British Jewish opposition to Israel : the relationship between local and distant fields of contention in a social movement

This thesis examines the recent Jewish Israel-critical movement in the UK, asking how it enables and directs Jewish criticism of Israel, and how the distant and local objects of activism are constructed and affected in this process.I also ask whether the interaction I outline between local contestation and distant issue activism pertains to other distant issue movements (DIMs).The thesis is situated within the field of social movement studies, using a movement-relevant theory paradigm, which involves directing my research towards the concerns of the social movement I am studying.My methods followed from the grounded theory framework I used and involved a multiple process of data gathering -interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis.I analysed the data to understand the processes of meaning-making of participants, as well as the empirical events people in this movement are involved in.My methodology also involves feedback to participants within the movement.This thesis offers a descriptive analysis of this movement, its intellectual roots and routes, situates it within the British Jewish field and examines the problems it faces.I use this movement as a case study in delineating how an overtly political movement deploys and is constrained by the process of identity politics.I apply Bourdieu's theory of field and habitus to explain the processes of meaning-making in distant issue movements (DIMs), and extend this theory to account for change from below.A purpose of the thesis is to investigate, through the instance of this particular movement, how the tension between the local field of contention, the subjectivity of the actors and the subjectivity of the object of solidarity provides the mechanism to explain the processes of change and contention that distant issue movements are engaged in.I argue that the movement has succeeded in galvanising Jewish people to question, criticise and oppose Israel, but possibly the movement's most important effect in the Jewish ethnic field is in loosening the automatic correspondence between Jewishness and Zionism.This thesis argues strongly in favour of the idea of identity contestation structuring knowledge and political projects, with movement goals arrived at in the dialogic process of identity construction with others in the field.While participants speak 'as Jews', a more accurate term for their disposition is 'rooted cosmopolitanism', a disposition rooted in the local process of contention.iii I use Bourdieu's theory of practice to draw together different insights in social movement theory.This theory also offers a way of cutting through the false dichotomies of self-interest and altruism often applied to distant issue movements.The major way I adapt Bourdieu's ideas is to highlight the salience of multi-field contention and outline a model of actors acting in and influenced by several local and distant fields.I advance the importance of external disruption as a determinant of changes in field contention.This schema of activists being affected by external discourses which they translate to local fields provides a means to explain how counter-hegemonic social movement activists can become carriers of change, while recognising that their actions are constrained by their habitus within the local field.the state, whether from an ideological anti-Zionist standpoint or simply reacting to its treatment of Palestinians.Recently though, this has been transformed from a 'not in my name' individual opposition to and withdrawal of support from Israel to 'not in our name'; a collective attempt to withdraw legitimacy from Israel's claim to represent Jews and to forge a specifically Jewish collectivity that opposes Israel's policies.In this dissertation I argue that we can speak for the first time of a diaspora Jewish social movement criticising Israel, using the case of the Anglo-Jewish Israel-critical movement as a significant instance of this trend.Certainly in Britain, there is a networked group of Jews engaged in political contention with a common and very clearly delineated enemy -Zionists more so than Israel.This network is seeking to re-cognise the Israel/Palestine conflict for Jews and others (Eyerman and Jamison 1991), 2 and there is a commonality of purpose which allows for major disagreements over tactics, such as the boycott campaign.The underlying aim is to challenge Zionist hegemony among their fellow Jews and to challenge Israel, speaking as Jews.The latter is directed at both mainstream and Jewish audiences, and provides support to Palestinians and the Palestine DIM.It is also partly directed towards the Palestine DIM, particularly the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM)informing them and (to a lesser extent) Palestinian people that there are Jews who oppose Israel and demanding they do not conflate the two.3 Thus these groups operate in two fields, the specific Jewish field and the wider political field.It is this dual process of field contention, I argue in chapter three, that demarcates them as a discrete movement separate both from the Palestine DIM and from purely identitarian Jewish groups.Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon was the first time a strong diaspora Jewish disenchantment with Israel was articulated, a disenchantment that has grown with each successive war.Since the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 2000, diaspora Jewish groups that oppose Israel have sprung up in Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Belgium and even in Germany, and of course many organisations in the US (EJJP 2009; JFP 2007).In England, there is an alphabet soup of groups -Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP), Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), Jews Against Zionism (JAZ), Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG), Just Peace UK (JPUK), not to mention the older Jewish Socialist Group (JSG).The profusion of groups should not obscure the networked and decentred nature of this activism.Groups undertake 2 Eyerman and Jamison (1991) talk of social movements as engaged in cognitive praxis, with a prime aim being to advance an alternative cognition of existing practices, or to re-cognise them.3 By Palestine DIM I mean British groups supporting Palestinians.I use the term PSM or Palestine Solidarity Movement when talking of groups offering political solidarity.

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