#S02E01 | Living in London, how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'disrupts' my neighbourhood, schedule, food and nightlife
English transcript of the first episode in season 2. Original soundtrack in Mandarin Chinese: 56min 46s.
Welcome to Season 2 Episode 1 of the Podcast 📻Overreactology!
This is a made-in-China podcast about international relations—created for and by young people. Inspired by the concept of Everyday International Relations, this podcast seeks to bridge the gap between global politics and everyday life, unpacking how individual experiences are intertwined with the wider geopolitical conflicts and shifts in global politics.
The hosts for this podcast are Yexu (Jasmine) Wang and Yuting (Alina) He. You can find full episode transcripts here on Substack and listen to the original audio onApple Podcasts|Spotify|小宇宙.
For questions, feedback, or criticisms, feel free to reach out at overreactology@outlook.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Living in London, how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'disrupts' my neighbourhood, schedule, food and nightlife
What do wars and conflicts at a distance mean to people living in peace zones? With the development of technologies, digital screens of smartphones have been “folding” scenes of life in war zones into the everyday life of people elsewhere. Solidarity campaigns, boycotts, and online debates are the byproducts of the pains of wars and conflicts in the peace zones. Strangers living in different parts of the world are now all pieced together ‘in the clouds’ in the age of the Internet.
Welcome to the second season of Overreactology: “(Un)folding Conflicts”, where we take you on a journey to hear how people living outside of the conflicts zones are unprecedently, whether intended or not, involved into the effects of wars and conflicts at a distance.
In this episode we welcome
(China), a financial sector professional living in London, to discuss the impact of the recent Israeli-Palestinian military conflicts on his life.Working in a foreign country, why did Theo decide to join the Free Palestinian protests almost every Saturday? What do leftists think of champagne socialists? How has this conflict diffused into the everyday life of different neighbourhoods in London, influencing street graffiti, residents’ diets and even bank accounts? And how are LGBTQ+ communities, electronic music and rave culture intertwined with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
There’s a lot at stake in this episode, which may leave you feeling angry, powerless or maybe lucky to be on the sidelines, and we hope you'll come away from it informed, connected and with an opinion, as Theo says, “For those of us who have the privilege of living in peace zones, we should realise that the world is full of unevenness”.
Text Transcription
Introduction
Alina 01:11
Hello everyone and welcome back. This is the first episode of Overreactology Season 2, and I'm Alina, the host.
Jasmine 01:20
I'm Jasmine, the host, and I've been getting a lot of messages from people across all the platforms after the last episode was publish in the previous season, the 20th of May, and some of our listeners thought we had disappeared from the internet, but that wasn't the case! We didn't. Overreactology is produced and released on a quarterly basis. So while you haven't seen us, we're actually busy preparing for the second season.
The first season is mainly an ice-breaking one from Overreactology itself. We invited guests to talk about what confuses us about international relations from an academic disciplinary point of view. I also want to show what I had in mind when I first mobilised Alina to run this podcast with me. So this season, we're going to tackle the issues that are most relevant to the spirits of Overreactology, and discuss some of the conflicts that have been going on in the world in the last two years, and how they're affecting people living in different parts of the world.
In this episode, as a new round of armed conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to rage, we wanted to connect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the city of London for the first episode. We invited Theo, a Chinese person working in London, to talk about how the conflict has intertwined with his everyday life.
Alina 02:36
Theo and I met in Cambridge at the end of September 2022, we were friends from the same college. My first impression of Theo at the time was that he was a very keen participant in all kinds of activism and was very sick of white-priviledged, right-wing, Tory elites. For as long as I've known him, including later when we weren't in the same city, I've been reading from what he posted on social media - he is doing everything he can for the people of Gaza. And this activity has become a daily routine for him, including and not limited to participating in street protests, writing letters of protest to the local MP and so on. As we've just started recording this podcast, Theo says it's Saturday, and this afternoon after we've recorded this podcast, he's going to go on to a new round of protests.
Jasmine 03:46
Could Theo please say hi to everyone?
Theo 03:37
Hi everyone, thanks to Alina and Jasmine for having me on their podcast. Alina and I met in Cambridge. Alina was studying International Relations and I was studying International Development. We were in the same building, our majors were in the same department in the same building, and we often talked about what we studied and basically a lot of it was about the critiques of neoliberalism and globalisation that we are living in now, and a lot of current global affairs. After graduation, I am now working in the international development banking industry in London, and to a certain extent, I have been integrated into this globalised neoliberal order. Then when my professional life was bowing down to neoliberalism, it was time to take to the streets at weekends and defend my conscience. So like Alina said, I go to the protests on the weekends whenever there are, and in a way, it's exercising the voice that I'm able to make as a migrant in the UK. I'm going to make my voices heard.
