When Western philosophers deny Palestinians’ right to politics

This open letter was written by a Palestinian cultural critic, writer, and artist who has chosen to publish anonymously for fear of reprisal by the Israeli regime, which has subjected Palestinian voices to a brutal crackdown and arrest campaign since October 7.

A letter to the most dangerous philosopher in the West

Dear Slavoj Žižek,

You published an article claiming that “The Real Dividing Line in Israel-Palestine” is between the “fundamentalists” on both sides and all of those who actually seek “peace,” by which you call for a position that doesn’t choose between one “hardline faction” or the other. Despite equating both in principle, you begin and end your article with a straight hardline condemnation of Hamas’s conduct, yet never come to explicitly condemn the other “hardline faction” for the same exact conduct. This conduct has been carried out slowly for the past 75 years. I begin my response with a fundamental question: who do you speak as? 

Are you speaking as a strictly Western philosopher committed to a Western project, infamous for its centuries-long tradition of “morally overlooked” colonialism that has yet to see an end, to the worn-out tale of the civil and the barbaric? If so, then I accept your position and I have nothing to deliver to you. You’ve chosen your side. But if you speak as a philosopher, as a bearer of truth, I would expect the minimum amount of critical thought in your position — first and foremost toward the political canon on which you base your evaluation, insight, and call for action. I would expect nothing less from the star of the “critique of ideology,” who is undoubtedly well-versed in detecting the extensive brutal authority of ideological manipulation — especially when most common Western geopolitical perspectives about the Middle East, be it through media or historical narratives, have often proved to be altered by such manipulations. 

Your key insight on ideology was that it functions as such; we don’t believe in it, nonetheless we do it, illustrated by that climatic moment in the movie They Live, where beneath all these bold, sensationalized headlines there lies a deeper, more disturbing shaping of the subject. We can see this in the headlines trumpeted throughout Western media’s virtual and physical billboards following October 7 and its alleged atrocities — such as rape, beheaded babies, and other massacres so unspeakable that they affected many readers on a personal humane level. 

These actions come off as deeply impolitic when attributed to a political faction carrying out a war for justice and liberation — that is, of course, if one is adequately equipped or morally committed to honor that it is, indeed, a resistance faction, even if as a mild passing consideration. 

Some of these brutal claims, like the “beheaded babies,” were refuted by many, including the Israelis and U.S. President Biden himself. All the while, other claims were at least disputed, and many were repudiated by testimonies of released Israeli hostages. Some of them boldly testified that the people attending the music festival, for example, were not executed by Hamas, but were rather killed during fire exchange, suggesting that it was by Israeli fire which didn’t seem to mind the presence of civilians in its path. With such contradictions and all the media’s shadow-banning, true facts of the events of that day remain unknown.

Yet there’s a stark insistence on equating a Palestinian resistance faction born in the obvious context of military occupation to ISIS, despite their conflicting histories and varying goals and ideologies. This attempt, dating back to the 2014 war on Gaza, was played out by Netanyahu for his right-wing party’s electoral campaign and was already rejected by Israeli scholars as a distortion of reality that was meant to evade negotiations. From a critical position, the revival of this claim in today’s political climate presents itself as another abuse of a growing atmosphere of Islamophobia in the West to secure unconditional support for Israel. 

This premise raises doubts not only about the integrity of the media but also about the entire Western political apparatus, as it relies on a one-sided labeling or dismissal of resistance factions as pure terrorism in the name of Islam while insisting on a rival narrative of politically justified “self-defense.” If these doubts are to be considered — which they should — political stances, histories, and contexts significantly matter. If you dismiss Hamas (and other resistance factions) as terrorism, don’t you risk dismissing an entire history of armed Palestinian struggle against a fully armed occupation? 

You begin with a claim for a way forward by means of historical context, yet your historical reflection seems to expel the part in which Palestinian resistance is nationally formed and shaped. To dismiss resistance as terrorism is to politically decontextualize it, and to deprive Palestinians of the basic right of political organization and aspiration. This renders the Palestinian subject as nihilistic and leads to misreadings such as the case you make for the 2015 Jerusalem Intifada — referred to as the “Knife Intifada” — as a violent expression of despair. Such a sociological approach to politics requires serious augmentation. 

In “lone wolf” cases of suicide attacks, there might be a small number of attackers whose drive was economic or personal despair, but most do, in fact, dedicate their actions to the general resistance project, usually in the form of a written will. In many cases, reflecting upon these individuals’ earlier social media posts, it is only after their martyrdom that their political intentions begin to make sense. Such local attempts recognize the small time window for action in these initiatives. They consider very well the nature of the Israeli police, soldiers, security forces, and even the heavily armed population, particularly in Jerusalem — these forces are always alert and ready for violence — both to inflict and receive. In such guerilla confrontations, even a cry of “Free Palestine” would jeopardize their “mission.” This is basic contextual knowledge.

