Zizek in Print

Slavoj Žižek, "We should not have to choose between Hamas terrorists and Israeli hardliners"

-Our choice should be between fundamentalists and all who believe in peaceful coexistence

-The way forward is to fight Hamas while also reaching out to negotiate with Palestinians who are not anti-Semites

The barbarism unleashed on Israel should be condemned unconditionally. The massacres, rapes and abductions of civilians from villages, kibbutzim and a music festival were a pogrom, confirming Hamas’ goal to destroy the state of Israel and all Israelis. That said, the situation demands historical context – not as any kind of justification, but for the sake of clarity about the way forward.

A first consideration is the despair that characterises the lives of most Palestinians. Recall the spate of suicidal attacks on the streets of Jerusalem around a decade ago. An ordinary Palestinian would approach a Jew, pull out a knife, and stab the victim, knowing full well he or she would be immediately killed. There was no message in these “terrorist” acts, no shouts of “Free Palestine!” Nor was there any larger organisation behind them. They were individual acts of violent despair.

Things took a turn for the worse when Benjamin Netanyahu formed a new government by allying with far-right, pro-settler parties that advocate annexation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

The new minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, believes: “My right, my wife’s right, my kids’ right to move around freely [in the West Bank] is more important than that of the Arabs.” This is a man previously barred from army service, owing to his affiliations with extremist anti-Arab parties designated as terrorist organisations following the 1994 massacre of Arabs in Hebron.

After long boasting of its status as the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel is morphing into a theocratic state. The government’s list of “basic principles” states: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.” It is absurd to reproach Palestinians for refusing to negotiate with Israel. The government’s official programme takes negotiations off the table.

It is not hard to see that both sides – Hamas and Israel’s ultranationalist government – are against any peace option. Each is committed to a struggle to the death.

The Hamas attack comes at a time of great conflict within Israel, owing to the Netanyahu government’s efforts to gut the judiciary.

The country is split between nationalist fundamentalists who want to abolish democratic institutions and a civil-society movement aware of this threat but reluctant to ally with more moderate Palestinians. Now, the looming constitutional crisis has been put on hold, and a government of national unity announced.

Must there be an external foe to achieve peace and unity at home? How does one break this vicious cycle?

The way forward, notes former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, is to fight Hamas while also reaching out to Palestinians who are not anti-Semites and are ready to negotiate. Contrary to what Israeli ultranationalists claim, these people exist.

On September 10, more than 100 Palestinian academics and intellectuals signed an open letter “adamantly reject[ing] any attempt to diminish, misrepresent or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity or historical revisionism vis-à-vis the Holocaust”.

Once we recognise that not all Israelis are fanatical nationalists, and that not all Palestinians are fanatical anti-Semites, we can start to acknowledge the despair and confusion that give rise to outbursts of evil. We can start to see the strange similarity between the Palestinians, whose homeland is denied to them, and the Jews, whose history is marked by the same experience.

A similar homology applies to the term “terrorism”. During the Jewish struggle against the British military in Palestine, “terrorist” had a positive connotation. In the late 1940s, American newspapers ran an advertisement with the headline, “Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine”, wherein Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote, “My Brave Friends. You may not believe what I write you, for there is a lot of fertiliser in the air at the moment. The Jews of America are for you.”

Beneath all the polemics today about who counts as a terrorist, there is the mass of Palestinian Arabs living in limbo for decades. Who are they, and which land is theirs? Are they inhabitants of “occupied territory”, the “West Bank”, “Judea and Samaria” or … the state of Palestine, recognised by 139 countries and a UN non-member observer state since 2012?

Yet Israel, which controls the territory, treats Palestinians as temporary settlers, an obstacle to the establishment of a “normal” state with Jews as the only true natives. Israel never reached out its hand to them, offering some hope or positively outlining their role in the state they live in.

Hamas and Israeli hardliners are two sides of the same coin. The choice is not one hardline faction or the other; it is between fundamentalists and all who still believe in peaceful coexistence. There can be no compromise between Palestinian and Israeli extremists, who must be combated with a full-throated defence of Palestinian rights that goes hand in hand with an unwavering commitment to the fight against antisemitism.

Utopian as this may sound, the two struggles are of a piece. We can and should unconditionally support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks. But we also must unconditionally sympathise with the truly desperate and hopeless conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories. Those who think there is a “contradiction” in this position are the ones effectively blocking a solution.