THE MIDDLE EAST WAR: A BORING RECAPITULATION

We will find ourselves in a world of unholy alliances

Dear Comrades,

In a world overflowing with noise, your support as a paid subscriber is an act of valuing depth over superficiality. By subscribing, you gain access to exclusive content that challenges conventional narratives and invites critical reflection. This is more than just supporting a platform; it’s about fostering a space where meaningful ideas thrive.

Your subscriptions keep this page going. So if you have the means, and believe in paying for good writing, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Since the destructive cycle of violence in the Middle East continues, I will do something that is deeply against my nature: instead of providing new, original twists and turns, I will recapitulate, in a condensed way, what I have been saying for over a year. Yes, the situation is that desperate.

I have often evoked Jean-Paul Sartre’s claim that if you are attacked for the same text from both sides of a political divide, this is one of the few reliable signs that you are on the right path. What has been happening to me over the last decades regarding the Middle East crisis perfectly illustrates this claim: I have been attacked (often based on the same text!) for anti-Semitism—up to advocating a new holocaust—and for spreading perfidious Zionist propaganda. Now, on the first anniversary of the October 7 attack, the story goes on. The Palestinian side is accusing me of “taking a shocking moral position that included and justified Israel’s right to defend itself by killing Gazan civilians.” Their critical claim is that, along with Jürgen Habermas, I:

“took positions in solidarity with Israel regarding the events of October 7th, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself without restrictions. They disagreed with describing Israel’s actions—killing, starving, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians—as genocide. They rationalized that Israel has the right to retaliate in any manner it deems fit.”

Anyone who has followed my numerous comments on the Gaza war will realize the nonsense in these quoted lines. In my first reaction, I approvingly quoted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken:

“‘Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again.’ But he added: ‘How Israel does this matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard. That’s why it’s so important to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.’”

So, it’s NOT “in any manner it deems fit.” I wrote more than 20 comments analyzing and condemning the acts of the IDF and Israel, which clearly put me on the opposite side of Habermas. (When I spoke at the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 17, 2023, my focus on Palestinian suffering caused a scandal; Habermas and three of his colleagues published a letter advocating solidarity with Israel.) No wonder, then, that I was even more frequently attacked by Zionist fundamentalists. Here’s the latest case: a reaction to my comment on the anniversary of the October 7 attack:

“Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian Marxist philosopher and director at the University of London’s Birkbeck Institute, insinuated that the destruction of the Israeli state would result in peace in the Middle East.”

Again, pure nonsense. So why waste time on what is happening to me? Because the real question that lurks behind it is: where does this strange concord between mortal enemies come from? This concord arises precisely because, as mortal enemies, they share the same presupposition: no negotiated peace is possible between the Palestinians and the Jews; the conflict can only be resolved through the violent victory of one side. There are opponents of Israel who reduce it to a colonial intrusion into the Arab world and advocate its complete annihilation, and there are fundamentalist Zionists who dream of expanding Israel "from the river to the sea"... and more:

“In a new documentary, Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich detailed his desire to conquer not only all Palestinian territory to the Jordan River but also the Syrian capital of Damascus and territories extending as far as Iraq and Saudi Arabia: ‘Our great religious elders used to say that the future of Jerusalem was to extend as far as Damascus.’”

The words of an extremist minority? Yes, not many in Israel talk like this in public—but their words perfectly reflect the logic of what Israel, as a state, is doing now. What the two opposed sides reject is the very idea that both ethnic-religious groups between the river and the sea have some right to that land, so that a mode of coexistence must be found. One of the surprising voices of reason comes from the top of the Israeli secret services. Recall the words of Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad:

“We don't have the luxury of waiting. We need a viable policy that deals with the presence in this area of both Jews and Palestinians. We are doomed to live together. I don't want to say we are doomed to die together. And if our approach is that we are doomed to live together, we can't simply live together with one side holding the upper hand and ignoring the aspirations of the other side. There must be the beginning of a meeting of minds.”

Ami Ayalon, a former leader of Shin Bet, said something quite similar on January 14, 2023: “We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, will have hope. This is the equation: Israel will not have security until Palestinians have their own state, and Israeli authorities should release Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the second intifada, to direct negotiations to create one.

“Look at the Palestinian polls. He is the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel. First of all, because he believes in the concept of two states, and secondly, because he won his legitimacy by sitting in our jails.”

