious, and we’re very confused about what lies ahead and how it involves us […] we can’t help out without a nudge in the right direction. And while there’s been lots of dancing, if there’s no clarity in your revolution, we’re not coming”[2].

It is important for me to say that I consider myself an anarchist; I am always suspicious of myself when identifying as such, and always do so with the intent that it be a beginning to a conversation, not an end to one. I even feel uncomfortable (and slightly pretentious) stamping myself with that infamous ‘A,’ knowing that I will not be able to engage in dialogue with many of those who read this. Nonetheless, I do so to keep short the explanation of where I’m coming from, as well as to contextualize the questions that I am asking of myself and of the movement: I too see the struggle against the cooptation of our education as part of a larger struggle against capitalism; direct action is not always the right way, but one way within a strategy consisting of a diversity in tactics. But we cannot make our struggle against capitalism and privatization everyone else’s struggle. Trying to rally people around radical understandings of social relations rather than common points of unity misses the essence of solidarity.

We are right to call for a broad, collective struggle that encourages people to “pursue their own ways of fighting against this ongoing trend toward the destruction of our education”[3]. Yet, we cannot expect everyone to have the analytical and theoretical tools (and the privilege to acquire/develop them) to draw the connections between occupying spaces (or militant actions in general) and a larger struggle against privatization. Neither can we expect everyone to want to take part in an anti-capitalist struggle. In other words, to explain that occupying a building is to localize a global struggle against capital presupposes that a critical understanding of capitalism in general, and neoliberalism in particular, is self-evident; it assumes a knowledge of histories of anti-globalization resistance, and even more pointedly, it assumes that people should want to be a part of this movement. What about those who just want to be able to afford their education?

The current discourses of the struggle—at least those which are projected outward through emails, blogs, etc.—converge at the phrase “end capital” (and other anti-capitalist phrases similar to it): pictures from the rallies so clearly convey the anarchist ambiance of the space. Such a discourse implies that people should join the struggle because it is also an expression of a larger resistance to capitalism and privatization. But do we not betray our mission of encouraging people to pursue their own ways by trying to convince them that struggling for true public education must go hand in hand with resisting capitalism? I agree that real public education is impossible within neoliberalism, but if someone aspires to be a CEO should they not be a part of our struggle? Do they not deserve the opportunity to complete their business degree without racking up massive amounts of debt?

When we talk about the struggle for our education only in the context of a larger struggle against capitalism, we concurrently endow ourselves (intentionally or not) with the role of “radicalizing” the student body; thus, automatically placing ourselves in a position of power (we know and they don’t). But do we not, in this way, also belie anarchism’s opposition to all forms of domination? Is this not just another act of othering non-radicals? We may not intend to create teacher/student relations, but the slogans are what the rest of the student body sees; it is our responsibility to make sure that our slogans are not heard louder than our individual and collective voices.

This does not mean we should abandon our platform. Neither does it mean that we should not challenge and engage with people—of course we should, whether they are capitalists or anarchists. Nonetheless, many people who want affordable, public education may not identify with a struggle against capitalism. To make the struggle for education, first and foremost, about resistance to capitalism will alienate people we want fighting with us. Our challenge as radicals and anti-capitalists is not to convince people (capitalists or otherwise) that because capitalism drives this crisis, everyone’s framework must be anti-capitalist, but to find solidarity in that which unites us: a desire for real public education, for our university. Solidarity, in this way, is to be together in our differences: a coexistence of ideologies in contradiction and our aspirations in common.

Before I am accused of speaking in contradictions, allow me to accuse myself: “first he says that real public education is impossible within a neoliberal context, and then he says that we should work toward solidarity with capitalists.” Absolutely. Real public education may not be possible within neoliberalism, but slogans such as “end capital” only enforce a conception in which anyone who wants to participate in the struggle for our education must also adopt a personal struggle against capitalism: “to be included you must stand behind this slogan.”

People who are not necessarily anti-capitalists also went to those rallies and dance parties: to support a struggle against a deteriorating education system; they would not have shown up if they did not care about our education, but they could not be there without having that ‘A’ inscribed onto their foreheads. They could not be there as themselves, they were made anarchists. Yes, I was not there. But the pictures, videos and messages speak for themselves: banners occupied the space, from above, and all around. Was there any way to be present without standing just a few feet from anti-capitalist slogans? “We are all anarchists,” the space declared.

