How projecting past persecution onto Palestinians only perpetuates the war
Things I’ve been reading:
Rachel Shabi’s new book Off White: The Truth About Antisemitism is thoughtful, insightful and compassionate. I don’t wholly agree with all of the book, but I think it’s well worth engaging with. (Needless to say, there are many truths about antisemitism).
Lutz Fiedler’s Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence is a terrific read. I can almost guarantee you will learn a lot.
Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism by Jonathan Judaken is also brilliant. It combines an introduction which reconceptualises the field, using Judeophobia as the umbrella term and anti-semitism (he makes a strong case for the hyphen) for the 1870-1945 period); chapters on each of Sartre, Arendt, Lyotard, Poliakov and more on their theories of Jews and anti-semitism; and a conclusion that considers forms of Judeophobia that have grown since 1945.
A must-read from +972 on the current situation in Northern Gaza.
I found this piece by Louis Fishman in Prospect really interesting, on the ongoing influence if Ottoman and Mandate structures in the contemporary Middle East.
I want to address an underlying issue that I think has led many Israelis and diaspora Jews to support the war. I think it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding or misdiagnosis of the conflict, one that is rooted in historical trauma.
A primary argument frequently made by supporters of the war is that Israel has no choice, that it is faced, in Hamas and Hizbullah, with genocidal enemies who plan to kill not just every Israeli but every Jew. We, they say, are compelled to destroy them before they destroy us. We have no choice. You can see why this argument is so popular; if there if is no choice then there is no debate. If your military enemy is the epitome of evil, who aims to destroy you entirely, then there can be absolutely no compromise with them and there is no argument. To support this position Hamas has been described as genocidal, and October 7th an attempt to simply kill as many Jews as possible. But this analysis misunderstands October 7th and the Palestinian struggle more generally. And this misunderstanding did not begin with October 7th – it is one that goes back decades and is probably constitutive of Israeli society. The primary subject of the misunderstanding is Palestinian violence. Such violence may often be brutal, unethical and tactically unwise. But it is not genocidal. It does not aim to kill all Israelis, still less all Jews.
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