THE POLITICS of SOLIDARITY in OCCUPIED JERUSALEM Adi Grabiner Keinan, Ph.D
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THERE’S A NEW LEFT IN TOWN: THE POLITICS OF SOLIDARITY IN OCCUPIED JERUSALEM A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Adi Grabiner Keinan February 2016 © 2016 Adi Grabiner Keinan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THERE’S A NEW LEFT IN TOWN: THE POLITICS OF SOLIDARITY IN OCCUPIED JERUSALEM Adi Grabiner Keinan, Ph.D. Cornell University 2016 In November 2009 a small group of Jewish Israelis initiated a protest in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, in response to the forced eviction of more than sixty Palestinians from their houses and the establishment of a Jewish settlement in the neighborhood. The group grew rapidly and for almost three years thousands of people protested in Sheikh Jarrah against Israel’s occupation in the Palestinian Territories. In the media this struggle was portrayed as the birth of a new Israeli Left, as a true collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians. However, in September 2012 Jewish Israeli activists decided to end the struggle and a few months later their political movement, Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity, ceased to exist. This study is an ethnographic exploration of particular dynamics related to the Sheikh Jarrah struggle and its collapse. Through a critical analysis of this case study I develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of political protest in general. I argue that in order to provide a nuanced analysis of political dissent one has to account for the dialectical relationships among socio- cultural structures, people’s subjectivities, and their agency. Instead of developing a structural cause-and-effect analysis, as different studies of social movements aim to do, my objective is illuminate a system of interactions in which subjectivities, forms of agency, and socio-cultural structures are co-produced. Drawing from practice theory, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory, and based on rich ethnographic data, this work reveals the ways in which particular forms of political agency and subjectivity both challenge and reinforce the socio-cultural structures they aim to change. Focusing on the conscious and unconscious meaning of political practices in the circles of the Israeli Left, I argue that many social justice struggles, and especially joint struggles between privileged and oppressed, strengthen and unsettle power structures simultaneously. A close analysis of these struggles which accounts for the dialectical relationships among agency, subjectivity, and socio- cultural structures reveals the desires, interests, and perceptions behind particular forms of protest and allows a better understanding of their contradicting effects. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Adi Grabiner Keinan received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Tel Aviv University in 2005 and a Master of Arts in Cultural Production from Brandeis University in 2008. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe my deepest gratitude to my committee members, Magnus Fiskesjö, Jane Fajans, and Steven Sangren. Their contributions to my intellectual journey and to this work have been invaluable. I am grateful for all that they have taught me over the years, for their guidance, and for encouraging me to find my own way as a scholar. The research for this work would not have been possible without the willingness of Israeli and Palestinian activists to share their experiences, thoughts, and emotions with me. I thank them for their honesty, openness, and courage. Their deep reflections and rich insights encouraged me to ask uncomfortable questions and to challenge my perceptions. I hope my partner, Alon Keinan, already knows of my enduring gratitude for his incredible support. His patience and encouragement made this journey possible. Finally, my deepest thanks are to my son, Noam Keinan. He has been a source of immense joy and strength over the years. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch ....................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi How to Write a Protest? .................................................................................................................. 1 Setting the Stage – On the Production of Spaces and Political Consciousness Through Time .... 41 The Psychic Life of Dissent – Anxiety and Desire in the Israeli Left ........................................ 104 New Collectives? – On the Reproduction of “Us” and “Them” ................................................. 140 New Middle East – Crossing Boundaries, Unsettling Divisions ................................................ 187 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................................... 214 References ................................................................................................................................... 220 v PREFACE On March 23, 2012, Daniel Dukarevitch-Argo, a Russian-born Israeli physician and one of the founders of the Shaikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, published a short article online, reflecting on the struggle in the Palestinian neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem (Dukarevitch-Argo 2012). Only a few months earlier, in September 2011, Jewish-Israeli activists decided to end the two years long protest in the neighborhood and to seek new ways to challenge the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian Territories. “Before one specific myth becomes cemented in general public opinion,” Dukarevitch-Argo wrote, “I promised myself to try to describe what events looked like then and now from the point of view of an activist. This is merely an attempt, because at the end of the day those who make history on the ground are rarely the ones who write it, Israelis and Palestinians alike.” The myth he referred to was the assumption within the circles of the Israeli Left (including activists, journalists, politicians, and scholars) that “all the problems of the world would be solved if only enough people came to demonstrate in Sheikh Jarrah on Friday,” to use his words. Indeed, during the two years of struggle, members of the movement and the thousands of people who attended the weekly Friday demonstrations in the neighborhood have contributed to the development of a romantic image of the protest in Sheikh Jarrah, while underplaying its complex dynamics and contradicting effects. In both social and conventional media channels the struggle has been portrayed as a “true collaboration” or a “joint struggle” between Israelis and Palestinians, as the birth of a “new Israeli Left,” and as a battle between oppressors and victims, powerful and powerless. “But we have not yet learned to tell the full story.” Dukarevitch-Argo wrote in the conclusion to his short piece. “In a way, the Solidarity movement has become the victim of the vi myth it helped create...Just like it took us time to realize the impact of this myth ourselves, it will take time to persuade the thousands who demonstrated with us on Fridays at the playground in Sheikh Jarrah” (2012). Although I assume Dukarevitch-Argo had an honest intention to demystify common perceptions regarding the struggle, his description of “what events looked like” reinforces the myth by emphasizing the successes of the protest while ignoring the processes that have led to its end. In March 2012 it was still difficult for committed and involved activists such as Dukarevitch-Argo to examine their practices in a critical manner and to challenge their perceptions and practices. I arrived in Jerusalem in February 2012 and realized that the transformative struggle in Sheikh Jarrah which I intended to study had come to an end. Thus, instead of joining energetic protests in the neighborhood and participating in crucial meetings with excited Israeli and Palestinian activists, I found myself conducting long, reflective interviews with confused, angry, and in some cases devastated Jewish-Israeli activists who tried to explain and to decipher their experiences to themselves and to me. As an anthropologist studying protest and resistance I had a sense of obligation to tell a particular story about the Sheikh Jarrah movement, and like many other scholars focusing on such issues, I experienced the desire to find hope and optimism in the field. But the activists I met following the decline of the movement forced me to re-examine my own perceptions, and to challenge my liberal-academic tendency to “read all forms of resistance as signs of the ineffectiveness of systems of power and of the resilience and creativity of the human spirit in its refusal to be dominated,” as anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod’s adequately describes (Abu-Lughod 1990, 42). They did that unconsciously. For most of them it was difficult to reflect on their inner desires, their perception of the Palestinian “other”, their ides of “the Left”, and their interests; it was difficult for them to challenge the myth they worked so hard to create, both vii consciously and unconsciously. But their reflections conveyed a complex narrative that they could