Slavoj Zizek: Let Jerusalem Go
LRB | Vol. 28 No. 16 dated 17 August 2006
Excerpt from Letter in London Review of Books
That Israelis, descendants of exemplary victims, should be considering a thorough ethnic cleansing – or ‘transfer’ – of the Palestinians from the West Bank is the ultimate historical irony.
What would be a proper imaginative act in the Middle East today? For Israelis and Arabs, it would involve giving up political control of Jerusalem, agreeing that the Old Town should become a city without a state, a place of worship, neither a part of Israel nor of a putative Palestine, administered for the time being by an international force. By renouncing political control of Jerusalem, both sides would gain, because they would see Jerusalem become a genuinely extra-political, sacred site. What they would lose is only what deserves to be lost: the reduction of religion to a counter in a game of political power. Each side would have to recognise that this renunciation would constitute a liberation for itself, not merely a sacrifice made for the other.
Letters: Let Jerusalem go
Freud gives a striking example of a good dream interpretation made by Alexander the Great’s counsellor. On the eve of a battle fought for the city of Tyre, the obscene figure of a satyr, dancing wildly, appeared in Alexander’s dream. The counsellor ignored the figure and focused instead on the word satyros, which he deciphered as ‘sa Tyros’: ‘Tyre will be yours.’ Perhaps, today, as the IDF tries to ‘pacify’ the same city of Tyre, we should reverse the focus, and concentrate on the figure of the satyr. What orgy of violence will be unleashed if the IDF does conquer Tyre?
The mystery of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of which the war in Lebanon, discussed by Elias Khoury, Rasha Salti and Karim Makdisi (LRB, 3 August), is another horrific symptom, is why it has persisted for half a century when everybody knows the only workable solution: the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank and – conclusively – Gaza, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and, as part of that process, a compromise over the status of Jerusalem. How often has peace seemed possible, only for everything suddenly to fall apart, demonstrating the frailty of the negotiated compromise? There is, in effect, something neurotic in the Middle East conflict: everyone sees how the obstacle can be got rid of, and yet no one wants to remove it, as if there were some pathological libidinal benefit to be gained by persisting with the deadlock.
If there ever was a passionate attachment to the lost object, a refusal to come to terms with its loss, it is the attachment of Israelis and many diaspora Jews to the ‘Holy Land’ and above all to Jerusalem. The present troubles are supreme proof of the consequences of such a radical fidelity, when taken literally. For almost two thousand years, when the Jews were fundamentally a nation without land, living in exile, their reference to Jerusalem was a negative one, a prohibition against ‘painting an image of home’ or indeed against feeling at home anywhere on earth. Once the return to Palestine began a century ago, the metaphysical Other Place was identified with a specific place on the map and became the object of a positive identification, the place where the wandering which characterises human existence would end. The identification, negative and positive by turns, had always involved a dream of settlement. When a two-thousand-year-old dream is finally close to realisation, such realisation has to turn into a nightmare.
Brecht’s joke a propos the East Berlin workers’ uprising in 1953 – ‘The Party is not satisfied with its people, so it will replace them with a people more supportive of its politics’ – is suggestive of the way Israelis regard the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza. That Israelis, descendants of exemplary victims, should be considering a thorough ethnic cleansing – or ‘transfer’ – of the Palestinians from the West Bank is the ultimate historical irony.
What would be a proper imaginative act in the Middle East today? For Israelis and Arabs, it would involve giving up political control of Jerusalem, agreeing that the Old Town should become a city without a state, a place of worship, neither a part of Israel nor of a putative Palestine, administered for the time being by an international force. By renouncing political control of Jerusalem, both sides would gain, because they would see Jerusalem become a genuinely extra-political, sacred site. What they would lose is only what deserves to be lost: the reduction of religion to a counter in a game of political power. Each side would have to recognise that this renunciation would constitute a liberation for itself, not merely a sacrifice made for the other.
Back to Brecht – and the Caucasian Chalk Circle, in which a biological mother and a stepmother are in dispute over a child and appeal to a judge. The judge takes a bit of chalk and draws a circle, then he places the baby in the middle and tells the two women that the first to pull the child out of the circle will get him. When the stepmother sees that the child is being hurt, she lets him go and, of course, the judge gives her custody, claiming that she has displayed true maternal love. One should imagine Jerusalem along these lines: whoever truly loves Jerusalem would let it go rather than see it torn apart.
Slavoj Zizek
Ljubljana
Recent Comments