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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31299 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Another day, another controversy about what is antisemitism and what is legitimate criticism of Israel.

This time, a German architecture prize was rescinded over the recipient signing a letter condemning Israel.

The Athens-based artist and author James Bridle, [...], was announced in June as the recipient of the Schelling Architecture Foundation’s theory prize, [...]

Bridle was informed in an email that the foundation’s committee had decided unanimously not to award them the prize because Bridle was among the several thousand authors who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.

Of course, the Guardian is not quite sure how the founder of the prize is called, oscillating between Schelling and Schilling:

The foundation’s prizes, which have been awarded since 1992, are named after the late German architect Erich Schilling.

The letter in question is here. Key passages:

the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.

We still have 3/4 of that century to go, but good job being optimistic!

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.

This would at least be debatable.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

Fair enough.

the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.

That would be the the general right self-determination of peoples, as mentioned in the UN charter? Does this also apply to the Uighur, the Kurds, the Basques, the Catalans and so on?

Or is the relevant law the limited recognition of Palestine, or the Oslo Accords?

Was the Hamas rule before the Oct 7 a shining example of self-determination?

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to calls to stop the IDF from bombing the hell out of Gaza. I am also fine with demanding that Israel should stick to the Oslo accords in the West Bank and dismantle their illegal settlements.

But to demand political autonomy in the context of Gaza is where I get off the train. The force of political autonomy in Gaza is called Hamas. Their primary objective is to sabotage any peace process by murdering random residents of Israel. Asking for political autonomy for Gaza is like asking for political autonomy for Germany in 1946.

Overall, I don't think that the letter is plainly antisemitic. If the author had signed a similar pledge against Chinese institutions for the Uighur genocide, and also demanded self-determination for the Kurds, I would tend to call them a general advocate for oppressed people. If their only political topic is Israel, then that would be a bit dubious.

In my view, someone boycotting Israel could, theoretically not be anti-Semitic, but I don't know of any organised movement that qualifies.

For such a movement to demonstrate not being anti-Semites, they would need to state conditions XYZ, such that:

  1. Israel could fulfil XYZ without jeopardising its existence, and
  2. the movement declares that, if Israel fulfils XYZ, they will end the boycott.

However, doing this would lose the support of those who oppose Israel not out of sympathy for Palestinian children but anger that the Jews have somewhere where they can exist without the permission of the Nations.

It's entirely possible to not be antisemitic and not want the State of Israel to exist.

There are some lefty Jewish organizations that boycott Israel and ask for one state solutions. I think it'll be difficult to argue that these in particular are antisemitic.

Moreover, you can't just argue that anarchists or people who boycott all operators of concentration camps on principle hate a particular ethnos.

Yes, it's possible. Some socialists are absolutely against strengthening ethnonationalist impulses. FdB wrote an insipid piece on it not too long ago.

You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.

The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.

You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.

The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.

I believe that Israel might very well be the only justified ethno-state; every invocation of '109 countries' by certain political tendencies only serves to strengthen that conviction.

Ok, but the Jews aren’t the only ethnic group with a long history of persecution.

Now that I think of it, another ethnic group whose entire history consists of persecution is one of Israel’s immediate neighbors. Do the Maronites have the right to build an ethnostate and maintain it at whatever the cost?

Do the Maronites have the right to build an ethnostate and maintain it at whatever the cost?

Wasn't that the basis of the foundation of Lebanon?

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