Slingshots and “Sarafs"

Slingshots and ‘Sarafs’ 1 is the working title for my dissertation, and it is actually about the fifth rewording I have come up with in just the few short weeks since I started working on the project. A previous incarnation was ‘David and Goliath’, a reference to mythical story of the young, Israelite, Sheppard boy’s miraculous victory over the Philistine ‘Giant’ and champion, Goliath, that is documented in Biblical and Qu'anic texts. The current title certainly draws from the sentiment expressed with that ancient myth. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is, and has been for a long time, 2 a conflict between two antagonists that is so vastly unequal in terms of military might and economic resources, that, short of a similar miracle it appears to be almost irresolvable at this point.

Apart from the aesthetic fact that the term ‘David and Goliath’ is perhaps overused in reference to this conflict, I was keen to use a title that was more descriptive of the actual conditions facing modern day antagonists while maintaining the core of the original sentiment. The slingshot, therefore, is not only the weapon which David used to incapacitate his foe, it is also the weapon that’s use grew in prominence during the first Intifada) and perhaps best captured in symbolism of the resistance by Palestinian children to the extraordinary might of the Israeli military. The slingshot is something that is held in the hand of the antagonist and fires projectile, usually stones, toward the target. The ‘Saraf’, on the other hand, is a brand new weapon, in April of 2007 the Israel government took delivery of the first three of a final contingent of eighteen from the US based Boeing Corporation4 The ‘Saraf’ is the latest upgraded version of the well known Apache Helicopter. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) website refers to it as “the most advanced of all aircraft5 its can operate during day or night operations and in all weathers and in any part of the world. Perhaps most revelling is that in contrast to the slingshots dependence on the accuracy of human judgement, the aircraft possesses a new “automatic target selection and a new missile target system” which is nicknamed, tellingly: “Launch and Forget". 6

1‘Sarafs’ are sometimes translated as ‘Sharafs’, the Original product designation from Boeing is AH-64D Apache Longbow. (http://www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/ah64d/)

2Since 1967, in its current form.

4 Al Jazeera online (http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=7602)

5 IDF Website (http://www1.idf.il/DOVER/site/mainpage.asp?sl=EN&srch=&id=6&clr=1)

6 IDF Website (http://www1.idf.il/DOVER/site/mainpage.asp?sl=EN&srch=&id=6&clr=1): Tran, M., “Abbas appeals for US help” in The Guardian, Friday May 18, 2007 (available online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,,00.html, last accessed 23/05/:51:13), At the time of writing, Israeli helicopter gun ships are involved in missile attacks, primarily, against those who they identify as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in and around Gaza City in response to rocket attacks on nearby Israeli towns from Gaza. It is not clear weather the ‘Sarafs’ are operational in these missions, however the extraordinary gulf in military strength is evident here nonetheless.

"Battle for the Holy Land"

Obviously I recommend all of the videos I've put on the sidebar of this blog, but if there is one to watch about Jerusalem (Yerushaláyim: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם /al-Quds: القُدس) - its this one:

"Battle for the Holy Land"

Peace, Justice: Hegemony...

It is a concept that all politicians will deny, but most political science student will tell you about until they (and probably you) are blue in the face, is that control of the narrative is power. 'Peace' and 'Justice' are great tools to control the narrative, particularly in the context of protracted conflict: 'Justice' defines the threshold between what is acceptable, and what is not.

'Peace' is an even better tool, it doesn't even need a definition, it just 'is'... We just assume peace to be a state of affairs which is simply better than what exists now. Its vague enough for everyone to agree that its a good idea. without discussing what it actually means.

Problems arise when we apply our assumptions of 'justice' to what is acceptable to think and to say - and when we start using 'peace' as a battering ram, and as by-word for hegemony... and then take these concepts as premises for the narrative, then these noble sounding terms are weapons of war.

As an illustraition of this, we may consider a comparison between the treatment of the narrative of the 'Indian Mutiny', as discussed in The Other Side of the Medal (Edward Thompson, 1926) and the discussion of 'Islamist Terrorism' at the time of the Oslo accords (c. 1993) - a comparison that is still, I believe, relevant today.