I am not asking whether the occupation of the graduate student commons and Humanities 2 building were good or bad, effective or ineffective—that depends on how each individual would define those terms. Its memory, and the memories it suppressed, are for us to learn from. As we encourage those who disagree with our tactics to pursue their own ways we must also encourage them to pursue their own frameworks. For some of us, the struggle against the world capitalist order informs and shapes our daily lives, how we resist, what we resist. For others, the struggle for a career and economic security frames everyday actions and everyday thoughts: such has been the struggle for many Palestinian residents of Bil’in, a West Bank Village south of Ramallah. As the construction of Israel’s “security barrier” imposed more and more restrictions on access to their agricultural land, the residents of Bil’in started organizing; while their resistance is no doubt representative of an overarching Palestinian struggle against the occupation, their message has not strayed from what is local—the right to access the land from which they make a living.

Every Friday over the past five years, locals, along with internationals and a group of Israelis loosely defined as Anarchists Against the Wall get together to protest the Israeli ‘security barrier,’ which today leaves nearly 60% of the village’s farm land on the ‘Israeli side,’ unreachable to farmers. Ideologically, Israeli anarchists and Palestinians have much to disagree about. Nonetheless, in Bil’in, the decision to unite based on common goals rather than ideology has set the stage for a struggle that is only growing. As such, it is an act of resistance that goes beyond the familiar slogan “end the occupation”: it is about the residents’ right to farm their land; it is about their right to their livelihood. Every week, Abdullah’s message to the soldiers on the other side makes it so clear: “we want to go to our land; we need to get to our olive trees,” he says through the megaphone. “This is Bil’in’s land; soldiers, go home.”

I remember the first protest I attended: about 200 participants marched through the olive groves, and then I saw the yellow gate in front of me, the fence itself stretching into the distance on either side. Beyond the fence, soldiers tell us through a megaphone (sometimes they do not tell us) that it is an “illegal” demonstration. Beyond them, hills: thousands of olive trees belonging to residents of Bil’in ripen every season, but this year too, they will not be harvested. Over ripened olives will soon litter the ground; not a single drop of oil can be squeezed out of dry olives. We chant, give speeches; the soldiers respond. It is just part of the routine.

Tear gas is a miserable experience and a protest is not going to bring down any fence. Yet, every week the demonstration is still on; it means different things to different people. The slogan “end the occupation” begs the question: “and after we ‘end it,’ then what?” While Palestinians do not agree within themselves about two states or one state, I would personally prefer a no-state solution. For me, this too is a part of a larger struggle against capitalism—the occupation is a profitable industry, there is high demand for a market in mechanisms of control. It is also a struggle against patriarchy and homophobia. But I do not go there to be an anti-capitalist or to be a queer. It is not my goal to “teach” Palestinians about queerness or anarchism—and yet, it does not mean that I have to abandon the things I am.

That said, the experience is not without its difficulties. I would not kiss a man in Bil’in. On Fridays, Bil’in is both Palestinian and Israeli, queer and homophobic; anarchists, farmers, dykes and sexist men march side by side, and afterward have lunch in each others company. Some of our differences are visible, and some are kept hidden, but our points of unity define our togetherness: it allows us to say in one voice that the fence needs to go. The farmers need access to their trees; those olives, whether as olive oil or marinated goodies, need to be sold (eaten too! Without food, how will we go on dancing?).

Togetherness gives truth to the fact that the differences we are forced to keep hidden are artificial in the first place. They are borderlines erected to keep us apart—queers from straights, Palestinians from Israelis. Such borderlines are constantly recreated, to include some to the exclusion of others, and thus, must also be constantly resisted. By going to Bil’in we engage in a process of resistance to these borders. We embody relationships between Israelis and Palestinians that ought to be and can be (and for many of us are), seeking to build a space in which individuals can empower themselves to acknowledge and resist their own prejudices. This is the potential of the space—friendship; it is why I kept showing up.

