SHAJ MOHAN

and

DIVYA DWIVEDI

There is a quiet principle which grounds the justification for the extraordinary formation of the state of Israel, and any refutation of it will complicate the explicit norms derived from it in order to determine jurisprudential terrains. The principle of political existence is two fold, no one has the right to kill another, and everyone has a duty to not be killed by another. However, the oft repeated statement that Israel has a special right to self-defence—a people unlike any other people—does not correspond to the principle of political existence because Israel is a state like any other, and the Palestinian people are a people without state who sought to be a people like any other people. So far over 9000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel and more than 3500 of them are children. 

A friend who cannot be named called in despair and she said “are our children born to be massacred for the pleasure of white people?” This is obviously not a question. If it were, the shame of having to respond truthfully would have been unbearable, and no friend would inflict it upon another. Instead, it makes one see that which was unseen. It seizes one’s thoughts and body away from the regulation according to the calculus of norms and conveniences (for example, many are forced to keep silent in the very landscapes of the holocaust where the unfolding of another in Palestine must now be welcomed). It shakes off the terror raised against such feelings of seizure by the governments of the world which are asking us to close our eyes to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass pedicide (which had been an ‘important’ method of ethnic cleansing before 1948). It constitutes in oneself a shivering quivering surrender to what the human animal must be—it must be just. On the other hand, this experience is not ec-static, it does not let one leave oneself, but instead it forces one to confront the possibility—to be that evil which only the human animal can be—which resides in all of us at all times, such that we recognise what is being done to the Palestinian people. This shivering body forces the just animal to witness the evil animal, in the same body, and demands the distinction. 

1. The principle of political existence says no one has the right to kill another, and everyone has a duty to not be killed by another.

2. The principle of political responsibility says one must never create conditions where the life of one is weighed over another and if such conditions exist they must be displaced immediately.

Instead of rushing to condemn the state of Israel alone—which never had the power nor the mandate on its own to commit any of these atrocities before (trained and aided by the British government to commit ethnic cleansing) or since 1948 (adopted and enabled by America to bomb, kill, and maim)—we should heed again the words spoken in lamentation (moirologia or addressing one’s own fate) and proceed further—“are our children born to be massacred for the pleasure of white people?” That is, “the west” and their “international community” today means the military alliance for rich white nations (from here onwards MAWN). 

Then, there is a second principle which corresponds to the principle of political existence. The principle of political responsibility is that one must never create conditions where the life of one is weighed over another. These two principles have been at work in the texts of the great philosophies of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. They would have found today the destructive instrumentalisation of the holocaust arriving at the cataract of its moral force, brought on by the very same states and actors, MAWN, who were parties to the holocaust itself. These philosophers would have found these present moments unliveable, in which the evil acts of which only the human animal is potent are in free play— and there are several, including extermination, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, genocide, ethnocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, hate speech, dehumanisation, rejoicing in the suffering of children. 

There are two principles:

1. The principle of political existence says no one has the right to kill another, and everyone has a duty to not be killed by another.

2. The principle of political responsibility says one must never create conditions where the life of one is weighed over another and if such conditions exist they must be displaced immediately.

Woman embracing her dead child, southern Gaza; Image credit: Reuters.

These two principles are sufficient in themselves to understand what is taking place in this moment in Palestinian lands to the Palestinian people. These principles are being violated with stony faces—which we encountered in the histories of the holocaust from across the world—of MAWN journalists, politicians, and experts expressing solidarity with the bombs. But we should gather the meaning of a certain lemma at work in this situation, which is posited as an instrument to comport us away from the principles and into the theorem of total obliteration of the Palestinian existence as such. 

A lemma of war is akin to an auxiliary proposition which does not say much on its own, but its use lies in the way in which one can advance towards a theorem. It is a proposition which as a means, without a sense of its own, draws us towards something else which makes much sense. The lemma of war in the politics of the American style is often made up numbers, and they lead to their theorems with ease:

A) 11-09, therefore millions in Iraq and Afghanistan must be killed.

B) 07-10, therefore thousands and thousands of Palestinians must be killed and their lands must be ethnically cleansed.

These numerals intimidate us into surrendering the words capable of recalling and revealing those memories and histories which can disarm the lemma of war. 

A lemma of war is the proposition produced through the suspension of recollection and history, using force and intimidation on the basis of the shock or unexpected character of an event. The militaristic lemma, then, can suspend the very recollection of the principles of jurisprudence, international law, democratic norms etc. in order to constitute extraordinary crimes as a proven theorem in war and mass murder.

The lemma of war should be analysed before we return to the present implications of the principles. The militaristic lemma is not a recent invention: there was already Pearl Harbour and therefore atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was invoked as the precedent by Israeli officials giving away their intentions (1). A lemma of war is the proposition produced through the suspension of recollection and history, using force and intimidation on the basis of the shock or the unexpected character of an event such as the horrifying Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. The militaristic lemma, then, can suspend the very recollection of the principles of jurisprudence, international law, democratic norms etc. in order to constitute extraordinary crimes as a proven theorem in war and mass murder. It is this lemma that forces us to keep quiet on the reality that the genocides, mass murders and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from Palestinian lands had been going on for nearly a century, piece by piece and peace by peace.  