We can, of course, engage in the game of suspicion and dismiss such comments as hypocritical publicity stunts (saying something you know well has no chance of being realized). However, to do this is the greatest error because it ignores the basic lesson of Alcoholics Anonymous: ‘fake it till you make it.’ There is a chance we might get caught in something we only pretend to do. But the basic tragedy is that we all know mutual recognition is the only way to prevent total war, so mutual recognition is simultaneously impossible and necessary – in Lacanian terms, it is the only Real in the destructive mess of reality.

To avoid a fatal misunderstanding: I am not saying both sides are ultimately the same. Although there is a widespread tendency among Palestinians and other Arabs to destroy Israel, it is now Israel that wants a much wider war, one that would involve the US and Europe. We are already seeing the first step toward such direct involvement – on October 14, 2024, it was reported that 'the US will send an advanced anti-missile system – and US troops to operate it – to Israel to help bolster the country’s air defenses after Iran’s unprecedented attacks against it this year.' However, one should mention that US troops operating this system can also be read as a sign that the US wants to control how this system will be used, fearing that IDF would use it to further escalate tensions.

The true background of the October 7, 2023 attack remains to be explored, especially the fact that Israel financed Hamas to keep Palestinians divided. Bernard-Henri Lévy recently spoke about the 'solitude of Israel,' which, from 1945 (even before it was established as a state), has had to confront the threat of being abandoned by the West… really? The stance of the US and (most of) Western Europe is exactly the opposite: while rhetorically expressing reservations about how Israel acts in Gaza and on the West Bank, at the level that really matters (financial and military support of Israel), nothing is really changing. Israel is thus alone only in the sense that it can act in whatever way it wants, ignoring the critical recommendations or 'worries' of its allies. It is true that on October 15, 2024, the US gave Israel 30 days to address the Gaza aid crisis, threatening to curb weapons supply if Israel doesn’t comply with this demand, but we are still far from real pressure. The power and influence of Israel stand alone, revealed in its nakedness.

When it became known that on October 16 2024 that Yahya Sinwar was accidentally killed by an Israeli tank, media reported that “US officials have long looked to Sinwar's eventual death as a key opportunity to end the Israel-Hamas war.”[i] My immediate reaction was: Netanyahu’s eventual death would offer another opportunity to end the war. In the same way I would shed no tears for Sinwar, I would also shed no tears for Netanyahu: two criminals who should be buried together as a monument to genocidal wars.

There is no doubt that a deep desire for peace and reconciliation is dormant in Israel. When Sadat visited Jerusalem on November 19, 1977, thousands of Israelis waved their newly purchased red, white, and black Egyptian flags. However, in the last decades, this desire has, for all practical purposes, disappeared – 'from the river to the sea' is now Israel’s official policy, supported by a large majority of the Jewish population. During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon on October 8, 2024, Netanyahu said:

'You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.'

Beneath these lines, it is easy to discern a rather terrifying logic: If you, the people of Lebanon, do not join us – Israel – in annihilating Hezbollah, your country will be full of ruins and suffering, like Gaza is now. Try to imagine the silent majority of Lebanon, traumatized and confused, regularly bombed by the IDF – how could they now actively join the IDF in its efforts when Hezbollah 'hands out food, cash, and medicines to people displaced in the conflict?' To families that have been displaced twice, 'regular deliveries of meals, food parcels, and even cleaning supplies from organizations connected to the group have kept them afloat.' The only way for Israel to win the hearts of (some) Gazans and Shiites from Lebanon would be to do something similar, instead of destroying hospitals and legitimizing starvation as a strategy.

The bias in how Western media report on the war is reaching ridiculous dimensions. When an Israeli soldier shoots to death a 3- or 4-year-old girl, the Sky report says: 'It looks like accidentally a stray bullet found its way into the van ahead, and that killed a 3- or 4-year-old young lady.' When a Hezbollah rocket hits a military facility in northern Israel and kills four soldiers – a military target! – their names, photos, and ages (19 years old) are displayed, personalizing them to evoke sympathy.

On October 14, at least four people were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, causing a fire that engulfed several tents housing displaced Palestinians. Footage showed people desperately trying to extinguish the flames as explosions could be heard within the camp, while we see children attached to IV drips, burning alive, and desperately trying to escape the fire. One should remember how, days after the October 7, 2023 attack, there were reports about charred and decapitated children left behind by Hamas. Weeks later, these reports were withdrawn by the IDF itself (making Joe Biden seem ridiculous when he claimed to have seen photos of beheaded children). Now, we see actual footage of children burned by Israeli bombs, but this is, of course, just the result of Israeli self-defense, for which Hamas is responsible.

