An Occupier's Peace or a Just Peace - Shir Hever on RAI

The decades-old conflict in Middle East, between Israel & Palestine, won't end so easily, as the Global West perceives it to be, because a "just peace" have to be brought in for everyone living there. In a society, where there's "just peace," people need to have equal rights & obligations.

The current conflict will continue on until the occupying force, Israel, only wants peace on its terms, & of course, the conflict itself is helping to line the pockets of influential people in Israel & around the world. Political & military elites, & esp. the conservatives in North America & Europe want this conflict to continue on because they are profiting from it immensely. Of course, the average joe in Israel & the occupied territories of Palestine merely wants peace where everyone has equal rights.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWYeWeoQ-uQ

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So if you're going to talk about what the future might look like, what a peace, if possible, might look like, you've first got to talk about, well, who actually wants peace, and on what basis do they want peace? ... There are a few people in Israel who are doing extremely well out of the current situation. There's a stratum of multimillionaires and billionaires, a political stratum. I mean, why would they want anything other than what they got?

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: I think the vast majority of the Israeli public wants peace. But a famous German military thinker, Clausewitz, has once said the occupier always wants peace. Peace means the status quo. That's why Palestinians don't call for peace, they call for a just peace. And that's also why the Israeli peace movement has collapsed because the peace movement had this kind of idea that if Palestinians would be offered peace, they would just accept that the current situation will continue. And, of course, that's a completely false premise.

But there are, of course, people in Israel who do have an incentive to end the occupation and to end the injustice. A lot of Israelis are suffering because of the massive cost of security that is needed to repress the Palestinians. I would say the majority of Israelis are losing in their standard of living because of this continued repression of Palestinians, because of the continued conflict. So they have a real interest even in a just peace, but their voices are not heard and they cannot be heard within this kind of colonial system, which is dominated by those elites who are actually profiting.

JAY: So talk a bit about the elites because it's a very small group that own the dominating, commanding heights of the Israeli economy.

HEVER: Yeah. And I would say the major forces that push Israel in this direction of continued conflict and continued occupation are actually outside of Israel. These are the forces--the U.S. government and right-wing groups within the U.S.--that fund the most extremist and violent political movements inside Israel. Sheldon Adelson in the U.S. has opened up a free newspaper in Israel in order to make sure that Netanyahu keeps winning the elections with a massive investment that no one on the other side can match. So that sort of support makes sure that the hawks continue to dominate the political structure.

Sure, there are also Israeli security companies and military companies that are very powerful and very influential. In fact, there was a meeting in 2011 of 80 of Israel's biggest capitalists but not from the security sector, which said, if Israel will continue on this path, we're going to get to the situation of South Africa, we're going to be boycotted by the world, we have to do something. They had this emergency meeting. But they couldn't actually do something. It shows that even capital has its limits. They couldn't find a way to convince the government to act differently because there's just no historical precedent for that. There is no historical precedent of a colonial power which just stops in its tracks and says, this is wrong, we should allow these people freedom and equality.

JAY: Would you say if outside of the security-military-industrial complex, if you will, the rest of the majority of big capital would actually like to see a resolution of this?

HEVER: Yes, yes. And they've tried a couple times to fund their own candidates for prime minister and spent a lot of money on that. The public didn't vote for these candidates. The public wants a strong leader that can say--a sort of security person who can say--I will be a representative of your national pride, I will make sure Israel is safe, I will fight Iran, and so on. And when somebody says, if we end the occupation it's actually good for the economy, this sort of argument doesn't get--.

JAY: But if their heart was really in it--and they being these other big capitalists--I mean, they could match Sheldon Adleson and they could have their own TV stations and their own newspapers. I mean, they could really go at it. Is their heart really in it? They're doing so well the way things are.

HEVER: I think they estimate that if they do that, people will not see that, won't watch that television or will not read the newspaper. And they're right because people don't like to read that they're in the wrong, and that things have to change, and that political power has to be shared. They don't want to read that.

JAY: Alright. ... what is a model that if you could even think ten, twenty, thirty years out, if you were going to try to create a model that would be, one, sellable, not just just. I mean, you can imagine a just model, which is pretty straightforward. It's a Democratic, single secular state and everybody gets to vote and it's a modern country. But right now that's not a sellable proposition. So some people have talked a possible federated state, where you have a province or a state within a Federation which is primarily Jewish. Hebrew would be the language. You would have another one, another state, which is primarily--Arabic is the primary language, and so on, or some configuration. You must have thought about this. What might be possible?

HEVER: It's not only that I've thought about it, that this is also almost an obsession, but not just for me, but for political activists, for leftists for years.

