Thursday, October 31, 2013

Jerusalem: Capital of non.


“What would be the truly radical ethico-political act today in the Middle East? For both Israelis and Arabs, it would consist in the gesture of renouncing (political) control of Jerusalem, that is, of endorsing the transformation of the Old Town of Jerusalem into an extra-state place of religious worship controlled by some neutral international force. What both sides should accept is that by renouncing political control of Jerusalem, we are effectively renouncing nothing. We are gaining the elevation of Jerusalem into a genuinely extra-political, sacred site. What we would lose is precisely and only what already, in itself, deserves to be lost: the reduction of religion to a stake in political power play. This would be a true event in the Middle East, true political universality in the Paulinian sense of “there are for us no Jews and no Palestinians.” Each of the two sides would have to realise that this renunciation of the ethnically “pure” nation-state is a liberation for themselves, not simply a sacrifice to be made for the other.

Excerpt From: Zizek, Slavoj. “Violence.”

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