Slavoj Zizek and
Freedom Flotilla
By Israel Shamir
The Flotilla to Gaza was stopped in
its tracks by the omnipresent Israelis and their friends
in Greece and France. A part of a pattern? Probably. But
first I want to heed an advice.
“I wish,” wrote G K Chesterton in his
Plea for Hasty Journalism, “that at the beginning or
end of all the articles we read, there were a brief note
stating the situation in which the work was written.
Thus we should read, `Will Australia adopt Bimetallism?'
then, in small letters, `Top of Omnibus'; or some such
place in which we journalists do most of our learned
research and compilation. We should see in some excited
morning paper the headlines, `Battle at Ping Cho still
in Progress, by an Eyewitness. Latest'. Then in the
usual place would be the note, `A.B.C. shop, Strand'.
The thing would throw a kind of flush of colour into our
articles. Nature would creep into them as she creeps
into the colour of flowers and wine.”
An avid follower of GK, I am inclined
to fall in with his proposition and admit that this
piece on the latest developments in the Middle East was
written at dawn -- in Chianti country near Siena, amid
pomegranate trees in ginger blossom, pink and white
roses, the tender green of olive trees meshing with the
bright green of vineyards, stony path meandering among
the slopes, light mist crowning the mountaintops, tiny
streams at the bottom of deep and steep dales, and, at
night, firefly dances above the scented chaparral. The
figs are still green and hard, and yet they bulge,
pregnant with sweetness. The few farms are scattered
among rolling hills; here you can still pass a day
without seeing a man. The human touches here are light
and universally benevolent: you see clipped hedges,
tended vines, freshly watered flowers.
Tuscany tugs a familiar chord in my
heart, like discovering your own name spoken in a
foreign tongue. It might be a twin sister to Palestine.
My mountain refuge in Siena province might easily have
been found somewhere between Ain Karim and Beth Jallah,
or anywhere southwest of Jerusalem. The grapes of
Bethlehem Cremisan are as just as good as the best
Sangiovese. The churches have
the same names and the same frescoes adorn their walls:
the Visitation church of Ain Karim is a short hike from
San Gimignano, where the Romanesque façade memorialises
the memory of crusades with the Jerusalem Cross of St
John’s Knights -- though the church itself is now a wine
shop. Just as Tuscany was once riven between the Guelphs
and the Ghibellines, Palestine has been torn between the
Fatah and Hamas.
And yet Siena fared better than has
our Holy Land. Though it was repeatedly invaded and
subjugated (notably by the Medici, hell-bent on global
domination in 1555), it had never suffered the indignity
of Cyclopic separation walls. The people of Siena have
always been free to sit under their own fig trees and
enjoy the fruit of their own vines, something definitely
denied to the natives of the Palestinian Highlands.
This might be an appropriate place to
honour the most recent attempt to liberate the Holy
Land, or at the very least to remind the word of its
captivity. I salute my noble friends of the Freedom
Flotilla who put out to sea but were stopped by means
both fair and foul.
In long-ago 1820 Lord Byron wrote the
following stanzas, seemingly with the Freedom Flotilla
in mind:
When a man hath no freedom to
fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his
neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of
Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for
his labours,
To do good to mankind is the
chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever
you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll
get knighted.
While their efforts have yet to earn
them knighthoods, the Fates have been kind to them: they
were not killed as were the
brave Turks in the last year’s attempt; yes, their
boats were sabotaged, but they were not dynamited as was
the
Sol Phryne. Moreover, their ostensible failure was
as good as a victory, nay, even better for it remains a
powerful exposé of the techniques of our elusive,
ruthless and arbitrary enemy.
Among the Freedom Flotilla, for the
first time, were Russians; they have slowly overcome the
strategic collapse of 1991 and are now re-joining the
struggle. The brave Russian journalist
Daria Aslamova shared her frustrations with the
millions of readers of the dynamic KP (Komsomolskaya
Pravda), the largest-circulation newspaper in
Russia. She was the only mainstream journalist on board,
and she was able to report: “All the Mediterranean ports
were closed in face of the Freedom Flotilla. In breach
of maritime law, the boats were detained in the Greek
ports. Now we see who is the real master of the
Mediterranean, who is bossing the world – it is Israel.”
The strong words and stronger emotions invoked by
blockades will destroy Israel faster than long,
uneventful jaunts to Gaza.
Another powerful illustration of the
enemy’s brute strength and its critical shortsightedness
was the fly-in. A few hundred Europeans had planned to
visit the West Bank, to walk in the footsteps of Abraham
and Christ, to see the ancient villages so reminiscent
of Tuscany, to meet local people. While an Italian
Ministry of Tourism would bless such an initiative, the
Israelis instead prevented the majority of these
visitors from even boarding their planes, let alone tour
Bethlehem and Bir Zeit. And they did it all with the
active collaboration of various European states and
airlines. Yes, Israel robbed Palestine of one fistful of
dollars, but their actions highlighted to all the
less-discussed but equally strangling blockade of the
West Bank.
