Image: Arne Dedert (dpa)
Israeli intellectuals reacted largely with understanding to the speech by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek at the Frankfurt Book Fair. At the opening on Tuesday evening, he said that in Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, too little attention was paid to the background of the Palestinians. There was then a tumult. At yesterday’s short-term discussion “Concerned about Israel”, most of the Israeli panelists basically agreed with this.
The context is important
Zizek demands that “everything must be contextualized,” said the publicist and director of the Anne Frank Educational Center, Meron Mendel. “That’s probably true. But I notice how difficult it is for me.” He needs a basic consensus for discussions: that “absolute evil” was at work in the massacres on October 7th. “There’s no need for contextualization. You can’t discuss it. But if we have this common ground, we can talk about anything.”
Zizek said a lot that could be criticized, said the writer Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus. However, his diagnosis is correct: it is important to analyze the situation better. “I wish I could understand this complexity better. So that we can find better solutions. Because the solutions we have right now don’t seem to work for decades.” Parts of the speech were “foreign” to him, said the writer and historian Doron Rabinovici. But it is true: “The Palestinian people are suffering.”
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I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