Alina 04:49
Welcome, thank you very much Theo for joining us! So today let's talk about how conflict is folding into everyday life in London. Social media has shown us unprecedented political influence in global political events in recent years, particularly in conflict and war.
How social media manipulates our political attention
Alina 04:58
So today, the first topic that I really want to chat with Theo is how social media is mobilising people in London. How are they spreading information about the conflict? How are they getting people involved in the protests?
Theo 05:26
Yeah, that's a really interesting topic. The keyword for this topic that I want to talk about is passivity. Passivity is twofold. The first one is the passivity of access to information. Social media makes it passive for us that when we need to get information, we don't have to actively switch on the TV, or actively open the newspaper. All we need to do is to browse our mobile phones, which we modern people do all the time. Once you turn on your mobile phone, social media feed us with information everywhere, as long as you have Instagram, TikTok, WeChat... You can access a variety of news channels to send information to us.
Since October last year, almost every time I open my mobile phone, every time I open any social media, I can see the news about Gaza. They may be my friends forwarded to share, or it may be because my algorithm understands that I'm very interested in this topic, and it constantly pushes this aspect of the relevant content in my echo chamber, that is to say, the algorithm is actually constantly reinforcing the echo chamber. It constantly puts us in such an information echo chamber, and then in a way, it makes us more entrenched in the existing opinions. I'm constantly trying to get out of this echo chamber, and then to keep my own thinking critically.
The second point about passivity is that it makes conflicts at distance more tangible. Social media connects you with your friends in a passive way. It's not that you think about getting in touch with a particular friend that you haven't seen in a long time and you send them a message asking them how they're doing. Rather, because we are constantly posting, uploading updates, etc. on top of social media, even if I haven't been in touch with a friend for a long time, I can still see what they are doing right now.
For example, I have a friend from Lebanon whom I have not seen for quite a long time, but ever since the war in Gaza started last year, he has been retweeting content about Gaza. And after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in September this year, he has been retweeting news about the war in Lebanon. I know that this war is very much a matter of concern to him and the fate of his family. So I replied to his updates, and I also asked him how his family was doing, and he said that his mother and his grandmother had already escaped from Beirut to the mountains to escape from the Israeli air strikes. That's the kind of situation that makes me feel that these wars aren't just cold death numbers on the news, but that they're the lives of people I know, people who are very close to me. Then it's a kind of tangible pain, and it makes me feel like distant wars are very close to my life.
Jasmine 08:29
So just from the outbreak of the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict, you've been getting these messages on social media constantly, and that kind of long term attention has planted a spark of concern in you. And was there an event or a turning point that made you decide that you wanted to get involved?
Theo 08:47
The decision to get involved was actually a thought process I had for about two weeks after the 7th of October last year. Most of my friends around me I met when I was an undergraduate at UCL in London, which is very much like other European universities: it's basically a stronghold of young left-wing people, and we were very much concerned with topics like decolonisation, the welfare state, anti-imperialism, world peace and so on. After the Israeli invasion in Gaza on the 7th of October last year, we went on to the streets again for similar reasons. And then especially, importantly, a very good friend of mine, who used to go to Gaza every summer to run a programming summer camp to teach local kids there. (Jasmine: Where is the friend from?) The friend is Hawaiian, but is Asian, whose dad is Laotian and mum is Japanese. I think being Hawaiian, there's a lot of resentment and rebellion against the exploitation and the big overdevelopment of Hawaii by the mainland United States. And then I think, so as a Hawaiian, my friend is a young person who grew up in a wave of anti-colonial thinking, so is able to understand a lot of the plight of the people of Gaza. My friend has not been able to go to Gaza in this past year, after the genocide of Gaza by Israel, but has a lot of friends in Gaza who have either died in the crossfire or have been displaced from their homes. Or escape to Egypt with their families by paying extremly high prices. That friend also met some of Palestinian friends from Gaza who escaped when went to Cairo a few months ago to hold the programming summer camp. That's how my friendship with this friend adds a more personal dimension to this war and directly shows how painful the war is. So I think it was mostly the people around me (that influenced me).
Are champagne socialists the death knell or blessing of the left-wing movement?
Alina 10:59
When it comes to the people around you, I feel like the whole vibe of a city - including the kind of people you can usually get in touch with, can really have a very big impact on your behaviour, including the kind of decisions you make. I recently moved to Sydney to start my new life. Compared to London, Sydney is a city where there's not a lot going on, of course there are protests like this and all sorts of things that people go on to the streets, but it's very different in terms of the scale and the level of participation that you may get in London. I'm studying at the University of Sydney at the moment, and here the free palestine protests frequently happen as well. There have been a lot of student protesters on campus campaigning loudly or set up encampments in front of the main building of the university. Meanwhile, when I talked about this with people around me, one interesting point is that they said that those who continue to protest are the "rich kids who live near the sea": If they live in the Eastern or Northern suburbs of Sydney, in a luxury villa with a sea view, they may have the motivation to persist in these activities (activism). But for those who need to find a job urgently and may come from the working class, they will not be able to spend time and energy on these things. I've been thinking about this after hearing this kinds of comments.
