A little over a month ago, I wrote a post here called “Against Trespass,” intended mostly for campus activists for Palestine. It’s tempting, I argued, to want to engage in forms of direct action that involve trespass, and morally speaking–abstracting entirely from considerations of cost or consequence–it can be justified to do so. But once we re-introduce matters of cost and consequence into the equation, as we have to, trespass strikes me now as mostly pointless and self-defeating. For one thing, more often than not, it puts the activists who engage in it out of commission. For another, it doesn’t effectively do what most needs doing: generate widespread public support for Palestine. So on the whole, it can’t accomplish the good that activists want or need. It’s more likely to subvert it. Continue reading
Category Archives: Notes on the Anti-War Movement
Davenport et al on Regime Change in Iran
PoT’s own John Davenport has a piece in The Defense Post attacking the idea of regime change in Iran. John argues, reasonably enough, that a war with Iran is ill-conceived, partly because it’s based on Israeli deceptions, and partly because it’s likely to lead to terrible, even catastrophic consequences. Continue reading
Against War with Iran
People like to say that Near East politics is complex, but the war on Iran is blindingly simple. Aggression is immoral, as is participation in it. Israel’s war on Iran is a blatantly obvious, incontestable act of aggression, as is US participation in the war so far, along with any further participation. No one has bothered to provide even a semi-plausible justification for this war, no one can, and no one will. The whole thing is insane.
Continue readingKalven’s Complicit Executioners
I’ve previously mentioned that I’ll be giving a presentation on institutional neutrality at the Heterodox Academy Conference in Brooklyn a couple of weeks from now, Tuesday, June 24th. I have yet to write the paper up, but here’s the abstract, below. I’d be interested in/grateful for any comments, questions, objections, etc. I’ll probably be posting on material related to the paper over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Manifesto of the Israeli Embassy Shooter
I’ll have a post here on the Israel Embassy shooting as soon as I can make the time for it, but until then, do yourself the favor of reading the presumptive shooter’s manifesto, published at Ken Klippenstein’s Substack. Though I don’t agree with Klippenstein’s take on the shooting, he’s to be commended for publishing the manifesto, which is more than can be said of the usual defenders of “viewpoint diversity.” Continue reading
Memo to Joe
Imagine dropping Joe Biden right now in the middle of Gaza, and telling him to find his way to the nearest cancer treatment center. It’d be a long, arduous, circuitous trip, because there isn’t one. Thousands of people don’t have to imagine that. They’ve lived it for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency, and have lived a version of it ever since the Israelis imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007, with Joe Biden’s eager acquiescence. In other words, they’ve lived, at Joe’s behest, the Hell that it would universally be thought tasteless to wish on him.
Continue readingAgainst Trespass
“The conflict over Palestine is unusual in many different ways, principally of course because Palestine is not an ordinary place.”
–Edward Said, “Introduction,” Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, p. 1.
“Direct action,” in activist parlance, is a form of public protest to induce some party to meet one’s demands–a demonstration, a sit-in, a disruption. Some direct actions (not all, obviously) involve trespass of some kind. What counts as trespass in any given context, particularly a university campus, can often be a confused and confusing affair. So I’m restricting attention in this post to the cases in which it’s clear that a given action commits trespass (is “trespassory”). Given all that, I want to make a case that pro-Palestine activists should stop engaging in direct actions that involve trespass. But first, a few clarifications. Continue reading
The Kids Are Alright
No, you really don’t “have to” take sides in the war (if that’s what it ends up being) between India and Pakistan. I’m an ethnic Kashmiri, and have no shortage of things to say about recent events, but ultimately, I think this kid Kaif not only gets things right, but deserves a Moral Equanimity award for what he says here.
Continue readingWhy Princeton students disrupted Naftali Bennett
This post was written by Princeton Alumni for Palestine, of which I’m a member. The piece was rejected for publication in both The Daily Princetonian and Princeton Alumni Weekly. I’ll be posting a separate post on this topic, in my own name, in the near future.–IK
To understand why students had to disrupt Naftali Bennett’s visit to Princeton on April 7th, it’s important to recenter ourselves on the ongoing events abroad. Hamas and Israel at last reached a ceasefire earlier this year which was recently unilaterally broken by Israel, which resumed its genocidal campaign. Full stop. Well over 50,000 deaths have been recorded, of whom 15,000 are children. These figures are a “clean” report. Yet according to the Lancet, the death toll is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands. Anyone who does a cursory search of the images from Gaza will find evidence of the deeply horrid violence that Israel has been enacting on innocent civilians, journalists, medics, UN aid workers and children. And let us not forget that these weapons are supplied with our tax dollars. Continue reading
May Day in Princeton
One of the activist groups I work with, Resistencia en Acción, is putting on a May Day march and celebration this Thursday, May 1st, in Princeton, New Jersey, starting at 6 pm. The event begins at the “Fountain of Freedom” at Washington Rd and Prospect St on the Princeton University campus. We’ll march through town, circle back, and hear from local activists and members of the community in both English and Spanish. This is a march in solidarity with and defense of all migrants, documented or not, “legal” or not, and against the arbitrary harassment, detentions, and deportations engaged in by the “Department of Homeland Security,” among others. We’re expecting some 800 participants, from Newark to Trenton and points in between. Join us if you want to stand up for justice, and have a good time doing it. And click the Instagram below to listen to Princeton’s own Chris Hedges while you’re at it: Continue reading
Policy of Truth 