But I want to answer you in two parts. The first part, I have to say, again I have to be very sensitive to my own position of privilege. Being an Israeli Jew and saying well, this is the solution is not going to work, and it shouldn't be, it shouldn't work. Palestinians should not get their solution from some Israeli. They have to come up with their own platform for political change. And therefore, I have to be very careful in how I answer that sort of question.

Having said that, let me tell you what voices I hear from my Palestinian friends about what they're saying. And among these voices, you can hear a lot of those ideas of a federation, a confederation, two separate states, three separate states, one democratic state, joining with Egypt. You can hear a lot of interesting ideas. But the voice that comes out the clearest in the last few years is the voice that says, we don't care about that. All of these ideas are legal demarcations, are some kind of--where you put the border here or there. That's not important. The important thing is to talk about rights, talk about how we have the right to move wherever we want, to say whatever we want, to have a government that represents us, to organize, to practice our religion, to trade freely. That's what it means to be free. And then it doesn't matter so much exactly how many borders you're going to stretch across this territory. If we're practical about it, historically Palestine is a country that was divided by the UN, but in fact there has never been a Palestinian state there. There's always been one powerful force of Israel and some areas that were temporarily held by Egypt and Jordan, and then Israel occupied these parts as well. Now we have a situation in which there's one state under Israeli domination with a population of 12 million: 49% Jews, 49% Palestinians, 2% others. And it's an apartheid state.
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JAY: What I'm getting at, ... if there's going to be rights, there's going to have to be at some point some kind of buy-in by enough Israeli Jews to go along with this, I mean, unless you think there's going to be some military defeat of the Israeli state, and it's hard to imagine that right now. Even if the American policy was to significantly shift, you still have a mass of Jewish-Israeli public opinion that is where it is. I mean, it's in not a very good place. There's got to be some kind of understanding of how that's going to be dealt with to create a model that's at least the next step.

HEVER: There's this famous British general that once said in Zimbabwe, whatever happens, we have machine guns and they don't. And they lost. So the military defeat is not so unimaginable, but, of course, it'll be further down the road. It's not going to be in the next few years.

I think the fact is that a Jewish state is not sustainable. It's a concept that doesn't fit the 21st century. It barely fits into the 20th century. It's a racist idea.
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JAY: Well, I was about to get to that, 'cause then you get to the campaign for boycotting, disinvestment, and sanctions. It's clearly having some influence. It's hurting the Israeli economy. If it was stronger, it could precipitate more self-interest in some kind of change in Israel. But don't you then still have to have--okay, then what does that look like? 'Cause if you get to a point of real rights the way you're talking about, this can't be a Jewish state anymore.

HEVER: Exactly. Yeah. It cannot be a Jewish state. It's going to be--I mean, even if there will be a separate Palestinian state according to what we call the two-state solution, then the battle will continue. The struggle for equal rights in Israel will continue, because Israel cannot be a Jewish state; it has to be a state for all its citizens, one way or another. And the way that this defeat comes, it comes very suddenly. And, of course, the model is South Africa, where one week before apartheid collapsed, 90% of white people in South Africa supported apartheid. One week after apartheid collapsed, they all say we were always against it. And the Israeli minister of justice, Tzipi Livni, just said a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BDS movement, she said, I went to South Africa and spoke to some Jewish people there about their experiences from this era of the fall of apartheid, and the main thing they told me is it came unexpectedly, it came suddenly. There is a moment in which you lose courage, you lose your faith that you can continue to repress other people forever. And that moment may not be as far as we believe. I'm hopeful.
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Does Divestment Work?

As I have commented on those social media posts, which always support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel, for its continued brutal & illegal occupation of Palestine, that BDS movement won't work against Israel. This article partially supports my opinion.

It partially supports because it supports product boycotts but not divestment. But it is still correct in explaining how divestment from certain industries / companies doesn't work. So, for instance, divesting or selling stocks of Lockheed Martin (stock: LMT) because it supports wars by manufacturing weapons won't stop or help reduce wars, because investors who don't care about ethics or value money over everything else will snap up those stocks & make a fine buck. Lockheed Martin won't feel any effects of divestments, whatsoever.

I go one step further & assert that product boycotts also don't work. They don't work because all consumers, similar to the investment community, don't have a sympathy bone for Palestine & the plight of Palestinians, or, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. If a small section of the consuming public stops using a certain product, it might have a small to minimal effect on sales, & the resulting profits, of the company.

