Risk and Extortion LXVII: Pounding the Table

Defending the Indefensible through Semantic Violence

The growing rift between public opinion and the state-sanctioned narrative of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the West Bank across most western nations poses an enormous challenge not just for Zionism, but also for Communication Science and its understanding of the art of persuasion. I will focus on the challenge to Zionism. In the next post, I will turn to the  specific challenge to Communication Studies.

Representatives of Zionism are increasingly being confronted by opposition not onto to their narratives and slogans, but more importantly, to their accounts of facticity which time and time are proven to be deliberate lies. In the USA, lawyers are trained to follow the following principles: (a) if the facts are on your side, argue the facts, (b) if the facts are not on your side argue the law; (c) if neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table and yell like hell.

Ad a) It is clear that the facts are not on the side of Zionism. The myths of its constitution – a land without people for a people without land – were already exposed by Revisionist Zionism. The continuous denial, revisions and exposure of lies regarding documented facts involving human rights violations, war crimes, violations of international law and genocide in the name of Zionism have exposed the latter as a post-factual ideological exercise.

Ad b) The recent cases before the ICJ and ICC as well as a litany of violations of UN resolutions including the genocide convention also make clear that Zionism does not have the law on its side. There is no firm legal basis in international law for the claims that the state of Israel has a right to exist, it exists as a matter of fact, let alone the claims for the expansion of this state as Greater Israel. There is never a legal basis in international law for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is never a legal basis in international law for apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Ad c) Zionism is not only pounding the table, but has somehow managed to convince others to pound the table with them: The USA, the UK, the EU (minus Spain and Belgium). The pounding of the table however is less innocent than it may seem. There are real threats deployed by Western governments to their own citizens as well as other nations, resulting in serious violations of their own constitutions in defence of Zionism. The adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is indeed in itself already a violation of human rights, truth and common sense. What we have here is the undermining of law and democracy by means of semantic violence.

Zionism can easily be exposed as an exercise of physical as well as semantic violence. It is devoid of any legal standing as it has inaugurated a claim to statehood on the basis of an inaugural act of violence that would make Carl Schmitt proud. The semantic violence, for example, also includes the categorical prohibition of comparing the Shoah to any other genocide, thereby effectively preventing that which the IHRA claims to promote: learning from the past through keeping memories alive in order to prevent its repetition in the future. The semantic violence seems to suggest that the main unique feature of the Shoah, which prevents it from being comparable to other genocide, is the identity of its victims. This actually would act as proof of Aimé Césaire’s point that the exceptional nature of the Holocaust is, that its victims were white Europeans. Finally, the semantic violence becomes clear in the main deflection strategy against criticisms of Zionism: ad-hominem attacks. By magically being able to depict individuals as anti-Semites, everything they say can be delegitimated beforehand without having to engage in any discussions about facts and logic.

This of course does not mean that anti-Semitism does not exist. Anti-Semitic is every utterance that suggests that Jews commit evil acts because they are Jewish, or that the state of Israel commits evil acts because it is a Jewish-majority state. In the Iron wall (1923)  Vladimir Jabotisnky actually admitted that in order to establish a Jewish majority state, acts of violent conquest and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people are inevitable. Ascribing this statement to Jabotinski being Jewish is obviously an act of anti-Semitism. Ascribing this statement to Jabotinski being a (Revisionist) Zionist, obviously is not. Not all Jews are and were ever (Revisionist) Zionists. Between Zionism and Judaism is a huge gap. The first is a form of nationalism, a secular ideology born in Europe during the 19^th Century, the second is a religion that spans over 3 millennia. 

The hijacking of specific religious tropes by nationalist ideologies is nothing specific to Zionism. Most expressions of nationalism invoke explicit religions or implicit religiosity. Nationalism is for many just like a religion: believing in the Nation is like believing in God. In a 1929 letter to the legal philosopher, Carl Schmitt, whose political theology helped justify the birth of the Third Reich, the Zionist political philosopher Leo Strauss writes about the crisis of liberalism and how myth or authority (including national myths) becomes necessary once religion loses its grip. This is how conservative nationalism operates: constructing a mythpoesis of transhistorical identity to justify authoritarian politics.

Strauss was the intellectual godfather of the Neoconservative movement in the USA, which in tandem with their fake opponent, Neoliberalism, has radically undermined democracy, critical thinking and notions of universal justice. They prepared the way for movements such as MAGA, Reform UK and the AfD. There are also very strong crossovers between the philosophies of Leo Strauss and Alexander Dugin (who has strongly influenced Putin’s opportunist turn to Russian imperialism). Both identify liberalism as spiritually and politically hollow, unable to provide a meaningful worldview or coherent authority, yet have no problems with neoliberalism as the façade of capitalism. Both look to pre-modern sources (mythopoesis) to critique modern nihilism and to restore transcendent or metaphysical meaning to politics.

Zionism is nothing special or exceptional. It resonates perfectly well with the more generic forms of Nationalism as they emerged from both political practice as well as political philosophy. There is nothing specifically Jewish about Zionism except in terms of the substantiation of mythopoesis. Its ideological structure is not different from that of any other form of European nationalism. The fact that it derives extra appeal from narratives of victimhood is also not unique. Many nationalisms have emerged from identifications with one’s own victimhood. Dutch nationalism, for example, is derived from a narration of liberation from Spanish-Habsburg oppression, which was also turned into a story of liberation from Roman-Catholic oppression and a liberation from being tied to the land. Does its glorification of imperial-colonialism and the denial of genocidal violence make Dutch nationalism unique or fundamentally different from Zionism?

It is interesting to note that most of the vociferous defendants of Dutch nationalism are very positive about Zionism (one notable exception being Thierry Baudet). They clearly see the parallels, yet at the same time, they too insist on Jewish exceptionalism. Probably because they also believe in Dutch exceptionalism. They can deny the equivalences and emphasize the uniqueness because they are steeped in identity thinking. That is why they are also inherently opposed to the universality of human rights and see rights as part of a zero sum game. Like the expression “America First”  shows, if one’s rights are stressed over others because of nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or any other identity-marker, the universality of human rights is already called into question.

This may explain why the elites of western nations are so desperate to cling on to defending Zionism, even at the expense of the rights of their own citizens. Nationalism was never intended for elites, but only for the masses. Universal Human Rights suggest that elites have the same rights as common people. Ethnocratic Nationalism provides an ideology that is diametrically opposed to anything universal; truth, justice, human dignity, equality, freedom. It organizes interests on the basis of an alliance between a few who benefit and the rest who do not. After the death of God, it is the only way that enables the wealthy few to monopolize their wealth. This is why Jesus was absolutely right to say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Only those that are willing to give up all their wealth and privileges for the sake of the Kingdom of God – which is a universal kingdom – can crawl through the eye of a needle on their own. This of course is a lot easier for those who do not possess anything.