In a fresh interview, Peter Sloterdijk kindly praised me for bringing black humour into philosophy. Indeed, I think that was the case – with the exception that I do not consider it to be purely individual perversion. For we live in specified times that only black humour is suitable for knowing the madness of social reality.
Take a fresh example. On May 5, 2025, known war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Gaza Strip population would be resettled south. A minute earlier, his safety office approved the extension of the military operation in the enclave area, which 1 of the ministers called the plan of "conquest".
The decision was made respective hours after the military's message that it would mobilise as many as 70,000 reservists to strengthen Israel's defence forces' possible in the besieged Palestinian territory. Gaza's population is to be relocated to a tiny area in the south – in short, de facto to a concentration camp – “for its protection” – explained Netanjahu, referring to the ‘extensified operation’.
That's the message you're asking for. Netanyahu's message sounds as if peace had prevailed so far, and Israel only now attacked a territory in which it is impossible to live, people are dying of starvation caused by the melting of food supplies, hospitals are ruined, most of the buildings are in ruins, there is no water or electricity, all of this by continuous fire... from Israel. So Israel wants to “protect” Palestinians and Palestinians from...? Alone. First you gotta raze Gaza to the ground and then you gotta officially attack her.
Everything explains the name of the operation: “Gedeon's chariots”. Gideon led the Jews into conflict to slay the enemy Midianites associated with the Amalekites. All we request to do present is put the tanks under the chariots. The Israeli army follows the trend in Israeli politics to justify criminal warfare by direct references to the Bible. Palestinians are thus regarded as modern Amalekites. This means that, as Jehovah commanded the ancient Israelites to kill all Amalekites, including women and children, the Israelites present have the right and work to do likewise with the Palestinians.
This is not a marginal opinion. The Israeli ultimate Court itself confirmed by an identical biblical mention that Israel has the right to starve the people of Gaza. The Israeli State, which is believed to be the only democracy in the mediate East, justifies its reasoning in a way that is very akin to what the muslim State said a fewer years ago. Israel claims that its aim is only to warrant its own safety, but publically declares that this safety requires the demolition of all its enemies (real and imagined).
It's evidently not the only way. 1 of the fewer amazing voices of reason in Israel, erstwhile head of Mossad Ephraim Halevi, He said After the attacks of 7 October:
"We don't have the luxury to wait. We must have a viable policy on the presence of Jews and Palestinians in this area. We're doomed to live together. I don't mean to say we're doomed to die together. And if we have an approach that we're doomed to co-exist, then we just can't live that 1 side of the equation has the advantage and ignores the aspirations of the another side. There must be an agreement.”
What happens erstwhile 1 or both parties exclude an agreement? What is happening now is that the stronger side is doing cultural cleansing or even genocide on the weaker side. In specified a situation, do we, external observers, have any right to condemn the Palestinians for being liable for the veto, armed terror? But are we – in this case Western Europeans – truly external observers? I believe that our government has an even worse attitude than Israel.
The most powerful countries in Europe declare erstwhile and for all that they care about the suffering of people in Gaza and the West Bank. However, this does not prevent them from constantly supplying arms to Israel and blocking any serious diplomatic action against that State. Why?
When talking to respective high-ranking European officials from different countries and parties recently, I heard the same from them (of course at the highest level of confidentiality): yes, the terrible thing Israel is doing can even be called genocide, but we should realistically accept the sad fact that cultural cleansing works. Clear borders and the cultural homogeneity of large Israel can make the region peaceful. So let's let that happen. And then let's accept the fact..
Many Western and judaic liberals talk very critically of Israel, while condemning the fresh wave of anti-Semitism seen in student protests and various another groups of Western societies. The position of these Liberals has its reasons: yes, Palestinian organizations declare in their statutes that their aim is to annihilate Israel; yes, they commit acts of panic specified as the 7 October attacks; yes, it is passing through the West a fresh wave of anti-Semitism.
However, any things request to be clarified. Let us begin with this apparent fact that any criticism of Israel is regularly disposed of as anti-Semitism and support for Hamas terrorism. But the fact that Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank would consequence in an increase in anti-Semitism was predictable, I suppose? So whether Israel in his actions consciously, or possibly even deliberately, accepted the emergence of the world's hostility to those on whose support he relies, be able To introduce yourself as a victim?
However, the most crucial thing is that, as Owen Jones put it, public life in Israel is virtually in a genocidal grip. It is not even about the Zionist movement taking over the state and utilizing it for purposes not shared by the majority. The point is that it is impossible to talk to Israelis, and against their state, due to the fact that most of them are even more anti-Palestinian. A large part present opposes a two-state solution and supports the incarnation of Gaza and the West Bank into Israel. The difference is that radical, fanatical Zionists want to accomplish this openly brutally, while “liberators” like to keep any minimal appearance of decency.
W Kneset and Israeli tv are multiplied by gruesome debates specified as: do only adult men and women and children request to be killed in Gaza? They dominate the justification for violent torture on prisoners. It discusses how much Israel should grow to accomplish security: is it adequate “from river to sea”, or is it essential to long on Sinai, part of Syria and Saudi Arabia all the way to Euphrates?
After the attacks of October 7, we heard in all media that no context justifies them. The first question in the interviews was, do you condemn Mrs Hamas? If consequence contained even a shadow of nuance, the interview ended. Now it's time to turn it around. The first question should always be: do you condemn what Israel does in Gaza and in the West Bank? Without a clear ‘yes’ in response, further conversation is unnecessary.
It is besides not worth avoiding appeals to the further past. Problems did not start after the Six-Day War in 1967, resulting in Israel occupying the West Bank of Jordan, nor even in 1948, erstwhile the State of Israel was recognized by the UN. The conviction on the Zionist task – the relation between anti-Semits and Zionists – existed from the very beginning.
