Slavoj Žižek on Israel and Palestine (17.10.2023, Frankfurter Buchmesse)
Talk · sergeausrio ·
2023-10-07 · 0:26:45 · 2,847 words
geopolitics-warideologyfascism-populismrace-antisemitismrevolution-violenceliberalism-political-correctnessethicshistorycinema-art-culture
Opening speech at the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair (Buchmesse) delivered shortly after the October 7 Hamas attack. Žižek unconditionally condemns the Hamas attack and affirms Israel's right to self-defense, but polemically insists on the right to analyze the broader background: the decades-long Palestinian limbo, settlement expansion, the collapse of the two-state framework, and the rise of Israeli nationalist fundamentalism. He develops the notion of 'antisemitic Zionism' (European right-wing support for Israel as a way to expel Jews), defends Adania Shibli against cancellation, and argues that literature is the privileged medium for grasping the ambiguity of the predicament.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 15
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Prejudice and violence against Jews; invoked here both to condemn Hamas and to insist that fighting antisemitism must not silence analysis of Palestinian suffering.
The framework of land-for-peace and a Palestinian state alongside Israel; invoked as having vanished into thin air under the current government.
The constitutional form of Israel threatened, per Harari, by the Netanyahu government's judicial coup before the Hamas attack.
The overcoming of internal political division; reframed as tragic when it is achieved only by mobilization against an external enemy.
A middle measure between two extremes; rejected here as the 'filthy' sense of compromise, both sides must be pursued to the end, not split the difference.
His phrasing for the mechanism by which 'diversity and inclusion' nonetheless requires the exclusion of those who don't fit.
The movement for a Jewish state; invoked critically in its current Israeli-government form and paradoxically in the 'antisemitic Zionism' of the European right.
as “antisemitic Zionism”
His coinage for the phenomenon where antisemites support Zionism precisely so that Jews are sent away to Israel rather than kept at home.
Koestler's inversion he embraces: victimhood does not immunize a people from committing oppression, with tragic consequences for both sides.
The dismissal deployed against Jews who criticize Israel; rejected as 'the ultimate obscenity' when applied to Marek Edelman.
Mass expulsion/erasure of a people; linked by him to poetry as its ideological accompaniment.
as “no ethnic cleansing without poetry”
His paradoxical formulation: ethnic cleansing is always accompanied and legitimated by poetic/ideological elevation (Rwanda, Karadžić, Mao).
Punishing a whole population for the acts of some; applied to the ongoing punishment of millions in Gaza.
The practice of excluding voices that don't fit a notion of inclusion; analyzed as structurally self-contradictory.
Implicit in his refusal to compare 'as an act of violence' while still insisting on structural comparison of the two positions.
Stories he reaches for 4
Heydrich wrote that Jews are a wonderful nation worth collaborating with, but not in Germany, they should go over there, cited as evidence for 'antisemitic Zionism'.
“Israelis are a wonderful nation, we are ready to collaborate with them, but not here in Germany, they should go over there.”
The Norwegian mass murderer was, Žižek notes, totally antisemitic at home yet fully supportive of Israel, another instance of antisemitic Zionism.
“Breivik... totally antisemitic here, but there we fully support it.”
Rwanda's local poet, Radovan Karadžić the respected poet, Mao Zedong, all cited to show that mass atrocity is accompanied by poetic-ideological elevation.
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry. Think of Rwanda... Think about Ex-Yugoslav war: Radovan Karadžić, a quite respected poet.”
A young kibbutz member chasing Palestinian plunderers was seized and his eyes plucked out; Dayan's funeral eulogy refused to blame the murderers, asking what claim we have against their hatred given that we transformed their villages into our inheritance.
“Let us not cast blame on the murderers today. What claim do we have against their mortal hatred of us?”
Works invoked 6
Mein Kampf book
Read by Žižek to refute the cliché that hearing the enemy's story breeds understanding; it made him love Nazism less.
Her award ceremony's postponement is defended as scandalous; implicitly a Palestinian literary work embodying the ambiguity literature should render.
Its principle 'who is an antisemite determines the Jew' is taken up and turned symmetrically against the Palestinian question.
Quoted as asserting the Jewish people's exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel, including settlements, used to show the foreclosure of negotiation.
Cited as a model of honest speech that acknowledged the Palestinian grievance behind Israeli possession of the land.
Celebrated in a Ramallah meeting Žižek co-organized, a Jewish thinker honored in a Palestinian setting as evidence of coexistence.
People invoked 18
Mentioned as the organizer of the Barak-Arafat pact that Arafat rejected.
Radovan Karadžić negative
Cited as a 'quite respected poet' from the ex-Yugoslav war, used to illustrate that ethnic cleansing is accompanied by poetry.
Itamar Ben-Gvir negative
Entered politics through the outlawed Kach/Kahane Chai youth movement, barred from IDF for extremism, now Minister for National Security, emblem of the current government.
