Judith Butler: ‘I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence’

Yes­ter­day (the 26^th of Aug) the Jer­u­s­alem Post pub­lished an attack on the award­ing of a major inter­na­tional prize to Judith But­ler, the philo­sopher and Berke­ley pro­fessor of com­par­at­ive lit­er­at­ure, because But­ler favors boy­cot­ting Israel. But­ler wrote this response and, unhope­ful that the Post would pub­lish it, sent it to us. — The Edit­ors at Mon­do­weiss.

The Jer­u­s­alem Post recently pub­lished an art­icle report­ing that some organ­iz­a­tions are opposed to my receiv­ing the Adorno Prize, an award given every three years to someone who works in the tra­di­tion of crit­ical the­ory broadly con­strued. The accus­a­tions against me are that I sup­port Hamas and Hezbol­lah (which is not true) that I sup­port BDS (par­tially true), and that I am anti-​Semitic (pat­ently false). Per­haps I should not be as sur­prised as I am that those who oppose my receiv­ing the Adorno Prize would seek recourse to such scur­ril­ous and unfoun­ded charges to make their point. I am a scholar who gained an intro­duc­tion to philo­sophy through Jew­ish thought, and I under­stand myself as defend­ing and con­tinu­ing a Jew­ish eth­ical tra­di­tion that includes fig­ures such as Mar­tin Buber and Han­nah Arendt. I received a Jew­ish edu­ca­tion in Clev­e­land, Ohio at The Temple under the tutel­age of Rabbi Daniel Sil­ver where I developed strong eth­ical views on the basis of Jew­ish philo­soph­ical thought. I learned, and came to accept, that we are called upon by oth­ers, and by ourselves, to respond to suf­fer­ing and to call for its alle­vi­ation. But to do this, we have to hear the call, find the resources by which to respond, and some­times suf­fer the con­sequences for speak­ing out as we do. I was taught at every step in my Jew­ish edu­ca­tion that it is not accept­able to stay silent in the face of injustice. Such an injunc­tion is a dif­fi­cult one, since it does not tell us exactly when and how to speak, or how to speak in a way that does not pro­duce a new injustice, or how to speak in a way that will be heard and registered in the right way. My actual pos­i­tion is not heard by these detract­ors, and per­haps that should not sur­prise me, since their tac­tic is to des­troy the con­di­tions of audibility.

I stud­ied philo­sophy at Yale Uni­ver­sity and con­tin­ued to con­sider the ques­tions of Jew­ish eth­ics through­out my edu­ca­tion. I remain grate­ful for those eth­ical resources, for the form­a­tion that I had, and that anim­ates me still. It is untrue, absurd, and pain­ful for any­one to argue that those who for­mu­late a cri­ti­cism of the State of Israel is anti-​Semitic or, if Jew­ish, self-​hating. Such charges seek to demon­ize the per­son who is artic­u­lat­ing a crit­ical point of view and so dis­qual­ify the view­point in advance. It is a silen­cing tac­tic: this per­son is unspeak­able, and whatever they speak is to be dis­missed in advance or twis­ted in such a way that it neg­ates the valid­ity of the act of speech. The charge refuses to con­sider the view, debate its valid­ity, con­sider its forms of evid­ence, and derive a sound con­clu­sion on the basis of listen­ing to reason. The charge is not only an attack on per­sons who hold views that some find objec­tion­able, but it is an attack on reas­on­able exchange, on the very pos­sib­il­ity of listen­ing and speak­ing in a con­text where one might actu­ally con­sider what another has to say. When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews “anti-​Semitic”, they are try­ing to mono­pol­ize the right to speak in the name of the Jews. So the alleg­a­tion of anti-​Semitism is actu­ally a cover for an intra-​Jewish quarrel.