The root problem with BDS is that the movement assumes that a large public will catch on to its cause & will help fight it against illegal occupations, wars, climate change deniers etc. What it forgets that BDS, although being a noble movement, requires a large enough section of the public (investors, consumers, legislators etc.) to help with its causes. It's like a seesaw in the children's playground. If a heavy-set or large child sit on one end of the seesaw, the other end will need a similarly large-sized or at least enough children on the other end to bring down the other end of the seesaw.

For instance, Israel's GDP isn't hurt at all if a small section of the general public stops watching Fox Network or CNN because those news channels are demonizing Palestinians & supporting the illegal occupation of Israel. But, if, let's say, 70% of American adult general population stops watching Fox Network & CNN, advertisers will move their dollars to other cable news channels & that will hurt those networks.

As the article suggests, BDS movements should focus on the stigmatization of a country or industry or company. That stigmatization will hopefully lead enough investors, consumers, & legislators to stop investing, stop consuming & come up with sanctioning laws to help with BDS causes. But that's where the hard work starts for BDS movement. Raising enough awareness in the general public to bring that tide change requires massive effort, time, & money. Most people forget the cause in a day & move on with their lives. Continuing my example from above, how many Muslims, for instance, would or have stopped watching Fox Network or CNN? They might have one time or another but forgot it later on. On top of that, Muslims only make like 2% of the general population of America. So, even if all Muslims stop watching Fox & CNN, it won't make a damn dent in the profits of those networks.

On top of that, Israel's GDP is helped a lot by exporting war technology. How many Muslims, or even other people who sympathise with Palestinian cause, have any say, whatsoever, in their country purchasing war technology & weapons from Israel? Pretty much no one from the general public. So, how does BDS would help hurting Israel's GDP?

In summary, BDS movements are pretty much useless, since they require a quite large following to bring about any change to their causes. Many times, the public doesn't even have a say in doing anything which can bring about any change, since it is out of public's hands. BDS movements are essentially "feel-good" movements for their participants, because it makes the participants feel good that they are doing something, if anything, to help a good cause, even though, they are essentially wasting their efforts, time, & money because the focus of all their work is in the wrong place.

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http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/does-divestment-work

Beginning in the early 1980s, students on college campuses across the U.S. demanded that their universities stop investing in companies that conducted business in South Africa, in protest of the apartheid system. As an example of social activism, the campaign was a phenomenal success: by the end of the decade, about 150 educational institutions had divested. But did the campaign succeed in pressuring the South African government to dismantle apartheid? The answer is less obvious than you might think. The economists Siew Hong Teoh, Ivo Welch, & C. Paul Wazzan studied how U.S. divestment movements affected the South African financial market & the share prices of U.S. companies with South African operations. Divestments were expected, on average, to decrease share prices, but the study found that, in fact, political pressure turned out to have no discernible effect on the shares’ public market valuations. According to the authors, a possible explanation of this finding is that “the boycott primarily reallocated shares and operations from ‘socially responsible’ to more indifferent investors and countries.”

Although contemporary divestment campaigns have the potential to do a lot of good, we need to be clear about what their path to impact might be. Divestment is an example of socially responsible investing—the practice of either investing only in socially valuable companies or, more commonly, refusing to invest in companies that are deemed “unethical.” Socially responsible investing is big: according to a 2014 report by the Forum for Sustainable & Responsible Investment, roughly one in six dollars, or about 18%, of the $36.8 trillion in professionally managed assets in the U.S. is involved in socially responsible investing. And the movement has exploded in the past two decades.

Students are lobbying their universities to divest from morally dubious industries, such as tobacco or firearms. More recently, a coalition of 2,000 individuals—including celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio—& 400 institutions worth $2.6 trillion has pledged to divest from fossil-fuel companies.

However, if the aim of divestment campaigns is to reduce companies’ profitability by directly reducing their share prices, then these campaigns are misguided. An example: suppose that the market price for a share in ExxonMobil is $10, & that, as a result of a divestment campaign, a university decides to divest from ExxonMobil, and it sells the shares for $9 each. What happens then?

Well, what happens is that someone who doesn’t have ethical concerns will snap up the bargain.

They’ll buy the shares for $9 apiece, & then sell them for $10 to one of the other thousands of investors who don’t share the university’s moral scruples. The market price stays the same; the company loses no money & notices no difference. As long as there are economic incentives to invest in a certain stock, there will be individuals & groups—most of whom are not under any pressure to act in a socially responsible way—willing to jump on the opportunity. These people will undo the good that socially conscious investors are trying to do.