His government's pact with Arafat, organized by Clinton, is mentioned as the deal Arafat was extremely stupid to reject.
Ismail Haniyeh negative
Leader of Hamas, quoted as demanding Jews get out of the land, 'clear and disgusting'; noted as living comfortably in a Dubai five-star hotel.
Marek Edelman positive
Declared his 'ultimate hero of the 20th century': Warsaw ghetto and uprising fighter, stayed in Poland after 1968, joined Solidarity, defended Palestinian resistance, the model of judging one's own side.
Adania Shibli positive
Palestinian author whose award ceremony was postponed; Žižek calls the cancellation scandalous and a contradiction of the book fair's values.
Moshe Dayan positive
Praised for the brutal honesty of his eulogy for Ro'i, openly acknowledging that Israel transformed Palestinian villages into its inheritance.
Yuval Noah Harari positive
Quoted calling the Netanyahu judicial measures a coup and Israel on its way to becoming a dictatorship.
Yasser Arafat negative
Characterized (via Abba Eban's line) as 'the man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity' for rejecting the Barak-Clinton pact; Žižek is critical of the Palestinian Authority too.
David Ben-Gurion positive
Named with Dayan as the first generation of Israeli leaders who spoke an honest language about the claim to the land, not grounded in universal justice.
Benjamin Netanyahu negative
Quoted as saying Israel is not a state of all its citizens but of the Jewish people only; his government's judicial coup cited via Harari.
Anders Behring Breivik negative
The 'crazy Norwegian guy' cited as antisemitic at home yet fully supportive of Israel, another instance of antisemitic Zionism.
Named alongside Karadžić and the Rwandan poet as an example of the link between poetry and atrocity.
Reinhard Heydrich negative
Cited as author of a letter praising Jews as a wonderful nation to be collaborated with, provided they leave Germany for Israel, the archetype of antisemitic Zionism.
Walter Benjamin positive
A Jew whose work Žižek co-organized a celebratory meeting around in Ramallah, as evidence of genuine Palestinian-Israeli collaboration.
Antony Blinken positive
Quoted with reluctant agreement: Israel has the right to strike back but how it does so is the concern of all.
Arthur Koestler positive
Quoted approvingly for the inversion that persecution corrupts the victims, a thesis Žižek applies to both sides.
What it argues
prohibition to analyze the background of the Gaza warsymmetry of victimhood: who determines the victimantisemitic Zionism and the European rightthe collapse of the two-state solution and honest Israeli languageMarek Edelman as the moral model of staying and judging one's own sideliterature as the medium of ambiguity and the link between poetry and ethnic cleansingcancel culture's inclusion-through-exclusion paradoxnational unity as a tragic suppression of inner division
Dialectical moves 8
“The moment one mentions the need to analyze the complex background, one is accused of supporting or justifying Hamas terrorism.”
Analysis itself is recast as complicity, the very demand to understand is what power forbids.
“If the victim determines who is an antisemite, then the same must hold for Palestinians determining who is stealing their land.”
He applies the very principle used to shield Israeli victimhood symmetrically, so it flips into a critique of Israel.
“The crisis is over, the spirit of national unity prevails — the tragic moment when inner split is overcome against an external enemy.”
Unity is not resolution but the suppression of internal division by externalizing the enemy; consensus as tragedy.
“If power corrupts, the reverse is also true: persecution corrupts the victims.”
Victimhood is not moral immunity; the persecuted can become the oppressor in subtler, more tragic ways.
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry.”
The reverse of the commonplace that poetry humanizes: poetic-ideological elevation is the condition of mass atrocity.
“Diversity and inclusion, yes — but to have our way of diversity, some people must first be excluded.”
Inclusion is shown to be constituted by its exclusionary underside; the official virtue inverts into its opposite.
“The solution is not a compromise in the filthy sense of a proper measure between the two extremes — one should go to the end in both directions.”
True justice is not the midpoint between two positions but the simultaneous radicalization of both demands.
“Hamas's brutal annihilationism and the Israeli government's exclusive claim to the whole land are two versions of the same exclusion of the other.”
The opposed positions are shown to share a common structure, both foreclose coexistence.