Interestingly, nations, too, seek to render difference invisible, but only within their own collective: to create togetherness only within themselves for the purpose of producing and highlighting the difference of the other (we are like this, they are like that; we want peace, they want to push us into the sea; we know, and they do not). Nations cover their citizens with a flag to propagate the myth that the “people’s” interests are all the same. The nation that covers me with its flag and its citizenship expects me to remain hidden, to allow myself to be subdued into silence, to be afraid of the other, to justify the brutal occupation it enforces (because they are all “terrorists,” right?).

I am not suggesting a ‘right way’ to continue the struggle that is taking place within our university—and yet, there are many wrong ways. Neither do I want to suggest that we should “pander” to non-anarchists; direct action needs to be part of a broad struggle. But if we are indeed engaging in localizing a global struggle against capitalism, then let us attend to what is really local: our education, the right to our education. Students have a stake in resisting the draconian policies of the regents and our administration; and yet, if we want people to pursue their own ways in joining this fight, we must also allow them their own reasons for doing so.

Slogans that arise from (exclusive and privileged) radical discourses, rather than from the aims that define our points of togetherness only give legitimacy to the border between ourselves and other non-radicals with whom we share a common struggle. We cannot expect everyone to resist capitalism with us, but we know that together we need to fight for our education. We must not let our banners turn into flags.

With respect to those for whom to resist is to build alternatives.

Lior

[2] City on a Hill Press. “You Say You Want a Revolution? Just Let Us Know What Kind.” City on a Hill Press, October 22, 2009, Op-Ed section.

[3] Email sent out by “OccupyUCSC”. “A response to Dave Kliger”. October 18, 2009.

Slums on the Bagmati river

For example, when Nepal is introduced as a “poor” country,  what is being referred to is the present. On the one hand, they are talking about the government’s tiny budget, endlessly supplemented by program-specific grants from non-governmental organizations, foreign governments and different branches of the international government like the World Bank. More than 80% of the health, education and probably other budgets comes from these non-governmental governments, systems that are largely dysfunctional and unaccountable (while the Nepali Royal Army is an image of efficiency and uncommon job security). The idea is that the government is weak and poor, so the nongovernments have to help the government. The assumption is that if the government “worked,” then everything in Nepal would be fixed, that essentially the problem with Nepal is poor governance.

On the other hand, they are talking about the poverty of the people. Although the vast majority of people in Nepal live in rural villages, when foreigners talk about poverty they are mostly talking about what they see in Kathmandu, the extremes symbolic of the rule. People collecting garbage to recycle, fishing through trash to find fruits to sell. Child porters carrying 170kg at a time, many under 12 years old (10% of the GDP or more is from child labor). Slum dwellers living on the banks of the garbage-choked Bagmati river, where no one else wants to live because of the monsoon floods. And of course, the infamous street children, who live their lives in the streets getting high on glue. Yesterday, one of the kids pointed to a stray dog and said cheerfully in Nepali “Just like me.”

Probably like many third-world cities, Kathmandu assaults the average middle-class first worlder with both presence and absence. The presence of piles of burning garbage and throngs of people. The absence of recognizable signs of authority, from street signs and street lights to animal control, from paved roads to city planning. On the other hand, the absence of central authority only makes it all the more amazing at how good people can be at managing with each other. Although most of Kathmandu’s residents have no access to any discussion on governance, Kathmandu (miraculously) works, day after day, probably with less theft and violent crimes than most of America’s heavily-policed cities. Despite the poverty and inequality, Kathmandu’s residents offer each other admirable amounts of their already limited space. One of the TBT workers said that his greatest culture shock upon returning to Israel is all about buses. In Nepal 30 people or more cram into a microbus and still manage patient smiles, even when sitting on top of each other. On the other hand in Israel, despite the large, roomy, air-conditioned bus traveling on the fully paved road, the people are far more impatient to say the least.

The poverty in Kathmandu is undeniable, sometimes described as “crushing.” But when we say these people are ‘impoverished,’ that implies causes, agents, reasons. If they are impoverished, who or what is doing the impoverishing? And if they are crushed, who is doing the crushing? (And no, it can’t just be a ‘lack of awareness’). Unfortunately, the questions implied by the word ‘impoverishment’ remain largely inert in the absence of history.

