Nate,
As you have probably gathered from my previous comments on the list, I
firmly stand with you in the opposition to the occupation. However, I think
we must be careful not to accept the argumentative structure of moral
equivalence.
The reason the occupation and the war against the Palestinian population is
wrong is not because the Israeli army has killed MORE Palestinians than
Palestinian suicide bombers have killed Israelis, but because of the
material and structural domination Israel exerts on the Palestinians in the
reproduction of an apartheid system in the name of "security".
Call me an old-fashioned Augustinian, but I think it is important to
distinguish between resistance against the domination (including violence
directed towards combattants) and the targeting of the civilian population
within the pre-1967 Israeli borders. In other words, the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants is crucial. My point is that suicide attacks
are wrong, both for ethical and political reasons. From an ethical
perspective, they cannot be justified by a quantitative comparison of the
number of Palestinian killed, nor by attempting to compare the historic
injustices suffered both by the Jews and the Palestinians. I think Lyotard's
Differend can teach us quite a bit about this. On a political level, you
might want to ask why Sharon's offensive has not targeted the Hamas and the
Islamic Jihad, but has almost exclusively focused on the Palestinian
Authority and Arafat's Fatah movement. Don't the suicide bombers function as
Sharon's allies in his strategy to build the Greater "Eretz Israel" from the
Sea to the Jordan?
In any case, it seems that the dead body has acquired a symbolic
significance in this conflict that goes perhaps beyond what we know from
previous wars. The heroization and fetishization of the dead as the martyr
is perhaps a strategy of resistance to the Israeli politics of controlling
bare life. Positing "bare death" as suicide against the biopolitical control
may be an attempt to inverse the power relations at play through an inversal
of the value parameters upon which the latters are based. However this
inversion still is caught in a dialectical movement, since it rests on a
dichotomy of value of life vs. value of death. The real question, it seems
to me, is what kinds of resistance can base themselves not on a dialectical
inversion, but on the power of life itself.
Yves
On 16/04/02 18:28, "Nathaniel Roberts" wrote:
> Dear Jonas,
>
> Thank you for your concern.
>
> According to B'Tselem, 897 of the Palestinians killed from September 29,
> 2000 though March 30, 2002 have been civilians, including 192 children.
> There were over 108 assassinations (a war crime according to the Hague
> Convention -1907) [source: http://www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org,
> factsheet]. This does not include most of those killed in the recent
> assault, where the numbers have yet to be counted. I will forward two more
> pieces about this most recent assault, which make a strong case that
> massive war crimes have been committed by the Israelis.
>
> -Nate
>
>
> At 03:31 PM 4/16/2002 +0200, you wrote:
>
>
>> Nathaniel Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Jivko,
>>>
>>> Yes, Israelis have been killed by suicide bombers. But do you have any
>>> idea of how many MORE Palestinian civilians have been killed by the
>>> Israelis under the occupation?
>>>
>>
>> Im very courious, is there any any exact numbers on how many "MORE" the
>> Israelis have killed?
>>
>> Best Regards
>>
>> Jonas Vestlund
>
As you have probably gathered from my previous comments on the list, I
firmly stand with you in the opposition to the occupation. However, I think
we must be careful not to accept the argumentative structure of moral
equivalence.
The reason the occupation and the war against the Palestinian population is
wrong is not because the Israeli army has killed MORE Palestinians than
Palestinian suicide bombers have killed Israelis, but because of the
material and structural domination Israel exerts on the Palestinians in the
reproduction of an apartheid system in the name of "security".
Call me an old-fashioned Augustinian, but I think it is important to
distinguish between resistance against the domination (including violence
directed towards combattants) and the targeting of the civilian population
within the pre-1967 Israeli borders. In other words, the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants is crucial. My point is that suicide attacks
are wrong, both for ethical and political reasons. From an ethical
perspective, they cannot be justified by a quantitative comparison of the
number of Palestinian killed, nor by attempting to compare the historic
injustices suffered both by the Jews and the Palestinians. I think Lyotard's
Differend can teach us quite a bit about this. On a political level, you
might want to ask why Sharon's offensive has not targeted the Hamas and the
Islamic Jihad, but has almost exclusively focused on the Palestinian
Authority and Arafat's Fatah movement. Don't the suicide bombers function as
Sharon's allies in his strategy to build the Greater "Eretz Israel" from the
Sea to the Jordan?
In any case, it seems that the dead body has acquired a symbolic
significance in this conflict that goes perhaps beyond what we know from
previous wars. The heroization and fetishization of the dead as the martyr
is perhaps a strategy of resistance to the Israeli politics of controlling
bare life. Positing "bare death" as suicide against the biopolitical control
may be an attempt to inverse the power relations at play through an inversal
of the value parameters upon which the latters are based. However this
inversion still is caught in a dialectical movement, since it rests on a
dichotomy of value of life vs. value of death. The real question, it seems
to me, is what kinds of resistance can base themselves not on a dialectical
inversion, but on the power of life itself.
Yves
On 16/04/02 18:28, "Nathaniel Roberts" wrote:
> Dear Jonas,
>
> Thank you for your concern.
>
> According to B'Tselem, 897 of the Palestinians killed from September 29,
> 2000 though March 30, 2002 have been civilians, including 192 children.
> There were over 108 assassinations (a war crime according to the Hague
> Convention -1907) [source: http://www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org,
> factsheet]. This does not include most of those killed in the recent
> assault, where the numbers have yet to be counted. I will forward two more
> pieces about this most recent assault, which make a strong case that
> massive war crimes have been committed by the Israelis.
>
> -Nate
>
>
> At 03:31 PM 4/16/2002 +0200, you wrote:
>
>
>> Nathaniel Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Jivko,
>>>
>>> Yes, Israelis have been killed by suicide bombers. But do you have any
>>> idea of how many MORE Palestinian civilians have been killed by the
>>> Israelis under the occupation?
>>>
>>
>> Im very courious, is there any any exact numbers on how many "MORE" the
>> Israelis have killed?
>>
>> Best Regards
>>
>> Jonas Vestlund
>