Didier Fassin: “Consent to the crushing of Gaza has created an immense rift in the moral order of the world”

Interview with Didier Fassin

It only took one year for Israel to satisfy its thirst for revenge against the Gaza enclave, to turn it into an immense field of ruins, after having inflicted its cruel yoke on it for 16 years of an illegal and inhumane blockade.

It only took a year for Israel to be guilty of a mass massacre which meets all the conditions of a contemporary genocide, which nothing has stopped, nor its classification as such by the International Criminal Court ( ICC), nor the repeated UN calls for a ceasefire.

In his latest edifying work “A strange defeat. On consent to the crushing of Gaza”, La DécouverteDidier Fassin, professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the chair “Moral Questions and Political Issues in Contemporary Societies”, analyzes this “ consent to the crushing of Gaza, this acquiescence to its devastation and the massacre of its population by the State of Israel » which add to the horror of the human tragedy suffered by Gazans. A prolific author, this renowned academic, who also teaches at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, agreed to answer Oumma’s questions.

You explain that the objective of your work is to “resist the double scourge of censorship and self-censorship” by contributing to freedom of critical expression. How do these mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship manifest specifically in the context of Gaza?

Censorship takes different forms. There is a ban on scientific, cultural or political events. There is the repression of street demonstrations and occupations of university campuses. There is the denunciation of students by their institution and the stigmatization of professors by their colleagues.

Recalling the history that preceded October 7, criticizing the violence of reprisals in Gaza, and even calling for a ceasefire have long been denounced as anti-Semitic, or even as incitement to hatred or apologies for terrorism. With censorship comes self-censorship. An international survey showed that more than eight out of ten Middle East specialists chose not to speak on the subject because of the sanctions they faced.

The case of the major Western media is interesting, because it combines the two logics. On the one hand, the editorial staff imposed a language and a reading of the facts, inviting Israeli politicians and soldiers, but never allowing Palestinian voices to be heard. On the other hand, the journalists themselves, anticipating criticism or fearing sanctions, avoided showing the abuses of the Israeli army and the suffering of the Palestinian people. We must therefore say the importance of independent media, as +972 in Israel, The Intercept And Mondoweiss in the United States, Humanity, blast And EastXXI in France, among others, as well as non-Western media, such as Al Jazeera, which were able to inform the public outside of these political and ideological pressures.

You mention that “consent to the crushing of Gaza created an immense rift in the moral order of the world” and evoke two necessary distinctions around the notion of consent. What are these distinctions?

You can consent passively, by letting it happen, or actively, by providing support. The refusal of most Western countries to call for a ceasefire, while the massacres were taking place in Gaza, and the absence of denunciations of the destruction of universities and the assassinations of professors by higher education establishments are passive consent.

The travels of Western political leaders to assure the Israeli government of their unreserved support and the shipments of weapons directly or indirectly aimed at the devastation of infrastructure and the crushing of Palestinian populations demonstrate active consent.

You argue that starting the sequence of events on October 7 not only evades history, but also gives special meaning to the facts, with two major implications for those who hold this view. What are these two implications?

Virtually all major Western media, and in the case of France, almost all public and private audiovisual media, systematically recall that the war in Gaza was triggered by the tragic events of October 7, which is factually true. But they are just as systematically silent about what preceded the operation led by Hamas.

To carry out this scam, this operation is reduced to an anti-Semitic act by speaking of a pogrom. We thus evacuate the historical context of colonization, oppression, violence, humiliation, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without charge, contempt for United Nations resolutions, and finally the disappearance of the question of Palestine from the agendas. international politicians, all elements which led to this revolt.

This concealment has two consequences. First, we dismiss the responsibility, in the genesis of the October 7 attack, of the Hebrew State, whose decades of violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinians are not mentioned. Then, we authorize the extreme brutalization of the response of the Israeli army, since Hamas has committed an absolute crime against humanity.

Why do you think that the phrase “Israel-Hamas war”, often used in the mainstream media, is misleading?

