September 2, 2012

It is untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating. Such charges seek to demonize the person who is articulating a critical point of view and so disqualify the viewpoint in advance. It is a silencing tactic: this person is unspeakable, and whatever they speak is to be dismissed in advance or twisted in such a way that it negates the validity of the act of speech. The charge refuses to consider the view, debate its validity, consider its forms of evidence, and derive a sound conclusion on the basis of listening to reason. The charge is not only an attack on persons who hold views that some find objectionable, but it is an attack on reasonable exchange, on the very possibility of listening and speaking in a context where one might actually consider what another has to say.

Judith Butler responding to an attack published in the Jerusalem Post on her award of the Adorno Prize; more here.

11:28am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbySdZMuu
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Judith Butler Israel anti-Semitic silencing speech freedom free reason Jewish state Palistine Palistinian BDS boycott divestment sanctions 
January 17, 2012

From Israel’s ‘national suicide’  by Mark LeVine

Simply put, the threat of a Palestinian “demographic bomb”, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has called it, is little more than a contrivance to justify the further exclusion of Palestinians from full citizenship rights within Israel.

But accurate or not, the average Jewish Israeli is likely not spending much time parsing the logic or statistical foundations of the High Court’s decision - because they understand the deeper meaning of the argument underlying the decision’s title: to extend full human rights to Palestinians will lead inevitably to the “national” - that is, political - suicide of Israel as a Jewish state.

Why?

Because to recognise that Jews and Palestinians can become one in the most intimate way possible - through love, sex and children - is to open Israeli Jews to the possibility that there is nothing essential that separates them from Palestinians, that as human beings with deep roots in this land, Palestinians have the same human rights as Israeli (or diaspora) Jews.

9:32am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyEw5oAj
(Notes: 13)
  
Filed under: Palestinian demographic bomb Netanyahu Israel Jewish state nation political suicide sex love children human rights human 
November 4, 2011

In 1927 Bergson wrote his last will, in which he says that he would receive baptism in the Catholic Church were it not for the growth of anti-Semitism: he wants to remain among the persecuted. At the same time he formally forbids the publication of any of his manuscripts, letters, or notes.

On 3 January 1941 Bergson died in occupied Paris from pneumonia contracted after standing for many hours in a queue to be registered as a Jew.

From Laszek Kolakowski’s Bergson

11:59am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyBUrJcA
(Notes: 8)
  
Filed under: Henri Bergson Laszek Kolakowski philsophy World War II war Jew Jewish Catholic Church baptism persecuted anti-Semitism occupied Paris Paris