Thoughts on Solidarity
Sunday 14 October 2007
Last week at our SLU Solidarity with Palestine meeting, Sam asked about the meaning of the word “solidarity.”
It’s worth thinking about.
Philosophers Agnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér retrieve two understandings from modern history. First is the notion of an in-group solidarity in which acts of concern are extended to the members of one’s own ethnic, religious, class, or political group. Second is a universal solidarity in which such concern is extended to all those in need of such assistance, regardless of their particular identity.
SLU Solidarity with Palestine is an example of the commitment to a universal solidarity. Over the years, some in the group have been Palestinian-Americans. But many more have not been, and we all recognize the compelling justice of the Palestinian struggle.
Heller and Fehér further state that, “Practicing the virtue of solidarity requires a gesture of active help. Whenever someone we are familiar with becomes the victim of domination, violence, force or injustice of any kind, we must lend our support to the cause of the victim with civic courage. Indeed, we must do even more: we have to stand by the victim with advice, and give the persecuted shelter against the persecutors in a gesture of solidarity. Those who fail to lend such support fall short of all that the virtue of solidarity implies.”
SLU Solidarity with Palestine is primarily concerned with the forty plus years of illegal Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. It is incumbent upon us to find ways to lend support to the Palestinian cause for freedom and justice and muster the civic courage to do so, even when we know that we run the risk of insult or defamation (consider the recent cases of Jimmy Carter and Norman Finkelstein).
Occasionally, some of us have the opportunity to visit or work in Palestine. Of course, being on the ground there convinces one of the urgency of the injustice Palestinians face every day. A few of us have been able to work with the International Solidarity Movement, which very concretely encouraged us to “give the persecuted shelter against the persecutors in a gesture of solidarity.” For but one example, think of Rachel Corrie.
But our context is a Jesuit university campus. And the moral and imaginative challenge for us at SLU is to find creative and serious ways to expose the facts and patterns of Israeli domination of the Palestinians and to amplify wherever possible the Palestinian narrative of dispossession and struggle. Further, we must invite and encourage others at SLU to consider another perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict than the one they have easy access to in the U.S. mainstream media.
The question of Palestine involves intersecting issues of politics, culture, economics, and religion, which can, at times, seem overwhelming. Nevertheless, there is a radical simplicity that should undergird our work. To adapt a meditation used by many SLU students, “Just like us, the Palestinians want to be happy; they don’t want to suffer.”