{"id":69,"date":"2022-04-29T13:04:48","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2022-04-29T13:04:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:04:48","slug":"stavit-sinai-israeli-activist-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Stavit Sinai Israeli Activist Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m adjusting my scruffy fringe in the camera when Stav joins the Zoom call, she\u2019s sat outside on a patio, glorious blue sky above her head and the sun shining on her long brown hair. \u201cI\u2019m spending the winter in Sardinia,\u201d she tells me. I look out the window at my miserable February English street. I never get to hear anymore about Sardinia; we only have an hour and other than a few words of introduction the rest of our conversation is dominated by stories of activism, arrests and socio-political theory.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Israel into an Eastern-European Jewish family, Dr Stavit Sinai \u2013 she normally goes by Stav \u2013 completed her BA and MA at the University of Tel Aviv before moving to the picturesque medieval city of Konstanz, on the Swiss border of Germany, to do a PhD in sociology at the city\u2019s university. She now teaches philosophy at Berlin VHS and has published a book titled Sociological knowledge and collective identity: SN Eisenstadt and Israeli society. <\/em>Dr Sinai is also a pro-Palestine activist and has frequently found herself on the wrong side of the law while pursuing this cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stav first came onto my radar last May when she joined UK based group Palestine Action in an attempted break in of a military drone factory, owned by the multi-billion dollar Israeli defence corporation Elbit Systems. Palestine Action have led a campaign of sabotage, vandalism and destruction against the company, that \u2013 Stav claims \u2013 is a key part of the Israeli state\u2019s \u201capartheid regime\u201d. On 10 January 2022 Elbit announced that they would be selling their Oldham factory \u2013 where Stav had been \u2013 the news of which was celebrated as a huge success by the pro-Palestine movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although her raiding party \u2013 \u201cwith the intention of smashing everything up with sledgehammers\u201d \u2013 didn\u2019t break the perimeter, for Stav it hadn\u2019t been a waste of time: \u201cThe effort was not futile because when we got arrested we kind of created mayhem around the neighbourhood… That exerts pressure on the population, nobody wants people arrested and shouting, nobody wants that trouble. I think, indeed, that contributed to the shutting down of that specific factory.\u201d While they may not have been successful that day, Palestine Action had been on many other occasions, causing millions in damages and massive disruption to Elbit\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTaking a sledgehammer and smashing machinery\u201d, \u201cgetting arrested\u201d and \u201cputting your body on the line\u201d come up a lot during our conversation, Stav says it\u2019s all part of \u201cdirect action\u201d, which she believes is the most effective form of protest: \u201cIt is an anarchist tactic that is based on non-violence and civil disobedience\u2026 if I see harm, if I see evil, if I see a crime against humanity that is being conducted in my front yard I just go and I stop it. It kind of brings agency back to the people, to civil society, and enables us to leave the realm of passivity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particular emphasis is put on getting arrested and twice she jokes about it being a \u201cpleasant experience in Europe,\u201d and that compared to \u201cthe Middle East \u2026 it\u2019s a piece of cake.\u201d Stav feels that she is using her \u201cprivilege\u201d, because for her getting arrested in these situations is \u201crelatively\u201d consequence free. So she sees it as part of her duty and an effective way of achieving political goals: \u201cThere have been 36 people who have been arrested from the Oldham factory [actions] and it\u2019s proven very successful.\u201d She\u2019s smiling and laughing while saying this \u2013 as she is most of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stav frequently pauses her flurry of words with \u201cumm\u201d or \u201cso\u201d, trying to think of the perfect phrase. I know that she isn\u2019t coming up with all of these ideas on the spot, and that she will have reiterated these same points countless times, but the pauses \u2013 as well as passionate slip ups \u2013 gives me the impression that these aren\u2019t rehearsed answers. She isn\u2019t reading from a script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ask how her family feel about all of this and if they agree with what she does. Stav stops, sits more up right, and tells me in a strong tone that if she were to speak with them about these things \u2013 or at all \u2013 they wouldn\u2019t be supportive. She talks about them in abstractions: \u201cThey would consider us traitors.\u201d, \u201cThey are in support of Israeli technology.\u201d, and then finally says: \u201cThey would not approve.\u201d She left Israel 12 years ago and hasn\u2019t been back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversation moving onto this topic is one of the few times that her manner darkens, talking slower, not smiling, but this tonal shift is quickly flipped when she mentions dodging mandatory military service and I ask how: \u201cI told them I was going to kill myself\u201d she says with a grin. A bit taken a back, I awkwardly laugh and say \u201cfair enough\u201d, to which she replies \u201cyes it worked so \u2013 fair enough\u201d and then breaks down laughing. With the awkwardness of discussing her family moved past, we talk about more scrapes that she\u2019s gotten into in Germany and the state of the activist community there \u2013 she thinks it\u2019s lacking compared to the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re interrupted by the postwoman, Stav walks over to her, stood on the other side of a low stone wall, and I can hear them talk in Italian. When she returns I broach the subject of antisemitism: many would \u2013 and have \u2013 label her as anti-Semitic for calling Israel an imperialist apartheid state waging a genocidal war. She dismisses this, saying that these \u201csmears\u201d and \u201csilly accusations\u201d are a natural part of standing up to institutional power. She then turns it around, bringing up that she has a degree in Jewish studies so understands the history of the Jewish state, that her family survived the holocaust, and that \u201cby assuming that all Jews must take the position that they support Israel, that\u2019s anti-Semitic in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before saying goodbye I ask what the big picture goal is: \u201cSo we have taken down one factory, the Oldham factory, it\u2019s a huge success but I think the overall target was to bring every Elbit factory down in the UK and beyond. It\u2019s always been the target and I think the next big thing is just to continue, to bring them down one after another, brick by brick, until they are all gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m adjusting my scruffy fringe in the camera when Stav joins the Zoom call, she\u2019s sat outside on a patio, glorious blue sky above her head and the sun shining on her long brown hair. \u201cI\u2019m spending the winter in Sardinia,\u201d she tells me. I look out the window at my miserable February English street.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edcarron.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}