Claims 18
asserts
The Hamas attack of October 7 must be unconditionally condemned without any ifs and buts, and Israel has the right to defend itself and destroy the threat.Hamas attack / Israel's right to self-defense
rejects
The prohibition on analyzing the complex background of the situation — whereby any such analysis is accused of justifying Hamas — is itself an ideological obscenity.prohibition to analyze
reframes
If the victim alone determines who is an antisemite, then the same principle must grant Palestinians the right to determine who is stealing their land and rights.the Spiegel principle of victim-determined antisemitism
asserts
There will be no peace in the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian question, which means confronting the decades-long limbo of millions of Palestinians.Palestinian question
rejects
The solution is not a compromise understood as a proper measure between two extremes; one should go to the end in both defending Palestinian rights and fighting antisemitism.compromise as middle measure
reframes
Analyzing the background does not relativize or justify the Hamas crime; it makes visible the discontent out of which such crimes arise.the charge of relativism
asserts
European right-wing support for Israel is often a form of antisemitic Zionism — supporting the Jewish state so that Jews are sent away rather than lived alongside.antisemitic Zionism
asserts
Literature is the privileged medium for rendering palpable the deep ambiguity and complexity of our predicament.role of literature/books
asserts
There is no ethnic cleansing without poetry — ideological-poetic elevation accompanies every mass atrocity.poetry and ethnic cleansing
reframes
Cancel culture's official logic of inclusion and diversity functions through the exclusion of those who do not fit its notion of inclusion.cancel culture / diversity-inclusion
asserts
The postponement of Adania Shibli's award ceremony is scandalous and contradicts the values the book fair claims.Adania Shibli cancellation
asserts
Marek Edelman — who stayed in Poland, fought in the Warsaw uprisings, and later defended Palestinian resistance — is the supreme moral model of the 20th century.Marek Edelman
rejects
To disqualify Edelman as a self-hating Jew is the ultimate obscenity.dismissing critical Jews as self-hating
rejects
The saying 'an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard' is stupidity masquerading as deep wisdom — reading Mein Kampf made him love Nazism less, not more.empathy-through-the-enemy's-story cliché
reframes
With the Hamas attack, Israel's internal crisis over the Netanyahu judicial coup was overcome in a tragic unification against an external enemy.national unity after October 7
asserts
Both Hamas's stated aim of annihilating Israel and the Israeli government's principle of exclusive Jewish claim to the whole land preclude any serious negotiation.the two exclusive-claim positions
asserts
One can and must fight for both sides at the same time — Palestinian rights and against antisemitism — and to deny this simultaneity is to lose one's soul.the simultaneity of two struggles
asserts
The first generation of Israeli leaders (Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan) spoke an honestly brutal language about their claim to the land that has been replaced by euphemism and denial.early Israeli honesty vs current euphemism
Quotes 16
“I unconditionally condemn the Hamas attack on Israelis close to Gaza border without any ifs and buts, and I give Israel the right to defend itself and destroy the threat.”Slavoj Žižek · unconditional condemnation + right to self-defense
“The moment one mentions the need to analyze the complex background of the situation, one is as a rule accused of supporting or justifying Hamas terrorism.”Slavoj Žižek · the prohibition to analyze
“Who is an antisemite determines the Jew and not the potential antisemite.”Slavoj Žižek · victim-determined antisemitism (Spiegel)
“Beneath all the polemics about who is more of a terrorist lies a heavy dark cloud, or rather swamp: the mass of Palestinian Arabs who are for decades kept in a limbo.”Slavoj Žižek · the Palestinian limbo beneath the polemic
“There will be no peace in the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian question.”Slavoj Žižek · no peace without the Palestinian question
“The solution is not a compromise in the filthy sense of a proper measure between the two extremes.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of compromise as midpoint
“One should go to the end in both directions, in the defense of the Palestinian rights as well as in fighting antisemitism.”Slavoj Žižek · radicalizing both struggles at once
“If power corrupts, the reverse is also true: persecution corrupts the victims, though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.”Slavoj Žižek · Koestler's inversion of power corrupts
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry.”Slavoj Žižek · poetry as the condition of atrocity
“To have our way of diversity, some people of course must be first excluded.”Slavoj Žižek · inclusion-through-exclusion
“The moment you accept that this is not possible to fight for both sides at the same time, you lost your soul.”Slavoj Žižek · the simultaneity of the two struggles
“This is always a tragic moment when inner split is overcome against an external enemy.”Slavoj Žižek · national unity as tragedy
“Someone had to stay here with all those who perished here after all.”Slavoj Žižek · Edelman on staying with the dead
“To disqualify Edelman as a self-hating Jew is the ultimate obscenity.”Slavoj Žižek · rejecting the self-hating Jew dismissal
“Literature is the privileged medium to render palpable the deep ambiguity and complexity of our predicament.”Slavoj Žižek · literature as medium of ambiguity
“I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. I heard his story and I love Nazism not more but even less.”Slavoj Žižek · against the empathy-with-the-enemy cliché
Transcript 4 turns
Slavoj Žižek
