A Quick Response to Seyla Benhabib
Recently I was sent this letter where Syela Benhabib explains why she’s against a letter of solidarity with Palestinians. She goes on to make really bold statements which are exteremely misleading and logically defunkt.
I will try and point out the glaring errors that take down her entire argument, but will not spend too much time, since the foundation was flawed, all her later arguments are flawed.
I cite now some examples:
First of all, the establishing statement.
“Zionism is not a sort of racism”
That’s not true, any theocracy is racist or at least bigoted and therefore discriminatory by definition.
“The actions and institutions of the State of Israel towards the Palestinian people of the occupied West Bank, the refugee camps and, of course, Gaza, are discriminatory on the basis of nationality, not color, and reflect the continuing state of emergency that exists between Israel and its neighbors”
To me, these are the words of someone who doesn’t understand what’s happening in Israel at all, or understand Judaism or Zionism or that Ethiopian Jews are discriminated against in Israel, or that Arab Israelis are subjected to apartheid. I mean they’re all very simple and evident points to counteract her statement.
“Palestinian nationalism, just like many other nationalisms, including Zionism, emerged in the crucible of the struggle for recognition by its opponents.”
Zionism started out in the US in the 1820s and was started by Christians some would argue is largely antisemitic but was later adopted by Jews, so I wouldn’t say that this is the same.
“Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms mirror each other, and at the end of the day they have to live cheek by jowl and share the territory with one another.”
Israel is an occupier and expanding illegal settlements, Palestinians are now fighting to live. I’m not sure how we can mirror an occupier and the occupied, it’s like saying French Nationalism mirrors Algerian Nationalism in Algeria, but even more so equating white nationalism in South Africa to Black liberation movement.
“the people of Gaza have urged allies worldwide to exert pressure on their governments to demand an immediate ceasefire. But they have been clear that this should — this must — be the beginning and not the end of collective action for liberation.” In endorsing these demands, you also endorse Hamas’s position as the supposed vanguard of the Palestinian “liberation struggle.” This is a colossal mistake.”
So people should accept to be killed and live under occupation so that they don’t endorse Hamas? How is everything centered around Hamas? Should people not ask for something just because a horrible organization asks for it? It makes no sense to me at all.
Yes, as Amnesty International has said, “Gaza is the largest open-air prison in the world,” but this is also due to the fact that Hamas is an exterminationist organization, whose Charter endorses the destruction of the State of Israel.
How can this be true if the West Bank experiences similar levels of violence without Hamas? This justification of why Gaza needs to be an open air prison is immoral this is collective punishment justified.
“The attacks of October 7, 2023 are not “just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation, something anticipated by international humanitarian law in the Second Geneva Protocol,”… They are a turning point not only for the Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere, but also in the history of the Palestinian people. The murder of 1300 Israeli Jews, the wounding of 3000 others, the devastation of kibbutzim and towns and the taking hostage of over 200 people, have created a deep wound in the psyche of many Jews around the world; only compounded by the sense that Israel has lost in the world of public opinion.”
The only thing that matters are the Jews killed, not the thousands of Palestinian hostages already taken by Israel, the thousands murdered in Gaza and West Bank, the thousands subjected to apartheid. The Jewish trauma surpasses 70 years of occupation according to the writer. I find this racist and unforgivable. The world did not start on October 7th, many Israelis killed were also in a crossfire, Israel has a Hannibal directive which instructs them to kill their own hostages, and they have a Dahiyya that mandates a disproportionate use of force.
“October 7, 2023 is not just a turning point for Israel and the Jewish diaspora; it must be a turning point for the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian people must free themselves of the scourge of Hamas.”
This is a letter obsessed with Hamas rather than the liberation of Palestinians, the main idea pushed forward by the so called philosopher is that people, rather than liberate themselves from Israel who has occupied their land and bombing them, depriving them of a basic life, they should liberate themselves of Hamas. The writer needs people to reset to the West Bank, fully controlled by Israel before they can even start to struggle against occupation. What a joke.
“Yes, it is not only Hamas which has committed war crimes; Israel is in the process of doing so in Gaza as well.”
The cherry on top of a completely blind, biased, inhumane article. In the process of doing so, not endlessly committing war crimes.