A Gnawing Sense of Discomfort - White Like Heaven Presents...

There has been a growing discomfort with the limits of discourse surrounding the Israel and Hamas conflict, as highlighted by an increasing number of articles. A recent speech by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek at the opening ceremony of the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair perhaps best encapsulates this emergent dynamic, despite Žižek’s typically verbose style. The moment was made even more poignant by the subsequent prohibition of pro-Palestinian protests.

Žižek began with a straightforward condemnation of Hamas and the events of October 7, acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself. However, he then posed several provocations that unsettled the audience, leading to interruptions. He noted the strangeness of how any attempt to analyze the complex background of the situation is often met with accusations of supporting or justifying Hamas terrorism. He humorously questioned, “In which society do these prohibitions belong?” and then compared it to the society of bees, illustrating the matriarchal totalitarianism that structures the humble Bombus society.

When referencing this in conversations, I’ve often been met with quizzical looks—questions arise about what or who is being suggested as totalitarian and how this totalitarianism manifests. To understand this, a brief look at recent articles around the conflict might prove insightful. For instance, climate activist Greta Thunberg was condemned by IDF spokesperson Arye Sharuz Shalicar after she posted a message of solidarity with Gaza on social media. Shalicar stated, “Whoever identifies with Greta in any way in the future, in my view, is a terror supporter,” because her message, while showing solidarity with Gaza, did not mention the massacres of Israelis. Despite his subsequent apology, the suggestion that advocacy for Palestinians is implicitly supporting terrorism if it does not start with a condemnation of Hamas is noteworthy.

A parallel can be drawn from the infamous Sky News interview between British journalist Owen Jones and Labour MP Margaret Hodge. Jones opened by condemning the atrocities committed on October 7 before criticizing the subsequent deaths of Palestinians and conveying a message from an Israeli friend who, while appalled by the violence of October 7, was critical of current policies towards Palestinians in Gaza. Hodge responded by critiquing Jones for his supposed lack of recognition of Hamas’s violence and accused him of being obsessed with “the issue around Palestine,” questioning whether he believed Israel had “no right to defend themselves.” Jones responded that the military solutions being pursued would lead to “countless dead Israeli soldiers and huge numbers of civilian dead.” Hodge retorted that not pursuing the current military option would be tantamount to “allowing the hostages to die.” The right-wing press seized on this segment, accusing Jones of “mansplaining to a Jew” while ironically questioning why the protections of identity politics were not afforded to Jews, a rhetorical sleight of hand often condemned by numerous Jewish organizations for conflating the actions of the state of Israel with those of the Jewish people as a whole.

The term “discourse” has been invoked by many authors, most notably by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who used it to denote a particular socio-historical system that produces knowledge and meaning. In Foucauldian scholarship, discourse is understood as expressing power relationships through specific languages and behaviors, leading to ‘practices that systemically form the objects of which they speak.’ In his speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Žižek mentioned an article in Der Spiegel regarding the BDS movement entitled “Wer Antisemit ist, bestimmt der Jude und nicht der potenzielle Antisemit” or “Who is an antisemite is determined by the Jew and not the potential antisemite.” The piece, an interview between Michael Naumann, the first Minister of State for Culture in the 1999-2000 Red-Green government, and then co-editor of “Zeit” magazine, a largely centrist/liberal publication, appears on its face to be a prudent statement. It is commonly invoked in various civil rights struggles. However, as Žižek pointed out, a curious contradiction emerges where seemingly the same logic is not afforded to Palestinians and their allies when defining their own oppression.

At the time, this issue was partly spurred by the Palestinian author Adania Shalibi being barred from receiving an award at the Frankfurt Book Fair following a high-profile resignation from the jury of Litprom, the German literary association, which cited the conflict as the principal reason. However, Shalibi’s book ‘A Minor Detail’ had previously been criticized by the left-leaning publication Die Tageszeitung for portraying ‘the state of Israel as a murderous killing machine,’ a normative statement given the book is at least partially based on real-life events that occurred in 1949.

More recently, the Jewish artist Candice Breitz was informed that her exhibition detailing the experiences of sex workers in Cape Town was being pulled, despite her condemnation of Hamas. This was allegedly due to her unwillingness to draw a parallel between the attacks perpetrated on October 7 and the Holocaust, in contrast to her understanding of the Shoah as a singular historical event. In an interview with The Guardian, Breitz stated, “The notion that every progressive Jew in this country can be assumed to be harboring antisemitism unless they publicly denounce Hamas is patently ridiculous. One is apparently guilty by default, until one declares oneself innocent. This reminds me of the post-9/11 climate, in which Arabs, Muslims, and Sikhs who did not publicly condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were automatically suspected of condoning al-Qaida.”

