By Susan Sontag

salaam

I'm posting this in relation to an issue discussed recently on this list 
about struggle and success related to such struggle. Its a long read - 
but a very enjoyable one. The part relating to our previous 
discussion is towards the end.

"The likelihood," Susan Sontag says, "that your acts of resistance 
cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what 
you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your 
community."

na'eem



A Keynote Speech 

by Susan Sontag; April 27, 2003 
Allow me to invoke not one but two, only two, who were heroes --- 
among millions of heroes. Who were victims --- among tens of 
millions of victims. 
The first: Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, 
murdered in his vestments, while saying mass in the cathedral on 
March 24, 1980 --- twenty-three years ago --- because he had 
become "a vocal advocate of a just peace, and had openly opposed 
the forces of violence and oppression." (I am quoting from the 
description of the Oscar Romero Award, being given today to Ishai 
Menuchin.) 
The second: Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old college student 
from Olympia, Washington, murdered in the bright neon-orange 
jacket with Day-Glo striping that "human shields" wear to make 
themselves quite visible, and possibly safer, while trying to stop one 
of the almost daily house demolitions by Israeli forces in Rafah, a 
town in the southern Gaza Strip (where Gaza abuts the Egyptian 
border), on March 16, 2003 --- two weeks ago. Standing in front of a 
Palestinian physician's house that had been targeted for demolition, 
Corrie, one of eight young American and British human-shield 
volunteers in Rafah, had been waving and shouting at the driver of 
an oncoming armored D-9 bulldozer through her megaphone, then 
dropped to her knees in the path of the super-sized bulldozer ... 
which did not slow down. 
Two emblematic figures of sacrifice, killed by the forces of violence 
and oppression to which they were offering non-violent, principled, 
dangerous opposition. 
*** 
Let's start with risk. The risk of being punished. The risk of being 
isolated. The risk of being injured or killed. The risk of being 
scorned. 
We are all conscripts in one sense or another. For all of us, it is hard 
to break ranks; to incur the disapproval, the censure, the violence of 
an offended majority with a different idea of loyalty. We shelter 
under banner-words like justice, peace, reconciliation that enroll us 
in new, if much smaller and relatively powerless communities of the 
like-minded. That mobilize us for the demonstration, the protest, the 
public performance of acts of civil disobedience --- not for the 
parade ground and the battlefield. 
To fall out of step with one's tribe; to step beyond one's tribe into a 
world that is larger mentally but smaller numerically --- if alienation 
or dissidence is not your habitual or gratifying posture, this is a 
complex, difficult process. 
It is hard to defy the wisdom of the tribe: the wisdom that values the 
lives of members of the tribe above all others. It will always be 
unpopular --- it will always be deemed unpatriotic --- to say that the 
lives of the members of the other tribe are as valuable as one's own. 
It is easier to give one's allegiance to those we know, to those we 
see, to those with whom we are embedded, to those with whom we 
share --- as we may --- a community of fear. 
Let's not underestimate the force of what we oppose. Let's not 
underestimate the retaliation that may be visited on those who dare 
to dissent from the brutalities and repressions thought justified by 
the fears of the majority. 
We are flesh. We can be punctured by a bayonet, torn apart by a 
suicide bomber. We can be crushed by a bulldozer, gunned down in 
a cathedral. 
Fear binds people together. And fear disperses them. Courage 
inspires communities: the courage of an example -- for courage is 
as contagious as fear. But courage, certain kinds of courage, can 
also isolate the brave. 
The perennial destiny of principles: while everyone professes to 
have them, they are likely to be sacrificed when they become 
inconveniencing. Generally a moral principle is something that puts 
one at variance with accepted practice. And that variance has 
consequences, sometimes unpleasant consequences, as the 
community takes its revenge on those who challenge its 
contradictions --- who want a society actually to uphold the principles 
it professes to defend. 
The standard that a society should actually embody its own 
professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that moral 
principles contradict the way things really are --- and always will be. 
How things really are --- and always will be --- is neither all-evil nor 
