Blowing up the UN; missile hide n seek; deaths that matter less; realpolitik for the oppressed. posted by Richard Seymour

You might have thought, folks, that when I cited comments suggesting that the UN be blown up, I was merely reflecting the views of a few extremists. However, Israel likes to knock the UN about a bit. Alex Cockburn's excellent latest on Counterpunch, for instance, discusses the fact when the UN passed resolutions against Israel's previous occupation of Lebanon, prompted by the fear that the Palestinians' "peace offensive" might work, General Sharon bombed Beirut on the exact minute that each of the resolutions were passed. I can't vouch for the exactitude of the timing in this case, but Israel appears to have punished the UN for its latest outrage in describing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law by bombing UNIFIL positions fifteen times. Oh, and they also bombed Red Cross ambulances - 26 of them.

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Kim Howells, the disgusting hypocrite from the Foreign Office, was being interviewed on BBC News this morning and was asked how "serious" the situation was (because BBC anchors couldn't devise a meaningful, challenging question if their fatuous careers depended upon it), and he replied: "It's very serious indeed. You know, I am hearing rumours that they've even got missiles stored in people's houses and apartments. Hezbollah are very ruthless..." Aren't they dreadful? Imagine it - instead of putting all their weapons out in a big open field and highlighting their presence with the big yellow flags, Hezbollah is rumoured to have actually put the rockets in big suburban blocks, thereby forcing the Israelis to bomb civilians. Where, I wonder, did Mr Howells pick up his 'rumours'? And since when were 'rumours' an adequate basis for a British minister to extemporise on television? Shall we hear next that Hezbollah has been smuggling in weapons on Red Cross ambulances? (Update: turns out Howells was probably doing penitence for his meek criticisms of Israel yesterday).

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Project Censored has completed a study of AP coverage of Israeli and Palestinian deaths in the year 2004. They have found that "there is a strong correlation between the likelihood of a person’s death receiving coverage by AP and that person’s nationality. In 2004 there were 141 reports of Israeli deaths in AP headlines and lead paragraphs, while in reality there were only 108 Israeli deaths, this difference comes from reporting a death more than once. During this same period, Palestinian deaths were reported as 543 by the AP, but at the time 821 Palestinians had been killed. The ratio of actual number of Israeli conflict deaths to Palestinian deaths in 2004 was 1:7, yet AP reported deaths of Israelis to Palestinians at a 2:1 ratio. In other words, the AP reported 131 percent of Israeli deaths, whereas they only reported 66 percent of Palestinian deaths."

We have heard Mr Bolton, Hell's own representative at the UN, describe how Lebanese deaths are not morally equivalent to Israeli deaths. Now (via K), we have Alan Dershowitz's latest advocacy on behalf of Israel. Dershowitz wonders "just who is a 'civilian' in the age of terrorism, when militants don't wear uniforms, don't belong to regular armies and easily blend into civilian populations". You must have been thinking something similar yourself. Dershowitz proposes a "new vocabulary", which is what those who find even conventional liberal norms inconvenient always do. To wit: "the continuum of civilianality." Predictably, Dershowitz's minute distinctions, which are at best trivial and at worst the usual racist garbage, do not attempt to connect with reality.

But this is the lingua franca of the 'war on terror'. One is used to such guardhouse lawyering over the use of torture, over the destruction of marketplaces in Baghdad, over the use of death squads and so on and on. This is the cheap alchemy of capital, whose norms are ductile, glittering generalities, frequently to be melted down and refashioned. Capitalist morality valorises the ruling class's interests while endlessly condescending to, ridiculing, demonising and anathematising opposing interests - and capital pays a class of entertainers and scribes and polemicists and, yes, lawyers to obscure this, to persuade you that you have something to gain in this, that you have a vital stake in the arms industry, in keeping the fuel-deathlock economy running exactly as it is, in abandoning your right to a decent pension and paying instead for renewed nuclear weapons while working yourself to an early grave. Your are to be persuaded that British ruling class interests in the Middle East are 'our' interests. This class has a keen sense of audience: radio shock-jocks raise hysterical alarums about "the Muslim threat" (which is to do with im'grants n stuff), while liberal columnists expatiate about womens' rights, free speech (and "the Muslim threat" thereto).

In the war on terror, capital takes the leap of openly trying to redefine what is human and what is not, openly trying to resuscitate racist discourse. It resolves its crisis of profitability by slashing the wage bill and plundering resources, and binds you libidinally to this process by reminding you that your family will never be safe until we tame the Middle East with its cartoon collection of mad religious fanatics, Oriental dictators and rising brown tides. In this, Israel plays its part as it always has: from Iran to Nicaragua, from Afghanistan to the Maghreb, Israel is richly rewarded for being the global adjuvant to imperialist power, a role its founders sought for it since day one. By pounding Lebanon, it does what the US is temporarily restrained from doing, fighting a proxy war against Iran and Syria, two states in the Middle East not amenable to US bribery or sanctions. And the moral code for this rampage is: Never Makes Excuses for Terrorism; Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself; White Kids are More Human Than Brown Kids.

But if you weren't disposed to be taken in by this, and if you were sickened by the contemptuous excuses made for abandoning even the limited restraints on ruling class power (whether expressed by the state or by corporations) achieved by popular struggles throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, then the proper response is to openly embrace the political nature of these norms, to resist the canting moralism of phoney liberals who wish to return to a golden age of sexy Clintonite imperialism. That's gone. Even if it were possible to return to that preposterously romanticised era, which was in fact one of the most brutal, violent, alienated and impoverishing eras in the recent history of the US, it would hardly be desirable. The fact that even limited notions of human rights and democracy are being abandoned by the ruling class has given the left a chance to hegemonise these norms, to inflect them with the interests and aspirations of our class. But that is to recognise it as a political struggle, not as a moralistic crusade of dos and don'ts. That is to say, we don't need formulaically correct answers to global political problems, since if it were only about being correct then the revolution would long since have succeeded: we need realpolitik for the oppressed.