Around the halfway point of his speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Žižek discussed Yuval Harari’s criticism of the deeply contentious issue at the heart of Israeli democracy: the “judicial reforms” that provoked a widespread backlash due to attempts to give politicians greater control over the supreme court. While not inherently wrong, as pointed out by Ryan Cooper in Prospect Magazine, these moves appeared aimed at placing the office of the president and recent scandals above the law, with potentially dire consequences for many segments of Israeli and Palestinian society.

Žižek went on to say, “perhaps the first thing to do is to clearly recognize the massive despair and confusion that can give birth to acts of evil. In short, there will be no peace in the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian question.” Curiously, similar sentiments were expressed in multiple Israeli outlets, including the Times of Israel, which linked recent governments’ efforts to prop up the Hamas administration and tolerate its growing militarization to moves away from Palestinian statehood by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Žižek outlined what he believed to be a state of affairs where Palestinians appeared to be partly “denied a vision of a country in which they could play a positive role.” Instead of viewing a solution to the crisis as a compromise between understanding the anti-Jewish violence of Hamas’s fundamentalism and the violence of a nation born from one of the most inhumane industrialized mass killings of the modern age, he suggested “going to the end in both directions,” meaning “defending Palestinian rights as well as fighting antisemitism.” Some commentators rebuked him for comparing the terror of Hamas to the current actions taken by Israel. However, Žižek’s comments were specifically against this kind of contextuality. He noted that even this was deemed unconscionable, pointing to the current problem: these restrictions on condemnation and dialogue are creating a discourse that, while appearing to uphold open conversation, excludes specific understandings of the context in which the October 7 attacks occurred, potentially preventing their recurrence. We should not forget that when the walls of Gaza were breached, it was not only Hamas militants who entered Israel that day.

This is not to excuse the attacks nor to unreservedly condemn any response but to state that these prohibitions on discussion prevent deeper understanding of the roots of the conflict, hindering any real resolution. Curiously, a similar sentiment, though less focused on directly critiquing the institutions involved, was expressed by Robert Peston, a figurehead of British centrist liberalism. He shared an article from The Harvard Crimson by Jewish community leader Bernie Steinberg, cautiously suggesting that unscrupulous deployment of the charge of antisemitism could, in some cases, align with what he described as an “incipient McCarthyism.” The end result paradoxically may be a rise in the very phenomenon—conspiratorial far-right extremism—that these measures are presumably intended to suppress.

Addendum

At the time of writing, the conflict has reportedly killed over 20,000 Palestinians, three-quarters of whom are said to be women and children, with many more trapped under rubble. In an interview with The Independent, James Denslow from Save the Children stated that the speed and intensity of the killings are “record-breaking.” He added, “This is the highest number of children killed and maimed in one conflict since 2006 when United Nations records began,” and “This is also 21 times higher than the number of children killed and maimed in Ukraine last year,” and almost 20 times the number of Israelis killed during the initial attack perpetrated by Hamas. On the Israeli side, 507 soldiers have reportedly been killed since the conflict began, with the Israeli outlet Yediot Ahronoth reporting around 12,500 soldiers left disabled as a result of recent fighting.

Recent moves by Houthi rebels in Yemen to block supplies into Israel have threatened to drastically expand the conflict, with U.S. reprisals killing at least twenty in the Red Sea following the rebels’ attack on Maersk shipping vessels. Meanwhile, pressure continues to grow both internally and externally for the Netanyahu administration to lessen civilian casualties and seek an end to the conflict. Early signs of a ‘lower intensity’ strategy being pursued by the IDF reportedly require fewer munitions, troops, and strikes, but still indicate a belligerence aimed at sustaining the conflict rather than an immediate change.

On October 20, a less remarked-upon article by Vox magazine entitled ‘What Israel Should Do Now’ was published. Written by Zach Beauchamp, it brought together several retired Israeli officers, Palestinian intellectuals, counter-terrorism experts, and scholars of the ethics of law and war. Amid the many ideas discussed, one stood out: trying to crush groups like Hamas with pure military force rarely works, and where it arguably has, it required almost unthinkable levels of sustained violence. This has already been noted by the Israeli far-right, which has repeatedly called for the resettlement of Gaza’s population in other parts of the world or for their wholesale destruction. While this attitude is clearly unconscionable, it has perhaps served as part of the justification for what seems like a strategy of perpetual war. A chance reading of Emma Goldman’s infamous anti-war article ‘Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter’ at a local anarchist meeting touched on many of the issues with trying to maintain a state constantly engaged in active repression—ongoing militarization being linked to anti-democratic rule, rising nationalism, and the shoring up of class privilege through lucrative military contracts. Many of these steps are already underway, with 360,000 reservists reportedly called up to serve during the current offensive, opposition to the anti-democratic judicial reforms largely forgotten, and a reported $14.3 billion in aid recently cited in the latest U.S. national security budget.

A central question underlying this gnawing discomfort is whether complexity, empathy, history, and nuance can be retained amid the drive for simplicity, atemporality, and insensitivity.

Notes

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