In the United States, I have been alarmed by the num­ber of Jews who, dis­mayed by Israeli polit­ics, includ­ing the occu­pa­tion, the prac­tices of indef­in­ite deten­tion, the bomb­ing of civil­ian pop­u­la­tions in Gaza, seek to dis­avow their Jew­ish­ness. They make the mis­take of think­ing that the State of Israel rep­res­ents Jew­ish­ness for our times, and that if one iden­ti­fies as a Jew, one sup­ports Israel and its actions. And yet, there have always been Jew­ish tra­di­tions that oppose state viol­ence, that affirm multi-​cultural co-​habitation, and defend prin­ciples of equal­ity, and this vital eth­ical tra­di­tion is for­got­ten or side­lined when any of us accept Israel as the basis of Jew­ish iden­ti­fic­a­tion or val­ues. So, on the one hand, Jews who are crit­ical of Israel think per­haps they can­not be Jew­ish any­more of Israel rep­res­ents Jew­ish­ness; and on the other hand, those who seek to van­quish any­one who cri­ti­cizes Israel equate Jew­ish­ness with Israel as well, lead­ing to the con­clu­sion that the critic must be anti-​Semitic or, if Jew­ish, self-​hating. My schol­arly and pub­lic efforts have been dir­ec­ted toward get­ting out of this bind. In my view, there are strong Jew­ish tra­di­tions, even early Zion­ist tra­di­tions, that value co-​habitation and that offer ways to oppose viol­ence of all kinds, includ­ing state viol­ence. It is most import­ant that these tra­di­tions be val­ued and anim­ated for our time – they rep­res­ent dia­sporic val­ues, struggles for social justice, and the exceed­ingly import­ant Jew­ish value of “repair­ing the world” (Tikkun).

It is clear to me that the pas­sions that run so high on these issues are those that make speak­ing and hear­ing very dif­fi­cult. A few words are taken out of con­text, their mean­ing dis­tor­ted, and they then come to label or, indeed, brand an indi­vidual. This hap­pens to many people when they offer a crit­ical view of Israel – they are branded as anti-​Semites or even as Nazi col­lab­or­at­ors; these forms of accus­a­tion are meant to estab­lish the most endur­ing and toxic forms of stig­mat­iz­a­tion and demon­iz­a­tion. They tar­get the per­son by tak­ing the words out of con­text, invert­ing their mean­ings and hav­ing them stand for the per­son; indeed, they nul­lify the views of that per­son without regard to the con­tent of those views. For those of us who are des­cend­ants of European Jews who were des­troyed in the Nazi gen­o­cide (my grandmother’s fam­ily was des­troyed in a small vil­lage south of Bud­apest), it is the most pain­ful insult and injury to be called com­pli­cit­ous with the hatred of Jews or to be called self-​hating. And it is all the more dif­fi­cult to endure the pain of such an alleg­a­tion when one seeks to affirm what is most valu­able in Juda­ism for think­ing about con­tem­por­ary eth­ics, includ­ing the eth­ical rela­tion to those who are dis­pos­sessed of land and rights of self-​determination, to those who seek to keep the memory of their oppres­sion alive, to those who seek to live a life that will be, and must be, worthy of being grieved. I con­tend that these val­ues all derive from import­ant Jew­ish sources, which is not to say that they are only derived from those sources. But for me, given the his­tory from which I emerge, it is most import­ant as a Jew to speak out against injustice and to struggle against all forms of racism. This does not make me into a self-​hating Jew. It makes me into someone who wishes to affirm a Juda­ism that is not iden­ti­fied with state viol­ence, and that is iden­ti­fied with a broad-​based struggle for social justice.

My remarks on Hamas and Hezbol­lah have been taken out of con­text and badly dis­tort my estab­lished and con­tinu­ing views. I have always been in favor of non-​violent polit­ical action, and this prin­ciple has con­sist­ently char­ac­ter­ized my views. I was asked by a mem­ber of an aca­demic audi­ence a few years ago whether I thought Hamas and Hezbol­lah belonged to “the global left” and I replied with two points. My first point was merely descript­ive: those polit­ical organ­iz­a­tions define them­selves as anti-​imperialist, and anti-​imperialism is one char­ac­ter­istic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe them as part of the global left. My second point was then crit­ical: as with any group on the left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against that group, and one needs to crit­ic­ally eval­u­ate their stand. I do not accept or endorse all groups on the global left. Indeed, these very remarks fol­lowed a talk that I gave that even­ing which emphas­ized the import­ance of pub­lic mourn­ing and the polit­ical prac­tices of non-​violence, a prin­ciple that I elab­or­ate and defend in three of my recent books: Pre­cari­ous Life, Frames of War, and Part­ing Ways. I have been inter­viewed on my non-​violent views by Guer­nica and other on-​line journ­als, and those views are easy to find, if one wanted to know where I stand on such issues. I am in fact some­times mocked by mem­bers of the left who sup­port forms of viol­ent res­ist­ance who think I fail to under­stand those prac­tices. It is true: I do not endorse prac­tices of viol­ent res­ist­ance and neither do I endorse state viol­ence, can­not, and never have. This view makes me per­haps more naïve than dan­ger­ous, but it is my view. So it has always seemed absurd to me that my com­ments were taken to mean that I sup­port or endorse Hamas and Hezbol­lah! I have never taken a stand on either organ­iz­a­tion, just as I have never sup­por­ted every organ­iz­a­tion that is argu­ably part of the global left – I am not uncon­di­tion­ally sup­port­ive of all groups that cur­rently con­sti­tute the global left. To say that those organ­iz­a­tions belong to the left is not to say that they should belong, or that I endorse or sup­port them in any way.

