Her latest book just released in Hebrew, the author discussed disaster capitalism, Israel and the growing boycott movement.

Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist and activist and the author of No Logo, was in Israel-Palestine last week to promote the publication of the Hebrew and Arabic translations of her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Accompanied by her husband, journalist Avi Lewis, Klein spoke in Haifa, Ramallah and Jaffa, visited Jerusalem and Gaza and participated in the weekly protest against the separation wall in Bil’in.

Her appearance early on a Saturday morning at the Arabic-Hebrew Theater in Old Jaffa was somewhat low-key, apparently publicized only on a few leftist websites and blogs, as well as on Facebook.

Disaster Capitalism

Klein began by briefly discussing the idea behind the book. The Shock Doctrine, she said, is a book about “disaster capitalism,” a term which can be loosely defined as a neoliberal political-economic strategy that exploits a society’s sense of shock in the aftermath of traumatic events to push through a radical agenda of free-market capitalism, privatization and deregulation.

The book traces the origins of the strategy from Latin America’s military coups through Thatcherism and the post-Cold War era in the West to the aftermaths of more contemporary shocks, such as 9/11, Iraq and the Asian tsunami.

The idea for the book, Klein said, came to her during the invasion of Iraq. Seeing how the invasion paved the way for an avalanche of “blank slate” economic policies, hastily imposed by an unelected leadership, Latin American friends of hers were struck by the similarity to their own national histories. “They did this to us,” they told Klein, who was in Argentina shooting a documentary at the time.

“Our elites exist in a state of acute disaster preparedness,” Klein told the Jaffa audience. Not, however, the kind of emergency preparedness that would have been useful in the aftermath of, say, Hurricane Katrina. Instead, governments, corporations and power brokers worldwide, said Klein, lie in wait for crisis situations – situations in which they believe they can get away with things that they couldn’t under normal circumstances.

Take the “War on Terror,” for example. A lousy political strategy, says Klein, but an excellent business plan, the War on Terror leveraged the shock of 9/11 to create a new framework for tech companies, devastated by the dot.com bubble, to recast themselves as security firms. Often, this was possible with only minor changes to the technologies or services being offered. Indeed, the “homeland security” industry, which barely existed a decade ago, is today a significant and growing market, with ongoing wars in places like Iraq providing a host of business opportunities for the well-connected.

Israel as a Warning?

Israel, for better or for worse, plays a starring role in The Shock Doctrine. The final chapter of the book, ominously titled “Losing the Peace Incentive,” describes Israel as the prototype of a disaster capitalist state.

Not so long ago, said Klein, in the early 1990′s, Israel’s business and industrial leadership were still actively lobbing the government to negotiate some sort of peace with the country’s neighbors. The violence and chaos of the First Intifada were considered bad for business, so supporting peace was the natural alternative.

By the early 2000′s, however, Israel’s economy was in the dumps, reeling from the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the uncontrollable violence of the Second Intifada. The Israeli government responded by pouring money into the military, which then served as a kind of business incubator for Israeli communication, security and surveillance firms.

Once out of the military, many Israelis took the knowledge they had gained to create new start-ups, which were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the homeland security boom after the attacks of 9/11 made counterterrorism a top priority in the US. The Israeli leadership, seeing the opportunity, was quick to point out Israel’s long experience with such things, rebranding the Israeli security sector as the industry leader.

While this may seem like simply a clever business strategy, Klein sees it as a dangerous threat to the prospect of peace.

In every country where the population has eventually risen up against oppression, she said, it was because of two factors: the loss of a feeling of normalcy and prolonged economic hardship.

In Israel’s case, “bubbles of normalcy like Tel Aviv” substitute for genuine normalcy, and the hardships resulting from ongoing conflict are born by one side only, while the other side actually profits from it. In this situation, the worst case scenario for economic interests is for peace to break out (what will happen to our comparative advantage?). Or as a former businessman told Klein in Gaza: “For Israel, peace is a luxury.”

This extends to the production of culture, which according to Klein has been co-opted by the State for its own purposes. Israel has a new branding strategy that asks the world to get “beyond the conflict” and see the other side of Israel. As part of the strategy, the country has tried to create a different image for itself. Israeli models in bikinis posing for men’s magazines, for example, or the construction of a Tel Aviv-esque beach in New York’s Central Park.

The Boycott Movement

This is where the talk turned to the boycott (officially: Boycott, Divestment, Sactions), which Klein described as a non-violent Palestinian resistance strategy meant to isolate Israel in the international arena, similar to the boycott of apartheid-era South Africa. Klein supports the boycott, and tried to convince her Israeli audience to support it as well.

As she explained it, the boycott strategy does not mean ostracizing Israelis. The idea is to avoid contact with official Israeli institutions. Thus instead of publishing the Hebrew version of her book with a large, commercial publishing house, Klein found a small, activist publisher called Andalus, which translates works of Arabic literature into Hebrew as an “act of resistance.” Klein donated the rights to her book in Hebrew to Andalus, thus supporting a cultural project that she believes in while “boycotting the Israeli economy, but not Israelis.”

By supporting BDS, Klein wants to send the message that Israel is not a normal place, and should not be treated as one. In an interview with Haaretz ahead of her visit, Klein said:

“The State of Israel is trying to show that everything is fine in its territory, that it’s possible to spend a nice vacation here or to be part of Western culture, very Western culture. I don’t want to be a part of that. I am waiting impatiently for the time when I will be able to come for a vacation or a normal book launch in Tel Aviv. But this is a privilege that should be reserved for all the inhabitants.”

Klein, who presented the boycott as external pressure meant to help the Israeli Left bring about change from within, has found it to be a tough sell among Israelis. Israeli Jews are the “missing piece,” she said, yet they “are not accepting this in the spirit of cooperation and movement-building.”

The audience, some 100+ people, mostly Ashkenazi, very leftist-looking, and squashed into a domed, ancient Arab structure converted into a theater, showed no overt enthusiasm for Klein’s call to support the boycott. In Israel, a country where many feel that the entire world is against them in any case, convincing people to boycott themselves will probably take a bit more convincing.

Still, Klein’s books sold like hotcakes, and not just because they were being offered at a discount. The Shock Doctrine is a milestone in the intellectual effort to understand the neoliberal age, and its translation into Hebrew will make it accessible to an audience in a country where neoliberalism is still very much alive and kicking.

By putting Israel’s own sophisticated disaster capitalism complex in the international context, the book will hopefully lead Israeli readers to new insights about the political and economic policy choices made by their leaders. And if the concepts explored in the book manage to penetrate Israel’s cacophonous political discourse, Klein will have made a huge contribution toward bringing about internal change in Israeli society.