Language and rhetoric are not weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are weapons of mass destruction (and to be clear, Israel has these — Palestinians and campus protestors do not).

A response to Zadie Smith's "Shibboleth"

May 12, 2024

Several people have expressed concerns to me that I am not focusing enough on possible antisemitism in the Palestinian solidarity movement when I express my solidarity with the people being subjected to unthinkable cruelty in Gaza. A few of these people encouraged me to read Zadie Smith’s recent article in the New Yorker titled “Shibboleth: In the campus protests over the war in Gaza, language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction.”

In the article, Smith asks the Palestinian solidarity movement to reflect on whether our actions are in alignment with the underlying ethics of the movement. She begins by articulating her understanding of the ethical framework underlying the Palestinian solidarity protests. She describes this framework as having two components: “1. There is an ethical duty to express solidarity with the weak in any situation that involves oppressive power. 2. If the machinery of oppressive power is to be trained on the weak, then there is a duty to stop the gears by any means necessary.” I agree with her that this is a fair description of the ethical framework underlying the Palestinian solidarity movement. Palestine is an occupied territory and is not recognized as a country. The people who live there do not enjoy basic human rights. They have been subjected to control by the state of Israel for 80 years. They have been killed with impunity by the Israeli military. Children have been abducted and placed in jail for throwing rocks. Peaceful protests have resulted in being shot dead. And this is all before the massive genocidal attack that has been underway for the past seven months. This is not a war in the traditional sense of two nation states with armies engaged in armed combat. It is a war on a civilian population, using AI to target people who may be in some way affiliated with Hamas, and dropping bombs on them while they are at home with their families. It is a war on families and children, killing more children in seven months in the tiny area of Gaza than armed conflicts have killed globally in four years. So yes, I agree with Smith that the Palestinian solidarity movement is a movement that recognizes that Palestinians have no way to defend themselves from the mass slaughter, forced starvation, and absolute genocidal brutality being inflicted on them by the state of Israel, and so has decided to interrupt business as usual until the killing stops.

Having laid out her understanding of the ethics of the Palestinian solidarity movement, she asks the reader to consider whether the actual behaviour of the protestors is in alignment with these ethics. She writes:

“[W]hen I open newspapers and see students dismissing the idea that some of their fellow-students feel, at this particular moment, unsafe on campus, or arguing that such a feeling is simply not worth attending to, given the magnitude of what is occurring in Gaza, I find such sentiments cynical and unworthy of this movement. For it may well be — within the ethical zone of interest that is a campus, which was not so long ago defined as a safe space, delineated by the boundary of a generation’s ethical ideas — it may well be that a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance, is, in that moment, the weakest participant in the zone. If the concept of safety is foundational to these students’ ethical philosophy (as I take it to be), and, if the protests are committed to reinserting ethical principles into a cynical and corrupt politics, it is not right to divest from these same ethics at the very moment they come into conflict with other imperatives. The point of a foundational ethics is that it is not contingent but foundational. That is precisely its challenge to a corrupt politics.”

I would like to break down this paragraph. First, I would like to discuss the “zone of interest.” In order to determine who is the “weakest participant in a zone of interest” we must first define that zone of interest. Here, Smith assumes that in the context of the Palestinian solidarity encampments, the zone of interest is the encampment itself. This is her first error. The Palestinian solidarity movement is a global movement. Fundamental to its ethical framework is the refusal to stay inside zones of interest defined by nation states and imperialists. The Palestinian solidarity movement rejects the idea that Palestinians are “somewhere else” and so therefore outside of our ethical consideration. The Palestinian solidarity movement exists across many borders, in many countries, and all Palestinian solidarity protestors know that Palestine is right here. Wherever there is mass suffering is our zone of interest. We are not separate from Palestinians, and acting as if we are contributes to the dehumanization encouraged by the state of Israel and other imperialists. Our zone of interest includes Gaza. When that is understood, the statement made by Smith that we should consider Jewish college students who are not being bombed the “weakest participants in the zone” is absolutely absurd.

She then goes on to describe an entirely hypothetical situation in which “a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance.” I have not heard of a single real situation like this and I would be very surprised if such a situation did occur. The Palestinian solidarity movement has always had significant Jewish participation and leadership. Many Jewish people feel deeply committed to the cause of the Palestinians, due to their visceral rejection of occupation and genocide stemming from their own history of occupation and genocide, so much so that it is fair to say that opposition to genocide is a fundamental part of Jewish cultural identity for many Jewish people. What that means is that Jewish members of the Palestinian solidarity movement are expressing their Jewishness when they take personal risk in order to show solidarity with Palestinians. When we see photos of Jewish protesters wearing shirts that say “Never again means never again” and “Jews for a ceasefire” being handcuffed, I think it would be accurate to call that antisemitism. Additionally, many Jewish people feel a deep responsibility for the lives of Palestinians in particular, due to the way that the cruelty and violence of the state of Israel is repeatedly justified in the name of Jewish trauma and Jewish safety.

There are many Jewish people at the encampments and at the protests and there always have been. Therefore, Smith’s hypothetical scenario in which a Jewish person is immediately assumed to be a Zionist and warned to keep her distance makes no sense at all. But it is true that there are many people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who wish to use antisemitism, Jewish trauma, and the idea of Jewish people feeling unsafe to shut down any discussion of the slaughter of Palestinians. Long before the past seven months, accusations of antisemitism resulting from public displays of solidarity with Palestinians has ended careers. Being Jewish does not protect people from this. I know of multiple Jewish people who have received harassment calling them antisemitic and even Nazis for talking about Palestine. It must be said that this itself is antisemitic. Jewish people, like all people, are allowed to have internal political disagreements. Calling anti-Zionism antisemitism conflates Zionism with Jewish identity which erases the reality of the many passionately anti-Zionist Jews. Calling Jewish people antisemitic or Nazis for expressing solidarity with Palestinians is particularly offensive.

