Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

This chapter begins with then-president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers’s remark that criticism of Israel and calls to divest from Israel are actions that are antisemitic “in their effect, if not their intent” (101).

Butler thinks that it is right of Summers to be concerned about antisemitism. However, Butler also thinks that, historically, Jews should not be seen only as “presumptive victims” and insists that no political ethics should start with the assumption of Jewish victimhood. Sometimes Jews are survivors of violence, and sometimes they are perpetrators of violence.

The accusation of antisemitism is a particularly loaded one, especially for progressive Jews like Butler, and Butler argues that this charge is used not only by Summers but is part of a discursive force that disallows any criticism of Israel. Israel’s formation in 1948 was grounded in Zionism, which dislocated 700,000 Palestinians and violently appropriated their lands, creating a “dehumanizing basis” for the formation of the state. Criticism of the establishment and maintenance of the state of Israel is thus necessary. The charge of antisemitism is particularly unbearable for progressive Jews, a group in which Butler includes themselves, and conjures up the traumatic history of Jews who colluded with the Nazis.