Such events explain a strange fact noted by many observers: children in Gaza, who are continuously exposed to brutal events, very rarely show signs of post-traumatic stress. Why? Because they live in a permanent traumatic situation: they don’t have time to experience a traumatic event as a horror that occurred to them. In order to survive, they have to just go on with their lives, paying attention to dangers. Post-traumatic stress is already a form of relaxation.

It’s no wonder many Democratic voters are abandoning Kamala Harris, who is unable to clearly condemn these acts. It is because of the US government’s inability to clearly distance itself from Israeli crimes that Trump may win. We are effectively approaching the point where the difference between Harris and Trump is becoming negligible. In his speech to the US Congress, Netanyahu said, “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster,” and this sentence was greeted by a standing ovation. Now we see how Israel is effectively finishing its genocidal job faster. Western “critics,” who supply arms to Israel, often claim that Israel has no clear plan of what to achieve. This claim is pure nonsense—Israel has a very clear long-term plan: to sabotage negotiations in order to expand its territory and create Greater Israel.

We all know the saying that peace negotiations are needed with enemies, not with friends. Netanyahu’s “choice” is thus a total fake: as in Gaza, its true aim is not the destruction of Hezbollah but the Gaza-like destruction of a good part of Lebanon. Here is Bernard Henri-Levy’s comment on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon:

“Israel is not invading Lebanon; it is liberating it. This is a historic moment, not only for the Israelis but for the Lebanese, Arabs, Kurds, and Eastern Christians. To not understand this is to have lost all moral and political compass.”

Yes, and this compass shows that Israel liberated Gaza and is liberating the West Bank in the same way. The fact that Israel proclaimed Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, a persona non grata is just the tip of the iceberg. The IDF attacks peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, limits the activity of UN personnel who provide food and medicine in Gaza, and occasionally even bombs them. In short, it treats the UN at best as an irrelevant factor to be ignored, mostly as an obstacle, and at worst as an enemy. While it is easy to laugh at the irrelevance and impotence of the UN, the fact is that its organs do important work in preventing famine and providing minimal health care. Precisely because the UN is perceived as a weak neutral network, it is (more or less) tolerated by all sides to do some humanitarian work—a state doesn’t risk its power if it allows UN bodies to operate in its territory.

When, in March 2024, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories said there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, as well as when Netanyahu and Gallant were charged with crimes of extermination, persecution, and starvation in Palestine, these statements were taken as symbolic acts with no prospect of being truly enforced. But they at least caused a certain public outcry. Now, such voices are simply ignored. The power of the UN paradoxically resides in its very impotence: the UN is the only remaining space for dialogue and negotiation, the only diplomatic body in which all sides participate, the only organization offering a legal space for negotiations. Its power resides in its very impotent neutrality. Without the UN, there is just wilderness, where local pragmatic alliances occur from time to time and where raw military force ultimately decides.

As we have already seen, Israel now treats even its closest allies in a similar way: it just ignores Biden’s or Macron’s “warnings.” The terrifying prospect of the near future is thus clearly visible: in its “self-defense,” Israel will be “forced” to transform into Gaza-like ruins more and more of its neighboring land—West Bank, Lebanon (on October 15, 2024, Israel already ordered the evacuation of one-quarter of Lebanon’s territory)—and who knows which country will follow. On the opposite side, hardline Arabs are not only ready to accept such immense casualties but even solicit them, aware that the daily images of the horrors committed by the IDF will give a new boost to anti-Semitism. And, in yet another turn of the screw, the new explosion of anti-Semitism will enable Israel to present itself as a state whose very existence is under threat, and to entice the US and some Western European countries to intervene on behalf of Israel. All this is leading to a global geopolitical catastrophe: Israel and the developed West against the Third World “anti-imperialist” majority, including countries like North Korea and Afghanistan:

“Russia's Foreign Ministry said on October 4, 2024, that the decision to remove the Taliban from a list of terrorist organizations had been "taken at the highest level." Putin stated in July that Russia considered Afghanistan's Taliban movement an ally in the fight against terrorism.”

This step seems quite logical: if Russia considers North Korea and Iran (which, a couple of years ago, crushed large feminist demonstrations) its key allies, why not go further and include Afghanistan, with its extreme oppression of women? The umbrella of anti-colonial struggle would then cover the majority of countries that limit women's rights and sexual freedoms. Who now remembers that, a year before October 7, 2023, the entire power structure of Iran was shaken by mass protests after the Iranian Revolutionary Guard murdered Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl, in prison for refusing to properly cover her head? In the new conditions, feminist protests with authentic revolutionary power will largely become a thing of the past, and we will find ourselves in a world of unholy alliances between pro-Putin “leftists” and Muslim fundamentalists. We are entering an era of violent struggles along false lines of distinction (where oppressing women means anti-colonialism, where bombing cities into ruins means fighting terrorism), and we should harbor no illusions: false struggles are often much more destructive than those for authentic emancipatory causes.