My first exposure to history in Nepal is Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy by Manjushree Thapa, a problematic and conflicted book by one of Nepal’s elite liberal humanists trying to understand her country. What I understood from the book and from the smattering of historical content in the program is that Nepal’s “history” is actually two histories. First there is the widely known ‘political history’ of Nepal, frustrating as it is irrelevant. Beginning with the ‘unification’ of the country by a particular royal dynasty 250 years ago, this history is an endless series of soap-opera successions, betrayals, and power struggles with local and international powers backing opponents and making deals to top the intrigue. Most of Nepal’s people are not mentioned, the assumption being that they are somehow implied in the endless royal drama. In 1950 the royal dictatorship was briefly replaced by their elite challengers/inheritors, political parties, who rode on popular desire for some alternative. They behaved in much the same way as different lineages of royal inheritors had, except with more instability, with ten governments taking power in as many years. The second half of the 20^th century is a struggle for power between different segments of the royal family and the political parties, culminating in a second 1950’s style popular movement followed by the reinstitution of parliamentary democracy in 1990. Then, out of nowhere, the People’s War from 1996 to 2006, a ten year insurgency led by the Maoist communists of Nepal. Violence, refugees, natural disasters, broken treaties, a strange massacre in the royal family, and the negotiated settlement with the Maoists come in a rapid and incoherent succession, a feeling of watching a massive spectacle that one has no active part or understanding in. Thapa communicates this brilliantly in her book.

On the other hand, very much in the background and totally separate from this traditional telling of Nepali history, is the (depoliticized) economic history. Development projects exploding with the reinstitution of the royal dictatorship in 1960, and roughly since then a growing corpus of increasing statistics in a myriad of areas such as literacy, poverty, nutrition rates, number of schools, number of people. The arc of progress made of tiny numbers stretching out like  rainbow while the politicians bicker.

If accepted, this history would lead one to forsake politics for the sake of the pure, light-bringing progress of economic development. While the politicians quibble, the apolitical non-governments have been the only ones to do Nepal any good. Give us economics, save us from politics. Although this history is unintelligible and explains nothing, it is its very unintelligibility that achieves its political ends: to make people stay as far away from politics, to make it reasonable to think that economic development can be apolitical, to dismiss history as hornet’s nest of cynical power-politics that no person should even try to know or understand.

But under scrutiny, this history raises questions. For example, the People’s War turns out not to have been launched by the Maoists. It began with government attacks on villages where the movement later to be known as the Maoists was operating. Apparently, they were trying to organize people separately from the political system, something that threatened the sovereignty of the government was considered a threat existential enough to warrant massacring some unarmed civilians (this pattern would be repeated). The resulting insurgency fought the government to a standstill and even today controls large swaths of Nepal’s countryside.

Now, I’m not saying that the Maoists were perfect or selfless or even good, but rather that no insurgency can survive for one year, much less ten, much less fight the government to a standstill without massive popular support whose origins cannot be dismissed. Apparently they redistributed land in some places, forced banks to return confiscated land deeds, made landlords forgive massive debts, etc. On the other hand, Manjushree Thapa, the author of “Forget Kathmandu,” probably echoes widespread assumptions among Kathmandu’s urban intelligentsia about the Maoists: that the Maoist insurgency is a mindless pastime of impressionable villagers trying to vent their frustration at their own backwardness, or that most of their rural supporters are being coerced or threatened. These liberal elites explain that the insurgency is just an extreme symptom of a lack of development and/or “true” democracy. The march of development must be restored. The cynical, political past must be left behind in favor of it.

But there are more troubling facts. Leaders from a new ‘Janjati’ (ethnic/indigenous) party came to visit TBT, and they talked about all kinds of crazy things like the imposition of the caste system through a ‘Hindu state,’ how this imposition was used to dispossess people of their lands, how as recently as sixty years ago many people lost their land because elites had registered it in their own names. And of course, the sharecropper system that is one of the universal constants in Nepali rural life: most villagers must work the lands of rich, upper-caste, absentee landlords and pay half of their harvest as rent. Many if not most have lived on land that is not legally theirs for hundreds of years. Although the leaders who told us this were themselves elites with long histories in politics, quite possibly instrumentalizing their ethnic background for political support (but why is that only a problem when members of indigenous or marginalized ethnic groups do it?), this history was something different than the banal power contests that passed for history until then.