...and published. So welcome Slavoj Žižek. Wait with the applause. At the end you will not applaud. I am proud to be here at the book fair because books, as we heard it again and again today, are needed more than ever. Without them there is no solution to the terrifying Gaza war. Why? I unconditionally condemn the Hamas attack on Israelis close to Gaza border without any ifs and buts, and I give Israel the right to defend itself and destroy the threat. However, I noticed a strange thing: the moment one mentions the need to analyze the complex background of the situation, one is as a rule accused of supporting or justifying Hamas terrorism. Are we aware how weird this prohibition to analyze, to see the complexity is? In what society does this prohibition belong? Here my first provocation: in a society which is it’s not here which is structured like Waben, honeycomb. What an idiot did choose this as a Leitwort? Do you know how honeys live? It's the most totalitarian society you can imagine. More than are women who are de facto castrated, not allowed to develop sexually, they just work. Then you have one queen who once in a time, lifetime has sex with men, and when they have orgasm, the penises are immediately swallowed by her. No thanks, I don't want to live in such a society. So let me go to my point. The title of a recent dialogue on antisemitism and BDS, boycott, divest and so on, in Der Spiegel was: of Deutsch, Wer Antisemit ist, bestimmt der Jude und nicht der potenzielle Antisemit. I translate: who is an antisemite determines the Jew and not the potential antisemite. Okay, sounds logical. The victim itself should decide if it is really a victim. But does not the same also hold for Palestinians, who should be able to determine who is stealing their land and depriving them of their elementary rights? And I want to draw your attention to a beautiful detail today. Only, I think it was the very last word of the Slovene president's speech correct me if I'm wrong only this was only once that the word 'Palestinian' was pronounced. It was just Hamas versus Israel. I'm sorry, but you have to include in this situation millions of Palestinians. Further point. By analyzing the background, I don't mean the utter stupidity masquerading as a deep wisdom, you know that saying, an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard. Sorry, I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. I heard his story and I love Nazism not more but even less. Here are the two main stories about Israel today. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, who of course lives comfortably in a five-star hotel in Dubai, said on the day of the attack, I quote: we have only one thing to say to you, Jews. Get out of our land, get out of our sight. This land is ours. Al-Quds, their term for Jerusalem is ours. Everything here is ours. There is no place or safety for you. End of quote. Clear and disgusting. But did the Israeli government not say something similar, although of course in a much more civilized way? Here is the first of the official basic principles of Israel's present government. Quote from the official source: The Jewish people have an exclusive, exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the land of Israel, in the Galilee, Negev, Golan and Judea and Samaria. End of quote. Or as Benjamin Netanyahu said, quote: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. It is a state of the Jewish people and only it. End of quote. Does this principle not exclude any serious negotiation? Palestinians are strictly treated as a problem. The state of Israel doesn't offer them any hope, positively outlining their role in the state they live. So beneath all the polemics about who is more of a terrorist lies a heavy dark cloud, or rather swamp: the mass of Palestinian Arabs who are for decades kept in a limbo, exposed to daily harassment by settlers and by the Israeli state. Who are they? Which is the land they live in? Occupied territory, West Bank, Judea and Samaria, or the State of Palestine which is currently recognized by of the United Nations member states? The first generation of Israeli leaders, from Ben-Gurion to Moshe Dayan I want to praise them here spoke a totally different honest language. They openly confessed that their claim to the land of Palestine cannot be grounded in some universal justice. A very actual example. On 29th of April there was an incident concerning Gaza. A group of Palestinians from Gaza that had crossed the border to plant, to plunder the harvest in the Nahal Oz kibbutz fields. So, sorry, yes. The group then, Ro'i, a young Jewish member of the kibbutz who patrolled the fields, galloped towards them on his horse to chase them away. He was seized by the Palestinians and when the United Nations returned the body, his eyes has been plucked out. Here is the reaction of Moshe Dayan. He delivered this eulogy at this killed Jew's funeral the following day. Listen to it: Let us not cast blame on the murderers today. What claim do we have against their mortal hatred of us? They have lived in the refugee camps of Gaza for the past eight years while right before their eyes we have transformed the land and villages where they and their ancestor once lived into our own inheritance. End of quote. Can you even imagine a similar honest statement today? How far are we from the situation even a complex of decades ago when we were talking about land-for-peace agreement, two-state solution, or when even today's staunchest supporters of Israel were putting pressure on it not to build settlements in the West Bank? In Israel built a wall separating the West Bank from borders of Israel, thereby nonetheless recognizing West Bank as a special entity. All this now vanished into thin air. The emblem of today's Israeli government is Itamar Ben-Gvir. He entered politics by joining the youth movement of the Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed by whom? By the Israeli government itself. When Ben-Gvir came of age for conscription into the IDF, he was barred from service due to his extreme right political background. And such a person, condemned by Israel itself as a racist and terrorist, is now, yeah, guess what, the Israeli Minister for National Security who should safeguard the rule of law. Remember the great conflict that divided Israel in last months. Commenting the measures proposed by the Netanyahu government, Yuval Harari put it brutally: This is definitely a coup, a strike. Israel is on its way to become a dictatorship. End of quote. Israel was split between nationalist fundamentalists trying to abolish key features of the legal