This is why we should unconditionally reject the parallel between Israel and Ukraine, i.e., the claim that, in both cases, if the West stops supplying arms, the war will soon end. This claim is technically true, but its implications are entirely different: in Ukraine’s case, it means full Russian occupation and the obliteration of Ukrainians as a nation; in Israel’s case, it is the only way to halt Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories and compel it to engage in serious negotiations. To quote Bernard-Henri Lévy, but in a sense opposite to his intention: "To not understand this is to have lost all moral and political compass."

Regarding Ukraine, I fully agree with Étienne Balibar, who wrote: "I will say that the war of Ukrainians against the Russian invasion is just, in the strongest sense of that word. … I don’t feel enthusiastic, but I make my choice: against Putin." I also "don’t feel enthusiastic" about many political misjudgments and unacceptable stances by Ukraine (suffice it to mention its full support for Israel), but support for Ukraine, including military aid, should continue.

I don’t fear that the Middle East war will escalate into a worldwide conflict: none of the involved parties truly desires it or is ready to use nuclear arms. Moreover, one should always bear in mind that many Arab states that vociferously criticize Israel pose no real threat to Israel’s military expansion—Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, even Syria. The Jordanian king’s rhetorical outbursts against Israel should not make us forget that Jordan helped Israel intercept Iranian missiles as they crossed its territory en route to Israel.

Since Israel views Iran as the main instigator pulling the strings behind the scenes and supplying arms to Hamas and Hezbollah, it is no wonder that Netanyahu recently hinted that Israel (along with others) is preparing for regime change in Iran (the overthrow of the Islamic Republic). However, I still believe that Israel's new provocations (in Lebanon and Iran) are ultimately intended to distract attention from Gaza and especially the West Bank, where ethnic cleansing is ongoing and increasingly "normalized," reported like a weather update. One can easily imagine that, if Israel refrains from reacting too brutally to Hezbollah and Iran, it will emerge from this situation being celebrated as a force for peace, whose moderation prevented a global catastrophe. The true catastrophe, however, will be the shift in international relations and the normalization of localized wars.

To conclude with what is, without a doubt, a crazy dream, let me propose what would have been a truly radical act by Hamas: to do what it did on October 7, 2023 (break into Israel), but upon reaching the kibbutzim, simply greet the inhabitants, offer them flowers or fruit, and then withdraw back to Gaza.

[1] Frantz Fanon’s theory of liberation and its relevance to the Palestinian cause - Muslim Mirror.

[1] US urges restraint on Israel amid fears of regional war | Financial Times (ft.com).

[1] See Principles of solidarity. A statement - Jews, Europe, the XXIst century (k-larevue.com).

[1] Prominent Philosopher Criticizes Israeli State in Soros-funded Media Op-Ed (newsbusters.org).

[1] Ragıp Soylu on X: "Israeli finance minister Smotrich openly says Damascus will be “bit by bit” part of Israel in the future https://t.co/zvdtTLuIgF" / X.

[1] Exclusive Insights From Former Head of Mossad - YouTube.

[1] Ex-Shin Bet head says Israel should negotiate with jailed intifada leader | Israel | The Guardian.

[1] Op.cit.

[1] Live updates: Hezbollah drone attack on Binyamina army base, Israel kills 4 soldiers | CNN,

[1] Bernard-Henri Levy, La solitude d’Israel, Paris: Grasset 2024.

[1] See US gives Israel 30 days to address Gaza aid crisis, threatens to curb weapons supply | The Times of Israel.

[1] Live updates: Israel confirms Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead | CNN.

[1] Netanyahu warns Lebanon of 'destruction like Gaza' (bbc.com).

[1] ‘They are taking incredible care of us’: Lebanon’s Shia put their faith in Hezbollah | Hezbollah | The Guardian.

[1] Sky News Causes OUTRAGE Over Gaza Coverage - They're Not Even Pretending (youtube.com).

[1] Op.cit.

Sky News Causes OUTRAGE Over Gaza Coverage - They're Not Even Pretending (youtube.com).

[1] Bernard-Henri Lévy | Israel is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating it. This is a historic moment, not only for the Israelis, but for the Lebanese, Arabs… | Instagram.

[1] Russia has decided 'at highest level' to remove Taliban from terrorist list, TASS reports | Reuters.

[1]In the War: Nationalism, Imperialism, Cosmopolitics | Спільне (commons.com.ua).