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Israel Quotes by Judith Butler

30 Israel quotes by Judith Butler

All Israel quotes Judith Butler’s page

If you’re curious how a leading gender theorist frames the Israeli question, this set offers a concise look. Butler’s voice is analytical, often linking power structures to everyday realities, and these thirty snippets capture that blend without overwhelming you.

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I grew very skeptical of certain kind of Jewish separatism in my youth. I mean, I saw the Jewish community was always…

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There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge. It…

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Very often, if you just get the question: "Well, are you a Zionist?" if you say no, it's assumed that you want…

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Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentable stereotype to make large…

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It will not do to say that international law is the enemy of the Jewish people, since the Jewish people surely did…

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My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a…

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I do situate myself in this problem of being a Jew who doesn't want to be represented by the state of Israel,…

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The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in…

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Some Israeli politicians have proposed the transfer of Palestinians out of what is currently called Israel, either into the occupied territories, into…

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I was born a Zionist, because I didn't have a choice about that. It was the ether of my family life, but…

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I wonder whether I might have meant "terrify us" but perhaps as well there was a less than conscious effort to show…

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Indeed, even if one believed that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-semitic (by Jews, anti-semites, or people who…

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When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays…

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Because Al-Qaeda has been a non-state centered organisation, many of these scenarios do not exactly apply. These are not wars between states.…

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We are more often than not asked, for instance, to regard Israel and Palestine as in a conflict of this kind, a…

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I'm trying to think of what happens if we take expulsion off the table for everyone, and instead think about the rights…

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Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely…

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Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. Certainly, without a camera a drone…

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Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate representative of the Jewish people would…

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A challenge to the right of Israel to exist can be construed as a challenge to the existence of the Jewish people…

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When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews 'anti-Semitic,' they are trying to monopolize the right to speak in the…

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As a Jew, I was taught that it was ethically imperative to speak up and to speak out against arbitrary state violence.…

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Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and…

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It seems, though, that historically we have now reached a position in which Jews cannot legitimately be understood always and only as…

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I consider both the West Bank and Gaza to be colonised, even though Gaza is not occupied in the same way that…

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If you look at some of the language in the basic writings of Hamas, there is that famous call to push the…

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If you speak [ about violence against Israelis], you are in an unspeakable place, have become a Nazi or its moral equivalent…

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In the meantime, what is lost is any sense that the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonial rule is waged from a situation…

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A different kind of pleasure surfaced in the aftermath, the pleasure of seeing the towers fall time and again, the experience of…

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There are ordinary spaces where people do, more or less, share neighbourhoods. In Haifa, there are whole communities that are more or…

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More by Judith Butler

I don't think we have to have a personal relation to a life lost to understand that something terrible has taken place, especially in…

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We need a legal and political understanding of the right of the refugee, whereby no solution for one group produces a new class of…

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When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our…

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Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. Certainly, without a camera a drone can't function,…

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I would say that I'm a feminist theorist before I'm a queer theorist or a gay and lesbian theorist.

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Very often, if you just get the question: "Well, are you a Zionist?" if you say no, it's assumed that you want the destruction…

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Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way…

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Genocide is not a legitimate option. It's not ok to decide that an entire population has no right to live in the world. No…

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“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief,…

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The pleasurable part of public mourning can also lead to a sense of self-sanctification that justifies in advance any war effort, whether or not…

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“There is no life without the conditions of life that variably sustain life, and those conditions are pervasively social, establishing not the discrete ontology…

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“That the power regimes of heterosexism and phallogocentrism seek to augment themselves through a constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized…

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I think that public grieving is a good thing. People need to be grieved; loss needs to be acknowledged publicly, because it helps to…

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Maybe we need to start with the rethinking of what is "west" and what is "non-west." It seems to me that there are any…

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It will not do to say that international law is the enemy of the Jewish people, since the Jewish people surely did not as…

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