Two fur­ther points. I do sup­port the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions move­ment in a very spe­cific way. I reject some ver­sions and accept oth­ers. For me, BDS means that I oppose invest­ments in com­pan­ies that make mil­it­ary equip­ment whose sole pur­pose is to demol­ish homes. It means as well that I do not speak at Israeli insti­tu­tions unless they take a strong stand against the occu­pa­tion. I do not accept any ver­sion of BDS that dis­crim­in­ates against indi­vidu­als on the basis of their national cit­izen­ship, and I main­tain strong col­lab­or­at­ive rela­tion­ships with many Israeli schol­ars. One reason I can endorse BDS and not endorse Hamas and Hezbol­lah is that BDS is the largest non-​violent civic polit­ical move­ment seek­ing to estab­lish equal­ity and the rights of self-​determination for Palestini­ans. My own view is that the peoples of those lands, Jew­ish and Palestinian, must find a way to live together on the con­di­tion of equal­ity. Like so many oth­ers, I long for a truly demo­cratic polity on those lands and I affirm the prin­ciples of self-​determination and co-​habitation for both peoples, indeed, for all peoples. And my wish, as is the wish of an increas­ing num­ber of Jews and non-​Jews, is that the occu­pa­tion come to an end, that viol­ence of all kinds cease, and that the sub­stan­tial polit­ical rights of all people in that land be secured through a new polit­ical structure.

Two last notes: The group that is spon­sor­ing this call is the Schol­ars for Peace in the Middle East, a mis­nomer at best, that claims on its web­site that “Islam” is an “inher­ently anti-​semetic (sic) reli­gion.” It is not, as The Jer­u­s­alem Post has repor­ted, a large group of Jew­ish schol­ars in Ger­many, but an inter­na­tional organ­iz­a­tion with a base in Aus­tralia and Cali­for­nia. They are a right-​wing organ­iz­a­tion and so part of an intra-​Jewish war. Ex-​board mem­ber Ger­ald Stein­berg is known for attack­ing human rights organ­iz­a­tions in Israel as well as Amnesty Inter­na­tional and Human Rights Watch. Their will­ing­ness to include Israeli infrac­tions of human rights appar­ently makes them also eli­gible for the label, “anti-​Semitic.”

Finally, I am not an instru­ment of any “NGO”: I am on the advis­ory board of Jew­ish Voice for Peace, a mem­ber of Kehil­lah Syn­agogue in Oak­land, Cali­for­nia, and an exec­ut­ive mem­ber of Fac­ulty for Israeli-​Palestinian Peace in the US and The Jenin Theatre in Palestine. My polit­ical views have ranged over a large num­ber of top­ics, and have not been restric­ted to the Middle East or the State of Israel. Indeed, I have writ­ten about viol­ence and injustice in other parts of the world, focus­ing mainly in wars waged by the United States. I have also writ­ten on viol­ence against trans­gendered people in Tur­key, psy­chi­at­ric viol­ence, tor­ture in Guantanamo, and about police viol­ence against peace­ful protest­ors in the U.S, to name a few. I have also writ­ten against anti-​Semitism in Ger­many and against racial dis­crim­in­a­tion in the United States.

This entry was posted on 29 August 2012 at 6:18 am and is filed under Human Rights, Political Philosophy, The Political. Published under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License: You are welcome to share and remix this content for non-commercial purposes. Kindly acknowledge and hyperlink the source.