Yes, it turns out that not all is quiet and pastoral in the average Nepali village. In the two villages that I visited as part of the orientation, TBT workers explained that most farmers did not own enough land to feed themselves, with the best land usually owned by a minority of wealthy (sometimes absentee) landlords. The unequal land situation forces poor/impoverished farmers to relentlessly plow both their lands and the lands they sharecrop, leading to soil degradation and decreasing yields. The choice between rural hunger and backbreaking labor on the one hand, and urban poverty on the other is steadily sharpening. Like so many third world cities, Kathmandu actually a refugee camp for the rural poor, whose minimal services are mostly funded and partially administered by nongovernmental organizations and foreign grants to prevent the situation from becoming too bad to be suffered quietly. Through first-hand experience, Tevel Be’Tzedek workers have learned that virtually all of Kathmandu’s poverty is village poverty transported, that the urban poor are largely first generation rural refugees exchanging rural debt slavery for urban wage slavery.

Virtually everyone with a grassroots experience of social problems in Nepal knows that the problem is in the villages, that the problem disproportionately affects lower-caste/ethnic groups, and that the problem is land. Much fewer people have an idea of how this situation came about, how 80% of rural people came to own only 20% of the arable land.

But precisely at this point, the conversation ends. This is the end of the road for NGOs, because the history of land ownership is Nepal is a political history, and the question of land distribution is a political question. The separation of Nepal’s political history and its economic future must remain sacred and respected. After all, politics/history is impossible to understand and frustrating, it is best avoided. For all intents and purposes, then, the question of the historical origins of the very crushing poverty that NGOs seek to address is avoided.

This is a testament to how coincidental history is to the work of most development NGOs, a testament also to the limits of what “impoverishment” can mean in these circles. Obviously, the answer to the question of “how things came to be this way” would force nongovernmental organizations to deal with what is politically wrong in Nepal, to trace economics and politics back to the point where they become inseparable, then to trace it back to the present and stitch economics and politics back up again. It would force NGOs to grapple not only with the “impoverished,” but also with the political, economic and social actors, processes and systems that have and continue to impoverish them.

Perhaps the negative practical consequences of such a move are so great that they make it impossible to think it about openly. Wealthy land owners are after all actively running both Nepal’s government and many of its non-governments. But there is also a sense that TBT as a foreign organization has no legitimacy to look at the issue historically and politically. In Tevel B’Tzedek a series of largely informal understandings have arisen out of the direct experience of two years of trial and error. One is the sense that the mission is to learn about and empower the people we work with to think about the problems themselves, because they have legitimacy we do not to resist their enslavement. Although TBT volunteer activities have been formally confined to educational work related to health, nutrition, and agricultural improvement, there is a sense that there is a broader direction to the work that will somehow lead to greater autonomy and independent action, mainly exemplified by women’s groups and theater groups that aim to develop autonomous thought and expression in groups.

Needless to say, I believe that TBT needs to have a broader vision for their work that is firmly grounded in an explicit historical analysis. I believe this vision should include the creation of eventual creation of autonomous community organizations and networks with independent agendas that TBT can support and be a part of rather than proscribe. But I also believe that TBT’s unique model of direct and open-ended engagement of volunteer groups with village and urban Nepali communities and the willingness to follow and build on the conclusions of each group allowed TBT to reach deeper understandings of the issues than many (large, hierarchical) NGOs who have been in Nepal for years or even decades. Although I call for more historical analysis and reflection on the origins of present problems, I think that TBT is some proof of how loose, nonhierarchical structures and grassroots engagement more naturally lead to political directions. If nongovernments adopt more decentralized, democratic structures, it might only be a matter of time before they can no longer see themselves only as unpaid government assistants and start seeing themselves as allies of Nepali activists working for their liberation.