Yet Israeli’s ability to force
Europeans to say uncle does bode ill for the planned
show of force in the UN this September. Not only has the
US Congress threatened to stop paying its dues, the
European states seem to have
caught a case of cold feet. Without Europeans,
passage of a pro-Palestinian resolution is unlikely –
this as Europe agonizes over even the thought of
upsetting Jews.
Never has Jewish stock climbed to
such dizzy heights; it has surpassed its historical
limits, ascending to loony peaks that bespeak the Dotcom
madness of 2000. Perhaps we could create a new index of
political capital (the Dow Jews?) that rates the
obsequious suck-ups coming from members
of the US Congress. How high can it climb? How
long can it defeat the law of gravity before the
inevitable crash?
The US Senate applauds Netanyahu,
just as their Roman predecessors once greeted Caligula’s
horse; the most famous contemporary fashion designer and
the top film director are publicly fed to the lions for
daring to utter disparaging words about Jews; the Greek
government cooperates with Tel Aviv to permanently halt
the flotilla, even as Senator Mark Kirk calls upon US
Special Forces (presumably Navy Seals) to deal with
brave Americans marooned on the flotilla ship “Audacity
of Hope” like they once dealt with Osama bin Laden.
But the cherry on the cake belongs to
Slavoj Zizek. He went “full Monty” during his recent
visit to Tel Aviv at the invitation of some sincerely
dissident Israelis. They expected words of
encouragement, but instead he informed them that
fighting anti-Semitism is more important than defending
Palestinians.
The Slovenian philosopher spoke
kindly of the swindler Bernie Madoff, who was “a
scapegoat who was easy to blame, when in fact the real
problem is the system that allowed and even pushed
Madoff to commit his crimes.” Indeed, it must have
been ‘the system’ that pushed poor Mr. Madoff into
crime, just as it was ‘the system’ that pushed Shylock
to enter into money-lending and Jack the Ripper into the
business of carving.
From that rocky start it was plain
sailing to his philippics against the plague of
anti-Semitism sweeping Europe and the world: “even the
most oppressed and poor Palestinian should not be
tolerated for being anti-Semitic.” No doubt the
professor referred to the anti-Semitism of objecting to
Jews seizing Palestinian lands. The real suffering,
and the real problem, is European and American
anti-Semitism, he declared. Does the professor know
something we don’t? Are European and American Jews being
tortured in dark dungeons while their houses are
confiscated by blue-eyed Aryans? But the best was still
to come.
Zizek
said that “someone from the Democratic Republic
of Congo would sell his mother into slavery in a
heartbeat for the chance to move to the West Bank”.
This must be the quote of the year.
High school teachers may well use
this wonderful, historical, and geographical quote in
this year’s exercises:
Q
If a black from the
Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into
slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the
West Bank, whom and in how many heartbeats would he sell
into slavery for the chance to join the French
unemployed or Greek workers or American strikers?
Perhaps Zizek, as a laureate of
yesterday’s Left, has invented the ultimate defence for
the coming waves of IMF austerity programmers; the final
answer to silence Western workers who may have the
audacity to demonstrate against the strictures of
international finance. They should declare that they are
following the diktat of ‘the system’, and that they are
not to blame; indeed, it is they who are the true
victims of ‘the system’. And anyway, it’s worse in the
Congo.
Here is a better question for this
year’s students:
Q
If a black from the
Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into
slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the
West Bank, whom and in how many heartbeats would Slavoj
Zizek sell into slavery for the chance to move into the
intellectual establishment of the Right?
The answer is obvious. Zizek would
sell all of Palestine, and throw in his own immortal
soul for free. As for his mother, he would not only sell
her, but would actually deliver her. This is one
professor who knows that the best strategy for
self-promotion is to whine about anti-Semitism and to
defend the world’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of
Madoffs.
His crass and racist rhetoric caused
not the slightest ripple. His brave and sincere
dissident hosts either missed it entirely, accepted it
as normal, or
looked the other way. Indeed, what would you
expect from a black? Maybe he would sell his
mother into slavery for a chance to serve his white
master. The historical and international aspects of
slavery have been excised; it has been reduced to
something blacks bring upon themselves, or twisted into
a way for blacks to get ahead. But no harm done.
The kindly professor will not
be banned from the Cannes festival. His servile rhetoric
will be noticed by Bernard Henri Levy and other
powerful luminaries. He will get more and more
invitations to speak in greater and greater venues.
Even my critique will bring him extra coverage. I
cringed as Zizek’s speech approached the great lines
from
David Mamet (“the Israelis would like to live in
peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill
them all”), but he held himself back.
As long as visiting professors know
on which side their bread is buttered, we shall be
condemned to witnessing repetitions of the Flotilla
debacle. As long as we misunderstand the importance of
Palestine for the world’s future, we shall be trapped in
an endless “Middle East Crisis”.
Edited by Paul Bennett