Theo 13:40
That's another really interesting topic. The typical image of a champagne socialist that we have in London is that of someone who lives in the Eastern part of London, who is often white, has a British-born origin, but wants to move to the eastern districts to get that "working class" atmosphere, and then supports veganism, and then to be pro-vegan, or pro-Palestinian, and then to belong to a sexual minority. It's a stereotype or an image construction in a way. Just like we often construct the image of the so-called redneck, the image of the Trump supporter as being fat, white American driving a big pickup truck and wearing scruffy clothes. But somehow dividing people into different categories doesn't really help much in terms of dividing them into political identities and dividing them into political influences. It's more of a stereotypical categorisation.
What I do want to mention is that the Champagne Socialists are not the death knell of the global left-wing movement, they are the blessing of the global left-wing movement. Why? Because firstly, the global left movement is a pan-left front, it's a very diverse community of people, which includes impoverished groups, immigrants, students, intellectuals, people of colour, people (from) different countries and different social circumstances, who not only have different demands, but also different capacities for political participation. As Alina said earlier, a lot of kids from working class backgrounds are worried about getting money, they don't have much capacity for political participation, and that's a very bloody reality. At a time when other people down the left-wing front are being forced by life to get on with their studies, their exams, graduate and earn money and so on and so forth in their life choices, champagne socialists actually have a lot more options.
One example that can be cited in this regard is that, a few months ago, when the pro-Palestine solidarity encampments in the United States, a lot of students who needed to study, to earn money and to graduate were not in a position to support their struggle and to join in the encampment activities. Many of these students who were able to do so by going to occupy campuses and by sacrificing their own futures were these so-called champagne socialists. Many of the students who occupied Columbia University, for example, were the children of New York politicians, and many of them were upper class kids. But their upper-class origins meant that they were able to contribute to the left-wing movement, that they were able to sacrifice themselves, that they had an option to sacrifice their options, and that they were willing to do it. So actually, we need to be tolerant and empathetic towards these students who are able to occupy campuses and sacrifice themselves. It's these young people who are using their social resources to rebel against a social system that oppresses others. It's that kind of behaviour that will bring about some cross-generational change, that will make the world a better place in the hands of the next generation of young people. So that's why I say champagne socialists are actually gospel.
Jasmine 16:15
Yeah, and actually I feel like this group that you're talking about, actually has actual actions, not just empty words.
Alina 16:22
And I think that we actually need to consider the contexts that everyone is situated in, and that shapes the kind of choices people are able to make, rather than, say, directly judging a person's political identity, their background origins, and some of the labelling stuff.
Theo 16:39
Yeah, that's my logic. In this respect, "end result over intention". You can be very critical of the motives of the Champagne socialists, for example, that they were motivated by a sense of guilt, that they were trying to atone for the sins of their fathers, but the actual effect of their actions was to broaden the front of the people's movements, to broaden the voice of the people's movements.
London's pro-Palestine campaigns: scale, groups and the dilemma of immigrants
Jasmine 17:12
In the world of Chinese social media, there's been a lot of discussion about the activities of students in American universities, and there's been a lot of podcasts that have actually talked about how college students are doing protests. But we don't really know much about the protests in London. So could Theo please give Alina and I, and our listeners a general overview of what's happening in London right now in terms of protests, for example, what groups are involved, any landmarks or large scale events that have really stuck out, and so on.
Theo 17:41
On the 7th of October 2023, after the hostage incident, basically every two to four weeks on a Saturday, the Palestine Soliderity Campaign (PSC), one of the largest pro-Palestine organisations in the UK, holds a UK-wide national march in London in solidarity with Palestine. This is a National March for Palestine. At least 300,000 to 400,000 people turn out for each march. The largest one was the 11th November 2023 march, which ended at the US Embassy in London. One million people participated and is said to have been the largest march in the UK since the 2003 Peace March against the Iraq War.
As far as who goes to these marches, I would say it's just really everyone, lots and lots of people, and of course a lot of people are Palestinians and a lot of people are Muslims. Muslim support for Palestine is a manifestation of brotherhood, that is, they see their Muslim brothers being slaughtered and they have a sense of empathy for the pain, so a lot of Muslims were there. But really, everyone goes, all ethnicities, all ages... there were a lot of families pushing their baby wagons and bringing their little kids. And even because there were so many families, every march would have a family section, which is just a lot of families together, and then the little kids would be in the front holding a big banner, and there would be volunteers to take them slowly forward, and then all the others would make way for them. Every march is a product of communitarianism and collectivism.