From: "The Campaign Against 'Islamic Terror'", in The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Edward Said, Granta Books: London, 2000. p. 44- 50.

"Most British historians of India, for example, described the famous "Mutiny" of 1857 as a barbarous, terroristic attack on defenseless women and children, thereby convertying the Indian into a savage barbarian to whom the only response was force. Thompson points out that for the Indians the "Mutiny" was in fact a rebellion in their struggle against the British, provoked by generations of punishing colonization, racist discrimination, and savage imperial repression of Indian independence ...

... 'Our misrepresentation of Indian history and character is one of the things that have so alienated the educated classes of India that even their moderate elements have refuses to help the Reforms [of colonial policy]. Those measures, because of this sullenness, have failed, when they deserved a better fate." ... Great, deliberate bloody and indiscriminately violent actions like the 1857 mutiny or the recent bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are ugly, indefensible things ... Cynical manipulations of religion are appalling: to kill children or buys passengers in the name of God is a horror to be conditionally condemned, as much as one should also condemn leaders who send young people on suicide missions. But there has been little more obdurate and arrogant than the Israeli and American response, with its sanctimonious choruses against terrorism, Hamas, Islamic fundamentalism ...

... The fact is that the peace process has been an offense to the Palestinian spirit. Each declaration of its virtue, each resounding complement paid to it, each parade and celebratory event, has reminded Palestinians how their history as the native inhabitants of Palestine who were deliberately kicked off their own land, their society destroyed, the West Bank and Gaza kept under military occupation for twenty-nine years [now 40!], has been ignored, violated, misrepresented. Terrorism is bred out of poverty, desperation, a sence of powerlessness and utter misery ...

... Only when Muslims totally fall into line, speak the same language, take the same measures as Israel and United States do, can they be expected to be 'normal,' at which point of course the are no longer really Arab and Muslim. The have simply become 'peace makers.' What a pity that so noble an idea as 'peace' has become a corrupted embellishment of power masquerading as reconciliation."

A few statistics about Gaza...

With all the recent media coverage of 'terrorist attacks' in Gaza i.e. rockets being launched out of the Gaza strip into Israel, and the IDF's military response, I thought it was high time for just a few facts about the state of things in Gaza that we don't normally here about.

This extract is from John Pilger's article "Children of the Dust" in last week's New Statesman (28th May 2007, p. 26-28: Please try and read the full article it is availible online at: http://www.newstatesman.com/):

"More than 40 per cent of the population of Gaza are children under the age of 15. Reporting on a four-year field study in occupied Palestine for the British Medical Journal, Dr Derek Summerfield wrote that "two-thirds of the 621 children killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest - the sniper's wound". A friend of mine with the United Nations calls them "children of the dust". Their wonderful childishness, their rowdiness and giggles and charm, belie their nightmare.

I met Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads one of several children's community health projects in Gaza. He told me about his latest survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma, you see why: 99.2 per cent of the study group's homes were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed."

In my opinion, as a bit of a structuralist... when we talk about 'terrorism' in Gaza particular, we shouldn't be talking about the 'right to resist' or on the other hand 'the right to security' we should maybe just think, in practice terms - what on earth else do we expect human beings to do in these circumstances?!

If I were to walk round Lancaster campus tomorrow and punch every one I saw once in the face, I might be lucky a few times: I might punch a pacifist the first time, and an elderly lady the second time, and so avoid any retaliation. But, if I did it a hundred times surely the common sence conclusion would be that most people would resist, and probably do anything they could to resist me.

So, if an overcrowded city is encircled within a wall, trapped between the sea on one side and the IDF on the other, where "4,000 Palestinians have been killed (half of them children)" (Ilan Pappe, in Pilger, p. 27) by Israeli forces, all international aid is cut off, people live in constant fear and chaos of a military occupation... forget 'justice' and 'rights' - they don't come into it - why do we expect them to do anything else other than hit back.