all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do 
something about the morass of contradictions in which we function 
morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant 
of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away 
from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us 
that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be 
better off just not thinking about it. 
The cry of the anti-principled: "I'm doing the best I can." The best 
given the circumstances, of course. 
*** 
Let's say, the principle is: it's wrong to oppress and humiliate a 
whole people. To deprive them systematically of lodging and proper 
nutrition; to destroy their habitations, means of livelihood, access to 
education and medical care, and ability to consort with one another. 
That these practices are wrong, whatever the provocation. 
And there is provocation. That, too, should not be denied. 
*** 
At the center of our moral life and our moral imagination are the 
great models of resistance: the great stories of those who have said 
No. No, I will not serve. 
What models, what stories? A Mormon may resist the outlawing of 
polygamy. An anti-abortion militant may resist the law that has made 
abortion legal. They, too, will invoke the claims of religion (or faith) 
and morality --- against the edicts of civil society. Appeal to the 
existence of a higher law that authorizes us to defy the laws of the 
state can be used to justify criminal transgression as well as the 
noblest struggle for justice. 
Courage has no moral value in itself, for courage is not, in itself, a 
moral virtue. Vicious scoundrels, murderers, terrorists may be 
brave. To describe courage as a virtue, we need an adjective: we 
speak of "moral courage" --- because there is such a thing as amoral 
courage, too. 
And resistance has no value in itself. It is the content of the 
resistance that determines its merit, its moral necessity. 
Let's say: resistance to a criminal war. Let's say: resistance to the 
occupation and annexation of another people's land. 
Again: there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our 
claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of 
the claim that the resisters are acting in the name of justice. And the 
justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, 
the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last 
on the truth of a description of a state of affairs which is, truly, unjust 
and unnecessary. 
*** 
Here is what I believe to be a truthful description of a state of affairs 
that has taken me many years of uncertainty, ignorance, and 
anguish, to acknowledge. 
A wounded and fearful country, Israel is going through the greatest 
crisis of its turbulent history, brought about by the policy of steadily 
increasing and reinforcing settlements on the territories won after its 
victory in the Arab war on Israel in 1967. The decision of successive 
Israeli governments to retain control over the West Bank and Gaza, 
thereby denying their Palestinian neighbors a state of their own, is a 
catastrophe --- moral, human, and political --- for both peoples. The 
Palestinians need a sovereign state. Israel needs a sovereign 
Palestinian state. Those of us abroad who wish for Israel to survive 
cannot, should not, wish it to survive no matter what, no matter how. 
We owe a particular debt of gratitude to courageous Israeli Jewish 
witnesses, journalists, architects, poets, novelists, professors ---
among others --- who have described and documented and 
protested and militated against the sufferings of the Palestinians 
living under the increasingly cruel terms of Israeli military 
subjugation and settler annexation. 
Our greatest admiration must go to the brave Israeli soldiers, 
represented here by Ishai Menuchin, who refuse to serve beyond the 
1967 borders. These soldiers know that all settlements are bound to 
be evacuated in the end. These soldiers, who are Jews, take 
seriously the principle put forward at the Nuremberg trials in 1946: 
namely, that a soldier is not obliged to obey unjust orders, orders 
which contravene the laws of war --- indeed, one has an obligation 
to disobey them. 
The Israeli soldiers who are resisting service in the Occupied 
Territories are not refusing a particular order. They are refusing to 
enter the space where illegitimate orders are bound to be given --- 
that is, where it is more than probable that they will be ordered to 
perform actions that continue the oppression and humiliation of 
Palestinian civilians. Houses are demolished, groves are uprooted, 
the stalls of a village market are bulldozed, a cultural center is 
looted; and now, nearly every day, civilians of all ages are fired on 
and killed. There can be no disputing the mounting cruelty of the 