The lemma is at work and the theorem is being proven already, as Etienne Balibar wrote, “The catastrophe will therefore carry to term, and we will suffer the consequences” (2). We should record the character of what is being done to the Palestinian people who had been living for decades in the squalid unliveable conditions of the open prison of Gaza. They are not defending themselves, although they have both the right and the duty to make sure that they are not killed. Instead, the bombings, the cutting of electricity, water, food, medicine, and even breathable air show that there is a new technology of human extermination at work in Gaza. It is canned hunting of the human animal. Canned hunt, as the name makes evident, keeps the animal enclosed in such a way that the killer or the hunter can execute it without the animal having a chance to either flee or to fight back. What the poet of canned hunting wrote may have been about Gaza in this moment, 

All are gone, all but one. 

No contest, nowhere to run. 

No more left, only one. 

This is it, this is the countdown to extinction. (3)

When one watches the men and women,  ‘the leaders’ and ‘experts’ of MAWN nations, appearing in television networks to justify the unjustifiable, to blame the Palestinians for the misery and death thrust upon them, something else also becomes clearer. 

Children, Gaza; Image credit: Reuters.

Beyond all the rationalities that one can list for these mass executions—oil, control, fear of the autonomy of the former Ottoman territories—there are some appalling men and women who alone are able to visit the camera and openly justify the mass murder of children, smacking their lips. For example, the same woman who said that those who condemned mass murders and genocides are committing hate speeches and “hate marches,” has been ‘racing’ with the Nazis, and is not fit to hold any office. While doing so, these men and women are establishing a Gaza and a West Bank in their own countries. 

For that very reason, caution must be exercised while discussing the actions of the Israeli government and the militarised groups operating in the name of the Palestinian people in the region. We should be careful in avoiding two kinds of statements: 1. That the Palestinian people and children being mass murdered (currently 10,000 Palestinians have been killed) by the canned bombing of Israel government are human shields of Hamas, and 2. The anti-Semitic events such as the one being seen in Dagestan are the Israeli Defence Forces using Jewish people as human shields. They are both equally immoral and unjustifiable.

There is also a game going on with the children of Gaza while they are themselves the game. At night the MAWN bombs fall on their beds (military and other aids for Israel), for the roofs are mostly gone, and when the day breaks candies may also fall from the skies for the children who survive the night (for promised aid for the Palestinian people of Gaza is being prevented by very same MAWN offering it). In reality, the refugee camps built with MAWN money are the cages for the canned hunters of the Palestinian children; There might be a reason here: as days go by there will be less and less children and lesser aid money therefore to part with. 

there is a new technology of human extermination at work in Gaza. It is canned hunting of the human animal. Canned hunt, as the name makes evident, keeps the animal enclosed in such a way that the killer or the hunter can execute it without the animal having a chance to either flee or to fight back.

The theorems of death were being drawn while our own eyes were averted from Palestine in a busy world of cataclysmic news cycles and ecstasies of entertainment. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK said that the Palestinian people are “unseen” (4). It is an uncommon expression and it invokes the Ancient Greek ἀόρατος, which is the alpha privative of “horatos”, meaning the seen. Horao meant to watch over, and from this root comes the English word, “ward” as in the child in the care of someone, or the hospital room in which someone is being watched over and cared for. Often, when their parents are not nearby, children experience Ahoratos as the feeling of abjection, the feeling that they are the un-seen. Ahoratos as abjection shows what was once experienced as being the un-seen of the gods or being abandoned on earth. But apart from these conjectures, without which there is no language, it also says something precise about the state of the Palestinian people. In the words of Alexander of Aphrodisias “a thing is ahoratos if it could be naturally seen but [is] unseen.” (5) 

The Palestinian people who were being mass murdered since the last century, whose homes had been destroyed for building the homes of those who are the settlers backed by the MAWN, and whose children had been dying of bullets, bombs, and malnutrition – these people were always there and they could be seen, and yet they were deliberately unseen. Unseen by who? Certainly not by the people of the MAWN who were seeing them as the canned; but by those like you and us. Those who feel the rage, sorrow, and unbearable guilt in these very moments were not able to see them, hold them in our attention. 

Man carrying the corpse of a child, southern Gaza; Image credit: Reuters.

Had we held in our eyes the Palestinian people displaced and ethnically cleansed from their own lands, we would also not have fallen prey to the senselessness of merely wearing a symbol or sharing a hashtag in social media. Instead, we would have sought and found out the telos which determines the history of the nearing extinction of the Palestinian people. We would have discovered its teleograph. We would have understood whose interest is served in these moments? How do we distinguish between America and Israel in relation to the Palestinian people? We remember the modus operandi which created the United States of America for white people through the genocides and ethnic cleansing of the peoples of their own land, and we ask what is the coldest power exercised by MAWN? 

