Americans often wonder what the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is about, and why they should be obliged to care about it. They can’t get a clear sense of what it’s about from the mass media, but lack the time, energy, expertise, or inclination to wade through history books or specialty websites to figure it out from scratch. What to do? The situation seems one designed to induce apathy about the issue. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Israel
My Name is Ahmad
So I’m taking the 4 pm bus into Jerusalem from Abu Dis. There are maybe ten people on a bus that probably fits 70 or 80. We’re approaching the Ma’ale Adumim checkpoint, and I’m thinking, “This is going to be a breeze.”
We stop at the checkpoint. There’s yelling. Nothing happens. There’s more yelling–in Hebrew. I have no idea what’s being said.
The younger people get off the bus and stand in the “cage.” The cage is my name for a steel enclosure a few yards away that looks a lot like…a cage. In the past, I’ve sometimes voluntarily gone into the cage, but then, sometimes I haven’t. I’ve taken this bus dozens of times before and never been asked to stand in it, so I decide not to do so today. I just don’t feel like getting up. I’m comfy. It’s hot out. It’s my Rosa Parks moment. Continue reading
The Circumstances of Injustice: Ben Ehrenreich on Tel Aviv and Hebron
I’ve said before that American reporting on violence in Israel and Palestine involves a single predictable pattern: ignoring the moral significance or experiential nature of the occupation, such reporting fixates pointillistically on discrete, acontextual acts of violence by Palestinians, treating such acts without argument as initiatory violence or aggression “against civilians”; it then treats the Israeli response to such acts as retaliatory force, only raising questions (at best) about the “proportional” or “disproportional” nature of Israel’s resort to force. Continue reading
The Israeli Occupation: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It
Just a reminder for those in the area: I’ll be giving a talk on “The Israeli Occupation and Settlement Enterprise: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It,” this Saturday, May 21, at 11 am at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, located at 50 Cherry Hill Rd, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540. (I incorrectly described the start time in a previous post as 1 pm, but that’s when it ends.) The talk is sponsored by String of Pearls Reconstructionist Jewish Congregation of Princeton, and is open to the public. Thanks to Hilary Persky, String of Pearls’s Secretary, for the invitation. The talk takes place immediately after the Congregation’s Saturday morning sabbath celebration. Continue reading
Another Day, Another Assault: Everyday Life in Hebron
I’m practically counting the days until I can get on a plane and head back into stuff like this. It sure beats grading! Of course, the problem is that I’ll have a lot of grading to do, too. I just hope my pedagogical responsibilities don’t interfere with my tourist activities (NB: tourist, not terrorist).
Yes, don’t worry: I’ll have a camera, so I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures, maybe even do some filming! A PoT exclusive: you can watch me get beat up by young men who really ought to be doing something more productive with their free time than assaulting people for fun. Instead of doing that, why not register for my political philosophy seminar at Al Quds U? You have permission to audit the class if you behave. But leave the dog at home.
Moral of the story: the Israel Defense Forces aren’t occupying Hebron’s H2 zone to protect wogs. The’re in Hebron to protect thugs. Just so that we’re clear on that. Continue reading
Felician Conference Postscripts (1): Blake Wilson on Private Property
This is the first in a series of posts on the Tenth Annual Felician Institute Conference on Ethics and Public Affairs. For the introduction to the series, read this.
The first of the sessions I attended (and chaired) was one on (private) property rights, featuring two papers–one an essentially Hegelian justification of private property rights by Blake Wilson (SUNY Binghamton), the other a Lacanian account of a dilemma about private property by Chris Ketcham (University of Houston, Downtown). I’m going to discuss Blake’s paper rather than Chris’s, in part because Chris’s paper was aporetic rather than thesis-driven, and also because the aporia in Chris’s paper arises from the idiosyncrasies of Lacan’s conception of our obligations to others, a topic I’m not qualified to discuss, having read very little Lacan.
Political Philosophy Amidst the Ruins
Well, spring term is winding down at Felician U., so I guess I’m (riot)-gearing up for summer term at Al Quds U. Let’s hear it for the beneficence of the Israeli “Civil Administration” (which is what the military occupation calls itself), its undying respect for “purity of arms,” and the pinpoint accuracy of its “civilian” strikes (against noncombatant civilian targets). Learning Objective 1: try not to get tear gassed, shot, or arrested.
Philip Weiss’s “The World the Settlers Made”
When I was in Palestine last summer, I mentioned that I was going to be spending some time visiting Jewish settlements in the West Bank. I ended up doing less of that than I had planned. And though I did some, I never got the chance to write about it here. Since then, I’ve just let the experience fester in some dark corner of my brain, watching the “third intifada” from afar with that experience in mind. Part of the reason for failing to write was, as usual, lack of time. But part of it was that I met people out there who knew more than me, had spent more time there than me, and were likely to do a better job than me at saying what needed to be said.
Contingency, Irony, and Brutality: Richard Rorty in Israel
As the years went by, and we both left Princeton, I am afraid the incipient intellectual and emotional gulf between us got wider, especially after what I saw as Dick’s turn toward ultra-nationalism with the publication of Constructing Our Country. Dick had always been and remained to the end of his life a “liberal” (in the American sense, i.e., a “Social Democrat”): a defender of civil liberties and of the extension of a full set of civic rights to all, a vocal supporter of the labor unions and of programs to improve the conditions of the poor, an enemy of racism, cruelty, arbitrary authority, and social exclusion.
Problems from Locke
I can’t be the first one to have spotted this, but I’m teaching Locke tomorrow, and on my nth reading of Second Treatise chapter 5, it suddenly occurs to me that the assumption commonly attributed to Locke as the starting point of his discussion of property in the Second Treatise is much more puzzling than I had previously realized. Locke says that revelation makes clear that God gave the world “to mankind in common.” But how can that be, if God gave the Promised Land to Israel?
Policy of Truth 