By presenting things this way, we bring face to face a State recognized by international authorities and a group considered by Western countries as terrorist, which gives legitimacy to the first to get rid of the second. In addition to the fact that, from the start, all the experts said that it would be impossible to eliminate the ruling party in Gaza and its military wing, the formulation of an “Israel-Hamas war”, which is echoed by virtually all major media , is categorically denied by the speeches of Israeli political and military leaders and by the actions of the Israeli army.

The very numerous declarations up to the highest level of the Hebrew State concern the entire nation, in the words of the President, the erasure of Gaza from the face of the earth, according to a minister, the choice left to the population Palestinian woman to leave or be exterminated, as a senior officer says. And in reality, we have a destruction of everything that can make life possible in Gaza, a massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and a blockade of humanitarian aid intended to starve the inhabitants. We should therefore speak of “Israel’s total war against the Palestinians”.

You return to the notion of terrorism, initially associated with state practices during the Revolutionary Terror, and emphasize that this term is now applied only to those who attack the state. How do you explain this evolution of the concept of terrorism?

The symbolic coup was to shift the notion of “terror” from states to non-state groups alone. It is a long history which, particularly in colonial contexts, has allowed groups violently opposed to power to be qualified as terrorists, from the Jewish Irgun under the British mandate to the Palestine Liberation Organization in the face of the occupation of their territory by Israel, two groups whose leaders, Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a few years apart.

Today, a State which indiscriminately bombs tens of thousands of civilians with the avowed objective of terrorizing the population is not declared a terrorist, but the author of a knife attack against a police officer or a soldier is.

You assert that the confusion between criticism of Israeli policy, even Zionism, and anti-Semitism remains a norm in the discourse of Western governments, public media and academic institutions. You then speak of a “democratic paradox”, according to which criticizing a government composed of far-right ministers exposes you to accusations of unfairness. Can you explain this paradox and its implications?

Paradox, in fact, that States which proclaim their defense of democracy prohibit criticism of a government which denies democratic principles through the claim of ethno-religious supremacism, the discrimination of part of its population, the illegal occupation territories of neighboring countries, the widespread practice of torture against prisoners and the violation of international law, including humanitarian law.

In France, for around twenty years, the government has equated criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism. This communitarianization by the power of the conflict has assimilated Jews and Israel, as if all criticism of Israel was directed against the Jews and as if all French Jews supported the criminal policy of Israel. It is harmful and even fuels anti-Semitism. However, the same states signed a 2016 declaration by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which affirms that criticizing the policies of the Jewish state as one would criticize the policies of any state is not anti-Semitic. .

You write that “acquiescence in the Gaza war and its tragic consequences” renders illegitimate and ineffective, for a long time, the invocation of human rights and humanitarian reason by those who participated in this moral abdication. How do you interpret this moral abdication and its consequences?

How can we give credibility to the invocation of human rights and humanitarian reason to countries which consented and, for some, participated in what the International Court of Justice considers to be a “plausible” genocide? Western countries often highlight their historical responsibility for the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust to explain their unconditional support for Israel. But why should the price of violence perpetrated by Europeans against Jews be paid by Palestinians?

In fact, there are both strategic and ideological reasons for acquiescence in the war in Gaza. Strategic, because Israel is seen as a bastion defending Western interests in the Arab world, both economically and militarily. Ideological, because the rise of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, reinforced by the development of violent Islamist movements, places on the Palestinians this triple stigma of being Arabs, for the most part Muslims, and associated with the terrorism of yesterday and of today.

You emphasize that since October 7, it is “the history of the victors” that has been written, both by Israel and by Western countries. You also mention that another story will probably be written one day. What do you think this other story will tell?

The formula comes from the German historian Reinhard Koselleck who adds that over time, the version of the vanquished ends up imposing its truth. Long denied by the Jewish State and hidden in the Western world, the Nakba, that is to say the catastrophe represented by the expulsion of the Palestinians, the spoliation of their lands and the destruction of their traces, is today increasingly recognized today. It is likely that the gravity of the crimes committed by Israel, the complicity of Western states and the destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza will, in turn, be documented by historians and simply become historical facts.

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Didier Fassin, “A strange defeat. On consent to the crushing of Gaza”, La Découverte