Outrage

I start from the much rehearsed argument that the current Israeli government is in breach of international law. I agree and cannot but be horrified by the suffering to which the argument appeals, but I also think that the argument fails to address why it is persistently ignored by those states most invested in upholding the international legal order. The accusation of “hypocrisy …” is not good enough. My sense is that the argument fails to take into account firstly how the international legal order on which it draws is grounded in the history of the state of Israel and the Shoah. They are the exception that founds the rule, but, precisely for this reason, they also stand outside it. Indeed, in some sense, the state of Israel has been in breach of the international order it founds since at least 1967. Secondly, the problem is that for contingent reasons no one any longer abides by the international order that the state of Israel founds, and the policies of the current Israeli government draw attention to this disregard. Given the above peculiar status of the state of Israel, it then has to carry the burden of the global crisis. From this point of view, I cannot disagree that there is something very suspect about the moral outrage about Israeli actions. I do worry that I am running in circles, but there is something really troublesome about how one thinks about it all and I deeply mistrust moral outrage anyway.