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Israel's parliament has voted to pass legislation banning the UN's Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) from operating within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, accusing the organisation of colluding with Hamas in Gaza. Contact between Unrwa employees and Israeli officials will be banned within three months, severely limiting the agency's ability to operate in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Co-operation with the Israeli military - which controls all crossings into Gaza - is essential for UNWRA to transfer aid into the territory. It is the main UN organisation working on the ground there. Several countries, including the US and the UK, have expressed serious concern about the move. (BBC here).
In a number of respects, the current war(s) in Israel-Gaza, and around its "Jewish question" can be understood as a war of and through facades--that is of building behind the outward forms of the sacred (civilians, hospitals, spaces where children are brought together, as well as multilateral institutions, the structures of international jurisprudence) the institutions through which war (in all of its forms) can be effectively waged. This instrumentalization is made more effective by leveraging the narratives and presumptions built around and signification of the facade-objects behind which the re-signification of the object can be augmented. That signification shield of the facade produces a profound effect within the communities committed to the signification (whatever the realities of the facade) and by cultivating a conflation of facade-object and its signification. This, of course, is not unique to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is instead that the exposure here is unusual; and even more unusual the push back. In this sense narrative shielding serves as useful a purpose as human shielding, and one that is much less difficult to cultivate and use proactively.
Whatever one thinks of the object-facade, whatever one thinks of the underlying values at play, however one has determined any sort of "end game" toward which resources of all kinds ought to be deployed, the semiotic power of facades--especially signified facades, is coming to play a quite prominent role in warfare. It is not just innovation in the technologies of war--within and outside of physical combat--that has been accelerated by regional conflicts of this kind which has, by the collective decisions of a host of other actors and institutions (not the least of which are religious), but also the instrumentalization of narrative and the management of orthodoxies that can be applied in aid of combat. That innovation is not just positive (for example the use by non-combatants like South Africa and Nicaragua of jurisprudential instruments, though that is an ancient practice), but also the defensive use of institutions and the presumptions, goals, and states of being that they represent that can be effectively deployed.
It is with this in mind that one can understand the actions and reactions of all parties around the status and actual purpose of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and its instrumenatlizations (as relief agency, as the cover for the activities of Hamas and Hezbollah, as the means through which the UN can project its own political objectives in the conflict, as the representation, fulfillment and personification of human rights and humanitarian principles of etc.). For some there is a necessary conflation on the ground between that institution and the delivery of humanitarian services for the population trapped in an active combat zone (here). And yet that is precisely the assumption that has been challenged; if indeed the institution has become something other than what its narrative suggests it is, then its object becomes "other than" as well and either the institution will have to be reformed or replaced (here; "Israel is reportedly considering taking over aid distribution itself or subcontracting it, but it has yet to put forth a concrete plan.").
The UNRWA techno-bureaucratic leadership core of course have sought to defend the institution, not by refuting the allegation but by suggesting that those who raise it are themselves seeking to destroy the narrative signification within which the agency acquires its power; insisting on a distinction between individuals in the institution and the essence of the institution itself (Opinion article by Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General "But we must distinguish the behavior of individuals from the agency’s mandate to serve Palestinian refugees. It is unjust and dishonest to attack UNRWA’s mission on the basis of these allegations."). This is a position UNRWA has taken from the first, a perception premise that indeed might also be subject to interrogation, and one that would have been remarkable had it not been put forward. This discursive response is both classical and powerful--but only to the extent that it may be believed in the sense that it is free from doubt. And doubt may well be planted when the agency appears to be used either as an element of international political objects that cannot be directly applied or where it has become the instrument of another--effectively.
More interesting still may be the effects of perception on the engagement with evidence. From the perspective of semiotics it is possible to understand that what one perceives is in essence a consequence of how one perceives; what one believes is a critical element in the identification and evaluation of the significance of what can be signified, and thus signified interpreted. It is not merely that one can believe only what one wants to believe, it is that the rationalizations of perception and the critical importance of perception premises make it impossible to see things except in ways that fulfill and reinforce the core perception premises through which the world is understood and therefore must be made to operate (see, eg here, here, here and here). Different perception universes produce different perception of objects, different approaches to their signification, and quite different interpretations of their meaning. What one fights over, then, is not the facts but the meaning universe those facts are meant to reinforce and protect. Unexamined, this produces the nearly perfect form of instrument essential in conflict, and its strategic deployment--in itself or as facade, then becomes a powerful means of advancing conflict based objectives.
It follows that, in his own way, though, Mr. Lazzarini is correct when he argues that "We must meaningfully defend U.N. institutions and the values they represent before the symbolic shredding of the charter establishing the United Nations. This can only be achieved through principled action by the nations of the world and a commitment by all to peace and justice." (Opinion article by Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General ). But what exactly is being defended--the idea of the UNRWA or its facade, or what lies behind? The difficulty here is that one must now, it seems, confront head on the issue of the facade and its signification. It may no longer be enough merely to assert the proposition. The issue of the UNRWA (in this case but with broad applicability to much of the work of international agencies in conflict areas), then itself serves to contain two broad if related perception fields. The first goes to the preservation of the perception-premises on which a global order is rationalized. That depends in large part on the integrity of its institutions. From a semiotics perspective to attack the integrity of the institution is to attack the premises on which it is based and therefore the entirety of the multilateral order. On the other is a more subtle conversation about mixed use institutions--in this case the possibility that indeed in some respects UNRWA was an incarnation of its signification, but perhaps in others it incarnated a quite distinct signification, one the protection of which required a cultivation of a grand vision in order to obscure a perception rationalizing variation operating in and through its signified cover.