Israeli occupation of the 22 percent of the former territory of British 
Palestine on which a Palestinian state will be erected. These 
soldiers believe, as I do, that there should be an unconditional 
withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. They have declared 
collectively that they will not continue to fight beyond the 1967 
borders "in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire 
people." 
What the refuseniks have done (there are now around eleven 
hundred of them, more than two hundred and fifty of whom have 
gone to prison) does not contribute to tell us how the Israelis and 
Palestinians can make peace --- beyond the irrevocable demand 
that the settlements be disbanded. The actions of this heroic 
minority cannot contribute to the much needed reform and 
democratization of the Palestinian Authority. Their stand will not 
lessen the grip of religious bigotry and racism in Israeli society or 
reduce the dissemination of virulent anti-Semitic propaganda in the 
aggrieved Arab world. It will not stop the suicide bombers. 
It simply declares: enough. Or: there is a limit. Yesh gvul. 
It provides a model of resistance. Of disobedience. For which there 
will always be penalties. 
None of us has yet to endure anything like what these brave 
conscripts are enduring, many of whom have gone to jail. 
To speak for peace at this moment in this country is merely to be 
jeered (as in the recent Academy Awards ceremony), harassed, 
blacklisted (the banning by the most powerful chain of radio stations 
of the Dixie Chicks); in short, to be reviled as unpatriotic. 
Our "United We Stand" or "Winner Takes All" ethos ... the United 
States is a country which has made patriotism equivalent to 
consensus. Tocqueville, still the greatest observer of the United 
States, remarked on a unprecedented degree of conformity in the 
then new country, and a hundred and sixty-eight more years have 
only confirmed his observation. 
Sometimes, given the new, radical turn in American foreign policy, it 
seems as if it was inevitable that the national consensus on the 
greatness of America, which may be activated to an extraordinary 
pitch of triumphalist national self-regard, was bound eventually to 
find expression in wars like the present one, which are assented to 
by a majority of the population, who have been persuaded that 
America has the right --- even the duty --- to dominate the world. 
*** 
The usual way of heralding people who act on principle, is to say 
that they are the vanguard of an eventually triumphant revolt against 
injustice. 
But what if they're not? 
What if the evil is really unstoppable? At least in the short run. And 
that short run may be, is going to be, very long indeed. 
My admiration for the soldiers who are resisting service in the 
Occupied Territories is as fierce as my belief that it will be a long 
time before their view prevails. 
But what haunts me at this moment --- for the obvious reason --- is 
acting on principle when it isn't going to alter the obvious distribution 
of force, the rank injustice and murderousness of a government's 
policy that claims to be acting in the name not of peace but of ... 
security. 
The force of arms has its own logic. If you commit an aggression 
and others resist, it is easy to convince the home front that the 
fighting must continue. Once the troops are there, they must be 
supported. It becomes irrelevant to question why the troops are 
there in the first place. 
The soldiers are there because "we" are being attacked; or 
menaced. Never mind that we may have attacked them first. They 
are now attacking back, causing casualties. Behaving in ways that 
defy the "proper" conduct of war. Behaving like "savages," as people 
in our part of the world like to call people in that part of the world. 
And their "savage" or "unlawful" actions give new justification to new 
aggressions. And new impetus to repress or censor or persecute 
citizens who oppose the aggression which the government has 
undertaken. 
*** 
Let's not underestimate the force of what we are opposing. 
The world is, for almost everyone, that over which we have virtually 
no control. Common sense and the sense of self-protectiveness tell 
us to accommodate to what we cannot change. 
It's not hard to see how some of us might be persuaded of the 
justice, the necessity of a war. Especially of a war that is formulated 
as a small, limited military action which will actually contribute to 
peace or improved security; of an aggression which announces itself 
as a campaign of disarmament --- admittedly, disarmament of the 
enemy; and, regrettably, requiring the application of overpowering 
force. An invasion which calls itself, officially, a liberation. 