Like so many others, I consider the Colbert Report to be a powerful, politically courageous fusion of humor and politics, a fusion that at least for me represents a genuine alternative means of challenging the powerful and initiating discussions on pressing issues that are ignored by the mainstream media. I especially appreciate the particular approach of the Colbert Report to this kind of work. The idea of criticizing through exaggerated imitation, in other words through turning the arguments of nationalist groups and multinational corporations inside out and taking them to their logical conclusions. I believe that this is nothing less than a new form of political activism that has resonated with many people.

Colbert mocks the president at the Correspondents' Dinner

Like millions of Americans, I have also been following the right-wing, corporate attack on healthcare reform, an attack that has grown more violent and extreme every day. People like you and other progressive news commentators have correctly pointed out that right-wing organizations, from political parties to think tanks to news channels, funded by insurance and other corporations, have directed nation-wide ‘spontaneous’ actions. Hiding behind ‘the common people’ that they have enlisted and mobilized, powerful interests can carry out a campaign of violence, fear and intimidation they would never be able to carry out openly.

Of course, I have enjoyed the Colbert Report’s recent coverage of these developments, but I feel that there is an unprecedented opportunity here to use the Colbert Report’s approach in a new, potentially groundbreaking way.

As the Report has shown on many occasions, right-wing campaigns, actions and figures are already parodies of themselves. On the other hand, it is more difficult to laugh at the violence and vehemence of the town-hall meeting actions, particularly when pro-health care reform leaders have no effective response. Though helpful, it is not enough to parody these actions from a distance, especially when the consequences are proving themselves to be real, a developing subversion of the aspiration of millions of Americans for a real debate on health care.

In my view, the townhall meetings in particular and right-wing protests in general offer great possibilities for the kind of parody that the Colbert Report epitomizes. First, viewers of the Colbert Report (aka the Colbert Nation) voted to rename a space shuttle, then to donate tens of thousands of dollars to the families of veterans. What would happened if Colbert Report viewers showed up to the health-care reforms town-hall meetings to “join forces with our country’s heroes, to demand an end to socialism and the oppression of insurance companies” (Someone will come up with something better).

The Colbert Report could work together with local groups of viewers to come up with good slogans, involving the innovation of ordinary people in a new form of political activism—direct action parody! People could pretend to be “the mom from down the street” or “Joe the Investment Banker,” and hold signs that ostensibly agree with the signs of their “fellow heroes.” They could even offer more practical benefits to democratic politicians speaking about healthcare, by answering questions in parody that allow them to discuss the real issues (The Report has pioneered this approach in interviews on the show).

With the Colbert Report lending its support (perhaps only to groups it works with), it would be impossible for them to be mistaken for actual FreedomWorks activists. It might have the effect of encouraging people across the country to try their hand in something both funny and politically meaningful. I can envision all kinds of people taking interest, and sympathetic celebrities might even lend a hand, creating even more support for a new, truly grassroots form of defending health-care while laughing all the way.

I wouldn’t be emailing if I didn’t believe in the potential of this idea. I think that part of the reason that the Colbert Report is so appealing is that people who support health-care reform and other progressive causes are not inspired by political-activism-as-usual. I don’t connect with protests that try to out-Republican the Republicans, that compete for the “real American” championship and do their best to clothe themselves in righteous indignation. That is why the Colbert Report is so important, because it is an alternative means of dissent that changes the basis of dissent.

I understand that this is definitely a long-shot for anyone in the Colbert Report to actually read this, let alone respond, but the show’s history of communicating directly with its viewers gives me hope that someone might consider the idea. If you try it and it doesn’t work, then I’m sure the show will survive. Shows have survived much worse in the pursuit of much more mundane ideals. And if you decide not to try it, well then that won’t be the end of the world either. But I watched the correspondents’ dinner, and I appreciated the courage that that took and the commitments to social justice that stood behind that courage. Without sounding too dramatic, in 1994 as in now there has not been an effective, innovative response to the right-wing attacks on health-care reform. What happens in the next few months will determine whether we have to wait another 15 years for change, and at the very least I want artists/activists/purple-mounted heroes like Mr. Colbert to innovate new ways for people to be in the fight. Successful or not, the results will be very funny.

Thanks for being on the air and doing what you’re doing,

I’ll be watching,

Itamar Haritan

Berkeley, CA