state power and the civil society members aware of this threat. With the Hamas attack, and that’s what I consider a true tragedy, the crisis is over, the spirit of national unity prevails. This is always a tragic moment when inner split is overcome against an external enemy. So perhaps the first thing to do is to clearly recognize the massive despair and confusion that can give birth to acts of evil. In short, there will be no peace in the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian question. I read this in the last days in Israeli newspapers themselves. I'm not in any way justifying it's a criminal thing. Yes, Israel has the full right but to counterattack. But don't forget this dark obscure background: Palestinians. The second thing is that the solution is not a compromise in the filthy sense of a proper measure between the two extremes. You know, many of my friends claim this. They say on the one hand, yes, Palestinians have the right to be a little bit antisemitic, look what Israel is doing to them today. Or on the other hand, Israelis have the right to be a little bit violent, look what we did to them in Holocaust. I think there is nothing to understand here. One should go to the end in both direction, in the defense of the Palestinian rights as well as in fighting antisemitism. Never compare this terror of Hamas with what is doing on the Israeli side, sorry. I am not, I am not comparing. No, it's not relativism. I'm going much... Yeah, now you see what means in practice listen to diversity inclusion. Yes, but this is the cancel logic. To have our way of diversity, some people of course must be first excluded. I'm talking about dozens of Palestinians that I know. Sorry if I explode now a little bit. If there is a person here in this room who did more to peaceful collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis, then I bow my head. But they didn't. What more can you do than this? With my friends I co-organized in Ramallah a big meeting celebrating Walter Benjamin, a Jew. There was no problem debating it. I organized in Ramallah a cinema school together with the Jewish of course professor and so on and so on. About this you cannot compare... Of course you cannot compare it as an act of violence. I mean, Hamas attack is absolutely ruthless, brutal and so on and so on. But should I fall so low as to quote with whom I agree here, Antony Blinken, American State Secretary, who said yes, Israel has the full right to strike back but how it does is the concern of us all. It's not just Israel against Hamas. Especially. So again, the moment you accept that this is not possible to fight for both sides at the same time, you lost your soul. Especially today when we have something that I cannot but call antisemitic Zionism. You know why European right likes to support Israel? Let's go at the beginning. Look at my last book, you will have a full quote. You know who is one of the authors of it? Yes, Reinhard Heydrich. In that Heydrich wrote a letter, statement where he says Israelis are a wonderful nation, we are ready to collaborate with them, but not here in Germany, they should go over there. Breivik, you remember him, the crazy Norwegian guy, who... he had the same, totally antisemitic here, but there we fully support it. Not to go on with the list... This is a shame on a day where people are murdered and massacred. Where? Where, in Gaza also? Compare both sides and relativize what was happening... I don't relativize it. It was a horrible crime. I don't relativize it in any way. I'm just saying that to talk the way you did now immediately puts millions of Palestinians in an impossible position which will then make antisemitism grow. Let me nonetheless go to the end. Arthur Koestler voiced a bitter truth, quote: If power corrupts, the reverse is also true: persecution corrupts the victims, though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways. End of quote. This holds for both sides in the ongoing war. My ultimate hero, absolute, of the 20th century is Marek Edelman, a Polish Jew who saw this clearly. Edelman took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and also in the citywide Warsaw Uprising. After the war when his wife and children emigrated in the wake of the growing antisemitic campaign in Poland in he decided to stay in Poland. Comparing himself to the stories of the ruined buildings at the site of the Auschwitz camp, he said someone had to stay here with all those who perished here after all. End of quote. From 1970s on he collaborated with the Workers' Defense Committee as a member of Solidarity, he took part in the Polish Round Table talks. Towards
...and published. So welcome Slavoj Žižek. Wait with the applause. At the end you will not applaud. I am proud to be here at the book fair because books, as we heard it again and again today, are needed more than ever. Without them there is no solution to the terrifying Gaza war. Why? I unconditionally condemn the Hamas attack on Israelis close to Gaza border without any ifs and buts, and I give Israel the right to defend itself and destroy the threat. However, I noticed a strange thing: the moment one mentions the need to analyze the complex background of the situation, one is as a rule accused of supporting or justifying Hamas terrorism. Are we aware how weird this prohibition to analyze, to see the complexity is? In what society does this prohibition belong? Here my first provocation: in a society which is it’s not here which is structured like Waben, honeycomb. What an idiot did choose this as a Leitwort? Do you know how honeys live? It's the most totalitarian society you can imagine. More than are women who are de facto castrated, not allowed to develop sexually, they just work. Then you have one queen who once in a time, lifetime has sex with men, and when they have orgasm, the penises are immediately swallowed by her. No thanks, I don't want to live in such a society. So let me go to my point. The title of a recent dialogue on antisemitism and BDS, boycott, divest and so on, in Der Spiegel was: of Deutsch, Wer Antisemit ist, bestimmt der Jude und nicht der potenzielle Antisemit. I translate: who is an antisemite determines the Jew and not the potential antisemite. Okay, sounds logical. The victim itself should decide if it is really a victim. But does not the same also hold for Palestinians, who should be able to determine who is stealing their land and depriving them of their elementary rights? And I want to draw your attention to a beautiful detail today. Only, I think it was the very last word of the Slovene president's speech correct me if I'm wrong only this was only once that the word 'Palestinian' was pronounced. It was just Hamas versus Israel. I'm sorry, but you have to include in this situation millions of Palestinians. Further point. By analyzing the background, I don't mean the utter stupidity masquerading as a deep wisdom, you know that saying, an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard. Sorry, I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. I heard his story and I love Nazism not more but even less. Here are the two main stories about Israel today. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, who of course lives comfortably in a five-star hotel in Dubai, said on the day of the attack, I quote: we have only one thing to say to you, Jews. Get out of our land, get out of our sight. This land is ours. Al-Quds, their term for Jerusalem is ours. Everything here is ours. There is no place or safety for you. End of quote. Clear and disgusting. But did the Israeli government not say something similar, although of course in a much more civilized way? Here is the first of the official basic principles of Israel's present government. Quote from the official source: The Jewish people have an exclusive, exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the land of Israel, in the Galilee, Negev, Golan and Judea and Samaria. End of quote. Or as Benjamin Netanyahu said, quote: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. It is a state of the Jewish people and only it. End of quote. Does this principle not exclude any serious negotiation? Palestinians are strictly treated as a problem. The state of Israel doesn't offer them any hope, positively outlining their role in the state they live. So beneath all the polemics about who is more of a terrorist lies a heavy dark cloud, or rather swamp: the mass of Palestinian Arabs who are for decades kept in a limbo, exposed to daily harassment by settlers and by the Israeli state. Who are they? Which is the land they live in? Occupied territory, West Bank, Judea and Samaria, or the State of Palestine which is currently recognized by of the United Nations member states? The first generation of Israeli leaders, from Ben-Gurion to Moshe Dayan I want to praise them here spoke a totally different honest language. They openly confessed that their claim to the land of Palestine cannot be grounded in some universal justice. A very actual example. On 29th of April there was an incident concerning Gaza. A group of Palestinians from Gaza that had crossed the border to plant, to plunder the harvest in the Nahal Oz kibbutz fields. So, sorry, yes. The group then, Ro'i, a young Jewish member of the kibbutz who patrolled the fields, galloped towards them on his horse to chase them away. He was seized by the Palestinians and when the United Nations returned the body, his eyes has been plucked out. Here is the reaction of Moshe Dayan. He delivered this eulogy at this killed Jew's funeral the following day. Listen to it: Let us not cast blame on the murderers today. What claim do we have against their mortal hatred of us? They have lived in the refugee camps of Gaza for the past eight years while right before their eyes we have transformed the land and villages where they and their ancestor once lived into our own inheritance. End of quote. Can you even imagine a similar honest statement today? How far are we from the situation even a complex of decades ago when we were talking about land-for-peace agreement, two-state solution, or when even today's staunchest supporters of Israel were putting pressure on it not to build settlements in the West Bank? In Israel built a wall separating the West Bank from borders of Israel, thereby nonetheless recognizing West Bank as a special entity. All this now vanished into thin air. The emblem of today's Israeli government is Itamar Ben-Gvir. He entered politics by joining the youth movement of the Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed by whom? By the Israeli government itself. When Ben-Gvir came of age for conscription into the IDF, he was barred from service due to his extreme right political background. And such a person, condemned by Israel itself as a racist and terrorist, is now, yeah, guess what, the Israeli Minister for National Security who should safeguard the rule of law. Remember the great conflict that divided Israel in last months. Commenting the measures proposed by the Netanyahu government, Yuval Harari put it brutally: This is definitely a coup, a strike. Israel is on its way to become a dictatorship. End of quote. Israel was split between nationalist fundamentalists trying to abolish key features of the legal state power and the civil society members aware of this threat. With the Hamas attack, and that’s what I consider a true tragedy, the crisis is over, the spirit of national unity prevails. This is always a tragic moment when inner split is overcome against an external enemy. So perhaps the first thing to do is to clearly recognize the massive despair and confusion that can give birth to acts of evil. In short, there will be no peace in the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian question. I read this in the last days in Israeli newspapers themselves. I'm not in any way justifying it's a criminal thing. Yes, Israel has the full right but to counterattack. But don't forget this dark obscure background: Palestinians. The second thing is that the solution is not a compromise in the filthy sense of a proper measure between the two extremes. You know, many of my friends claim this. They say on the one hand, yes, Palestinians have the right to be a little bit antisemitic, look what Israel is doing to them today. Or on the other hand, Israelis have the right to be a little bit violent, look what we did to them in Holocaust. I think there is nothing to understand here. One should go to the end in both direction, in the defense of the Palestinian rights as well as in fighting antisemitism. Never compare this terror of Hamas with