Noam Chomsky was getting to the heart of the matter in his book, What Kind of Creatures Are We? (Columbia University Press, 2018):
That much was already clear to Aristotle. He concluded that we can 'define a house as stones, bricks and timbers,' in terms of material constitution, but also as 'a receptacle to shelter chattels and living beings,' in terms of function and design; and we should combine both parts of the definition, integrating matter and form, since the 'essence of a house' involves the 'purpose and end' of the material constitution. Hence a house is not a mind-independent object. That becomes still clearer when we investigate further and discover that the concept house has much more intricate properties. . . Inquiry reveals that even the simplest expressions have intricate meanings. (Ibid., p, 44).
UNRWA is in this sense an aspect of Aristotle's 'house' a word concept that both embraces both matter and form. But then again, in a sense, so is Gaza--a territory, an encampment, and a facade within, around and beneath which exists another reality. That objective signification becomes more complicated when both become multiple but each is essential to some but not all of an interpretive community, the ruptures of which rupture a common material and significating language and (collective) meaning as well. It is the possibility of facade rather than the appearance of "bad" people within the organization that poses the greatest danger not just to UNRWA but to other organizations operating perhaps under similar conditions.
The Israeli action has made it impossible to avoid the issue. But the question of which issue it is that will be resolved remains an open question--object, symbol (signification), or interpretive rationalization of a preferred perception universe. Also open is the issue of the level at which they resolution is to take place--as a matter of cognitive integrity, as a matter of internal solidarity or integrity, or as a matter of the interrogation of perception principles within which it is even possible to develop some sort of coherent means of communication. One moves here from the world of fact to one of belief within which facts are constituted and signified. One moves from experience to the constitution of experience in and through objects that constitute and manifest that belief and its experience. The key, then, is the power of faith in the rationalizing premises in which reality and belief in a reality can be held/imposed on a community of believers. One moves to Calvin (Calvin on Faith and Justification) and perhaps to Chao Lun (The Treatises of Seng.chao (Sengzhao; later Qin dynasty))
Objects are not (in themselves) objects; objects are produced by cognition. While an object produces a cognition, the cognition produces the object. So, the object arises in dependence (pratitya-samutpanna) and therefore it is a conditioned dharma (samskrta).3l1 As conditioned it is not a true (dharma). As such, it is not Truth (paramartha). Therefore, it is said in the Chung-kuan :312 'Because things arise from causes and conditions they are not true. What does not arise from causes and conditions is true' (Walter Liebenthal (ed & trans), Chao Lun: The Treatises of Seng-chao (Hong Kong University Press, 1968 (384-414 C.E.); PAN-JO WU-CHIH LUN III, ¶ 31, p. 75).
Where does this abstract and semiotic analysis leave one? Top what extent might it have any relevance to the current conflict over how one must be made to see the institution of UNWRA and its situational context? One might start with the object of avoiding the usual reverse engineering in discussions around serves as a reminder that discussions about institutions their ideals, the fulfillment of that ideal (along with its corruption), and the ways in which an institution, built around its ideals may actually serve as a facade to protect the construction and fulfillment of a different ideal (with or without the collusion of the institutions providing cover). If one starts where one wants to end then the analysis is itself an instrument meant to serve an objective; and in that sense loses its value as analysis as it merges with its object.
Shorn of its instrumental character, it may be possible to understand UNRWA and the extraordinary investment in social collectives in its preservation or elimination, as an aspect of a broader and more fundamental rift between what are emerging as distinct ways of understanding (and tolerating) the world of social relations manifested generally in political community and more specifically in the management of its Jewish problem in in what is again Israel. It is in the context of accumulating multiple displacement and enveloped in multiple inter-subjectivities that produces a concoction brewed out of the collision or collusion of a variety of lebenswelt all seeking to occupy, and arrange, a specific, if tiny, space. That concoction is then seasoned, if unfortunately, with a mix of disjunction--especially between ideals manifesting a belief in the way the world ought to be and the way that the vision is manifested on the ground. What emerges, and the UNRWA provides only one example, is the emergence of increasingly well developed symbiosis between ideal forms sharing a single point of manifestation. What makes it more problematic is the emphasis by both that this symbiosis does no exist. And perhaps that is ultimately the problem--the element of subterfuge, of disguise, of deception, denial--not of the respective ideal forms of those in symbiosis, but of the symbiosis itself. In this case, for example, it might have been less deceptive to have embraced the realities of symbiosis: that UNRWA could not effectively operate in Lebanon and Gaza with, as, and through, Hamas and Hezbollah. That synbiosis, then, would have transformed the ideal of UNRWA in its operational capacity, as a framework institution the substance and implementation of which would be driven by the ideological framework and objectives of its partners on the ground. That might have been distasteful to some, a diret threat to others, and a more realistic basis for conversion about the integrity of the ideal of the UNRWA within a system of necessary symbiosis.