I have also met Chinese, Asians, all kinds of people several times. I think the sheer size and diversity of the pro-Palestinian march is a reflection of the humanity of it, or the fact that all of us are here from different backgrounds, but all gathered here for the same one goal, and that is to stop the killing and the genocide.
Jasmine 19:51
Do Chinese or Asian people have their own section?
Theo 19:54
Not so much, but every time I meet them it's like "these are my people". Then everytime I met a Chinese, I would swap Instagram and asks if they are going to the next one (before every protest).
Alina 20:15
Previously, when I was still in the UK, the Conservative government had said that if you were a visa holder, your involvement in these activities might be labelled as a terrorist or something like that. This had some threats and implications for people's visa status and even work and living status, and of course this was a point of great social controversy for the Conservative Party at the time. So I wonder if Theo had some related situations or similar situations when you were attending these events?
Theo 20:51
I would say that the Conservative Government is a paper tiger on this issue. They made a big point when Prime Minister Sunak said that anyone who said "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at the protests was supporting Hamas and was a terrorist. But in a country like the United Kingdom, it is impossible to arrest everyone who says that at a protest. There were too many people, not enough police, and the UK has always been a democracy. It's true that there have been instances of the police arresting protesters, but it's rare, and it's not uncommon to see on social media that they've called for the help of lawyers from all over the world, and then a little while later they've been released because there's no accusations to be laid against them really. If you really wanted to convict everyone who said "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", it would take at least 10 years under the British system to put everyone in jail. It's totally impossible, so I'm not worried about my visa at all.
The only time was when an emergency demonstration was held outside the Prime Minister's residence in Downing Street after the bombing of the Rafah refugee camp by the Israeli army in May, and my friend and I went there. At 8 o'clock, a large number of police officers arrived, and when the police vehicles arrived, they told everyone that applications for the demonstration would only be accepted until 8 o'clock, and that we would be arrested if we did not leave the site quickly after 8 o'clock. At this time, my friend, who is Bangladeshi, and both of us are staying in the UK on work visas, we ran away on the spot because we couldn't take any chances under these circumstances. I'd also like to extend on this point that the fates of us as immigrants in the UK and Palestinian refugees in Gaza are completely different and not comparable, but there is a bit of an irony in the logic of both. I'd also like to draw out, that is, to say that one of the things that many protesters on the Palestine solidarity protests often say is that none of us is free until all of us are free. At a time when the refugees in Palestine are not free, we ourselves, as immigrants in the UK, are an equally oppressed and terrorised group under border imperialism. Only when all are free are we truly free.
The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Reflected in Urban Life and Graffiti Symbols
Alina 23:30
Is there any particular part of London that people are particularly concerned about Palestine, or in terms of the spatial distribution of the city, which parts would have more pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian people?
Theo 23:42
Yes, that is, if you really want to divide it up into Palestine solidarity zones and Israel solidarity zones, it's impossible. It's not very distinct. In London, it's still historically, generally speaking, pro-Labour, or pro-left-wing. And the constituency that I live in, is called North Islington, and the Member of Parliament that was elected at the general election in July was Jeremy Corbyn, who actually stood as the leader of the Labour Party for Prime Minister at the last general election, but lost. Then he quit the Labour Party and is now an independent candidate. As an independent candidate, he has a lot more room to develop his real political thinking and ideas. And then he's sort of the most left-wing, pro-Palestine liberation MP in the UK. You can see from that, I live in an area which is very much in solidarity with Palestine. And then every march generally ends at the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, or in the case of today's march, it ended at the American Embassy, and then as I said earlier, only once did it end at the Israeli Embassy.
And then the other thing is that rather than speaking in terms of the locality, I'd actually like to go into some of the symbols that are associated with this conflict that have been popping up all over the place in London this past year.
You can often see a Palestinian flag hanging in someone's home right above the window as you walk down the street, and show support for it. I haven't seen an Israeli flag flying in an ordinary home yet, not in London at the moment. Overall London is still a relatively pro-Palestinian city, especially in East London you can see a particularly large number of Palestinians, I think it's because there are a lot of immigrants of colour in East London, and then also, as I said earlier, there's a lot of young left-wingers, whether they're champagne socialists, or so-called "real" socialists. Inside a community like that, it's going to have more people who empathise with Palestine. But for example, I was once in an affluent area of North London called Hampstead Heath, where I saw posters saying "Bring home the hostages", referring to the hostages taken by Hamas on the 7th of October last year. And then sometimes I see posters or graffiti on the street with slogans in solidarity with Palestine, and then someone puts more stuff over it, like "terrorist", meaning that the people who put those slogans are terrorists. It's moments like that when you realise that the ashes of the war aren't far away at all, that the war between different points of view is still raging on the streets of London.
