Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians

by Baruch Kimmerling

Ariel Sharon was one of the most experienced, shrewd and frightening leaders of the new millennium. Despite being found both directly and indirectly responsible for acts considered war crimes under international law, he became Prime Minister of Israel, a political victory he won by provoking the Palestinians into a new uprising, the second intifada. From the beginning of his career Sharon was regarded as the most brutal, deceitful and unrestrained of all the Israeli generals and politicians. A man of monstrous vision, his attempts to destroy the Palestinian people have included the proposal to make Jordan the Palestinian state and the now infamous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which resulted in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Baruch Kimmerling’s new book describes Sharon’s quest to reshape the whole geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. He describes how Sharon is committed to politicide, the destruction of the Palestinian political identity, and how won the support of powerful elements within Israeli society and the American administration in order to achieve this. Kimmerling exposes the brutality of Sharon and his junta’s ‘solutions’, and constructs a devastating indictment of a man whose cruelty and ruthlessness have resulted in widespread and indiscriminate slaughter.

Genres: Middle East, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Israel

234 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[a*s*h]

recommended by norman finkelstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE8Hk...

[JJS. · Rating 4 out of 5]

First thing to know: this book is primarily about what Baruch Kimmerling calls 'politicide' in the Israel-Palestine conflict and about Ariel Sharon second; this is no biography of Ariel Sharon. This is a book about politicide and how Ariel Sharon's career as a military officer and politician factored into it.
Sharon served in the military as a young man from the first Israel war in 1948, and as a general and later as the Secretary of Defense. During much of that time he largely was a hardliner on the right in Israel's poltics, in part because, in his view, the endgame for Israel should be make the Kingdom of Jordan the Palestinian state. However, as Prime Minister, he successfully recast himself as a moderate (in part, probably thanks to the rise of Netanyahu), and gave the image of disengaging from some of the territories (mainly the Gaze Strip) which Israel had long occupied, while at the same time he advanced forward settlements in the West Bank that would ultimately make the two-state solution nigh-impossible.
Kimmerling's book, which does not reach the end of Sharon's priemership (which ended after going into a coma in early 2006, a state which he remained in for eight years before dying in 2014), manages to show, quite effectively, how Sharon was so heavily involved in the 'politicide' of the Palestinians (which is to say, led the destruction the Palestinians' aspirations for statehood).
It's certainly no uplifting topic, since Kimmerling's bleak analysis of the situation as it was then and, his hints of where the conflict was headed have proven to be largely true two decades later, even with Sharon out of the picture. Its certainly a relevent book, especially amidst bloodshed now taking place there in 2023.

[Owlseyes]

Gaza is the "largest concentration camp ever"

[Check expression "mowing the lawn"]

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book (or essay rather, as Kimmerling himself calls it) repeats most of the facts found in his earlier book The Palestinian People: A History, that he wrote with Joel S. Migdal, but in a more condensed form. It's an interesting piece for its time, but having been published more than 20 years ago it is of course a bit outdated.

It's quite a good book, but its brevity never really gives you any deeper understanding. Like a stone skipping across the pond. It starts in 1948 so it omits the Jewish terror campaign against Palestinian civilians from the 1930's and onwards described in for example Palestine Hijacked by Thomas Suarez.


Genocide

One thing which is peculiar, and that the author never explains, is why he chooses the phrase politicide instead of genocide

By politicide I mean a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution—or, at the very least, a great weakening—of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity. (p. 3-4)

Especially since his use of the term - and the events and policies he himself describes in the book - doesn't really gel with scholarship on politicide and genocide (my emphases):

In genocides the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion, or nationality. In politicides, the victim groups are defined primarily in terms of their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups.

Harff & Gurr (1988) "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945." International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 360

This view is echoed in later research.

"Genocide is identifying a group based on its ethnic or religious characteristics and not its threat. Thus, genocide is fundamentally a prejudicial choice where it is attitudes, and not necessarily threat, that are driving violence."

Uzonyi & Asal (2020), "Discrimination, Genocide, and Politicide" in Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 2, June 2020, p. 355

There is never any discussion why the events and policies he describes in the book are politicide and not genocide in light of Article II (points a-c specifically) of the genocide convention:

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Let's all go to the what?

In the final pages of the book Kimmerling writes that "the ability to carry out this program of politicide partially depends on the United States" (p. 206) but there is one glaring omission:

However, since September 11, the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic torrents sweeping across America and the increasing political power of the Christian Zionists have created a political climate in which the US Government will not prevent Israel from doing anything it wants to the Palestinians, while also providing it with international legitimacy and protection. (p. 206)

There is not one single mention of the powerful Israel lobby bribing (or blackmailing) American (and European) politicians into submission. Not one.

The power and influence of the Israel lobby was well known when the book was written. For example They Dare to Speak Out written by former congressman Paul Findley was published two decades before Kimmerling's book.

[Abe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dull honestly and all over the place as well. The second half barely has anything to with Sharon and doesn’t flesh out the thesis enough. Some questionable statements like calling the Oslo Accords a victory definitely are marks against this. I got the updated version because I thought it was going to be focused more on disengagement but perhaps that was my fault the epilogue does touch on it a bit. I dislike analysis of politics through the lense of individual figures but this was fine and pretty short anyways.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es un gran libro, aunque útil para entender nociones básicas del conflicto entre Israel y Palestina