The Last Days of Israel
In the face of the continuing castrastrophe being wrought in Lebanon by Israel, words fail.
The Israeli military is now actively engaged in war-crimes of the most severe magnitude - so much is already obvious to everyone with eyes. But Israel will not look itself in the eye, for fear of seeing staring back the same murderous gaze that constructed the Shoah.
Israel has dreamed of Auschwitz every night since it was founded. Beneath this dream, this dark desire: it wants to be annihilated. It wants to be annihilated, because it wants to stop dreaming this terrible dream, and cannot imagine another way out. In a flat voice emptied of affect, over and over and over again, Israel tells itself this: "We must repeat the Shoah. We must repeat the Shoah to end the Shoah; the Shoah must never happen again, it must happen again to make certain it never happens again."
Israel has become a prisoner of a symbolic structure drained of all movement. It has elevated the Shoah into more than an origin; it has become a telos. The pure incarnation of everything which Israel already is, and would secretly like to become: a pitiless death-machine. Everything Israel despises, transformed into an implacable alterior gaze, which by hook or by crook it will realize.
The building of the settlements, the engineering of Hezbullah, the brutal occupation of Palestine. The current campaign in Lebanon is only the latest iteration of a seemingly endless series of suicide missions carried out by an Israeli state, fanatically desperate to make itself a tyrant, to be destroyed as such, as all tyrants eventually are, in the secret hope which Israel still clings to, but cannot admit: that there is justice on Earth, and that God will dispense it for his chosen people.
This deal with God: deliver us from this evil that we have become. Let us be driven into the sea, and let the sea part for us, as it did once before - this time, let us let Pharaoh go: this time, the Messiah could really arrive.
Let Israel become-Messiah, and finally make itself worthy of the title it has assumed for itself: King of the Jews. Let the chosen people choose to become a truly free people, by abandoning this state of exception which is making them slaves to a past charred to cinders, and a future soaked in blood. Israel must sacrifice this compulsion to sacrifice, it must kill the korban itself. Let the sectarian Jewish state end, in a universal rebirth, let Israel become the most universal state of all.
The Israeli military is now actively engaged in war-crimes of the most severe magnitude - so much is already obvious to everyone with eyes. But Israel will not look itself in the eye, for fear of seeing staring back the same murderous gaze that constructed the Shoah.
Israel has dreamed of Auschwitz every night since it was founded. Beneath this dream, this dark desire: it wants to be annihilated. It wants to be annihilated, because it wants to stop dreaming this terrible dream, and cannot imagine another way out. In a flat voice emptied of affect, over and over and over again, Israel tells itself this: "We must repeat the Shoah. We must repeat the Shoah to end the Shoah; the Shoah must never happen again, it must happen again to make certain it never happens again."
Israel has become a prisoner of a symbolic structure drained of all movement. It has elevated the Shoah into more than an origin; it has become a telos. The pure incarnation of everything which Israel already is, and would secretly like to become: a pitiless death-machine. Everything Israel despises, transformed into an implacable alterior gaze, which by hook or by crook it will realize.
The building of the settlements, the engineering of Hezbullah, the brutal occupation of Palestine. The current campaign in Lebanon is only the latest iteration of a seemingly endless series of suicide missions carried out by an Israeli state, fanatically desperate to make itself a tyrant, to be destroyed as such, as all tyrants eventually are, in the secret hope which Israel still clings to, but cannot admit: that there is justice on Earth, and that God will dispense it for his chosen people.
This deal with God: deliver us from this evil that we have become. Let us be driven into the sea, and let the sea part for us, as it did once before - this time, let us let Pharaoh go: this time, the Messiah could really arrive.
Let Israel become-Messiah, and finally make itself worthy of the title it has assumed for itself: King of the Jews. Let the chosen people choose to become a truly free people, by abandoning this state of exception which is making them slaves to a past charred to cinders, and a future soaked in blood. Israel must sacrifice this compulsion to sacrifice, it must kill the korban itself. Let the sectarian Jewish state end, in a universal rebirth, let Israel become the most universal state of all.
5 Comments:
Good post/meditation on .....My own thoughts are Zionism both Jewish and Christian,Auchwitz as a metonym for the holocaust and political religion(first coined by Michael Burleigh in relation to the Third Reich)
To paraphrase Hitchens organised religion and the playgroup are both the domain of children.
Things to seek fromisraeltolebanon.info
Richard Hagee /red heifers
The Litani river/water
We know the physical manifestations of fascism but we should also seek the metaphysical manifestations
I like your writing because you have a vibe/ambience which is far removed from the consensus and also your byline.
Which is more boring? Capitalism or its ability to sell you the means to transcend the boredom.
God bless to you and yours
Daniel,
Can you elaborate on how you use the term 'state of exception' here, particularly since you use it in calling for a new universal state?
There's a basic problem with this piece in that it takes a Zionist line at face value, namely that the foundation of the state of Israel came as a response to the Nazi Holocaust.
In fact the Zionist instrumentalisation of the Holocaust as a justification for the state of Israel did not really kick off until the 1967 war.
The actual connection between the two events, as opposed to the propaganda, cannot be understood on the level of the history of the Jewish people - you have to look at the big picture of Western imperialism in the Middle East, the rise of the workers movement in Europe, the consequent deployment of anti-Semitism by reactionary forces, the internal logic of the Nazi state and so on.
Also, while I fully endorse the call for a universal state to be established in historic Palestine, I am somewhat sceptical that such a state can be legitimately named Israel. That signifier now is irrevocably associated with Zionism at its most racist and oppressive.
Bat,
Thanks for your comment. I broadly concur with your historical account. At the same time though, it seems to me that the Holocaust occupies the central place in the Israeli imaginary, and that, for reasons of strategy, this should be taken at face value, and then subverted on that basis. This is to say, I think we must take propaganda seriously - the symptoms must be interpreted, and then the fundamental fantasy must be traversed. Better, to my mind, to assume that Israel is insane rather than evil, as at least this former holds open the possibility of a cure.
Regarding your second point, whether a universalist state could legitimately be called Israel: accepted, perhaps not.
More discussion of these questions at the bottom of the comments box here.
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