From urban structure to diet: conflict disrupts my everyday life
Alina 26:44
I think cities, especially cities like London, are like containers for all sorts of different perspectives, all sorts of colliding ideas. London is a city in the eye of the storm, in the sense that you will always be living in the political issues, wrapped up in them. You pass through everything that's going on so that you feel the whole world of politics unfolding right in front of you. That life would be particularly intense compared to my life now, which is probably just more quiet. I have also heard that many people around me may have a lot of objections to Activism, for example, international students may complain that this kind of living condition is very different from their previous life in Chinese cities, which are well-ordered, and that they might think these activism activities are a kind of disruption of the daily life. Disruption as a form of political intervention, as a form of political expression, in whatever way, leaves some imprint on our daily lives. So I think living in the eye of the storm like this, it's really nice to be able to see that different perspectives are creeping into the streets of London.
Jasmine 27:59
In terms of disruption, there's actually another example on my side that didn't happen in London or in the UK. When I was studying in Rome, at the time, I had a classmate who was Egyptian. She was telling me at the time that her sister, who is now in high school, not even an adult, has became very fully engaged in supporting Palestine. She led the the whole family started boycotting any consumption of any business that was associated with Israel. This led to a change in the family's diet and in the items her mother bought when she went to the grocery shops.
And then I was interested in this, researched a little bit, and I found out that there's an organisation called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which is dedicated to guiding people who are pro-Palestinine on how to strategically and purposefully boycott Israeli-related businesses. They do not telling consumer to boycott all Israel-related businesses, but rather select companies and organisations for targeted boycotts based on whether they directly and explicitly influence or support Israel, as well as their media exposure. For example, Hewlett-Packard, which provides technology to the Israeli immigration service, and Chevron in the US, which claims to have natural gas rights in the Middle East, denying the Palestinians sovereignty over their natural resources, and then Carrefour in France, which is giving away parcels in support of the Israeli soldiers, and so on. So I wonder if there's any of that kind of boycott going on in London? Or Theo, have you been involved in any of these boycotts, including because you just said you're in the banking sector and Israeli banks should be a big part of the boycott, right?
Theo 29:49
Yes, BDS is a very important movement. Why is it important? Because Zionism, especially in the centres of political power in the US and the UK, is so influential that we can see that even today the US government continues to arm the Israeli army. It has an impact when we keep going out in the streets and protesting, but we also have to use our economic impact as well, so BDS is a form of economic boycott of Israel. And as Jasmine said earlier, BDS is not about supporting everyone to boycott any business that has any tendency to oppress Palestinians or any sign of that, but rather to follow the BDS boycott list. Ensure that our boycott is directed at the largest and most influential corporations so that we can focus our influence on these targets. If each of us were to spread our various boycotts to thousands of different companies, that would be spreading our influence too thinly, so that's where the logic of focusing the boycott comes in.
So with regard to some of the BDS behaviour in the banking sector, the most sensational thing happened in the UK recently is the boycott against Barclays Bank. Barclays is a British bank, but it invests heavily in the Israeli arms and defence industry, so over the past year, the PSC, which is the largest Palestinian solidarity organisation in the UK that I was talking about, and the BDS, and all the major organisations, they've all been in solidarity with the boycott of Barclays. And how do you do a boycott? It's that if you have a bank account with Barclays, you cancel that bank account, you transfer all your money to another bank, and you don't become a customer of Barclays. Then in July, there was a day designated by these major organisations as the "Barclays Bank Account Cancellation Day", that is, they led everyone to cancel their accounts with Barclays Bank on the same day, so as to force Barclays Bank to do so. If everyone cancels their accounts on the same day, that is, today, tomorrow, I will cancel my account and the day after tomorrow, he will cancel his account, the Barclays Bank will not be able to see or know about it. If everyone cancels their accounts on the same day in July, Barclays will hear what we are talking about.
Jasmine 32:40
Actually, I have seen news about it and it doesn't seem to be that peaceful. I have seen news that in London, they (pro-Palestine people) went to the bank and smashed the windows and threw paint on them.
Theo 32:53
Yes, that's right, and the bank actually based near my company. I didn't see it when they threw red paint or smashed that window on the ground floor, but I know about it. As for me personally on these acts, do you think whether I would condemn them? I actually don't condemn it. Do I feel sorry for Barclays Bank, whose windows have been smashed? I am not distressed. Because why should I feel sorry for a bank that has tens of thousands, millions, tens of millions of assets. It has a lot of money to go and he can go and have their glass replaced and that red paint wiped off. But if I don't smash it, Barclays can't see it or hear it. You can't rush into Barclays' headquarters and hijack the executives or something, that's certainly very radical. But splashing red paint, smashing windows... That didn't hurt anyone else working at Barclays. It hurt an asset, it hurt a property, that property can be exchanged for money within such a reasonable range of disruptive behaviour, there's nothing to blame for that.
