Letters from Beirut

s0metim3s links to this video, from July 21 in comments, but it might as well be elevated to a post.

Update 8/8/06:  And Michael Bérubé has a post some of our more "radical" leftist friends may wish to consider reading.

Update 8/09/06:  And another, continuing a patient series on Noam Chomsky.   Update: And another!

Neocon Clusterfuck in Middle East (open thread)

"...in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel...it is sentimental to discuss the subject of war, or peace, without acknowledging that a great many people enjoy war–not only the idea of it, but the fighting itself."

"....somthing frightening, the unhealthy, feverish illicit excitement of wartime..."
-Doris Lessing

Post-oracular hypothesis:  that no thinking person would honestly dispute the distinction between a free-wheeling, cultural-political, descriptive or generic or even centuries-old genetic "desire" for (what will become of the concept of) "war," and someone ignorantly wishing it to happen, or for that matter, refusing the responsibility that comes with power, and for  having significantly, predictably, knowingly, and against the consensus wisdom merely prescient of the glaringly obvious, helped it to happen.  The very intensity and stakes of the current 'crisis' (what makes it new–though never purely original–this time) have everything to do with a certain pressure on 'democracy,' it seems to me.

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"Love of the Jewish People..."

A recent post by Jodi on patriotism (along with the horrible events now taking place in Gaza) reminded me of an exchange between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt that took place back in the 1960's.  The topic was Arendt's controversial account of the Eichmann trial and the subsequent backlash from the Jewish community both in and out of Israel.  Scholem was among those who felt that Arendt's account tended to "blame the victims" of the holocaust, going so far as describing her tone as "heartless," "almost sneering and malicious..."  It is within this context that Scholem brings up the concept of Ahabath Israel, or "Love of the Jewish People..." " In you dear Hannah, as in so many intellectuals who came from the German Left, I find little trace of this."

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Nation as Trauma

About six months ago, Jodi linked to a great interview with Jacqueline Rose.  She was discussing her latest book, "The Question of Zion," which takes a psychoanalytic approach to Zionism and the Isreali-Palestinian conflict.  What reminded me of this work has been the recent discussion of Zizek's new book, and the role of psychoanalysis in general, as an approach to socio-political conflict.  Rose asserts that in its current form, Zionism represents the "militarization of suffering," where any sign of passivity or weakness is regarded as a national disgrace.

Jacqueline Rose: I do believe...that the consequence of the shame at the passivity felt by the Jews in the face of their Nazi oppressor has been a hardening and militarisation of their identity which is indeed explicable in terms of Jewish history...

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An Anti-Zionist Zionist?

Perhaps the most gifted of Heidegger’s students, Hannah Arendt is best known as one of the most influential political theorists of the 20^th century.  What is perhaps not so well known was her early involvement in the Zionist movement during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Though she helped children escape to Palestine, she herself had little interest in settling there.  When she fled Germany in 1933, her destination was Paris, not Jerusalem.  When she arrived in Paris, she posed the question to herself: “What can I specifically do as a Jew?”  Her answer was to get involved in politically “Jewish work.” 

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