Now, I was pleased by the rally because as a human rights scholar and concerned human being, I believe that all violence and especially state violence should be resisted in any way, shape or form possible that will be effective. I was a little dejected, however, as a social movement scholar and concerned human being because it is not at all clear that divestment actually reduces human rights, violations, and state-sponsored genocide. Perhaps the most famous case of divestment in an effort to stop state sponsored behavior is South Africa, but in this context the repressive behavior of interest was not genocide and divestment did not reduce state sponsor violence. By most accounts, the divestment effort placed a light on the topic but all it seemed to do regarding the violence was shift the manner in which the South African government and the economic actors functioned. In a sense, divestment created an even more difficult repressive regime in the sense that it prompted the South African government to be even less reliant and more independent upon actors that were otherwise able to exert some kind of influence on them. I am concerned about the divestment discussion because like symbolic representation, people seem more interested in how things looked and how people felt than on the substance of how to stop state-sponsored violence.
And on this topic, I feel compelled to revisit my last book - The Death and Life of State Repression: Understanding Onset, Escalation, Termination and Recurrence. This piece was explicitly interested in the idea of stopping state-sponsored violence and this is what is going on. I think that the use of the word/concept "war" (like in the case of "civil war" in the United States of America) is impending our ability to understand what is going on and what should be done. The creation of the relevant territories is a complex and detailed one but how can we consider war which is to be fought between nation-states when one of the states lacks the one thing that is supposed to define one: i.e., the legitimate control over coercion and force? One could of course consider the diverse forms of war put forward by the Correlates of War Project:
- Non-State Wars: Between or among non-state entities.
- Intra-State Wars: Predominantly take place within the recognized territory of a state.
- Inter-State Wars: Occur between or among recognized states.
- Extra-State Wars: Between one or more states and a non-state entity outside the borders of the state.
One could consider "civil war" but this implies an open form of contestation between two sides that are conceptually and practically able to engage in comparable levels of violence. Think of what Sambanis' piece "What is Civil War?" discusses:
- (a) The war takes place within the territory of a state that is a member of the international system with a population of 500,000 or greater.
- (b) The parties are politically and militarily organized, and they have publicly stated political objectives.
- (c) The government (through its military or militias) must be a principal combatant. If there is no functioning government, then the party representing the government internationally and/or claiming the state domestically must be involved as a combatant.
- (d) The main insurgent organization(s) must be locally represented and must recruit locally. Additional external involvement and recruitment need not imply that the war is not intrastate. Insurgent groups may operate from neighboring countries, but they must also have some territorial control (bases) in the civil war country and/or the rebels must reside in the civil war country.
- (e) The start year of the war is the first year that the conflict causes at least 500 to 1,000 deaths. If the conflict has not caused 500 deaths or more in the first year, the war is coded as having started in that year only if cumulative deaths in the next 3 years reach 1,000.
- (f) Throughout its duration, the conflict must be characterized by sustained violence, at least at the minor or intermediate level. There should be no 3-year period during which the conflict causes fewer than 500 deaths.
- (g) Throughout the war, the weaker party must be able to mount effective resistance. Effective resistance is measured by at least 100 deaths inflicted on the stronger party. A substantial number of these deaths must occur in the first year of thewar.41 But if the violence becomes effectively one-sided, even if the aggregate effective-resistance threshold of 100 deaths has already been met, the civil war must be coded as having ended, and a politicide or other form of one-sided violence must be coded as having started.
- (h) A peace treaty that produces at least 6 months of peace marks an end to the war.
- (i) A decisive military victory by the rebels that produces a new regime should mark the end of the war. Because civil war is understood as an armed conflict against the government, continuing armed conflict against a new government implies a new civil war. If the government wins the war, a period of peace longer than 6 months must persist before we code a new war (see also criterion k).
Why does classification of what is taking place matter? Well, if we do know what we are dealing with, then we cannot stop it. And in this context, I would suggest that what we are seeing in Israel is an instance of state repression; large-scale state repression (which includes not only genocide but also crimes against humanity and atrocities). This is typically defined as state behavior enacted against someone under the territorial control of the political authority for the purposes of influencing the behavior and/or thought of the target and/or some audience. I would argue that this is what we are seeing.
It is important to make this classification because stopping the behavior of interest becomes one of understanding and then perturbing the following model:
And in this context I was wondering why the students were so passionately talking about something that had no empirical basis/support for its impact on the behavior of interest. As I stood there I wondered if symbolic effort had replaced substantive. Perhaps it was just about people feeling better about themselves and doing what they felt was the right thing to do. As I stood there I thought about the ease of doing what seemed effective as opposed to the difficulty of doing what might be actually effective. Perhaps once the repertoire of what students feel they could do has been established, it is incredibly difficult to change that.