Even now, what is the reality—one which can always be changed—of the Palestinian people? In the region in which they exist, since the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the control was exercised by America with the dispensable support of Britain and MAWN countries. No country in the region has sufficient political autonomy to form a lasting pact to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people – whether out avarice, fear of regime changes, pulverisation such as dealt to Iraq, or rivalries without reason. Two states with immediate stakes in this crisis are likely to ‘receive’ the remaining Palestinian people from the remaining Palestinian lands (who today occupy 22% of the land that was theirs for millennia) for a good price termed as aid and assistance. 

No country in the region has sufficient political autonomy to form a lasting pact to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people – whether out avarice, fear of regime changes, pulverisation such as dealt to Iraq, or rivalries without reason. Two states with immediate stakes in this crisis are likely to ‘receive’ the remaining Palestinian people from the remaining Palestinian lands (who today occupy 22% of the land that was theirs for millennia) for a good price termed as aid and assistance. 

If we heed the principles there are tendencies which can be activated so that we do not again become the world of early 20th century which allowed the holocaust to take place. The principle of political existence demands of us that we should assert the right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves, to ensure that they do not let themselves be killed. This principle should be asserted in all forums on behalf of the Palestinian people. The principle of political responsibility shows us that practical steps can be  taken even now, and it demands that they should be explored. Questions can be raised, in spite of the fascistic control of the discussion of the mass murder underway in Gaza in the parliaments of the ‘most advanced’ democratic countries. Petitions with the global support of the kind never before seen can be drawn to demand concrete actions from both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court with the substantial evidence of the crimes against humanity, genocide, and ethnic cleansing which are available now. These actions will at least ensure that the mass murders and the enablers of genocide today will be tried the same way the geriatric Nazis were tried. It will also destroy the shock and awe of the lemma which is still being used to enforce the forgetting of the ethnocide of decades. 

These are the necessary, but preliminary steps for justice.  

There has always been a democracy of the word, one which is not modelled after national governments. It is alive as long as we share words and sorrows here and now, for the people alone are sovereign beyond the bounds of nation states. In this democracy of the world, and its name, we should demand of the countries of the world and the international organisations immutable three step solution to the crisis:

1. Israel should withdraw to the boundaries of 1967 (UN resolution 242 of 22 November 1967) and the boundaries should be observed by a UN led peace keeping force. That is, Israel should be gifted 78% of the Palestinian lands from where the Palestinian people were expelled through genocides and ethnic cleansing.

2. Palestinian refugees (UN resolution 194 of 11 December 1948) scattered across the world should be allowed to return, and if they choose not to then reparations should be paid. 

3. An Independent Palestinian state should be immediately established and recognised. The Palestinian people who were once at home in the whole of the present day Israel and the Palestinian lands under occupation should show the generosity to accept only 22% of what was once their land. The Palestinian state should have the whole of Jerusalem as its capital.

Man carrying the corpse of a child, southern Gaza; Image credit: Reuters.

Further, there should be a demand to immediately institute international commissions of enquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity, and their perpetrators should be tried at the ICC. These are simple propositions which are less than just from the point of view of the Palestinian people. But if this sacrifice is not acceptable what shall visit upon us next in that region? This question will open the very meaning of this century, as the holocaust had in the last century.

However, we should watch over the Jewish people across the world as we attempt to proceed along the path of peace. The most forceful defenders of the Palestinian people had been the Jewish intellectuals from within and outside Israel. Anti-semitism is always present as we saw in 2017 in Charlottesville, USA where the white nationalists raised anti-Semitic slogans, or in Europe where neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and extremist groups have revived the worst antisemitic stereotypes. The world failed the Jewish people, and left them unseen. It has seen that it should have done otherwise, and such seeing of what should have been done is the seeing in the modal of lost responsibility. (6) And yet, the world is once again un-seeing its responsibility: that no one should be Ahoratos no more.

NOTES

1. See https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/politics/biden-israel.html  

2. Etienne Balibar, “Palestine Till Death”, Philosophy World Democracy 4.10 (October 2023): https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1/till-death-palestine  

3. Dave Mustaine, Countdown to Extinction, https://youtu.be/bNVcktiS6C4?si=8nNnnX-vVZb75TXR  

4. https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-war-palestinian-ambassador-blames-gaza-hospital-blast-on-israel-12989978

5. See Shaj Mohan, “Be held in the gaze of the stone”, Philosophy World Democracy, 13 June 2022, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/be-held-in-the-gaze-of-the-stone

6. See Divya Dwivedi, “Indestinacy and the Modals of Lost Responsibility” In The Virality of Evil: Philosophy in the Time of a Pandemic. Ed. Dwivedi Dwivedi. London: Roman & Littlefeld, 2022.