Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Those who affirm the sovereignty of the Israeli state and also believe
Palestinians have a right to sovereignty for the same reason, and who
take the Palestinian question as fundamental, must admit that the
Israeli establishment’s policy is literally crazy and deliberately aims at
avoiding all possible solutions to this problem. It is therefore politi-
cally accurate to say that a state of war exists between Israel and the
Palestinians. In this war the Palestinians’ only weapon is terrorism. It
is a terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no other, and the
French who approved FLN terrorism against the French must
approve in turn the Palestinians’ terrorist action. This abandoned,
betrayed, exiled people can show its courage and the force of its hate
only by organizing deadly attacks.
~~Jean-Paul Sartre, 1972, after the attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich
~~Jean-Paul Sartre
~~Jean-Paul Sartre, 1972, after the attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich