Universitt Leipzig

Global and European Studies Institute

Settler-Based Conflict in a Comparative Perspective
Professor Gilad Ben-Nun











Towards a New Hegemony:
Binationalism and the Politics of Recognition in
Israel-Palestine













Jordan Stark
Rdelstrae 10
04229 Leipzig
jordan.d.stark@gmail.com

MA Global Studies Candidate
Matriculation Number: 3640440

10 July 2014

1
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is
dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a
great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
ANTONIO GRAMSCI, Prison Notebooks

I am not ready to achieve justice to the Jew through
injustice to the Arab.

JUDAH MAGNES, Hebrew University 1946

Zion shall be redeemed through justice,
and her returning ones by doing what is right.

ISAIAH 1:27

Over two decades now separate us from the signing of the Oslo Accord in
September 1993. Since then, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem has more than doubled; two-thirds of a 700 km separation wall has been
completed, which effectively annexes more Palestinian land; the proliferation of Israeli
controlled roads and checkpoints restrict mobility and confine Palestinians to a series of
noncontiguous enclaves (Falah, 2005; Farsakh, 2011: 55). The likelihood of these
circumstances giving rise to a viable Palestinian state is remote. Perhaps most
disconcerting, actors on all sides of the conflict remain unwilling and unable to conceive
of solutions that move beyond the two-state approach. In a recent op-ed in The New York
Times entitled, Two-State Illusion, Ian Lustick outlined the situation plainly: The
problem is that the changes required to achieve the vision of robust Israeli and Palestinian
states living side by side are considerably less likely than other less familiar but more
plausible outcomes that demand high level attention but arent receiving it (Lustick,
2013). As facts on the ground become increasingly disassociated from the narratives
endorsed by the major players, the potential for violence and disruptive, revolutionary
change increase. The central question is whether those who wield real influence will be
able to expand their moral and political imaginations in time to divert the looming crisis.
On a day when the streets of occupied East Jerusalem are flooded with Israeli police
firing tear gas and rubber bullets at mourners gathered for the burial of Mohamed Abu
Khdeir, the 16-year-old Palestinian boy brutally murdered in an apparent revenge attack
for the killing of three Israeli teenagers last month, the urgency of this task is made
horrifyingly palpable.

2
Despite vitriolic attacks hurled at them from all sides of the political spectrum, a
growing number of scholars and political activists are arriving at an understanding of the
conflict that parallels Lusticks assessment. These individuals reject the conventional
categories that define the mainstream discourse and seek solutions rooted in a tradition
pioneered by groups of Jewish intellectuals in the late 1920s and 1930s. Though varying
in terms of specific policy recommendations, at the core of these views is the conviction
that the establishment of a single, binational state on that land between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea is essential for guaranteeing the rights of Jews and
Palestinians over the long-term. This paper considers the moral, conceptual and
psychological basis from which such a polity might be conceived and deliberated upon.
In other words, what concerns us here is less facts on the ground than facts or
constructs of the mind that might function to expand the realm of intellectually and
politically conceivable alternatives (Lustick, 1993: 54).
1

The paper is divided into four sections: The first section provides historical
context to the debate. It locates the origins of the binational solution in the thought of
Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, and then traces the
reemergence of the binational idea following the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in
2000. The second section explores the ideas of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor
outlined in his seminal essay, The Politics of Recognition. Here I argue Taylors
notions of a politics of difference and presumption of equal worth offer a powerful
moral lens through which possibilities for binational peace and reconciliation might be
envisaged. The third section applies this moral outlook to an analysis of the extreme
ethnic nationalism articulated by the eminent Israeli historian, Benny Morris. Through
this analysis, it is shown that Morris ethical framework constitutes a fundamental denial

1
Here I make reference to conceptual distinctions developed by Ian Lustick in his classic work, Unsettled
States, Disputed Lands. The present analysis implicitly employs Lusticks conception of ideological
hegemony to understand the current dominance of the two-state approach and the circumscribed realm of
political and moral theorizing that constitutes the mainstream discourse. The concept, which Lustick has
adapted from the work of Antonio Gramsci, refers to the the successful containment or dissipation of
tensions tensions that would be expected to strain the political order if the belief, or belief system, of the
ruling strata were not shared unquestioningly by broader strata (Lustick, 1993: 53). As Lustick explains,
[T]he widespread diffusion and the deeply embedded nature of a particular conception of realityis seen
to shape outcomes in powerful and systematic ways. The shaping of outcomes is accomplished through the
effective exclusion of alternatives falling outside the range of choice implied by hegemonic beliefs
(Lustick, 1993: 53-54).

3
of Taylors presumption of equal worth, and therefore functions to further undermine
possibilities for sustained peace in the region. Finally, the last section considers how
these circumstances of nonrecognition might be rectified through an exploration of
Gandhian-inspired nonviolence as conceived in terms of what Yale sociologist Jeffrey
Alexander has referred to as social performance.

I. The Binational Idea: From Magnes to Benvenisti

The binational idea has its roots in a Zionist discourse that emerged during the
British Mandate era (Hermann, 2005: 382). The tradition was influenced by the thought
of Ahad Haam who rejected the notion that a sovereign Jewish state was the necessary
vehicle for the realization of the Zionist idea.
2
Instead, he fostered a conception of
cultural Zionism that would later inform the calls of Judah Magnes for the creation of a
Jewish spiritual, educational, moral and religious center (Magnes in Goren, 1982: 276).
Magnes, a rabbi and pacifist, along with theologian Martin Buber were among the most
prominent intellectuals agitating for a binational state. They were influential in the
advocacy group, Brit Shalom (Convent of Peace), and subsequently cofounded the
organization Ichud in 1942 (Tilley, 2005: 214-215).
Both men denounced the creation of a Jewish state as immoral due its disregard
for the rights of Palestinians. As Magnes writes: We must once and for all give up the
idea of a Jewish Palestine in the sense that a Jewish Palestine is to exclude and do away
with an Arab PalestineJews and Arabs, Moslems, Christians and Jews have each as
much right there, no more and no less, than the other: equal rights and equal privileges
and equal duties (Magnes in Goren, 1982: 277). However, the binationalist vision was as
much based in pragmatism as it was in morality. In an essay published in 1947 entitled,
The Binational Approach to Zionism, Buber wrote:

We describe our programme as that of a binational state that is, we aim
at a social structure based on the reality of two peoples living together.
The foundations of this structure cannot be the traditional ones of majority
and minority, but must be different This is what we need and not a

2
For an extended discussion of the philosophy of Ahad Haam (Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, 1856-1927), see
Avishai, B. (1985). The Tragedy of Zionism: Revolution and Democracy in the Land of Israel. New York:
Farrar Straus Giroux (pp. 45-66).

4
Jewish state; for any national state in vast, hostile surroundings would
mean pre-meditated national suicide, and an unstable international basis
can never make up for the missing intra-national one [emphasis mine]
(Buber in Tilley, 2005: 215).

These views were denounced as dangerously idealistic and perceived as a betrayal
by the Zionist establishment (Hermann, 2005: 385). Susan Lee Hattis contends, however,
that the vision of Brit Shalom was underpinned not by idealism, but rather an honest
recognition of the reality of a majority Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine: Brit
Shalom were not defeatists who were willing to make any concession for the
achievement of peace, they simply realized that the Arabs were justified in fearing a
Zionism which spoke in terms of a Jewish majority and a Jewish state (Hattis, 1970:
46).
3
Indeed, reflecting on the tragic events of the past half-century, one wonders if the
true dreamers were not (and still remain) those who embraced the political Zionism of
Herzl and Ben-Gurion, and thus the fantasy that the rights of one people could be secured
indefinitely through the dispossession of the rights of another.
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state in May 1948, and the uprooting of
more than 700,000 Palestinians in the war that followed, appeared to consign the already
marginalized discourse of binationalism to perpetual irrelevance. However, against the
backdrop of a failed peace process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September
2000, activists and scholars spanning both sides of the conflict have increasingly looked
to the idea as a plausible path forward. As early as 1999, Edward Said openly supported
the idea of a binational Israeli-Palestinian state. He claimed the separation-based peace
process had put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the hundred-year war
between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end (Said, 1999). As the situation on
the ground continued to deteriorate, several leading Jewish intellectuals voiced their
support for the binational approach. In October 2003, writing in the New York Review of

3
The realism that informed the early binationalists is perhaps most clearly expressed in their capacity to
foresee the antagonisms that would ultimately arise from the establishment of a Jewish state. In his book,
Beyond the Two State Solution, Yehouda Shenhav (2012) offers numerous examples of this far-sighted
awareness. As early as 1932, Ernst Simon predicted the Israeli group of the Jewish people will have to
develop all the positive and negative characteristics of a warrior nation. In other words, it will have to be
the fascist chapter of the Jewish people (161). Similarly, Buber commented that if a Jewish state was set
up, it will find itself in a state of war for generations, which will oblige it to militant, totalitarian behavior
(162). Ghersom Scholem prophesied a coming cataclysm: It is no longer possible to rescue the movement
from the forces it was sold to without a historic catastropheeither it will be washed away with the waters
of imperialism, or it will be burned in the revolutionary flames of the awakening East (162).

5
Books, Tony Judt concluded, The time has come to think the unthinkable. He claimed,
The very idea of a Jewish state a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have
exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded is rooted in
another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism (Judt, 2003). In this view, the
binational model was not only a likely outcome, but also a desirable one.
Similar ideas were also beginning to find expression inside of Israel. The key shift
came in the summer of 2003 when a lengthy interview with two prominent public figures,
Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi, was published in the weekly supplement of the
Haaretz daily (Shavit, 2003). In the controversial interview, both men clarified their
position on the peace process and openly called for a binational resolution to the conflict.
For years Benvenisti had advocated for the theory of irreversibility in which he
prophetically warned that the settlement project was rapidly approaching a point of no
return. In the interview, Benvenisti made a critical revision to his conceptualization of
the conflict, acknowledging that what he had previously understood as a nationalist
struggle was in fact a war fought between natives and settlers/colonizers (Shavit, 2003).
Through this awareness, we glimpse the truth depths of an antagonism born out of the
frustration and anger of a population uprooted by foreign invaders. For Benvenisti, these
tensions cannot be resolved through separation and thus concludes, There is no choice
but to think about western Palestine as one geopolitical unit What we have to do is try
to reach a situation of personal and collective equality within the framework of one
overall regime through the country (Shavit, 2003).
Ian Lusticks op-ed in the New York Times represents the latest contribution to
this ongoing debate regarding separation and reconciliation in Israel-Palestine. For
Lustick, the two-state approach serves as a comforting blindfold of entirely
contradictory fantasies (Lustick, 2013). On the one hand, the Israeli interpretation
envisions Palestinian refugees abandoning their sacred right of return, an Israeli-
controlled Jerusalem and an archipelago of huge Jewish settlements, crisscrossed by
Jewish-only access roads. On the other hand, the Palestinian version imagines the
return of refugees, evacuation of almost all settlements and East Jerusalem as the
Palestinian capital. Thus Lustick calls for the two-state mirage to be abandoned and
attention to be redirected toward understanding how equality of political rights is to be

6
achieved. Failure to honestly confront these urgent demands has the potential to give
rise to a new phase of conflict defined by ruthless oppression, mass mobilization, riots,
brutality, terror, Jewish and Arab emigration and rising tides of international
condemnation of Israel (Lustick, 2013).

II. The Politics of Difference: Recognition in Multicultural Society

Benvenistis contention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined by settler
colonial antagonisms has been explored extensively in a series of scholarly works linking
the historical experience of South Africa, Israel, and Northern Ireland.
4
As documented in
this growing literature, settler-based conflicts are characterized by their protractedness
and brutality. Albert Camus powerfully described these patterns of inter-community
violence in a letter to Algerian militant Aziz Kessous: It is as if two insane people,
crazed with wrath, had decided to turn into a fatal embrace the forced marriage from
which they cannot free themselves. Forced to live together and incapable of uniting, they
decide at least to die together. And because each of them by his excesses strengthens the
motives and excesses of the other, the storm of death that has struck our country can only
increase to the point of general destruction (Camus, 1960: 95).
The ongoing encounter between settler colonizer and colonized reshapes
economic and political terrains as well as human identities. As the Caribbean novelist
George Lamming observed, the colonial experience is a live experience in the
consciousness of these peopleThe experience is a continuing psychic experience that
has to be dealt with and will have to be dealt with long after the actual colonial situation
formally ends (Lamming in Loomba, 1998: 185). In Lammings comments we see
colonialism involves not merely economic and political exploitation, but also and
perhaps most importantly complex forms of psycho-cultural domination that reach into
the subject and influence the very ways in which reality is perceived and constructed. The
most illuminating account of these psychological mechanisms comes to us in the form of

"
For studies based in the comparative settler colonialism approach, see Mitchell, T. (2000). Native vs.
Settler: Ethnic conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Westport: Greenwood
Press; Lustick, I. (1993). Unsettled States, Disputed lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel
and the West Bank-Gaza. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. For a comparative study of South Africa, Israel,
and Northern Ireland that focuses on their shared Old Testament-centered Biblical faith, see Akenson, D.
(1992). God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.

7
Franz Fanons Les Damns de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth). For Fanon, the true
violence of the colonial encounter occurs through the psychological imposition of the
colonizers image of the colonized on the minds of the subjugated people (Fanon,
1963/2004). To escape these depreciating self-images, Fanon advocated violence as the
means through which the colonized could reclaim their self-understanding and match the
original violence of the alien imposition (Taylor, 1994: 65).
These issues of inter-cultural conflict lie at the center of Charles Taylors seminal
essay, The Politics of Recognition. Following Fanon, Taylor argues the critical
significance of recognition derives from its relationship to identity. Here identity is
understood as something like a persons understanding of who they are, of their
fundamental defining characteristics as a human being (Taylor, 1994: 25). As Taylor
notes, a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people
or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible
picture of themselves (Taylor, 1994: 25). It is in this way that nonrecognition or
misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a
false, distorted, and reduced mode of being (Taylor, 1994: 25).
5

Taylor builds on these insights to distinguish two forms of recognition: firstly, a
politics of equal dignity, or a politics of universalism, that aims to achieve an equality of
all rights and entitlements rooted in a recognition of either common humanity or

5
These views flow from Taylors understanding that human identities are formed dialogically: [M]y
discovering my own identity doesnt mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through
dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why the development of an ideal of inwardly
generated identity gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my
dialogical relations with others (Taylor, 1994: 34). As a mediating force in dialogue, language is central to
Taylors conception of self-formation, an idea he traces to Herders theories of expressivism. Interestingly,
Taylor locates the origins of his affinity for Herders conception of language in his childhood in French
Canada. Taylor is a bilingual, bicultural Quebecer who grew up in a family with a Francophone mother and
Anglophone father. Reflecting on this past in an interview, Taylor noted: My attraction to Herder was
prepared long ago by my situation in Quebec, where two languages as well as two philosophies of
language, came face to face: while English speakers considered language an instrument and did not
understand why someone would refuse to adopt the most widely used instrumentfor French speakers
language constitutes a way of being in the world. Having belonged to a family mixed for several
generations, it always seemed obvious to me that language is more than an instrument, that each language
carries its own sense of humor, conception of the world etc. Hence my interest for language and for the
romantic philosophy of language, which criticize the instrumentalist philosophy of Hobbes, Locke or
Condillac (Taylor, 1998: 109). Ignatieff has argued Taylors bicultural background is also linked to his
desire to mediate between rival outlooks and reconcile disparate points-of-view, most notably between
Marxism and Catholicism, liberalism and socialism, English analytic philosophy and French and German
metaphysics (Ignatifieff, 1985: 63).

8
citizenship; and secondly, a politics of difference that demands the recognition of the
uniqueness of individuals and groups. Taylor underscores the ways in which a politics of
difference grows organically from liberalisms traditional promise of universal equality,
freedom, and respect for the dignity of individuals. However, as Taylor describes, the
politics of difference constitutes a fundamental break with the politics of universal
dignity: With the politics of equal dignity, what is established is meant to be universally
the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of difference,
what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, its
distinction from everybody else (Taylor, 1994: 38). Taylor further clarifies the nature of
this transformation with reference to the Canadian experience:

Where the politics of universal dignity fought for forms of
nondiscrimination that were quite blind to the ways in which citizens
differ, the politics of difference often redefines nondiscrimination as
requiring that we make these distinctions the basis of differential
treatment. So members of aboriginal bands will get certain rights and
powers not enjoyed by other Canadians, if the demands for native self-
government are finally agreed on, and certain minorities will get the right
to exclude others in order to preserve their cultural integrity, and so on
(Taylor, 1994: 39-40).

Taylor explores the frictions between these notions of recognition and ultimately
argues against a form of procedural liberalism that is inhospitable to difference due
to its moral commitment to a uniform application of rights and its suspicion of collective
goals (Taylor, 1994: 60). Instead, Taylor supports a form of liberalism willing to weigh
the importance of certain forms of uniform treatment against the importance of cultural
survival, and opt sometimes in favor of the latter (Taylor, 1994: 61). The last section of
Taylors essay explores a more radical ethnical demand that often underlies debates over
multiculturalism in education. As Taylor explains, whereas the previous sections were
concerned with recognition of a minority groups right to cultural survival, the further
demand is that we all recognize the equal value of different cultures; that we not only let
them survive, but acknowledge their worth (Taylor, 1994: 64). Taylor concludes: It
cant make sense to demand as a matter of right that we come up with a final concluding
judgment that their value is great, or equal to others (Taylor, 1994: 69). To proclaim the

9
worth of a culture prior to actually engaging with it would be not only condescending
but ethnocentric. It would praise the other for being like us (Taylor, 1994: 71).
Though rejecting recognition of value as an a priori principle, Taylor claims there
does appear to be reasonable basis for granting other cultures what he calls a
presumption of equal worth (Taylor, 1994: 66): As a presumption, the claim is that all
human cultures that have animated whole societies over some considerable stretch of
time have something important to say to all human beings (Taylor, 1994: 66). Taylor
claims the presumption is legitimate because

it is reasonable to suppose that cultures that have provided the horizon of
meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and
temperaments, over a long period of time that have, in other words,
articulated their sense of the good, the holy, the admirable are almost
certain to have something that deserves our admiration and respect, even
if it is accompanied by much that we have to abhor and reject (Taylor,
1994: 72-73).

Here parallels can be drawn to the ancient rabbinic saying, Who is wise? The person
who learns from everyone, as it is said, From all who would teach me, I have gained
understanding (Pirkei Avot 4:1).
6
Importantly, for Taylor, the ethnical demand finds
concrete expression through a process Gadamer has described as a fusion of horizons
(Taylor, 2002; Taylor, 1994: 66). The process involves putting ones own horizon of
meaning at rick and adopting an openness to the other culture so as to patiently identify
and undo those facets of our implicit understanding that distort the reality of the other
(Taylor, 2002: 132). As Taylor explains,

We learn to move in a broader horizon, within which what we have
formerly taken for granted as the background to valuation can be situated
as one possibility alongside the different background of the formerly
unfamiliar culture. The fusion of horizons operates through our
developing new vocabularies of comparison, by means of which we can
articulate these contrasts. So that if and when we ultimately find

6
In his influential book, Gods Peoples, Akenson argues societies animated by covenantal thinking will
tend to make harsh distinctions between friend and foe, and be extremely unforgiving of transgressions
made by the latter. In a famous lecture given at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1904,
Talmudic scholar Louis Grinzberg was clear on this point: Love your enemies is not a Jewish precept,
and one may doubt whether there are any examples of compliance with it (Grinzberg in Akenson, 1992:
42). If the love Christ preached in his Sermon the Mount cannot be the basis of recognition then perhaps a
common desire for learning, understanding, and wisdom might serve such a function.

10
substantive support for our initial presumption, it is on the basis of an
understanding of what constitutes worth that we couldnt possible have
had at the beginning. We have reached the judgment partly through
transforming our standards (Taylor, 1994: 67).

The moral attitude Taylor endorses bears striking resemblance to the demands of
inter-cultural recognition identified by Martin Buber. As Buber notes, As long as we
have not imagined to ourselves the inner reality of a nation whose life is motivated by
other factors and whose principles are different in nature from our own, as long as we do
not come to know and understand what goes on in that nations heart of hearts, and what
is expressed by those factors and principles, we shall always consider what is different as
inferior. The inner reality of every nation has its own value, and any external criterion by
which you come to judge it can only by erroneous (Buber, 2005: 89).
7
Here we can also
detect echoes of Arendts notion that it is possible to enlarge ones thought so as to
take into account the thought of others (Arendt, 1992: 42). For Arendt, this was
achieved through comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual
judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of another man (Kant in
Arendt, 1992: 43). Thus, she concludes, To think with an enlarged mentality means that
one trains ones imagination to go visiting (Arendt, 1992: 43).
8


7
These statements were delivered in a speech to the Berlin chapter of Brit Shalom in October 1929, just
two months after a wave of Arab demonstrations descended into a violent rampage in which 133 Jews were
killed and 440 wounded. In the same speech, Buber further clarified his ethical position, stating: Every
responsible relationship between an individual and his fellow begins through the power of a genuine
imagination, as if we were the residents of Palestine and the others were the immigrants who were coming
into the country in increasing numbers, year by year, taking it away from us. How would we react to
events? Only if we know this will it be possible to minimize the injustice we must do in order to survive
and to live the life which we are not only entitled but obliged to live, since we live for the eternal mission,
which has been imbedded within us since our creation (Buber, 2005: 87).
8
Though outside the scope of the present analysis, the political thought of Hannah Arendt offers powerful
conceptual tools for approaching contemporary questions of binationalism, and undermining dominant
narratives of political Zionism. To offer one example, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that
the nation-state that attempts to represent one national group is structurally bound to produce and reproduce
a stateless class. For Arendt, statelessness was not a distinctly Jewish phenomenon but rather a recurrent
twentieth-century problem tied to the modern nation-state. It was through this lens that she approached
questions of Jewish statehood. She writes, After the war it turned out that the Jewish question, which was
considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved namely, by means of a colonized and then
conquered territory but this solved neither the problem of the minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary,
like virtually all other events of the 20
th
century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new
category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of stateless and rightless by another 700,000
to 800,000 people (Arendt, 1951/1973: 290). Judith Butler (2012) draws upon Arendts insights to
challenge Israeli policies concerning the Palestinian right of return, stating: [S]ince the existing Law of
Return is designed to foreclose the right of return, the Law of Return is still and again engaged in the

11
Taylors theory of recognition proves useful on two levels. Firstly, Taylors
argument against procedural liberalism and in favour of a politics of difference that
acknowledges minority groups right to cultural survival offers the conceptual basis from
which to resist the secular democratic state advocated by many Palestinian groups.
These voices call for a one-person, one vote model in which Jews and Palestinians are
recognized as equal citizens in a secular democracy in the territory of Mandatory
Palestine (Hermann, 2005: 391). Crucially, however, this model does not recognize the
collective political rights of either national group. As Adam and Moodley have noted, this
type of winner-takes-all outcome is unsuitable for plural societies, because legitimate
minority interests fall by the wayside (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 179). Importantly,
Taylors vision underscores an alternative to the post-Apartheid South African approach,
namely what could be termed the Canadian or Belgian model. In the Canadian
constitutional model, group rights of various founding nations are entrenched in addition
to individual rights of common citizens. Aboriginal rights of First Nations as well as
special protection for Quebec culture and language maintenance are guaranteed through
maximal subsidiarity. Quebec even controls its own immigration. Optimal federalism
allows provinces their own taxation laws while equalization payments address the gap
between poor and resource-rich provinces (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 180).


The Canadian model is particularly interesting as many have claimed it
constitutes a successful accommodation of difference. One in five Canadian residents is
foreign-born, and within a single generation Canadas major cities have been transformed
from overwhelmingly European-origin to some of the most diverse in the world. This has
largely occurred without major social upheaval or violence (Bloemraad, 2010: 309). In
addition, Canada is the only one of nine Western countries where a majority (74
percent) views immigrants as having a good influence, whereas in all Western
European countries as well as in the United States, majorities responded negatively to
newcomers (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 4). Revealingly, forty-five percent of Canadians
claim multiple identities (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 4). The model convincingly

production of a stateless class, thereby canceling the principles of its own legitimation. And though it
appears to be based on the rights of refugees, it works to abrogate those very rights, which means that the
Law of Return, which is supposed to support the rights of refugees, actively denies the rights of refugees
(Butler, 2012: 209-210).

12
demonstrates that the Jewish sanctuary need not be lost in a binational state, and thus
might provide the basis upon which the rights of Jews and Palestinians could be
formulated (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 179).
9

These are urgent conversations to be had as reference to the South African case
makes clear. Here David Landaus insights are useful. He writes, [T]he lesson of the
Bantustans of South Africa, in the deepest sense, is not just that a people cannot be
imprisoned behind a fence, but that it is impossible to halt a demographic trend by
geographic arrangements that one side imposes on the other (Landau, 2004). By 2017,
the number of Palestinians is expected to equal and start to exceed the number of Jews in
the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (Faris, 2013: 4). Unless
expulsion or the Bantustan plan are seen as long-term solutions, deliberations must
commence on how the rights of minority cultures are to be protected in such a scenario.
As Shenhav argues, The rights of the Jews must be formulated because rights based on
violence and apartheid could never be ensured over a long period of time. The lesson
learned from global history is that such regimes are doomed to be defeated or defeat
themselves (Shenhav, 2012: 33). To observers who doubt Shenhavs seemingly
apocalyptic forecast, Lustick offers a powerful reply: Those who assume that Israel will
always exist as a Zionist project should consider how quickly the Soviet, Pahlavi Iranian,
apartheid South African, Baathist Iraqi and Yugoslavian state unraveled, and how little
warning even sharp-eyed observers had that such transformations were imminent
(Lustick, 2013).
The Canadian model holds open the possibility that Israeli fears of Arab
domination brought about by a demographic majority could be defused through a
multicultural constitution with strong protections for minority cultures, such as those

9
The Canadian model of official multiculturalism animates the thought of many scholars concerned with
the recognition of minority cultures. In Seeking Mandela, Adam and Moodley acknowledge that they write
with a proud Canadian identity: While we periodically returned to our countries of origin for short
teaching periods and never lost touch with the customs and habits of our upbringing, it was the contrasting
Canadian exposure that reshaped our worldview (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 4). Taylors work on
recognition is strongly informed by his living in Quebec and his tireless advocacy for the province to be
recognized as a distinct society, but against secession from Canada. In an interview with Philippe de Lara,
Taylor describes how he has experienced the Quebec-Canada problem from early childhood and lived
astride these two worlds which do not understand each other (Taylor, 1998: 107). My interest in the rights
of minority cultures similarly derives from membership in an imagined Canadian community that upholds
multiculturalism as a defining principle and value. Realizing that these ethical assumptions are, in fact, far
from universal has been one of the most striking aspects of recent years spent living in Europe.

13
contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
10
The further promise of the
approach derives from its capacity to foster what Jrgen Habermas has theorized as
constitutional patriotism. The concept, as Mller explains, can be understood as the
idea that political attachment ought to center on the norms, the values and, more
indirectly, the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution (Mller, 2007: 1). The
emergence of such an ethic would constitute a new form of identity in which national
pride became rooted in the just recognition of both Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Similar views have been forwarded by Israeli academic Oren Yiftachel who argues,
[A]n understanding of Israel as a bi-ethnic-homeland society should preclude any long-
term ethnic domination as a viable option for political (and democratic) stability. The
consociational approach that would entail some power-sharing, cultural autonomy and
regional separation is more likely to advance towards a long-term peaceful Arab-Jewish
coexistence (Yiftachel in Smooha, 1997: 236). More recently, Labour Zionist Daniel
Gavron has also advocated for such an outcome.
11

The second reason Taylors insights on recognition are so pertinent, particularly
his argument for a presumption of equal worth, derives from their capacity to
illuminate a path through which a relation of enmity might be transformed into one of
civic friendship. As Schaap explains, the ideal of mutual recognition often constitutes a
central aim of reconciliation: The violence of the past is understood to have been
predicated on a misrecognition of the otherConsequently, the hope of reconciliation
depends on entering an inter-cultural dialogue in order to arrive at a shared
understanding (Schaap, 2004: 524). Thus, Taylors presumption of equal worth might
help to clarify the challenges and aims of binational reconciliation. The necessity of such
an ethnical framework becomes even clearer after considering circumstances in which
these forms of recognition are denied. The following section considers the denial of
recognition inherent in extreme ethnic nationalism, and its capacity to contribute to the
breakdown of social order.

10
There is also perhaps some hope in the South African analogy if we accept Adam and Moodleys
assertion that negotiating from a relative position of strength when long-term demographics work against
you was also de Klerks main rationale for abolishing apartheid in 1990 (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 186).
11
For an interesting interview with Gavron, see CBC Radio (2011). One-State Solution: An Interview with
Daniel Gavron and Ali Abunimah. Accessible online at: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/10/04/one-
state-solution/

14
III. Settler Colonialism and the Violence of Misrecognition

In their excellent book, Seeking Mandela, Adam and Moodley (2005) explore
opportunities for conflict resolution in Israel-Palestine through the lens of South Africas
successful experience of peacemaking and reconciliation. In developing this approach,
they provide a useful distinction between two forms of nationalism: civic and ethnic
nationalism. As Adam and Moodley explain, Civic nationalism is based on citizenship
and allocates equal rights to all residents of a state. Provided they are legal citizens, their
ethnic origin, race, or religion does not matter in these terms (Adam and Moodley, 2005:
36). This is generally the model that Western liberal democracies have embraced
although an unofficial and informal ethnic hierarchy continues to various degrees
(Adam and Moodley, 2005: 36). On the other hand, Ethnic nationalismelevates origin,
descent, or religion to the crucial criteria of belonging. An ethnic state privileges one
group with the right features over other citizens with different markers (Adam and
Moodley, 2005: 36). More specifically, an ethnic state practices a policy of creating a
homogenous nation-state, a state of and for a particular ethnic nation, and acts to promote
the language, culture, numerical majority, economic well-being, and political interests of
this group (Smooha, 1997: 200). As Smooha explains, Israel defines itself as a state of
and for Jews, that is, the homeland of the Jews onlyIts institutions, official holidays,
symbols, and national heroes are exclusively Jewish. The central immigration legislation,
the Law of Return, allows Jews to enter freely, excludes Palestinian Arabs, and allows
immigration and naturalization of non-Jews only under certain limited conditionsLand
and settlement are geared to furthering the interests of Jews alone (Smooha, 1997: 205-
206). Therefore, Israel can be considered a typical ethnic state.
Jewish nationalism, like any other nationalism, has both negative and positive
expressions. In its positive form, Jewish nationalism constitutes a quest for self-
determination, sharing and caring for members in true solidarity with a kinship
community, and the readiness to subordinate selfish goals for a common goal (Adam
and Moodley, 2005: 37). However, it can also be expressed as parochialism, arrogant
contempt for nonmembers, and potential aggression towards outsiders. It is in this
second expression that nationalism evolves into racism by promoting the exclusion
and subordination of others (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 37). Here it is perhaps useful to

15
highlight two unique features of Jewish nationalism. Firstly, as Israeli sociologist Avishai
Ehrlich observes: Zionism is an oddity among modern nationalisms it did not just call
for self-determination in the place where its nationals resided, but shifted its imagined
community to a different place. Zionism is thus a colonizatory ideology and project
(Ehrlich in Adam and Moodley, 2005: 24). In the words of Maxime Rodinson: European
supremacy had planted in the minds of even the most deprived of those who shared in it,
the idea that any territory outside Europe was open to European occupationIt was a
matter of finding an empty territory empty not necessarily in the sense of actual
absence of inhabitants, but rather of a kind of cultural barrenness (Rodinson, 1973: 39-
40). However, whereas other colonial projects were underpinned by economic
motivations, early Labor Zionists migrated due to persecution and vulnerability. This is
critical as the newcomers acquire a different relationship to the land, because they have
no homeland to return to, unlike economic colonizers (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 24).
These insights lead us naturally to a second feature that distinguishes Zionism
from other nationalisms, namely its lived history of felt wrongs. As Adam and Moodley
explain, Jewish nationalism is fueled not by an imagined injustice or defeat that
happened centuries ago (as in Serbian or Quebec nationalism), but in a living history
peopled by survivors and descendants. As a result, Jewish historical suffering has
evolved into a collective resolve to not let it happen again that few other national
identities display (Adam and Moodley, 2005: xv). Thus the colonial project comes to be
understood and legitimated as a quest for safe territory in an imagined ancestral
homeland. In this way Jewish nationalism functions to obviate the guilt of an intruding
settler population and frame acts of state violence and repression as self-defense
strategies necessary to protect the Jewish people from an eternal existential threat.
These forms of nationalist self-understanding are clearly expressed in the thought
of influential Israeli historian, Benny Morris. In an unusually upfront interview with Ari
Shavit, Morris articulated a vision of violent ethnic nationalism in which nationalist self-
preservation is explicitly privileged over human rights (Morris, 2004; Adam and
Moodley, 2005: 37-41).
12
For Morris, threats to survival absolve the Jewish state from all
ethical commitments: Preserving my people is more important than universal concepts

12
All of the following quotes of Morris are from this interview.

16
(Shavit, 2004). Morris thought is indicative of the us-and-them dualism that fuels
extreme nationalist discourse. Following Huntington, Morris world consists of an
irredeemable Manichean opposition: I think there is a clash between civilizations here. I
think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries:
The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it. Morris completes the
historical analogy, concluding: The Arab world as it is today is barbarian.
In this way, Morris sees Islamic culture as homogenous, primordial, and
monolithic. However, as various scholars have documented, this conception of culture is
inherently problematic: Cultures are in fact porous and fluid, and engaged in a constant
state of remaking. Importantly, this remaking often involves a selective appropriation of
symbols, ideas, and rituals from a cultural tradition by actors seeking to legitimate
contentious claims in the present. These processes were the focus of Eric Hobsbawm and
Terence Rangers classic work, The Invention of Tradition. The central claim of the book
was that traditions which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and
sometimes invented (Hobsbawm, 1983/2007: 1). Here invented traditions are defined
as a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a
ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour
by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past (Hobsbawm,
1983/2007: 1). However, as Hobsbawm argues, In fact, where possible, they normally
attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic pastInsofar as there is such
reference to a historical past, the peculiarity of invented traditions is that the continuity
with it is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the
form of reference to old situations [emphasis mine] (Hobsbawm, 1983/2007: 1-2).
The great Marxist historian further argued that invented traditions were central
to understanding that comparatively recent historical innovation, the nation, with its
associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories and the
rest (Hobsbawm, 1983/2007: 13). For Hobsbawm, each of these realms is constituted
through acts of social engineering which are often deliberate and always innovative, if
only because historical novelty implies innovation (Hobsbawm, 1983/2007: 13).
Interestingly, Hobsbawm clarifies this point in relation to the case of Israel-Palestine:
Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations must be novel, whatever the historic

17
continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims, since the very concept of territorial
states of the currently standard type in their region was barely thought of a century ago,
and hardly became a serious prospect before the end of World War I (Hobsbawm and
Ranger, 1983/2007: 13-14).
Salman Rushdie has similarly challenged conceptions of culture that overlook
these innovative dimensions. However, whereas Hobsbawm and Ranger mainly
undermined assumptions regarding the continuity of cultural traditions over time,
Rushdie attacks the idea that cultures can be understood as somehow isolated, existing in
neat compartments with harsh separation from outside influences. He articulated this
view of hybridization and expressed anxieties about Morris notions of cultural
homogeneity through a series of provocative questions. He asks,

Do cultures actually exist as separate, pure defensible entities? Is not
mlange, adulteration, impurity, pick n mix at the heart of the idea of the
modern, and hasnt it been that way for almost all this shook-up century?
Doesnt the idea of pure cultures, in urgent need of being kept free from
alien contamination, lead us inexorably towards apartheid, towards ethnic
cleansing, towards the gas chamber? (Rushdie, 1999: 21)

Disturbingly, this ethical trajectory bears noticeable resemblance to Morris nationalist
outlook. Despite his pioneering scholarship revealing the cruelties perpetrated by the
Zionist movement in 1948, Morris understands these actions as legitimate: There are
circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansingWhen the choice is between ethnic
cleansing and genocide the annihilation of your people I prefer ethnic cleansing. The
uprooting of 700,00 Palestinians was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the
border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from
which our convoys and our settlements were fired on. Morris goes further and suggests
Ben Gurion should have cleansed the whole country the whole land of Israel, as far as
the Jordan. It may turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full
expulsion rather than a partial one he would have stabilized the State of Israel for
generations. In developing this line of thought, Morris strangely argues: Even the great
American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians.

18
There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts.
13
Although
Morris claimed later that he regretted this last assertion, it betrays a deeper structure to
his thought that Adam and Morris articulate well: The ethnocentric mind decides
without hesitation the fate of an entire people in the totalitarian rationalization that the
noble end justifies the ignoble means (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 40).
It is useful to analyze Morris comments in light of Taylors insights on
recognition as this can help clarify how logics of extreme ethnic nationalism can
exacerbate the likelihood of ethnic disintegration. Here ethnic disintegration refers to the
phenomena whereby different ethnic and sectarian groups become increasingly hostile to
one another to the point of being unable to cohabit peacefully. Extreme ethnic
nationalism contributes to these forms of inter-community conflict because minorities are
suspected of being fifth columns, and thus a threat to national self-preservation (Adam
and Moodley, 2005: 37). For Morris, The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into
complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us.
Crucially, Morris fails to recognize how the propagation of these attitudes critically
determines how the Arab population comes to understand its relationship to the Jewish
nation. Indeed, this is the key lesson we take from Fanon and Taylor: nonrecognition and
misrecognition fundamentally shape how subjugated peoples come to understand
themselves and their relation to society.
Morris describes Palestinian society as a very sick society that should be
treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers. He claims we should
understand Palestinians as a wild animal that has to be locked up and therefore,
something like a cage needs to be built for them. It is difficult to comprehend the full
damage these comments inflict upon the psyche of the Palestinian people. Again, Fanons
insights prove useful. In his first book, Peau noire, masque blancs (Black Skin, White
Masks), the Martiniquan psychoanalyst draws upon his experience of both colonized
societies and his time spent in the French metropole to analyze the various mechanisms
through which racism dehumanizes the individual and instills feelings of racial
inferiority. The book opens with the words of radical Martiniquan poet and politician

13
In addition to being morally repulsive, the statement is also historically inaccurate as indigenous societies
in North America never posed an existential threat to the European settlers.

19
Aim Csaire: I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with
fear, inferiority, servility, despair, abasement (Fanon, 1952/1986: 9). Importantly, Fanon
is critically influenced by the master-slave dialectic in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit.
As Yar explains, in the conflict between master and slave, subjects confront each other
and vie with each other so as to successfully impel their other(s) to recognize them in
their own terms, i.e. as they desire themselves to be objectively seen, treated and
affirmed. Consequently, it seems that that struggle for recognition must lead to a contest
of strength, in which compulsion becomes the means to force the other into accepting
oneself on ones own terms (Yar, 2001: 66). In his famous chapter, Lexprience vcue
du Noir (translated as The fact of Blackness), Fanon describes the profound violence
manifest in the colonial gaze. Indeed, this is the point at which Fanon locates the
moment his inferiority comes into being through the other (Fanon, 1952/1986). He
recounts an experience from the streets of Paris in which he overhears the comments of a
young child: Look, a Negro. The racial epithet is felt as an extreme violation: My
body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that
white winter day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro
is ugly (Fanon, 1952/1986: 113). Crucially, the colonized subject is unable to affirm his
own self-understanding as it is already imposed upon him through the eyes of the
colonizer: And so it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that
was already there, pre-existing, waiting for me (Fanon, 1952/1986: 134).
Fanons experience is important because it reveals the defining element that
structures the relation between colonizer and colonized: Namely, its fundamental
asymmetry. The colonized cannot return the colonizers gaze nor can he escape it. In
Portrait du Colonis, prcd par Portrait du Colonisateur (translated as The Colonizer
and the Colonized), Albert Memmi describes the dilemma faced by the colonial subject.
If the colonized seeks recognition from his colonial master, he must demonstrate his
worth in terms of the cultural values of the colonizing society. Assimilation would thus
constitute self-negation: The crushing of the colonized is included among the
colonizers values. As soon as the colonized adopts those values, he similarly adopts his
own condemnation (Memmi, 1965/1990: 187). Deprived of the means of self-definition,
he is forced to shake off these accusing and annihilating images and reclaim his self-

20
understanding (Memmi, 1965/1990: 194). In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon discusses
how these antagonisms give rise to an atmosphere of violence. Importantly, this
atmospheric violence, this violence rippling under the skin, penetrates the psyche of
both colonized and colonizer (Fanon, 1963/2004: 31). Whereas Black Skin, White Masks
was written while Fanon was a student at the University of Lyons, Fanons conception of
atmospheric violence was born out of his experience as chef de service of the largest
psychiatric hospital in Algeria, the Blida-Joinville. Arriving in 1953, Fanon witnessed
first-hand the escalation of hostilities as struggles for national liberation intensified. At
the Blida-Joinville, Fanon treated both Algerian freedom fighters and French colonial
police officers, the tortured and the torturers, often on the same day. Fanon draws on
these experiences to expose the anxiety that pervades the settler population and the
mechanisms through which this atmosphere of violence slips into bloodshed:

How do we get from the atmosphere of violence to setting violence in
motion? What blows the lid? First of all there is the fact that such a
development has certain impact on the colonists state of bliss. The
colonist who knows the colonial subject realizes from several pointers
that something is in the process of changing. The good natives become
scarce, silence falls when the oppressor approaches. Sometimes looks
harden and attitudes and remarks are downright hostileThe colonists,
especially those isolated on farms, are the first to become alarmed. They
demand drastic measures.
The authorities do in fact take dramatic measures; they arrest one
or two leaders, organize military parades, maneuvers and flyovers. These
demonstrations of military power, these saber-rattling exercises, this smell
of gunpowder which now fills the atmosphere do not intimidate the
people. These bayonets and heavy gunfire strengthen their aggressiveness.
A dramatic atmosphere sets in where everyone wants to prove he is ready
for anything. It is under these circumstances that the gun goes off on its
own for nerves are on edge, fear has set in, and everyone is trigger-happy.
A trivial incident and the machine-gunning begins: you have a Stif in
Algeria, the Central Quarries in Morocco, and Moramanga in Madagascar
(Fanon, 1963/2004: 31-32).

At the time of writing, a new round of violent clashes between Israeli authorities
and Palestinians has commenced following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli
teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach and Gil-ad Shaar, near Hebron. The initial
response by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) resulted in the deaths of up to nine

21
Palestinians, the arrest and detention of more than 500, targeted air strikes in Gaza, and
the complete closure of the Hebron district, preventing some 750,000 Palestinians from
moving between their villages and the city of Hebron (Cadman, 2014; Mezzofiore, 2014).
Violent tensions continue to accumulate following the murder of Mohamed Abu Khdeir,
a Palestinian teenager whose burned remains were discovered in a Jerusalem forest last
week. Police suspect the motivation for the murder was nationalistic, implying the
perpetrators were Jewish extremists (Levinson and Associated Press, 2014). A senior
Palestinian official claims an initial autopsy revealed soot deposits in Abu Khdeirs
lungs, suggesting the boy was still breathing when he was set on fire (Beaumont,
2014a).
14
Video that is alleged to show Israeli police brutally beating Tariq Abu Khdeir, a
fifteen-year-old Palestinian-American and cousin of the murdered youth, was released
last week. Pictures of the fifteen-year-olds battered, barely recognizable face have also
been circulated widely online. The US State Department has said it is profoundly
disturbed by reports of the beating and has called for an urgent investigation (Reuters,
2014). Videos, pictures and written accounts continue to surface that document the
harassment of Palestinian Israelis. Reports have also revealed intimidation of Jews in the
Palestinian-dominated town of Qalansawe (Beaumont, 2014b).
Sirens ring across Israel. In recent weeks, nearly 300 rockets and mortars have
been fired at Israeli civilians. In an offensive labeled, Operation Protective Edge,
Israeli forces are amassing along the Gaza border and officials have warned of a potential
ground invasion (Beaumont, 2014c). As we stare down this catastrophe that is likely to
leave many more dead before weeks end, might Fanon and Taylor offer any guidance?

14
The depth of the current tragedy can be glimpsed in the enduring relevance of statements made by Ahad
Haam in a letter to the editor of Haaretz, written soon before his death in 1927 in Tel Aviv. In the letter,
the great Russian Jewish essayist responded to rumors that an Arab child had been killed by a group of
Jews in an act of revenge: What should we say if this is really true? My God, is this the end? Is this the
goal for which our ancestors have striven and for whose sake all generations suffered? Is this the dream of
our return to Zion, that we come to Zion and stain its soil with innocent blood? It has been an axiom in my
eyes that the people will sacrifice its money for the sake of a state, but never its prophets. And now God has
afflicted me in that I have to live and have to see with my own eyes that I have apparently erred therein too.
Even now the people does not give its money for the upbuilding of the national home. Instead, there is a
growing inclination to sacrifice its prophets on the altar of the national rebirth, to sacrifice the great moral
principles for the sake of which our people lives, for the sake of which it has suffered, and for the sake of
which alone it is worthwhile to return to the land. For without them, my God, what are we and what is our
future life in this land that we bring all the innumerable sacrifices, without which the land cannot be rebuilt.
Do we really do it to add a small people of new Levantines in a corner of the Orient, who will vie with
other Levantines in shedding blood, in vengeance and wrath? If this be the Messiah, then I dont wish to
see his coming (Ahad Haam in Kohn, 1951).

22
In May 1945, in the wake of the Stif massacre, which involved the murder of 103
French settlers and the subsequent killing of 6000 Muslims (although Cairo radio initially
claimed the number to be as high as 45,000), Albert Camus implored French authorities
to show restraint and avoid retaliatory measures that would be not only inhumane but
also impolitic (Camus in Schalk, 2005: 63). He further warned that in North Africa
nothing that is French will be saved without saving justice (Camus in Schalk, 2005:
64). His warnings fell on deaf ears then, but based on the reading of Taylor and Fanon
outlined above, they appear as wise words that Israeli authorities would do well to heed.
As Fanon observed, This threatening atmosphere of violence and missiles in no way
frightens or disorients the colonized. We have seen that their entire recent history has
prepared them to understand the situationThe colonized have adapted to this
atmosphere. For once they are in tune with their time (Fanon, 1963/2004: 40). In another
haunting statement, Fanon informs us: The violence of the colonial regime and the
counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an
extraordinary reciprocal homogeneityViolence among the colonized will spread in
proportion to the violence exerted by the colonial regime [emphasis mine] (Fanon,
1963/2004: 46-47).
But Fanon and Taylor also reveal something much deeper, something that exposes
the very basis upon which violence is enabled to thrive. Namely, we are given a renewed
awareness of the profound significance of recognition. In his preface to The Wretched of
the Earth, Sartre addresses his comments to the French. He writes: They would do well
to read Fanon; he shows perfectly clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither a storm
in a teacup nor the reemergence of savage instincts nor a consequence of resentment: it is
man reconstructing himselfOnce their rage explodes, they recover their lost coherence,
they experience self-knowledge through reconstruction of themselves; from afar we see
their war as the triumph of barbarity (Sartre, 1963/2004: v). Indeed, Morris racist
attitudes are nothing new. The colonial psychiatrists of the Algiers School claimed the
local Arab population suffered from a form of Muslim madness. Fanon powerfully
refuted this idea by demonstrating that the pathology that afflicted the mind of the
colonized was inextricably linked to the colonial encounter itself. The atmosphere of
violence arises from the denial of recognition inherent in the colonial gaze. Isaiah Berlin

23
similarly expressed concern regarding the importance of being recognized as an
autonomous human agent: If I am not so recognized, then I may fail to recognize, I may
doubt, my own claim to be a fully independent human being (Berlin, 1969: 157).
Therefore, misrecognition shows not just a lack of due respect. It can inflict a grievous
wound, saddling its victim with crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just a
courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need (Taylor, 1994: 26).

IV. The Struggle for Recognition: Nonviolence as Social Performance

We must resist the urge to demonize Morris and deny his humanity in a way that
reproduces the injustice inherent in his attitudes toward the Palestinians. Here Gandhis
conception of ahimsa offers an illuminating path forward.
15
As Jefferess notes, the path
of ahimsa requires that the satyagrahi appeal to the conscience of the adversary so as
to bring about a psychological transformation: Gandhi recognizesthe way in which
the colonial system conditions the British or Indian administrator to act coercively and
violently; hence, structural change requires the administrator to become cognizant of the
violence of which he is a functionary (Jefferess, 2008: 133). Thus, for Gandhi the
principle of conversion is critical: I embark on my campaign as much out of my love for
the Englishman as for the Indian. By self-suffering I seek to convert him, never to destroy
him (Gandhi in Jefferess, 2008: 133). Similarly, we must be cognizant of the historical
and political circumstances that condition Morris perspective, and creatively imagine
ways we might foster in him and others who share his views an awareness of the injustice
and violence in which they are implicated; an awareness of the evil that threatens to
swallow both peoples whole. Of course, there are limitations to such an approach: The
success of satyagraha relies on the opposing power being susceptible to moral appeals

15
Here it is interesting to highlight the similarities between the moral outlooks of Taylor, Buber, and
Arendt discussed in section II, and the ethical worldview advocated by Gandhi in his discourse of ahimsa.
Gandhi counsels the satyagrahi: I want you to feel like loving your opponents, and the way to do it is to
give them the same credit for honesty of purpose which you would claim for yourself...I confess that it was
a difficult task for me yesterday whilst I was talking to those friends who insisted on their right to exclude
the unapproachables from the temple roads. I confess there was selfishness behind their talk. How then
was I to credit them with honesty of purpose?...I am considering their condition of mind from their point of
view and not my own...And immediately we begin to think of things as our opponents think of them, we shall
be able to do them full justice [emphasis mine]. I know that this requires a detached state of mind, and it is
a state very difficult to reach...three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will
disappear, if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint (Gandhi cited in
Jefferess, 2008: 135).

24
and sharing a similar moral universe. Where such a shared value system is absent or the
colonized become dehumanized and pathologized (e.g., barbarian, terrorist, mad,
animals), or are perceived as acting on behalf of a foreign power (e.g., KGB agents,
Islamist zealots) posing an existential threat to the power holder, moral persuasion
tends to fall on deaf ears (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 8-9).
Nonetheless, the chief lesson remains: The most powerful forms of resistance
involve shaming the colonial power so as to instigate a wider cultural and psychological
transformation. As Raymond Williams has argued, true revolution is distinguished not by
the capture of state power, but rather by a change in the form of activity of a society, in
its deepest structure of relationships and feelings (Williams, 1966/2006: 101). Gandhis
nonviolence and Mandelas reconciliatory gestures were powerful instruments for
transforming the mind of the colonizer as well as the outside world. As Adam and
Moodley note, one must acknowledge that support for Morris apocalyptic vision reflects
the failure of the Arab adversary to persuade the Israeli public of its readiness for
peaceful coexistence. As long as fashionable, self-serving, anti-Zionist rhetoric is peddled
among Arab policy makers and intellectuals, the Israeli peace movement lacks credible
allies on the other side (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 41). Thus, when asked by their
Palestinian hosts, What then is a practical lesson we Palestinians can learn for our
struggle from Mandela? Adam and Moodley responded, The most important lesson the
Palestinian leadership could draw from Mandela would be how to reassure an adversary
that his essential interests will be respected. Mandelas magnanimous gestures of
embracing former oppressors, both symbolically and figuratively, never failed to move
(Adam and Moodley, 2005: 9). Indeed, the African National Congress (ANC) succeeded
in mobilizing even conservative European and North Americans against the apartheid
regime by communicating an unambiguous attitude of inclusion, nonracialism, and desire
for peaceful cohabitation (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 75).
Resistance conceived in these terms would thus function to initiate a shift in the
consciousness of the Jewish nation, and in doing so reveal the true alternatives that lie
ahead. For American sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, the potential for any such
transformation is critically determined by who controls the means of symbolic
production (Alexander, 2004: 202-203). To clarify the meaning of this statement, it is

25
helpful to briefly highlight Alexanders work on social performance. In an essay entitled,
From the Depths of Despair: Performance, Counterperformance, and September 11,
Alexander employs the metaphor of social performance to understand acts of terrorism.
He argues, We need to theorize terrorism differently, thinking of its violence less in
physical and instrumental terms than as a particularly gruesome kind of symbolic action
in a complex performative field (Alexander, 2004: 88). Alexander offers a detailed and
illuminating explanation of his notion of social performance:

Performances select among, reorganize, and make present themes that are
implicit in the immediate surround of social lifethough these are absent
in a literal sense. Reconfiguring the signifieds of background signifiers,
performances evoke a new set of more action-specific signifiers in turn. It
is these signifiers that compose a performances scriptScripts are
cultural, but the reverse is not equally true: background cultures are not
themselves scripts. It is not culture that creates scripts, but pragmatic
efforts to project particular cultural meanings in pursuit of practical goals.
Scripts narrate and choreograph conflicts among the sacred, profane, and
mundane. An effectively scripted narrative defines compelling
protagonists and frightening antagonists and pushes them through a series
of emotionally laden encounters. Such agonistic action constitutes a plot.
Through plotted encounters, social dramas create emotional and moral
effects. Their audiences may experience excitement and joy if the plots
are romances or comedies, or pity and suffering if they are melodramas or
tragedies. If the scripted narrative is effective and if the performance of
the plot is powerful, the audience experiences catharsis, which allows new
moral judgments to form and new lines of social action to be undertaken
in turn (Alexander, 2004: 91).

After clarifying this understanding of social performance, and the processes through
which it is enacted, we can return to our original interest in the means of symbolic
production and their relation to effective social transformation. As Alexander argues,
Social-dramatic action can be understoodby the theatrical concept of the mis en scne,
literally, putting into the scene. Such dramatic enactment requires control over the means
of symbolic production, which suggests a stage, a setting, and certain elementary
theatrical props. For social dramas, control over such means points to the need to create
platforms for performance in the public imagination and, eventually, to create access to
such media of transmission as television, cinema, newspapers, radio, and the Internet
(Alexander, 2004: 91).

26
Terrorism is ineffective as a strategy of social and political transformation
because it will forever be unable to craft an effectively scripted narrative in the context
of a modern democracy. As Alexander explains, In democratic societies, in order to
achieve broad effects political actors must orient their tactics to address the moral
frameworks that compel the larger population. This is exactly what terrorism cannot do
(Alexander, 2004: 90). Therefore, It is hardly surprising then that on September 11, the
terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers produced exactly the opposite effect than the
one they had in mind (Alexander, 2004: 90). Adam and Moodley make a similar
argument in their discussion of the Second Intifada. The uprising consisted of secretive,
militarized attacks by autonomous rival militias in a fragile semistate. With Palestinian
bombings and shootouts, Israeli opponents are challenged where they are strongest, rather
than shamed with moral exposure of expansionism where Israel is weakest (Adam and
Moodley, 2005: 10). In this way, the movement offered not a path toward liberation, but
rather its opposite: massive retaliation that has destroyed the social fabric of the
emerging state (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 10). In discussions with Palestinian activists,
Adam and Moodley reiterated the crucial difference between the essentially nonviolent
protests of the first intifada, which brought global sympathy to the Palestinian cause, and
the counterproductive violence of the second intifada (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 9-10).
Here Alexander similarly underscores the effectiveness of the first intifada in crafting a
compelling scripted narrative: This youth-centered, stone-throwing protest movement
against Israeli occupation engaged not in murderous, postpolitical terrorism but in highly
effective political dramaturgy. The young Palestinian Davids created sympathy, not
only outside of Israel but also within it, for their struggle against the Israeli military
Goliaths. What eventually followed was an occasionally enthusiastic but more often
resigned acceptance of the Palestinians national ambition among influential segments of
the Israeli public that had been steadfast in their opposition to the PLO during its terrorist
days (Alexander, 2004: 90).
In an afterword to the second edition of his book, In Defense of Lost Causes,
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj !i"ek introduces La Boties notion of servitude
voluntaire: power (the subordination of many to one) is not an objective state of things
which persists even if we ignore it; it is something that persists only through the

27
participation of its subjects, only if it is actively assisted or maintained by them (!i"ek,
2009: 274). These insights have natural implications for how one conceives of resistance.
As !i"ek claims, We do not obey and fear power because it is in itself so powerful; on
the contrary, the power appears powerful because we treat it as such. This fact opens up
the space for a passive revolution which, rather than directly confronting power,
gradually undermines it in the manner of a subterranean digging of a mole, through
abstaining from participation in the everyday rituals and practices that sustain it (!i"ek,
2009: 274). Based on these notions of resistance, !i"ek arrives at a strange and
paradoxical conclusion: One can then say that, crazy as it may sound, Gandhi was more
violent than Hitler[Hitlers] targeting of the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement
in which he avoided the real enemy the core capitalist social relations themselves.
Hitler staged a spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive, in
contrast Gandhi whose movement endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the
British colonial state (!i"ek, 2009: 475).
On the surface, !i"eks comments appear highly controversial and potentially
offensive to some, but the offence derives primarily form a misreading. Gandhis vision
recognized the deeply structural nature of colonial injustice. His strategies of resistance,
therefore, were aimed not at the colonizer, but at the underlying feelings and attitudes that
sustained the colonial system. Importantly, Gandhi sought to overturn not merely the
material relationships of colonial rule, but even more radically, he aims at the dissolution
of Hegels master-slave dialectic. In demanding an attitude of openness to the
perspectives of enemies, Gandhian ahimsa seeks to permanently transform the relation
between self and other, to liberate the colonizer as well as the colonized. In this sense,
Gandhi constituted a far more violent challenge to the status quo than those who
advocated militancy. Indeed, if we recall Williams rendering of revolution as a change in
the deepest structure of relationships and feelings of society then we might follow
!i"ek in entertaining this paradoxical view. For if violence is equated not with mere
physical force, but rather with the disruption of the established order, and the
transforming of underlying relationships of power and recognition, then our view of
resistance is inverted: The first intifada comes to be seen as far more violent than the
second; Mandelas vision more violent than Fanons. Such an articulation might help

28
clarify a common misunderstanding. As Adam and Moodley observed during their
research visits to Israel-Palestine, several Palestinian activists confused the Gandhian
approach to passivity and nonresistance (Adam and Moodley, 2005: 10). In fact,
terrorism would be more easily equated with nonresistance, in this view, as it leaves the
underlying structures of conflict untouched, and preserves an order of domination by
providing the oppressor a means to legitimate continued state coercion. Palestinians from
the Hebron area recently expressed Gandhis radicalism during a visit to the home of
Rachel Frankel, the mother of slain Israeli teen Naftali Frankel. When asked why they
had come, one Palestinian responded: Things will only get better when we learn to cope
with each others pain and stop getting angry at each other. Our task is to give strength to
the family and also to take a step toward my nations liberation. We believe that the way
to our liberation is through the hearts of Jews. Rachel Frankel received them warmly
(Samuel, 2014).
In addition to this psychological shift in the relations between Israelis and
Palestinians, the realization of a binational model of reconciliation would also crucially
depend on reassessing fundamental assumptions that underpin dominant understandings
of Zionism, Jewish peoplehood, and sovereignty. As Hobsbawm warns in The Invention
of Tradition: We should not be misled by a curious, but understandable, paradox:
modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel,
namely rooted in the remotest of antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely
human communities so natural as to require no definition other than self-assertion
(Hobsbawm, 1983/2007: 14). These types of nationalist self-assertion are especially
emotionally charged and problematic in the case of Israel. As Judith Butler explains,

Israel claims to represent the Jewish people, and popular opinion tends to
assume that Jews support Israel without taking into account Jewish
traditions of anti-Zionism and the presence of Jews in coalitions that
oppose the Israeli colonial subjugation of PalestiniansIt continues to
surprise me that many people believe that to claim ones Jewishness is to
claim Zionism or believe that every person who attends a synagogue is
necessarily Zionist. Equally concerning is a number of people who think
they must disavow Jewishness because they cannot accept the policies of
the State of Israel. If Zionism continues to control the meaning of
Jewishness, then there can be no Jewish critique of Israel and no
acknowledgement of those of Jewish descent or formation who call into

29
question the right of the State of Israel to speak for Jewish values or,
indeed, the Jewish people [emphasis mine] (Butler, 2012: 2-3).

In his book, Beyond the Two-State Solution, Shenhav is similarly concerned with the
mechanisms of censorship that preclude dissent, not by overt means, but rather through
the terms of discourse. Shenhav argues Israel has become what Jewish-German-
American sociologist Herbert Marcuse calls a one-dimensional society: Such a society
sustains pseudo-democratic regimes, including formal (or procedural) democracy and
freedom of speech. But at the same time, on the central issues of the political agenda, the
thought is paralyzed and almost uniform (Shenhav, 2012: 9). As he explains, The
symbiosis between left and right is the cause and effect of one-dimensionality which
rejects any type of discourse that strays beyond the boundaries of consensus (Shenhav,
2012: 9). Through his book, Shenhav seeks to transform this discourse through
imaginative acts aimed at expanding the realm of political possibility (Shenhav, 2012:
165). In this sense, Shenhavs ambitions are in alignment with those of the present study.
The findings here suggest that any such transformation will critically depend on
dissenting Jewish voices cooperating to collectively re-take control of the symbolic
means of production, and through these channels articulate alternative narratives of
Zionisms political history and future. Indeed, as Hans Kohn so presciently articulated:
Now only two ways remain: either to oppress the Arabs and subjugate them through a
continuous display of military might, of the worst kinds of imperial or colonial militarism
or to do our best to seek out paths to the Arabs and completely reshape Zionism in
the light of pacifism, anti-imperialism, and democracy all that the spirit of true Judaism
actually means (Kohn in Shenhav, 2012: 161-162).
16


16
Adam and Moodley note the dangers of moralizing in an emotionally charged conflict: Realistic
accounting turns out to be depressing and uncomfortable but is preferable to living with illusions (Adam
and Moodley, 2005: xvi). Shenhav offers further clarity on this point with reference to Herbert Marcuse. He
writes, Marcuse suggested the intellectual should understand reality exactly as it is, and, at the same time,
utterly reject the facts of it (Shenhav, 2012: 165). This account is not blind to the radicalism of its
assertions or the profound obstacles associated with their realization. According to a 2003 survey
undertaken by the Israeli Democracy Institute, Only 77 percent of the Jewish population support the
statement that democracy is the best form of government, the lowest percentage (alongside Poland)
among the 32 countries for which there is available data. Over half the population (56%) is of the opinion
that strong leaders can be more useful to the state than all the deliberations and laws (Gordon, 2004). In
addition, More than half of the Jews in Israel (53%) state that they are against full equality for
ArabsLess than a third (31%) support having Arab political parties in the government; and the majority
(57%) think that the Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate (Gordon, 2004). Overcoming these attitudes

30
V. Conclusions: Between Reality and Utopia

Intolerable practices and institutions often present themselves as natural,
inevitable, and having no alternative. The realm of imagination safeguards us from these
determinisms by opening a space of contestation in which dominant conceptions of
reality can be challenged. As Foucault implores us, We must free ourselves from the
sacralization of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something
so essential in human life and relationships as thought (Foucault, 1990: 154-155). This
account has called for a fundamental rethinking of core assumptions that have
underpinned dominant approaches to peace in Israel-Palestine. The atmosphere of
violence that structures relationships between the two peoples is currently intensifying in
profoundly dangerous ways. It is no longer acceptable, intellectually, morally, politically,
to allow the bankrupt solutions peddled by narrow-minded elites to define the terms of
discourse. Thus the key aim of the present study has been to undermine the determinacy
of conventional approaches by presenting an alternative moral outlook that might serve to
ground future deliberation on the rights of Jews and Palestinians in the land between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Above all, it is has been rooted in the conviction
that philosophy can serve an important function in clarifying paths toward conciliation.
As Taylor commented in relation to the challenges of reconciliation between French and
English-speaking Canadians: Philosophy is important in this struggle lest this dimension
of recognition be forgotten. If it is only discussed in terms of redistribution, of
institutional equality, the problems of recognition will re-emerge in a perverse way
(Taylor, 1998: 108). To use the words of Edward Said: What is now before us
nationally, and in the full imperial panorama, is the deep, the profoundly perturbed and
perturbing question of our relationship to others other cultures, other states, other
histories, other experiences, traditions, peoples, destinies (Said, 2003: 306). Indeed,
attention must be directed to identifying those unifying principles that might serve as the

will require an extraordinary moral courage on the part of both sides that is perhaps without historic
precedent. Needless to say, it would also demand that dissenters embrace the high-risks associated with
confronting Israeli state power with unrelenting civil disobedience and nonviolence. However, I contend
this is the only way: nonviolent resistance is both the only moral path and the only strategy cable of
success, two facts I see as inextricably linked. For empirical data on the effectiveness of civil resistance,
see Stephan, M., and E. Chenoweth. (2008). Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of
Nonviolent Conflict. International Security 33 (1): 7-44.

31
psychological, moral, and legal basis of cohabitation. I have argued Taylors politics of
difference and presumption of equal worth constitutes a powerful moral vision that
might contribute to such a project. In addition, I have sought to underline the dangerous
consequences that arise when these forms of recognition are denied and how conditions
of nonrecognition might be overcome.
As the twenty-first century unfolds before us, history may come to see the true
dreamers and realists in this debate in very different terms than contemporary
observers. As Lustick and others have noted, objective realities have become increasingly
detached from official narratives and failure to honestly confront this divergence has the
potential to produce catastrophe. From this view, the convictions of those who most
fiercely reject the binational model appear to flow more from a deficiency in political and
moral imagination than an acceptance of facts on the ground. As Shenhav reminds us,
The critical work of the intellectual focuses on the gap between the existing and the
possible, since intellectuals are expected not merely to represent a given public, but also
and even most of all to mark out the possible and desirableThe gentle interplay
between the present and the absentee, between reality and utopia, allows the rebuttal of
deterministic narrations of political histories and futures (Shenhav, 2012: 165). Thus, let
us not understate the gravity of the task that lies ahead for it requires nothing less than the
construction of a new hegemony, a new world conception that will redefine the political
coordinates of the conflict, and open new spaces of dialogue and understanding. Here the
words of Eugene Dawn from J.M. Coetzees Dusklands are instructive: The myths of a
tribe are the fictions it coins to maintain its powers. The answer to a myth of force is not
necessarily counterforce, for if the myth predicts counterforce, counterforce reinforces
the myth. The science of mythography teaches us that a subtler counter is to subvert and
revise the myth. The highest propaganda is the propagation of a new mythology
(Coetzee, 1974/1996: 24-25).
i



In outlining a binational vision grounded in a politics of recognition as conceived by Taylor, this account
represents a humble contribution to this enterprise. It is based in the assumption that important insights
might be gleaned through a productive encounter between, on the one hand, experts concerned with issues
of peace building in Israel-Palestine, and on the other, Canadian political theorists such as Will Kymlicka
and Charles Taylor who have been influential in advancing normative arguments for the recognition of
minority cultures. Three other areas that appear promising for future investigation include: (a)
reengagement with the counter-statist Zionist tradition of the interwar period and other strains of Jewish
political thought that might serve to undermine dominant narratives of political Zionism; (b) exploration of

32

constitutional architectures that could provide substance to the binational idea informed both by normative
political theory and empirical comparisons of binational solutions implemented in other societies; and
finally (c) a historical, empirical investigation of resistance strategies that looks towards mobilizing support
for binational recognition both inside Israel-Palestine, and globally.

(a) Jewish Intellectual History: Several scholarly works have emerged recently that affirm the relevance of
the interwar Zionist intellectual tradition for the construction of counter-hegemonic narratives that
challenge the statism that underpins mainstream Zionism. For an illuminating discussion of three key
interwar Jewish intellectuals who challenged the statist approach, namely historian Simon Rawidowicz,
religious thinker Mordecai Kaplan, and political theorist Hans Kohn, see Pianko, N. (2010). Zionism and
the Road Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. For a fascinating
critique of political Zionism that draws upon the richness of the Jewish philosophical tradition, including
the thought of Emmanual Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Martin Buber, and Walter Benjamin, see
Butler, J. (2012). Parting ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. New York: Columbia University
Press. Also see Butlers lecture delivered at the European Graduate School, Butler, J. (2009). Binationalism
and the Subject. Lecture conducted from European Graduate School, Switzerland. Accessible online at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUbGmXzYE0.

(b) Binational Constitutional Models: In conceiving of binational constitutional arrangements, Lijpharts
work on consociational and consensus democracy, Kymlickas theories of multicultural citizenship,
and Taylors politics of difference offer interesting points-of-departure (Lijphart, 1977; Leijphart, 1999;
Kymlicka, 1995; Taylor, 1994). In Seeking Mandela, Adam and Moodley engage with these approaches in
theorizing possibilities for reconciliation in Israel-Palestine that go beyond the two-state approach (See
especially pp. 44-46, 175-180). Similarly, in Beyond the Two State Solution, Shenhav invites a creative
rethinking of ideas of sovereignty and offers an introduction to alternative approaches, which he terms
post-Westphalian sovereignty (Shenhav, 2012: 149-159). In line with this critical tradition, Grindberg
proposes an Israeli-Palestinian Union (IPU), which would consist of one shared administration based on
parity representation located in the unified capital of Jerusalem, two separate democratic nation-states, and
a minimum of seven provinces (or federal states) that would be part of either nation-state and would enjoy
relative autonomy (Grindberg, 2009: 49). As Pianko has argued, the interwar Zionist intellectual tradition
might also provide helpful tools for reimagining conventional notions of nationalism and sovereignty
(Pianko, 2010). For a brief overview of binationalism in the twentieth-century that situates the model in a
global comparative context, see Smooha, S. (2009). The Israeli Palestinian-Arab Vision of Transforming
Israel into a Binational Democracy. Constellations 16 (3).

(c) Mobilizing for Binational Recognition: For the classic scholarly work on nonviolent resistance, see
Sharp, G. (1973). The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3 volumes). Boston: Porter Sargent. For an empirically
grounded assessment of the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance, see Stephan, M., and E. Chenoweth.
(2008). Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. International Security 33
(1): 7-44. For important discussions of forces shaping the production of meaning in society, see Alexander,
J., B. Giessen, and J. Mast, eds. (2006). Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and
Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For arguments in favour of boycotts, divestments, and
sanctions (BDS) as a means of securing Palestinian recognition, see Lim, C., ed. (2012). The Case for
Sanctions Against Israel. London: Verso. For a critical discussion of sanctions informed by the anti-
Apartheid struggle, see Adam, H., and K. Moodley. (2005). Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking between
Israelis and Palestinians. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, (pp. 72). For further discussion of
mobilization strategies and obstacles, see Part IV of Faris edited volume, The Failure of the Two-State
Solution: The Prospects of One State in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. For a discussion of the global
significance of Palestine, see Collins, J. (2012). Global Palestine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For an
account of ongoing projects seeking to find paths toward conciliation and coexistence between Israelis and
Palestinians, see Gavron, D. (2008). Holy Land Mosaic: Stories of Cooperation and Coexistence Between
Israelis and Palestinians. Lanham: Rowmen and Littlefield Publishers.



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