Where does that leave us--at least from an analytical perspective? As the current "debate" is now framed is is met with irreconcilable visions of the world and choices about what slices of that world ought to be emphasized and what ought to be ignored). The UN's techno-bureaucracies, true to their natire and in service to their institutions, have foregrounded an idealized vision of UNRWA. Their arguments, emotion, etc. all center on a defense of the idealized state of UNRWA--that an attack on the institution is effectively an attack on the fundamentally sound principles around which its ideal is wrapped, and more generally an attack on the UN system itself--not just the institutional apparatus of the system but also the entirety of the principles on which the UN was founded and purports still to operate (at the limit of this form of discourse). It is essentially a formalist defense on the essentially functionalist attack. It is one that posits a theoretical barrier between the conception and formal structures of UNRWA and the realities around which it operates. It also posits a sort of purity of purpose wrapped around a mandate that can, formally, be read as shorn of any connection with the conflict around which it was made necessary (in the judgment of those responsible for its creation and maintenance). It is also founded on the idea that any attack on UNRWA is an attack on its ideal form, its core principles, and the integrity and operation of the UN itself. Most importantly, focused on its ideal form, it necessarily must reject the possibility of its use oas a facade by other social collectives who see in the structures of UNRWA, and ideal instrument for the realization of its own ideas, now incorporated within the architecture of another, less objectionable (to UNRWA's funders and sponsors perhaps) manifestation of an ideal. The approach, then, in defense of the ideal of UNRWA, serves as a basis for its transformation as or amenability to be instrumentalized as, a facade of another lebenswelt the manifestation of which might incur, if exposed, more severe consequences.
It follows that the integrity of the ideal must be protected, even as its reality may vary somewhat with that ideal. Any evidence of integration with the architectures, objectives, ideals, and operations of another ideal system--in this case that of Hamas and Hezbollah committed, in part, to a Jew-free Palestine, would necessarily be characterized (it must be characterized this way given the semiotics of the ideal and the need for its preservation) as the work of rogue elements or of individuals, or groups of individuals, whose own bad acts do not corrupt either the integrity of the institution nor its ideals. This serves, perversely enough, to strengthen the symbiosis between the groups and the solidity of the instrumental use of the facade of the UNRWA (and its ideals). The object of this defense, then, is not focused on an interpretation of events on the ground, but rather on the preservation of an abstraction behind which all sorts of things might happen but can be explained away from perspectives of expediency, realpolitik, and perhaps sympathy.
The functional counter, then, inverts this analytical scheme. It is in a sense much more inherently phenomenological (and with it inductive). It starts from evidence on the ground and uses that evidence to (re)construct the ideal. So reconstructed, that on-the-ground-manifestation is compared to the abstracted ideal. The disjunctions then serve as the basis of analysis. For the Israeli (and others elsewhere), then, UNRWA becomes no more than its manifestation on the ground, which the Israeli analysis then concludes evidences the effective betrayal of those ideals in context. The issue, though is more complicated. But that avoids the subtextual issue of deception, which is at the heart of the functionalist attack on UNRWA, and thus its semiosis. What the facts imply is not merely that UNRWA is a facade, but that it lends the power and legitimacy of its ideal state in the service of the ideal state (and its operationalization) of another social collective.It would be one thing if this had been done in the open--then one might have a more brisk conversion about the symbiosis of ideals--that is whether, indeed, UNRWA must function as and through Hamas, Hezbollah or any other power within whose midst it operates. Yet it has not, and that lends power to the challenge to UNRWA in the current circumstances. And especially in this context, that lends credence not only to the assertion of symbiosis, but to the further allegation that so combined, UNRWA becomes or serves as an instrument of war/conflict even as it protects one of the combatants behind the walls of its idealized authority. There is a betrayal here that has a power equal, perhaps, to the betrayal that accusations of betrayal lodged by UNRWA and UN officials against the current functional attack and its consequences.
What semitotic analysis does, in this case, is expose, then the fundamental element around which all of the elaborations of attack and defense might be reduced to at their origins--the issue/element of fraud, of deception--and of the utilization of deception as an instrument of war in a most clever way. UNRWA understand the consequence of that exposure to its integrity, both as ideal and as working institution; but it fails in that defense to the extent it continues to wrap itself in its ideals, detached from the reality the exposure of which is having substantial consequence. There is no ready solution, one which will be reverse engineered in the current style of international relations. All of this, then, requires a confrontation with the fundamental issue of the cognition of UNRWRA within a broader cognitive discourse.Yet it is precisely within these systems of belief that is is possible to operate lebnenswelt behind the facades of another. The rest is politics--of cognition and of action that manifests belief in and as a thing.
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