Jasmine 34:19
Theo, do you have any idea whether these boycotts have had any effect? I have seen Barclays seem to have had some reaction.
Theo 34:28
Yes, I was just going to say that this is a very recent progress, just this past week, Barclays released an earnings report in which it was revealed that it had divested a significant portion of its investment from an Israeli defence company, so it's these BDS behaviours that are having an effect. This Israeli defence company is called Elbit Systems. It's one of the largest producers of defence electronics in Israel, so don't discount the power of everyone, really, BDS can be effective. This was also demonstrated by Starbucks, whose sales really fell off the face of the earth. I've read on the internet that the Israeli economy is really bad right now, and a lot of companies are not sanctioned by the West, they are boycotted by the West, and if they don't pull out of Israel, their dividends and revenues will go down, and that's a really useful way to get out of our capitalist society where money is king.
Alina 35:54
One thing that really struck me here was Theo saying that he never ate at the McDonald's next to the underground station again.
Theo 36:02
Exactly.
Alina 36:03
That's actually pretty hard, in my opinion.
Theo 36:07
Haha, it's really hard to do, especially sometimes when I go out at night and I come back quite late, maybe 2 or 3 AM when I come back and that's the only place open. Then if I am hungry I have to run home and cook myself an instant noodle to eat. Why did I boycott McDonald's? Because McDonald's has sued the Malaysian branch of BDS, and there was a news story about McDonald's in Israel giving out free burgers and fries to Israeli soldiers, and it was on the BDS boycott list. And then my neighbourhood underground station comes out to a McDonald's, and like I said it's just literally open 24/7 all night, and I've never eaten there again. I realised I've been eating a lot of Kebab this past year because I don't eat at McDonald's anymore. On the other hand, it also supports small local businesses and shops that immigrants run, so it's two birds with one stone.
Jasmine 37:27
It is not the fact that companies are actively taking a stand or taking a side. It may not be the fact that these companies publish a statement to declare which side it's on. But companies may just be on a distant element in the supply chain of the war, and it's all at risk. That's one of the clear manifestations of geopolitical conflict that affects the economy, that affects business, that goes into corporate decision-making.
And then the second thing I would say is that in this narrative, because it's the economy, the consumption, and the buyer's rights (economic power) that are utilised to pry the decisions of another state on the political affairs. In the United States and Europe, it's actually called coercion, but in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict you don't see them using this narrative to describe this kind of boycott.
Theo 38:13
In terms of this being interconnected, I think it's not just the economic interconnectedness of supply chains, it's also the interconnectedness of social issues. For example, why are you boycotting Starbucks? It's because the Starbucks workers' union in the United States, when they heard that Starbucks had colluded with the Israeli army in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's like they went on a spontaneous strike, and that led to Starbucks laying off a lot of people. And then the reason why people started boycotting it was because not only was it suspected of associated with the Israeli army, but it also disrespects labour laws and disregards workers' rights. So at this point, I still say that none of us is free until all of us are free.
"Queer for Palestine" and the Israeli Pinkwashing Strategy
Alina 39:19
I want to go back to what we were talking about just now. In terms of all the forces that have been supporting the protest, the power of civil society organisations have played a very vital role, like the BDS or the PSC that we've been talking about. So can Theo tell us a little bit more about any other organisations that you know of, or what kind of culture, what kind of cohesion in this protest?
Theo 39:49
Well, okay, I can mention two organisations here that I am personally familiar with. The first one is called Queer for Palestine. They're a solidarity organisation in London for Palestine. Regarding this organisation, I would like to talk about the topic of pink-washing, which is actually a tactic that is constantly used by the Israeli propaganda machine: Israel is the only country in the Middle East that provides a safe space for sexual minorities, for the gay community, for the queer... and in the words of the Israeli propaganda machine, Palestine is a fundamentalist, fanatical Muslim country, where if you're gay or a queer, your fate is to be stoned, or banished from your family, very miserable, etc. It is this tactic that is used to legitimise and rationalise Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, which is a sort of "civilisation vs. barbarism" rhetoric. Israel feels that it is civilised and Palestine is barbaric, but what should be used to determine civilisation and barbarism? (The judgement used in this discourse is) whether homosexuality is acceptable or unacceptable in a very one-dimensional, unidirectional way.
This "Queer for Palestine" organisation is in fact a revolt against the pinkwashing discourse, why? Because the flaw of pinkwashing is that the cultural conservatism of a region does not justify the extermination or mass murder of all the people in that region. You can't say that Palestinians are intolerant of gays, that Palestinian society is not enlightened and open, and then you use that as an excuse to massacre Palestinians. Queer people born in Palestine, of course they need to worry about being ostracised by their community, worry about their family being exiled, or being subjected to some violence by the Palestinian society because of sexuality. But what is the most important thing to worry about after Israel starts the genocide of Gaza? They need to worry about an Israeli artillery shell hitting their house and killing them. There's a very unethical stunt on the internet about how the Israeli army certainly doesn't discriminate against homosexuals, and that shells are fired at Gazans regardless of their sexual orientation. So pinkwashing is a very distracting piece of rhetoric.
