THE 28 JEWS OF CHRISTMAS 24. JUDITH BUTLER There is a great deal to be said about how women and children function in these kinds of arguments. Obviously, there is a special kind of shock and horror reserved for the destruction of the lives of women and children, who are understood to be emblems of innocence. On the one hand, the accusation that Hamas has sacrificed them makes them barbaric. But this same assumption implies that if the IDF has deliberately targeted them for destruction, it is the IDF that is barbaric. So we see how the same premise operates in the accusation. Does it mean that at some level the IDF knows that it is engaged in a form of killing that is utterly unacceptable? I am reticent to redeploy the language of barbarism since it seems mainly to be opposed to civilization. And that terms tend to work to distinguish among cultures that are more and less civilized, reproducing the scene of orientalism. Indeed, it is one reason that I continue to have interest and faith in international protocols that simply call the destruction of civilian populations criminal. But I suspect that if the Israeli discourse that charges Palestinians with the barbaric sacrifice of its children believes that the deliberate destruction of populations of children is barbaric, then at some level, it knows and believes that its own actions are barbaric; the point of the accusation against Hamas is to cover over, and to externalize, what it considers to be its own barbarism.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 15:10:15 +0000
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