the act of throwing stones_ refusing victimhood and materializing the apartheid relation _ the...
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owing Stones_ Refusing Victimhood and Materializing the Apartheid Relation _ the FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINETRANSCRIPT
10/16/2015 The Act of Throwing Stones: Refusing Victimhood and Materializing the Apartheid Relation | THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE
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The Act of Throwing Stones: RefusingVictimhood and Materializing the ApartheidRelation
The Act of Throwing Stones: RefusingVictimhood and Materializing the
Apartheid Relation
(http://thefunambulist.net/2015/10/08/theact
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October 8, 2015
(http://thefunambulist.net/2015/10/08/theactofthrowingstonesrefusingvictimhoodandmaterializingtheapartheidrelation/)History (http://thefunambulist.net/category/history/) / Law(http://thefunambulist.net/category/law/) / Philosophy(http://thefunambulist.net/category/philosophy/) By: Léopold Lambert
Once again, I feel the absolute urge to write in order to join the voices gathered against the Apartheid imposed onPalestinian bodies by the Israeli government, and its recent tightening, in particular in Jerusalem itself (see recentarticle (http://thefunambulist.net/2015/09/25/comprehensivemapofoccupiedjerusalemfromramallahtobethlehem/)).
The Western mainstream Press, as usual, is preparing the appropriate conditions for the Israeli army to deploy itsviolence without a strong reaction from their respective governments. It does so through a verbal and pictorialnarrative that depicts violent, masked and uncontrollable Palestinian youth throwing stones at Israeli soldiers andvehicles. A few other media have been providing the violence of the conditions in which these scenes haveoccurred, but this is not what I would like to do here. Instead, I would like to reflect on this very act of throwingstones: what does this act reveal about the state of Apartheid, and the role of Palestinians within it?
A series of new measures executed by the Netanyahu administration recently significantly increased punishment(up to four years in prisons and substantial fines) towards Palestinian that throw stones against its army. But it alsoconstructs the legal conditions in which the Israeli army could use live fire (0.22 caliber live rounds) on stonethrowers — sometimes through undercover agents as we saw yesterday (https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/aliabunimah/videoisraelplantsarmedstonethrowersamongpalestinianprotestors) — in an absolutelyliteral manifestation of the asymmetrical antagonism we are describing here, echoing thevoluntarily “disproportionate” military response of the loose rockets launched from Gaza by heavy, precise anddreadful bombardments. Asymmetry is the most obvious way of looking at the fighting forces in presence.Nevertheless, reading the situation only through this filter constitute a mistake in the assessment of these forcesthrough their means, and not through their very reason to fight: while the Israeli soldiers fight to enforce order in astate of Apatheid, Palestinians fight for their life as Amira Hass points out in a column(http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium1.679129?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter) yesterday inHaaretz.
The photograph above is particularly expressive of the argument that I would like to make, an argument that I hopenot to be too abstract. Would anyone reasonably think that these young Palestinians are actually attempting todestroy with stones this Israeli army watchtower in the West Bank? What about when tanks and bulldozers arebeing stoned? It would be ridiculous to think so. Stones are like words, they don’t destroy walls, towers or any otherheavy military equipment; they are used to manifest their antagonism against their target — the fact that the stonesthrown are fragments of a disputed land is certainly highly symbolic too. Stones are tracers that designate thatagainst which they stand politically, and their trajectory materializes the relation between the thrower and his/hertarget. Visualizing this relation, like on the photographic intervention below, allows us to think of the reciprocity of itseffect. The violence of the Apartheid follow the same trajectories onto Palestinian bodies and applies itself with amuch greater degree than the stonetracers.
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We should never forget the reciprocity of this relation, despite the drastic difference in the degree of violence, andthe stone trajectory reminds us of this. Envisioning Palestinian bodies as absolute subjects/victims of the colonialviolence, never helped to dissolute this violence. In July 2014, during the last occurrence of the dreadful Israelisiege on Gaza, I wrote a text entitled “Refraining from the Figure of Innocence(http://thefunambulist.net/2014/07/21/palestinerefrainingfromthefigureofinnocence/)” that advocated for ourabandon of notions such as innocence and victimhood that both establish hierarchies between the bodies subjectedto violence: children would be more innocent, and therefore more victims of the bombings, than their parents;similarly, Palestinian recognized as “nonviolent” theoretically bear more credibility in their struggle than the masked,stonethrower youth do. We can see the perversion in such thinking: the “International Opinion” pretends to wait forevery Palestinian to patiently and calmly wait that they all reach the full status of victim to finally gives itself themeans to intervene against the Israeli Apartheid violence.
If there is a form of hierarchy to establish within the Palestinian society, it is not one of victimhood that needs to bedone, but one of responsibility. On September 30, Mahmoud Abbas announced to the UN that the PalestinianAuthority will no longer abide by the 1993 Oslo Accords. As Rashid Khalidi points out, “It’s about time!(http://blog.palestinestudies.org/2015/09/30/rashidkhalidionabbasunspeechitsabouttime/)“, insisting on theresponsibility (if not the essence) of the PA in the crystallization of the occupation in their security efforts alongsidethe Israeli army. The Palestinian bourgeoisie is not the one throwing stones either. Instead it keep assembling themtogether in the construction of semiluxurious buildings and gated communities in a pretended indifference (if notmimicry) of the occupation (see the article “Constructing a Bubble: The Two Sides of Ramallah(http://thefunambulist.net/2015/02/27/palestineconstructingabubblethetwofacesoframallah/),” as well as thearticle on the question by Tina Grandinetti in the forthcoming second issue of The Funambulist Magazine). ThePalestinian responsibility in the normalization of the occupation was recently made clear, when a recent World Bankreport revealed a significant drop (http://www.bdsmovement.net/2015/worldbankfiguresshowpalestinianboycottbite13305) in the Israeli economy following the 24% decrease of import of Israeli products towards the West Bank.The boycott of Israeli goods seems to have become another means for Palestinians to act against thisresponsibility. Many defenders of the Israeli policies think of this boycott as a form of violence and, to some degree,they are right: like stones, the boycott challenges the very foundation of the statu quo and materializes the relationbetween the colonizer society and the colonized one.
Throwing a stone might be seen as an act of despair, a useless form of resistance against an unmovable colonialsystem. However, it is a performative act — perhaps even a cathartic one but I am already talking outside of myelement here — that materializes the Apartheid relation through its trajectories and that resolutely refuses theuseless status of victim, to prefer the one of resistant, however little the effect. The fact that the Israeli governmentrecently took measures against the stone throwers allows us to think that, despite the narrative they provide to theIsraeli state for its pretended defensive agenda, this effect affects more the state of Apartheid than the stones’small impact on concrete and steel would commonly suggest.
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(http://thefunambulist.net/wpcontent/uploads/2015/10/TrajectoriesstonesFunambulist.jpg) Visualizing theApartheid Relation through the stones’ trajectories / Created for this article (2015)
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