Israel and Palestine: The myth of unfathomable complexity

The squeamishness about discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes me back to my youth growing up during apartheid.

This is not just because of the attacks on hopelessly outgunned people by occupying forces. Nor the actions of defence and self-determination being branded terrorism, nor the fascism, nor the faux independence, nor the hate rationalised as policy.

All of that is familiar, sure. But what really echoes the savage brutal racial oppression in South Africa circa 1988, is the myth that the situation in Palestine is so complex it doesn’t even bear speaking about.

This was exactly the party line spouted by us obliviously racist white people of the time. We honestly believed that apartheid was so complicated that only we – the white South African intelligentsia – could really understand it. We somehow thought we were playing a game of five-dimensional chess in robbing black people of their rights, exploiting them in every way and then killing them for resisting.

When I began planning my first trips overseas, I remember being warned by older surfers from my peer group: “When you get over there, just don’t talk to them about South African politics. They’ll never understand it.”

The subtext was that legislated racism and fascist violence is definitely the right thing to do for us in SA, but it’s simply too sophisticated a concept to explain to anyone who doesn’t really know the situation on the ground.

I think the real reason was that you didn’t want to get into any arguments that you couldn’t win. Injustice is clear and understandable to all people. Sure it can be complicated, but the asymmetry of oppression in usually undeniable.

A parallel tactic in the ’80s South African arsenal of self-delusion was the injunction to “not talk politics”. This was common in the area of sport. Keep politics out of sport, mos! In Port Elizabeth, where I became conscious, a local example was the policy of the local university to “keep politics off campus”.

This attitude is of course plainly flawed because what it really says is, “Let’s maintain the status quo and ban any discussion that seeks to change that”.

The status quo, the way things are, is the result of political choices. So the attempt to ban any challenges to it is deeply political. Saying, “Let’s not talk politics,” is the most political statement of all, because it assumes the current political situation is normal, apt and therefore beyond politics.

When Colin Kaepernick was vilified for bringing politics into American football, he was really being cast out because he dared to question the tradition of endorsing a country that regularly kills black people in the name of law enforcement by singing the national anthem before every football match.

Saying, “Let’s not talk about it. It’s divisive,” is in fact to say, “let’s just let the dominant culture continue to dominate.” Thus was Kaepernick’s football career sacrificed on the pyre of support for the dominant power structure.

That is a seriously political move.

So forgive me if I dare to have an opinion about the Palestinian conflict. I believe it starts from a deeply unjust persecution of an oppressed people by an invader nation. I am open to learning more, but that will require further reading on my part, and, god forbid, discussing it.

However, that is easier said than done, here in this place still riven with very similar issues of oppression and exploitation.

A good starting point might be accepting that whatever the true situation is, it needs to change. On that, there must be almost unanimous agreement. Change is the opposite of the status quo. Change says, “Not this politics. We need a new politics!”

I really think we do. And that will definitely come from open debate and discussion. Not from politely avoiding issues that might offend people. Robust debate can indeed offend, but people living and dying in misery is far more offensive than that.

It certainly bears discussing.

Hagen Engler.