There is an important difference, therefore, between divestment & product boycotts. If a group of people believes that the Coca-Cola Company is harming the world, whereas PepsiCo isn’t, & accordingly switch their consumption from Coke to Pepsi, the Coca-Cola Company is harmed. Their sales decrease, & they make less profit. By contrast, if the same group of people stop investing in Coca-Cola, & invest instead in Pepsi, things will quickly balance out, & neither company will notice much difference. As soon as an ethical investor sells a share, a neutral or unethical investor will buy it.

This means that divestment risks being harmful. Several studies have shown that, because of the pressure against investing in morally dubious companies, “unethical” investments (sometimes called “sin stocks”) produce higher financial returns for the investor than their “ethical” alternatives. The economists Harrison Hong & Marcin Kacperczyk found that sin stocks outperform other stocks by 2.5% per year. This has even resulted in a niche industry: for instance, the Barrier Fund, formerly known as the Vice Fund, is a “sin-vestor” mutual fund that exclusively invests in companies that are significantly involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or defense. It has beaten the S&P 500 by an average of nearly two percentage points per year since 2002. By divesting from unethical companies, “ethical” investors may effectively transfer money to opportunists like the Barrier Fund, who will likely spend it less responsibly than their “ethical” counterparts.

Studies of divestment campaigns in other industries, such as weapons, gambling, pornography, & tobacco, suggest that they have little or no direct impact on share prices. For example, the author of a study on divestment from oil companies in Sudan wrote, “Thanks to China and a trio of Asian national oil companies, oil still flows in Sudan.” The divestment campaign served to benefit certain unethical shareholders while failing to alter the price of the stock.

There is some variation in divestment’s effects across different sectors. In a 2013 report by the Smith School of Enterprise & the Environment at the University of Oxford, the authors found that coal stocks are less liquid than those of oil & natural gas, & that divestment therefore has a greater chance of impacting share price because it is more difficult for alternative investors to be found. Indeed, Peabody Energy Corporation, a coal company, recently stated in its financial report that “divestment efforts … could significantly affect demand for our products or our securities.” However, even in this sector, the effect will probably be very small. In that same Oxford report, the authors cautioned campaigners that the direct impact of divestment is “likely to be minimal.”

There is one way in which divestment campaigns can have a positive impact. Campaigns can use divestment as a media hook to generate stigma around certain industries, such as fossil fuel. In the long run, such stigma might lead to fewer people wanting to work at fossil-fuel companies, driving up the cost of labor for those corporations, & perhaps to greater popular support for better climate policies.

This is a much better argument in favor of divestment than the assertion that you’re directly reducing companies’ share price. If divestment campaigns are run, it should be with the aim of stigmatization in mind. However, campaigners need to be careful. First, there is a risk of confusing people—suggesting that divestment will directly hit companies in the pocketbook when the evidence mostly suggests that it won’t. For example, the Campaign to Unload, which encourages divestment from gun manufacturers, describes its aim as “to hit back at irresponsible gunmakers where it hurts: their sources of funding,” even though gun manufacturers get funding from selling guns, not selling stocks. Moreover, in response to the question “How does a divestment campaign work?,” the group claims:

When many investors decide it’s time to sell at the same time, that company’s stock comes under pressure. Over time, a low stock price can make it harder for a company to get loans, finance its sales, or expand the business. And if the pressure is high enough, an entire industry—even a national government—can decide it’s time to change how they do business.

This sounds like an argument that divestment directly negatively impacts companies’ share prices, but that simply isn’t the case. Moreover, divestment campaigns may stigmatize organizations that are doing valuable work. For example, in 2014 the Gates Foundation came under scrutiny from protesters because of its investments in the G.E.O. Group, which runs private prisons. But the anger directed toward the Gates Foundation will cause more harm for the foundation, which is doing great work, than it will for private prison companies.

Above all, divestment campaigns risk distracting from more directly effective activities. If the environmentalist community focuses its time on divestment campaigns, they are left with less time for their other programs. This means less time spent lobbying for carbon taxes, or encouraging people to adopt life styles with lower carbon footprints, or calling on universities to boycott energy providers that rely on fossil fuels.

Where, then, does this leave us? Divestment campaigns have the potential to do good, but only with caveats. To avoid the risk of misleading people, those running campaigns should be clear that the aim of divestment is to signal disapproval of certain industries, not to directly affect share price. They should be clear that they aim to stigmatize the organizations (like fossil-fuel companies) that are being invested in, not those that do the investing (like universities, pension funds, or foundations). They should aim to maximize their media exposure. And, where possible, they should bundle the campaigns with actions that have larger direct effects, such as fossil-fuel energy boycotts, or with calls for specific policy changes.


William MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University & the author of “Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference.”