'Into the home and into the mind,' structural violence in occupation

“It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native.” - Frantz Fanon

Violence, in many ways, defines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 1948. 1967. 2000-2005. Winter 2008/2009. Fall 2012. Summer 2014. These bloody episodes form a historical backbone upon which varying narratives and theoretical frameworks are built. Each war, assault and “flare-up” is analyzed intensely with critiques, allegations and justifications flying in every direction. These discussions are helpful: The history of physical violence, cease-fires, assassinations, bombings, invasions, etc., informs our understanding of what is happening in Israel/Palestine in constructive ways. The use of physical violence has been massively asymmetrical throughout the conflict, with Israel holding a near monopoly on military power. Put bluntly, the Israeli government has killed and injured far more Palestinians than Palestinians have Israelis, and with far more dangerous and destructive weaponry. For example, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the assault of this summer, in which Israeli military strikes killed about 2,200 Palestinians, 70 percent of those killed were civilians. Palestinian militants killed 71 Israelis, 7 percent of whom were civilians.

This is unsurprising, given that the infliction of disproportionate force has been a part of Israeli military doctrine since before the creation of the state (this doctrine of “retaliation in force” is sometimes referred to as Ben-Gurionism). The doctrine, a form of state terrorism meant to violently coerce, is omnipresent in Israeli tactics. Palestinian children are arrested and sometimes tortured on suspicion for throwing rocks. The homes of Palestinians are arbitrarily demolished. Palestinians are shot dead for coming too close to the illegal Apartheid wall that divides land, communities and families.This past summer, the Gaza Ministry of Interior stated that Israel dropped 20,000 tons of explosives (the equivalent of 6 nuclear bombs) on Gaza, a tiny coastal enclave that happens to be one of the most densely populated areas in the world. The legacy of David Ben-Gurion is alive and well in the holy land.

By focusing on the nature, effects and sources of physical violence exclusively, however, we fail to understand the full scope of violence in the conflict. While death and physical harm are the most pronounced illustrations of violence, the most conspicuous is not necessarily the most dangerous. Far beyond the asymmetry of physical violence, as discussed above, is the concealed horror of occupation that seeps into every aspect of quotidian life, “Into the home and into the mind of the native.” The power imbalance of a tank to a rock (or an F16 to a homemade rocket) pales in comparison to that of the occupier and the occupied.

Kit R. Christensen, in "Nonviolence Peace and Justice: A Philosophical Introduction" (2009), defines structural violence as the victimization and increased vulnerability of a particular group of people “within a stratified, or hierarchically structured, society.” In other words, structural violence is the institutionalized assault on a group of people, an oppression enacted and enforced through laws and policies. Examples of structural violence are abundant within our own country. Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Greg Howard and others have detailed the various manifestations of structural violence against black communities in the United States, ranging from policies of mass incarceration, racist drug laws, housing policies and failures of the judicial system to demand accountability for police brutality, to name a few.

Thus, it should be unsurprising that this summer we saw such strong solidarity between black folk in Ferguson and Palestinians in Gaza. In the same manner that legal institutions facilitate mass incarceration and police brutality with impunity, Israeli policies facilitate mass incarceration in the West Bank (roughly 33 percent of black men in America will be incarcerated in their lifetime, as will 40 percent of Palestinian men in the West Bank). Many of those arrested in the West Bank are children taken from their homes in the middle of the night, often interrogated and tortured on suspicion of throwing rocks.

Mass incarceration is just the tip of the iceberg of the structural violence inflicted on the Palestinians. Israel restricts movement through a series of checkpoints and segregated roads unrivaled by the peak of the Jim Crow South or Apartheid South Africa. In just five years, 67 Palestinian mothers were forced to give birth at checkpoints, resulting in the death of 36 babies. Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of Palestinian homes are demolished in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on the grounds that residents failed to acquire a building permit, 99 percent of which are rejected according to some sources. In Gaza, Israel limits resources necessary for life and development from entering the Strip’s well-policed borders. This oppressive military domination has resulted in an alarmingly deteriorating human rights situation, with UN experts now saying Gaza will become uninhabitable in the next five years. When SJP speaks of apartheid, this is what we are talking about.

One of structural violence’s greatest problems is its invisibility. To be clear, for the Palestinian people, this violence is unmistakable and endured each day. But structural violence, particularly Israel’s exertion of such violence, is obscured in western media. Physical violence is often portrayed as occurring in a vacuum, as if the backdrop of structural violence plays no causal role in the engagement of hostilities. A narrative of two violently hateful enemies serves a useful purpose in the perpetuation of racial essentialisms and the preservation of the status quo. However, we know this structural violence to be very real and very dangerous.

The truth is, while we did write this article to elucidate the vast inequality in the use of violence in the conflict, such rhetoric is irrelevant if it doesn’t translate back to us. This Israel Apartheid Week, we implore you to consider the issue of Israel and Palestine with a comprehensive understanding of violence. If you find yourself saying something along the lines of, “I reject the use of violence on both sides,” consider that while physical violence may exist in a reactionary (albeit asymmetrical) exchange of blows, structural violence is a one directional force that travels from the oppressor to the oppressed.

What we don’t talk about is just as important as what we do. To discuss acts of Palestinian violence in isolation is to discredit and ignore the structural violence and psychological trauma that Israel is facilitating every second of every day. This IAW, consider what Israeli Apartheid means, begin to check your conversations and ask yourself why you would rather prioritize isolated incidents of violence and the politics of resistance at the expense of the legitimate reasons why and against what Palestinians need to resist in the first place. Too often, when we mention a rock, we ignore a checkpoint, and when we discuss a rocket, we forget apartheid.