The other day Ibn Tufayl reported on a debate at Harvard Law School over the two-state solution or the one-state solution between eminent profs, Noah Feldman and Duncan Kennedy. A student who attended the debate and wishes to remain anonymous fills in:
During the Q & A, Kennedy stated what he wanted: above all, above talk of one-state versus two-state solutions, he wanted a sustained American Boycott and Divestment movement. Feldman responded with a claim that the BD(S) movement would be counter-productive, targeting and marginalizing those within Israel proper–e.g., Israeli intelligentsia–most sympathetic to Kennedy’s own claims.
Kennedy responded that the BD[S] movement was meant to sway American leaders first and foremost. And then for the first time he invoked the apartheid analogy, and alluded to a few specific ways in which apartheid is the case in Israel and Palestine today.
Feldman bristled. Almost jumping in on Kennedy, he responded with something like the following: he very much doesn’t like this analogy for the following reason, it shifts the attention from the facts on the ground and realistic policymaking to vaguer theoretical questions about the legitimacy of applying certain analogies, indeed, of applying analogies at all. The idealists– and this was one of his themes, the uselessness of bringing ideas of “pure justice” to the negotiations– who invoke the apartheid analogy aim to distract those of us interested in moving-on and installing peace as immediately as possible. In other words, in Feldman’s opinion, those who invoke “apartheid” vis-a-vis the issue are not really taking the issue seriously; the analogy is for those who “do not want to get anything done.”
My correspondent, who found Feldman to be “sly,” says that this is a rough re-creation of the gist of the disagreement, and anyone should feel free to correct him, including of course the principals.