“Resistance is a continual viable endeavor.” This phrase recurs on graffiti walls all over Palestinian towns and cities and on virtual walls on social media platforms. It embodies a philosophy coined by Palestine’s most famous intellectual martyr, Basil al-Araj, [1] one that evolved into a theory of resistance in Palestinian national culture. It encompasses the belief that an act of resistance will always pay off in the fulfillment of national goals, if not in your own lifetime, then in the lives of future generations. There is no “death for the sake of death,” no “violence” devoid of a political chant. It is all an investment of the single life in a free collective life — A dissolution into the people. 

This dogma emphasizes the sanctity of the individual’s collective role, a crucial stance in the response to the systematic destruction of the Palestinian ability for self-organization. Sociologist Johan Galtung coined the term “sociocide” to describe what Israel practices on Palestinians, which involves the destruction of their ability for self-creation and recreation as a community. This lays the groundwork for understanding how the religious notion of “Jihad,” or “sacred war,” became relevant, even imperative, to the Palestinian national cause. 

The ubiquitous need for a stronger bond to the struggle for liberation, something materially indestructible like faith, gave rise to “Jihad” as a form of struggle. Faith imbues individuals with the resilience to uphold a collective consensus even in political isolation, and Jihad, in its basic linguistic meaning, is “exerting one’s utmost power and efforts.”  [2] Looking back at the historical context, both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestine’s prominent Islamic resistance factions, were formed following the failure of Arab nationalism and the defeat of 1967. For Palestinians, religion has been and continues to be a steadfast commitment to their cause, a sacred covenant toward liberation.

This may elude Western observers. As journalist Omar Al-Agha points out in an article for Al Jazeera, the reason behind the inability of Israel and the West to predict Hamas is rooted in their struggle to fully comprehend the intentions of a political “dogmatic fighter,” which constitutes the core component of the Palestinian resistance. This struggle, as he attributes, stems from a historical shift in Western thought. This shift is characterized by the belief that Western society embodies the pinnacle of human development and marks a departure from theological considerations. Al-Agha even differentiates between dogmatic fighters and ideological fighters familiar to the Western observer as “communist fighters.” Their key difference is the component of faith and the belief in a reward in the form of an afterlife. 

However, I further complicate this diagnosis by examining the synthesis of this dogma with an “organized structure,” such as a national resistance project, which signifies the formation of a political group. This synthesis leads to an evolution in the individual’s perception of the reward — the form of the reward itself doesn’t change as it pertains to an afterlife, but the belief in the reward undergoes a transformation. Initially grounded in the concept of a rewarded personal afterlife, this belief evolves to encompass a broader national dimension, a collective life initiated by the fighter’s death. This “afterlife” becomes the political-earthly-reward, an opportunity for a better collective existence. 

This sociology can also be detected in the formation and activation of “the joint room for Palestinian resistance factions,” where leftist and communist factions join hand-in-hand with Islamic factions, suspending differences (even among Islamists) to be solved politically following liberation. Moreover, an anthropological analysis of the Palestinian and Arab “audience” of the resistance reveals a diverse spectrum of individuals, encompassing liberals, Christians, atheists, communists, queers, and feminists — a composition reminiscent of a “secular” political crowd.  

These and many other analyses debunk narratives of “fundamentalism” and “antisemitism” viciously maintained by the West regarding any Palestinian attempt at liberation. It is no secret that the Western world has become a hostile and even violent environment for freedom of expression under the false pretense of antisemitism. These images of violence unleashed on pro-Palestinian protestors by the state apparatus in Europe are too similar to those of Israeli forces on Palestinian protestors. As you say, professor Žižek, violence signifies the failure of paternal authority, which opens a question: did the West ever want Palestinians to reach out politically, or is the “fundamentalism” narrative an attempt to cancel autonomous Palestinian aspirations as pure hatred and the annihilation of the Jewish people? 

Even Israeli voices have considered the unconditional release of captives and the humane treatment they received from Hamas personnel, as they testified to the press, as an indication that peace talks, or even political talks with Hamas, are possible. Yet what would that mean for the “state of Israel?” And why must any discussion of “peace” be preceded by a sole condemnation of Hamas, and not the axiomatic unconditional condemnation of life by violence? When international agreements legitimize resistance, why must the legitimacy of Palestinian political resistance be singled out, even by the most critical voices of the West? 

Perhaps these are the real dividing lines in Israel-Palestine, professor Žižek: the Western-centric narratives that actively keep Palestinian political initiatives outside the sphere of the political. Perhaps this shift in address is the key to a pragmatic elimination of violence in this territory. Ultimately, every Palestinian I know, the people who suffered too long, are principally opposed to violence against any innocent life.

Notes

[1] Basil al-Araj. I Have Found My Answers: Thus Spoke the Martyr Basil al-Araj (2018).

[2] Edward Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, vol. 1 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1865), 473.