There has been an increasing conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, including the creation of a new definition of antisemitism that explicitly defines criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Because the media is controlled by capitalists and imperialists, we hear this new definition of antisemitism repeated and assumed over and over again. We are taught that the only reason anyone would criticize Israel is because they hate Jewish people or don’t want Jewish people to be safe. This is absolutely and fundamentally false. As I have already stated, many Jewish people are themselves anti-Zionist due to their profound commitment to opposing occupation and genocide. It is also easy to see, if we put down the propaganda for a second, that caring about the lives of an occupied and brutalized population in no way means that you hate Jewish people or don’t care about Jewish safety. The myth that Israel is the only safe place for Jews, is just that — a myth. As Naomi Klein recently put it “I demand that Canada be a safe place for Jews.” I echo that demand. Everywhere should be a safe place for Jews. Everywhere should be a safe place for all people, regardless of religion, race, culture, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any identity category. We can absolutely be committed to that principle while opposing the violence of the state of Israel (and if we don’t oppose the violence of the state of Israel we are not committed to that principle).

After incorrectly defining an imaginary Jewish student as the weakest participant in the zone of interest she goes on to write “If the concept of safety is foundational to these students’ ethical philosophy (as I take it to be), and, if the protests are committed to reinserting ethical principles into a cynical and corrupt politics, it is not right to divest from these same ethics at the very moment they come into conflict with other imperatives.” Here we need to discuss what is meant by the word safety. If we define safety as freedom from violence, and if we define violence as an assault on bodily autonomy and/or a denial of material human needs like food, water, or shelter, then she is correct that safety is foundational to the ethical philosophy of the Palestinian solidarity movement. However, I don’t think most of us would choose to organize around the word “safety”, precisely because it is frequently misused in ways that facilitate violence, which is exactly what is happening in Smith’s article.

“Safety” is frequently weaponized to justify and facilitate violence, and this is not unique to the situation of Israel/Palestine. If you are unfamiliar with this idea, I recommend that you read Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair. In it she discusses at length how the concept of safety is used to justify violent and abusive behaviours, at multiple scales from the interpersonal to the geopolitical. She describes the behaviours we have come to call cancel culture, something I write about a lot, in which positioning oneself as the victim entitles people to dehumanize, harass, and socially isolate the person positioned as the aggressor. She writes about how cops who shoot unarmed people are doing so because they don’t feel safe, meanwhile they are the one holding a weapon. And she writes about this phenomenon in the context of Israel/Palestine, and how the history of Jewish trauma allows us to imagine that a nation state keeping an occupied population in apartheid conditions that deny their basic human rights is the real victim. This book came out in 2016, so if you haven’t read it yet, please do. If we misuse the concept of “safety” to dominate, abuse, or kill other people we are not creating safety, we are perpetuating violence. If we misuse the concept of safety to derail, interrupt, or undermine movements attempting to stop violence, we are not creating safety, we are contributing to violence.

Being confronted with ideas you don’t agree with does not make you unsafe. It makes sense to me that Jewish people who have been raised on the incorrect idea that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism might feel unsafe when confronted with anti-Zionist ideas. But that feeling is not an accurate reflection of reality. People can feel unsafe while not actually being unsafe. And we cannot derail our political movements which are fighting for the lives of people being slaughtered in the name of people’s feelings that aren’t even based in reality. I do have compassion for Jewish people who think they are experiencing antisemitism when they are actually witnessing anti-Zionism, but the people I hold responsible for that situation are those that perpetuate the lie that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. And I know that the feelings of someone not being bombed should absolutely not be centred in a movement about stopping people from being bombed.

Smith asserts that “it is not right to divest from … ethics at the very moment they come into conflict with other imperatives.” The Palestinian solidarity movement’s refusal to bend to the misuse of the concept of “safety” and the weaponization of Jewish trauma is not a divestment from our ethics. It is actually an expression of integrity and a refusal to divest from our ethics, even when that refusal results in misrepresentation and false accusations. The ethics that underly the Palestinian solidarity movement are a fundamental valuing of human life and a refusal to normalize, ignore, or accept genocide, no matter what tactics are used to dissuade us. Refusing to centre the feelings of people who are actually safe is an insistence on protecting people who are actually in danger. When police officers are clubbing protestors peacefully sitting on the ground we see how confused our ideas about safety and danger have become.

The subtitle of Smith’s article sums up exactly what is wrong with her argument. She thinks that language and rhetoric are weapons of mass destruction. That is such an absurd — and honestly, offensive — thing to say in this context. Do you know what is a weapon of mass destruction? A nuclear bomb. Do you know who has nuclear bombs? Not Palestinians. Not college students setting up tents as a desperate attempt to stop a genocide. Israel has nuclear bombs, and it is part of the reason why, despite the fact that Israel is committing war crimes, there is very little that can be done to stop them. Israel has real, material power: the power to kill. That is not even remotely comparable to the power of language and rhetoric. If language and rhetoric were weapons of mass destruction, then the Palestinian solidarity movement wouldn’t need to resort to encampments. They could start a cold war with Israel because both would have the power to annihilate the other. The idea is laughable because of course college students and traumatized, starving, bombed Palestinians do not have that kind of power.

Clementine Morrigan

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