Every violence in war has been justified as a retaliation. We are 
threatened. We are defending ourselves. The others, they want to 
kill us. We must stop them. 
And from there: we must stop them before they have a chance to 
carry out their plans. And since those who would attack us are 
sheltering behind non-combatants, no aspect of civil life can be 
immune to our depredations. 
Never mind the disparity of forces, of wealth, of firepower --- or 
simply of population. How many Americans know that the population 
of the Iraq is 24 million, half of whom are children? (The population 
of the United States, as you will remember, is 290 million.) Not to 
support those who are coming under fire from the enemy seems like 
treason. 
It may be that, in some cases, the threat is real. 
In such circumstances, the bearer of the moral principle seems like 
someone running alongside a moving rain, yelling "Stop! Stop!" 
Can the train be stopped? No, it can't. At least, not now. 
Will other people on the train be moved to jump off and join those 
on the ground? Maybe some will, but most won't. (At least, not until 
they have a whole new panoply of fears.) 
The dramaturgy of "acting on principle" tells us that we don't have to 
think about whether acting on principle is expedient, or whether we 
can count on the eventual success of the actions we have 
undertaken. 
Acting on principle is, we're told, a good in itself. 
But it is still a political act, in the sense that you're not doing it for 
yourself. You don't do it just to be in the right, or to appease your 
own conscience; much less because you are confident your action 
will achieve its aim. You resist as an act of solidarity. With 
communities of the principled and the disobedient: here, elsewhere. 
In the present. In the future. 
Thoreau's going to prison in 1846 for refusing to pay the poll tax in 
protest against the American war on Mexico hardly stopped the war. 
But the resonance of that most unpunishing and briefest spell of 
imprisonment (famously, a single night in jail) has not ceased to 
inspire principled resistance to injustice through the second half of 
the twentieth century and into our new era. The movement in the 
late 1980s to shut down the Nevada Test Site, a key location for the 
nuclear arms race, failed in its goal; the operations of the test site 
were unaffected by the protests. But it directly inspire the formation 
of a movement of protesters in far away Alma Ata, who eventually 
succeeded in shutting down the main Soviet test site in Kazakhstan, 
citing the Nevada antinuclear activists as their inspiration and 
expressing solidarity with the Native Americans on whose land the 
Nevada Test Site had been located. 
The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice 
does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and 
reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community. 
Thus: It is not in the best interests of Israel to be an oppressor. 
Thus: it is not in the best interests of the United States to be a 
hyperpower, capable of imposing its will on any country in the world, 
as it chooses. 
What is in the true interests of a modern community is justice. 
It cannot be right to systematically oppress and confine a 
neighboring people. It is surely false to think that murder, expulsion, 
annexations, the building of walls --- all that has contributed to the 
reducing of a whole people to dependence, penury, and despair --- 
will bring security and peace to the oppressors. 
It cannot be right that a president of the United States seems to 
believe that he has a mandate to be president of the planet --- and 
announces that those who are not with America are with "the 
terrorists." 
Those brave Israeli Jews who, in fervent and active opposition to the 
policies of the present government of their country, have spoken up 
on behalf of the plight and the rights of Palestinians, are defending 
the true interests of Israel. Those of us who are opposed to the plans 
of the present government of the United States for global hegemony 
are patriots speaking for the best interests of the United States. 
Beyond these struggles, which are worthy of our passionate 
adherence, it is important to remember that in programs of political 
resistance the relation of cause and effect is convoluted, and often 
indirect. All struggle, all resistance is --- must be --- concrete. And all 
struggle has a global resonance. 
If not here, then there. If not now, then soon: elsewhere as well as 
here. 
To Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. To Rachel Corrie. And to 
Ishai Menuchin and his comrades. 
[This speech was published in The Nation and appeared on 
http://www.tomdispatch.com]

http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000075.php