Balfour's declaration was issued by the British Government in 1917 as an act of support for the creation of a "house for the judaic people" in Palestine, then the Ottoman Empire region, inhabited by a tiny judaic minority. This declaration appeared in a letter from British abroad Minister Arthur Balfour, sent on 2 November 1917 to Baron Rothschild, leader of the British judaic community – so that it could be handed over to the Zionist Federation of large Britain and Ireland.
The same Balfour, "the defender of the Jews", in 1905 oversaw the adoption of the Aliens Act, whose main intent was to restrict the reception of Jews from east Europe by Britain (especially from Russia after the pogroms of the turn of the century). The Act does not specifically mention Jews, but only title, general foreigners. "It is clear, however, that its crucial nonsubjective was to halt the influx of East European Jews into Britain" (Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society During the Second planet War, Manchester 1989, p. 11). Thus, bringing Jews from Western Europe to Palestine from the very beginning was an anti-Semitic project. It should not surprise that Germany, the country liable for the Holocaust, is Israel's strongest supporter in Europe. That's the temper of the blackest.
And there's another, even more sinister dimension. The war between India and Pakistan (which alternatively rapidly ended with a ceasefire) was the first direct conflict between the 2 atomic powers. It has so broken the rule that the war between nuclear-weapon states should not have started at all, due to course it would have led to common destruction. Today, however, various countries, from Russia to Israel, regularly mention the anticipation of a first strike if something threatens their existence. They hope that specified an act will not be necessary, but...
If the primary axiom behind the Cold War was the MAD doctrine (Mostly Assured Destruction, Mutually Guaranteed Destruction), today's gunplay seems to be guided by the NUTS rule (Nuclear Utilization mark Selection), that is, the thought that you can strike with surgical precision and destruct the enemy's atomic arsenal, and your own anti-racite shield will defend against its impact.
The United States is applying a diverse strategy: they act as if they inactive trust the logic of the MAD in their relations with Russia and China, while they are tempted to practice NUTS against Iran and North Korea. The paradoxical MAD mechanics turns the logic of self-fulfilling prophecy into the logic of "self-imposing intent". The assurance of each organization that the another side would respond to its atomic attack with full destructive power, in the past guaranteed that no 1 would start a war. Today, the logic of NUTS is the opposite: we can force the enemy to disarm if we guarantee that we strike without the hazard of counterattack. However, erstwhile the same power uses 2 distinctly contradictory strategies at the same time, the fantasmatic nature of all reasoning is evident.
In specified a situation, we can only mobilise global public opinion to lead to the categorical criminalisation of any threats concerning atomic or another weapons of mass destruction. Leaders and states that consider specified a anticipation should be treated as pariahs, disgusting, subhuman monsters. All the moves against them should be allowed—from mass boycott to individual humiliation.
A extremist rejection of atomic weapons is essential due to the fact that NUTS only reveals the hidden paradox of the MAD strategy. Nothing of this paradox emphasizes better than the concept of the alleged "prejudice"—an atomic attack against an enemy made to prevent an attack on us. This is like a punishment done in advance before the perpetrator commits a crime – so that even if we strike first, our action counts as second in order, as a reaction.
The basic paradox of the logic of deterrence of MAD is that if doctrine works perfectly, it endures itself. So it can only function through its own imperfection (the threat that it will not work; that 1 side will nevertheless press the red button).
Those who usage NUTS logic present are not irrational – but on the contrary: they are besides rational. They draw the far-reaching, “reasonable” consequences from the MAD's reasoning, ignoring the imperfection that ensured its functioning during the Cold War. Here a grim gag is that consistent based on logical reasoning leads to madness.
Against all my instincts, I am inclined to usage the word "wisdom" here: it is wise to presume that perfect logic works only if it is not brought to the very end and tested in reality. This is how it is in real life: it is full of compromises and denials even at the basic level. 1 form in The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood says of the global disaster: “No 1 admitted to knowing. If others started talking about it, they stopped listening to them, due to the fact that what they said was apparent and unthinkable."
This is how most respond to the horrors that are happening in Gaza present and beyond. People know, but ignore those who talk about it due to the fact that the substance is "already apparent and unthinkable." The solution would be to “renormalize” Jews, to treat them no different than all another people – in this way, as they are now doing, it would become unobvious.
What should we do in specified a situation? Among intellectuals, the atmosphere of despondent resignation dominates: due to fresh populism, ideological manipulation has reached specified a level that what utilized to be called the “criticism of ideology” does not work effectively today. Public space That's how cynicism got overtakenthat the prevailing ideology can easy absorb any criticism as a subordinate minute of its own functioning.
Trump is an obscene, postmodern clown, not taking seriously his own rhetoric of Christian fundamentalism – he is simply a caricature of himself. Rumors play a key role: public life figures do not even anticipate their statements to be taken seriously. The measurement of their standards of nonsubjective fact fails with the objective.
Such pessimism – although to any degree correct – is, however, conducive to people in power. Do we not see all day that indirect and direct censorship is peculiarly increasing? It is adequate to mention that the prosionist network closely controls what may appear in the media, relativizing reports of the brutality of the Israeli army as a "refuse".
However, there is besides a fresh kind of reporter who is willing to devote himself to 1 substance without regulation – individual like Julian Assange or Owen Jones. In the West, we besides have our Navals. The panic they origin in the circles of power is proof that despite cynical manipulation, the facts are inactive working. specified characters are actual heroes of present – and their sarcastic black humour can set us free.
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In English she translated Aleksandra Paszkowska.