what is doing on the Israeli side, sorry. I am not, I am not comparing. No, it's not relativism. I'm going much... Yeah, now you see what means in practice listen to diversity inclusion. Yes, but this is the cancel logic. To have our way of diversity, some people of course must be first excluded. I'm talking about dozens of Palestinians that I know. Sorry if I explode now a little bit. If there is a person here in this room who did more to peaceful collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis, then I bow my head. But they didn't. What more can you do than this? With my friends I co-organized in Ramallah a big meeting celebrating Walter Benjamin, a Jew. There was no problem debating it. I organized in Ramallah a cinema school together with the Jewish of course professor and so on and so on. About this you cannot compare... Of course you cannot compare it as an act of violence. I mean, Hamas attack is absolutely ruthless, brutal and so on and so on. But should I fall so low as to quote with whom I agree here, Antony Blinken, American State Secretary, who said yes, Israel has the full right to strike back but how it does is the concern of us all. It's not just Israel against Hamas. Especially. So again, the moment you accept that this is not possible to fight for both sides at the same time, you lost your soul. Especially today when we have something that I cannot but call antisemitic Zionism. You know why European right likes to support Israel? Let's go at the beginning. Look at my last book, you will have a full quote. You know who is one of the authors of it? Yes, Reinhard Heydrich. In that Heydrich wrote a letter, statement where he says Israelis are a wonderful nation, we are ready to collaborate with them, but not here in Germany, they should go over there. Breivik, you remember him, the crazy Norwegian guy, who... he had the same, totally antisemitic here, but there we fully support it. Not to go on with the list... This is a shame on a day where people are murdered and massacred. Where? Where, in Gaza also? Compare both sides and relativize what was happening... I don't relativize it. It was a horrible crime. I don't relativize it in any way. I'm just saying that to talk the way you did now immediately puts millions of Palestinians in an impossible position which will then make antisemitism grow. Let me nonetheless go to the end. Arthur Koestler voiced a bitter truth, quote: If power corrupts, the reverse is also true: persecution corrupts the victims, though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways. End of quote. This holds for both sides in the ongoing war. My ultimate hero, absolute, of the 20th century is Marek Edelman, a Polish Jew who saw this clearly. Edelman took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and also in the citywide Warsaw Uprising. After the war when his wife and children emigrated in the wake of the growing antisemitic campaign in Poland in he decided to stay in Poland. Comparing himself to the stories of the ruined buildings at the site of the Auschwitz camp, he said someone had to stay here with all those who perished here after all. End of quote. From 1970s on he collaborated with the Workers' Defense Committee as a member of Solidarity, he took part in the Polish Round Table talks. Towards
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end of his life, Edelman publicly defended Palestinian resistance, claiming that the Jewish self-defense which he had fought was in danger of crossing the line into oppression. Now to disqualify Edelman as a self-hating Jew is I think the ultimate obscenity. Why am I saying this here in Frankfurt at the Buchmesse? Because only through reading books I agree here with my previous speakers can we become aware of the situation. Literature is the privileged medium to render palpable the deep ambiguity and complexity of our predicament. I'm not mystifying poetry. On the other hand my thesis is, to shock you again, no ethnic cleansing without poetry. Think of Rwanda, there was a big local poet there. Think about Ex-Yugoslav war: Radovan Karadžić, a quite respected poet without the war, not to mention people like Mao Zedong and so on. That's why I was shocked when I learned that the award ceremony for Adania Shibli was postponed. A decision I consider scandalous. Terrorism against Israel, yes, contradicts all the values of the Frankfurt book... yes, and so does the collective punishment of millions in Gaza as well as the cancellation of Adania Shibli. You know, here we are approaching the paradoxes of cancel culture. Official notice is, yes, inclusion, diversity, but then all that cancel culture does is excluding those who don't fit your notion of inclusion and diversity. So I'm not only proud to be here, I'm also a little bit ashamed. Try to imagine what Marek Edelman would say if he were to be alive today. And again to repeat, I'm at the end: No, I in no way identify or relativize what Hamas did. It was an unforgivable brutal killing spree. Haniyeh says it clearly, it's not just about limiting Israel, it's about the annihilating the state. But the circumstances that I described in no way relativize this crime. They just make us see the background of discontent out of which such crimes this doesn't justify them in no way may arise. If we ignore this, if we ignore what is happening now in the West Bank, then we cannot understand the situation. I absolutely recognize fully the right of the state of Israel to exist. I'm absolutely also critical against the Palestinian Authority. For example, I think that Arafat was in a justified way characterized as the man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It was extremely stupid for him to reject the the pact with Ehud Barak government organized by Clinton. So I'm not praising Palestinians, I'm just saying see their situation on the West Bank. It's a they are in a limbo, it's a tragedy. If we... sorry... [unintelligible] stop doing what you do. Yeah, if you would have said this to other people who spoke before me also, it would have been nice. So you see, the moment I just said it's not simple I compare the incomparable. No, I think we should compare it. Thank you. It's the freedom of the word and we have to leave it as it is. This is important to me. I think for this community, and