[Thread] 1/ Here are some reflections on legal repression as applicable to how Israel uses it against Palestinians to facilitate ethnic cleansing #SaveSilwan #PalestinianLivesMatter
2/ 'Law is used as an instrument to extend control over society, subjecting persons to rules laid down through particular institutions. The establishment of specific laws and the use of legal repression can result in ‘rule by law’ instead of ‘rule of law’' #SaveSilwan
3/ 'In ‘rule by law’, or repressive law, ‘there is little or no separation between law and politics, and the dictates and policies of the rulers trump laws’....repressive law are those laws and systems in which law is designed to uphold the social order [The Occupation)''
4/ 'It is often ad hoc, designed to punish disobedience and demands conformity. Repressive laws and legal systems are characterized by the subordination of law to power politics....
5/ As Tilly notes, ‘legality matters because laws state the costs and benefits which governments are prepared (or at least empowered) to apply to one form of action or another - whether public gatherings or requiring permits for building a shop' #SaveSilwan
6/ In this context, the law is an increasingly important category in repressing dissent. Laws accompanied by administrative actions and breaches of due process should also be considered political repression.
7/ Common laws in this category often include public meeting laws. Dictating when people can and cannot meet, whom they can meet and for what purpose is critical in controlling the outcomes of those meetings. The same is true of controlling who can and cannot build + live
8/ Although such laws may seek to mitigate the use of coercive force by creating a more palatable framework for organizing dissent and 'social order', the replacement of force with law serves to make repression less visible. #SaveSilwan
9/ By defining when, where and what people can do, and what space they can occupy, the state is better able to control and repress potential challenges to its authority before the need to use violent coercion (in theory) #savesilwan
10/ Wiktorowicz states that ‘discipline orders individuals in spatial settings to maximise the ability of the state or those in power to maintain constant observation. By dictating when and where individuals are present and even their relations with...'
11/ one another, the state enhances its social control. Isaac Balbus argues that ‘legal repression’ is a means of repressing dissent by the ‘formal rationality’ of legal methods that ‘depoliticise the consciousness of the participants'
12/ '...deligitimate their claims and grievances, and militate against alliances between participants and other non-elites or elite moderates'. This one is key, as the Occupying power will also say things like this process is 'legal', or everyone is 'equal before the law'
13/ 'The absence of overt coercive force also, as a corollary, imbues those whom the law benefits with the credibility that results from their resort to repression without the stain of violence. In other words, the absence of overt coercion does not mean the absence of repression
14/14 Authoritarian states like Israel though can rarely rely on the success of singular methods constantly over time, which is why they accompany their actions with violent force, to remind people that the law itself (and breaching it) is also violence #SaveSilwan
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