And what's more, the fact that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, is constantly seeking out or identifying sexual minorities in Palestine and then using them as a bargaining chip, blackmailing them, threatening them to do work for the Mossad, to get information, or else to tell their families that your child is gay, that your child is something or the other, and then to bring about unimaginable violence and consequences for them.
Electronic Music, Sharp Dance Culture and the Advocacy of Palestinian
Theo 43:19
Apart from this Queer for Palestine organisation, I also want to talk about DJs Against Apartheid. This is a collective initiative of DJs, electronic musicians and venues from all over the world, not just in London, calling for support for Palestine to be brought into our nightlife and the rave culture. Because electronic music and rave culture, in the past decades, has been a safe haven for women, sexual and ethnic minorities, a safe space for many marginalised groups to express themselves and find community. This spirit means that the rave culture and the support of Palestine are in the same vein. One of the most prestigious Techno clubs in the world is called Berghain, which is in Berlin. Berghain cancelled a DJ set because a musician who was going to do a DJ set in Berghain was supporting Palestine, and then DJs Against Apartheid pointed out what Berghain was doing, which is BDS in the nightclubs, and that's why people are boycotting Berghain. People were boycotting Berghain, not going to Berghain, musicians not playing at Berghain. And then in London there's another nightlife venue called E1, whose founder was actually in the Israeli army fighting in Gaza, so DJs Against Apartheid are also telling people don't go to E1. So under this big umbrella of solidarity with Palestine, there are all sorts of little ones, and in each of them you can find your own part of it. You can find a part of yourself, a part of yourself that you can belong to, or resonate within yourself.
Jasmine 45:11
Theo was talking about the role of LGBTQ+ sexual minorities in this conflict, and we're actually going to be talking about that in one of our episodes in this season, specifically focusing on the situation that Jewish or Palestinian people are facing in this conflict. And I was just thinking about a particularly famous photo, the caption of which is "The first rainbow flag raised in the Gaza Strip", which is a photo of an Israeli soldier holding a rainbow flag above the rubble. There have been a lot of responses to this photo, so I would like to share two quotes and then invite you to discuss them together. The first quote is from a Palestinian Israeli lesbian poet who is also an LGBTQ+ activist, Rauda Morcos. When she heard that Tel Aviv was going to continue the 2024 Pride parade - though that didn't happen in the end - she said "Don't you have any humanity? Israel is bombing the people of Gaza every day, and now who cares if gay people have equal rights? For me it's the Palestinian flag that should be raised now, not the rainbow flag."
Then the second sentence is from an anthropologist of Palestinian origin named Sa’ed Atshan. He was born in the United States, but grew up in the West Bank and then moved to the United States. He is also a gay. He has a monograph called Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique. There's a part of Pinkwash rhetoric that associates the support for Palestinian liberation with homophobia, and then this book goes into great detail about how these sexual minority activists in Palestine have been able to balance their advocacy for gay rights with their advocacy for the liberation of Palestine. And then I would like to share this quote, "I'm both gay and Palestinian, so I can't separate my body from my self, I'm both."
So I think these two sentences actually touch upon a very central question - in the midst of difficulties, which identities and rights should be given priority attention? The words of the first poet point out a very sharp contradiction, that is, when the right to live is not even guaranteed, are other rights meaningful? It is a kind of prioritisation and selection under extreme circumstances. In the face of ongoing violent conflicts, the pursuit of power for sexual minorities may be put on hold, or even seen as a luxury. But it also reflects a deeper struggle, that is, when we pursue freedom and equality, can we completely set aside the conflict and oppression in the background? In contrast to the second sentence, it is another reminder that there is no such thing as "either/or", because individual identities are an unbreakable whole, and no matter under what dilemma, these identities are part of the individual's complete self, and there is no way that they can be ignored, replaced, or sacrificed.
Anger is a macro-emotion, empathy is a micro-obligation
Alina 48:09
And also, identity is relevant to our daily lives. After the 7th of October, I actually met very many friends around me who could no longer be friends because of the conflicts between political views. Of course, there are also more friends who respect each other's political boundaries and continue to be friends in other aspects of their lives, such as continue shopping or travelling together. And then what I really want to talk to Theo about is that, in these activities, as you had mentioned, choosing to join the protests is because of the intense feelings of empathy and pain that shared with friends, with the environment, with social media... Have you ever encountered an interpersonal political conflict in your daily life?
Theo 49:00
Yes, of course I have. But going back to what we were talking about, which is that it's not good to pigeonhole people according to their political identities, to perpetuate stereotypes with more stereotypes, and then to have an automated rejection of their political outlook. We just talked about this when we were talking about champagne socialists.