I'd like to call it one community, I think I can speak on this community's behalf. We condemn terror. We are humans and we think in human terms on the Palestinian side and on the Israeli side, and we just heard about these negative attitudes and I thank you for this mirror you showed us, and I am in deep grief about what has happened here, and it's important to me to understand that we all agree on condemning the terror, and I'm glad that we can express it this way here. I'm also glad about somebody interrupting a speech. This must be possible. I'm glad that we listened to the speech to the very end even though we didn't like it, maybe we even condemn it. I thank all of you, I thank the world of books. I'm honest, this is not the most relaxed moment to enter the stage as a presenter, but well, this is where I am now. To open a book fair, and we will open this book fair and the honor is with the president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. Welcome back on the stage, Karin Schmidt-Friderichs. And while you are getting ready I have an important piece of information for you. Immediately after the traditional hammer blow, some guests of honor
end of his life, Edelman publicly defended Palestinian resistance, claiming that the Jewish self-defense which he had fought was in danger of crossing the line into oppression. Now to disqualify Edelman as a self-hating Jew is I think the ultimate obscenity. Why am I saying this here in Frankfurt at the Buchmesse? Because only through reading books I agree here with my previous speakers can we become aware of the situation. Literature is the privileged medium to render palpable the deep ambiguity and complexity of our predicament. I'm not mystifying poetry. On the other hand my thesis is, to shock you again, no ethnic cleansing without poetry. Think of Rwanda, there was a big local poet there. Think about Ex-Yugoslav war: Radovan Karadžić, a quite respected poet without the war, not to mention people like Mao Zedong and so on. That's why I was shocked when I learned that the award ceremony for Adania Shibli was postponed. A decision I consider scandalous. Terrorism against Israel, yes, contradicts all the values of the Frankfurt book... yes, and so does the collective punishment of millions in Gaza as well as the cancellation of Adania Shibli. You know, here we are approaching the paradoxes of cancel culture. Official notice is, yes, inclusion, diversity, but then all that cancel culture does is excluding those who don't fit your notion of inclusion and diversity. So I'm not only proud to be here, I'm also a little bit ashamed. Try to imagine what Marek Edelman would say if he were to be alive today. And again to repeat, I'm at the end: No, I in no way identify or relativize what Hamas did. It was an unforgivable brutal killing spree. Haniyeh says it clearly, it's not just about limiting Israel, it's about the annihilating the state. But the circumstances that I described in no way relativize this crime. They just make us see the background of discontent out of which such crimes this doesn't justify them in no way may arise. If we ignore this, if we ignore what is happening now in the West Bank, then we cannot understand the situation. I absolutely recognize fully the right of the state of Israel to exist. I'm absolutely also critical against the Palestinian Authority. For example, I think that Arafat was in a justified way characterized as the man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It was extremely stupid for him to reject the the pact with Ehud Barak government organized by Clinton. So I'm not praising Palestinians, I'm just saying see their situation on the West Bank. It's a they are in a limbo, it's a tragedy. If we... sorry... [unintelligible] stop doing what you do. Yeah, if you would have said this to other people who spoke before me also, it would have been nice. So you see, the moment I just said it's not simple I compare the incomparable. No, I think we should compare it. Thank you. It's the freedom of the word and we have to leave it as it is. This is important to me. I think for this community, and I'd like to call it one community, I think I can speak on this community's behalf. We condemn terror. We are humans and we think in human terms on the Palestinian side and on the Israeli side, and we just heard about these negative attitudes and I thank you for this mirror you showed us, and I am in deep grief about what has happened here, and it's important to me to understand that we all agree on condemning the terror, and I'm glad that we can express it this way here. I'm also glad about somebody interrupting a speech. This must be possible. I'm glad that we listened to the speech to the very end even though we didn't like it, maybe we even condemn it. I thank all of you, I thank the world of books. I'm honest, this is not the most relaxed moment to enter the stage as a presenter, but well, this is where I am now. To open a book fair, and we will open this book fair and the honor is with the president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. Welcome back on the stage, Karin Schmidt-Friderichs. And while you are getting ready I have an important piece of information for you. Immediately after the traditional hammer blow, some guests of honor
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who are here will have to leave very quickly, and I'd like to ask all of you more intensely than last year when it didn't work, please remain seated. This would be great. I will then officially say goodbye, some guests will leave, the others please remain seated, and now Ms. Schmidt-Friderichs, it's your honor to open the 75th book fair. I'm confused about the words we just heard. And I clearly appeal to peace, tolerance and respect for Israel. And still I open the 75th book fair.
who are here will have to leave very quickly, and I'd like to ask all of you more intensely than last year when it didn't work, please remain seated. This would be great. I will then officially say goodbye, some guests will leave, the others please remain seated, and now Ms. Schmidt-Friderichs, it's your honor to open the 75th book fair. I'm confused about the words we just heard. And I clearly appeal to peace, tolerance and respect for Israel. And still I open the 75th book fair.