It is very legitimate to oppose colonialism and to oppose the illegal Zionist settlements in Palestine, but it is along these lines that many people fall into the anti-Semitic narrative, which is very old, very cliche, very irrational, and certainly very evil. A lot of people just fall into this narrative of anti-Semitism, and there are figures that show that in the first half of 2024 there were 1,978 reported anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, and then that's an increase of more than 1,000 over the same period last year, and more than 1,000 of those incidents were in the London area. This shows that under the context of war in the Middle East and as the crowd became anger, there are in fact many dark things going on, a lot of reductionist views and behaviours are present.
I would like to mention here a conversation I recently started with a very good friend about the attitude we should take as people in solidarity with Palestine and when we meet Israelis around us. I actually just don't have any Israeli friends in London, so it's hard for me to speak for them, it's hard for me to say what their living situation is like. I can't speak for them. But I was talking to my friend recently about this situation. My friend, who is Russian, felt that the indiscriminate rhetorical attacks on Israelis by the Western left in this past year have been very bad, and it reminded her of a lot of the speculation and ill-will that she, as a Russian, was subjected to in the UK after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Because she, as a Russian, in the Western society after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, of course there were a lot of political dynamics to contend with - maybe not to contend with, there were a lot of political dynamics she needed to navigate.
Her friend's boyfriend is Israeli, a university student studying STEM, and he is apolitical. So for an Israeli living in the UK, if we, as pro-Palestine people, meet him and the first thing we do is to condemn him and accuse him and call him an executioner of Palestinians just because he's Israeli, his first reaction is to look for people who can support him and understand him in the midst of this very hostile environment. And these people who can support him and understand him are often the people that we don't want him to interact with, often religious fanatics, or Zionists, Israeli nationalists. Then these are the people who would tell him: “These Westerners, Europeans don't understand you as an Israeli, you should just throw yourself into our arms, we as Israelis, we as Zionists, we understand you." To have undifferentiated ill-will towards him just because he's an Israeli often produces this very bad effect, we push him to this fallacious, violent side.
At this point, I would like to take us to the bigger picture and look at the contrast between the macro level and the micro level of society. So at the macro level, social movements need inertia, they need waves, they need the anger of the masses, as I said earlier, and this anger has been a growing force in the movement in favour of Palestine over the past year. But this anger is a macro-level thing, and on a micro level, we as individuals need to unite with everyone around us that we can, and we need to use our empathy and reason. And by "we" in this context, I refer to us who are lucky enough to be away from the fires of the war, living in a world of peace, and I don't mean the Palestinians in the midst of a war. The Palestinians' lives are filled with anger, not just macro-level anger, but also micro-level anger, personal anger, the anger of having their families broken up, of having their country destroyed, of being displaced, and this is a personal experience that each and every one of them has lived through. I don't have the authority to tell them to be rational, to use empathy, to empathise with the Israeli army, which is a very absurd thing to do. I understand very well that their liberation as Palestinians comes from resistance, from anger, not from love. But in this case, the "we" I'm referring to are those who live in peace, those who have the privilege of living in peace, and should use that privilege to recognise the uneveness of the world. That's why I'm trying to say that support for Palestine shouldn't be the same as anti-Semitism, because support for Palestine is a choice based on learning, analysing and thinking, it's not just a black-and-white dichotomy which says Palestine is good and Israel is bad. It's not just a black and white, diode thing that says Palestine is good and Israel is bad, and it's of course not the very cliché Nazi talking point, anti-Semitic talking point that says Jews do all evil, it's not that at all, it's supposed to be based on critical thinking. It's about getting information and then thinking critically and forming your own subjective consciousness in the context of the objective premise of the world.
Alina 55:29 Thank you so much, Theo, for taking the time to join us on the podcast today before you go to the Palestinian march in the afternoon. I think one of the points that we've talked about a lot today is that identity is obviously an important part of politics and a starting point for inspiring our political engagement. But we need to avoid letting identity become a label that we use to attack each other, and instead we need to see the actual people and their dilemmas beneath the disguise of these labels.
This issue is actually very much in line with what we want to express in Overreactology, as wars and political conflicts seem very distant to those of us who grew up in peaceful times and live in peaceful areas, but they are also very relevant to us in this era, due to the influence of the internet, social media, and the influence of the people around us. And with London as the eye of the storm in global politics, it seems that all the "small issues" have met the right opportunity to be made into "big issues".
In the next two episodes of Season 2, we'll continue to explore what conflicts mean to people in peaceful parts of the world and how they penetrate our daily lives. We welcome your continued interest in our next few episodes and very much look forward to your interactions with us in our upcoming social media posts.
The views of the guests do not represent the position of Overreactology