Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

• Author: von Bockmann, James Lee
• Position: Review

Tomis Kapitan, Editor. Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997, 382 pp. Paper $29.95.

Fifty years of Palestinian dispossession and still timing is everything for academic philosophy. Ever fashionable, ever late, liberalism has finally arrived. Now we have a tool, a textbook. Now we have, as the cover reads, "the first anthology in English devoted to the philosophical issues engendered by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Yes, now that it is proper, though no longer quite meaningful to speak about a Peace Process; now that a pair of hands have been shaken; now that the PLO has become the PA rather than just a "terrorist organization;" and above all, now that Israelis themselves, the brave New Historians, have acknowledged that official Zionist historiography does indeed have a damp underbelly; now, at last, it is alright to present "both sides" of the conflict, side by side, to the English-speaking American public. If nothing else, it seems Oslo has at least underwritten another thoughtful attempt to reconcile rights and claims, concede violence is in fact violence, and offer normative soluti ons which just happen, generally, to reflect the obvious: the Palestinians must have a Palestine, Israel must accept it, and both peoples must somehow do more than merely accommodate one another. They may even have to learn to live together.

For those little inspired by the wait, watch, think, write, and repeat of professional philosophy, Kapitan's Philosophical Perspectives does not offer much. Subtract the word-spinning that sometimes passes for theoretical or "moral" insight, and it is all been said before, and often more blatantly. There are indeed several excellent essays among the fifteen that make up the book. Robert B. Ashmore's "State Terrorism and its Sponsors," James A Graff's "Targeting Children: Rights versus Realpolitik," and Erin McKenna's "Land, Property, and Occupation: A Question of Political Philosophy," are all wellwritten, well-reasoned reminders that, occasionally, things are as they seem: Israel is as Israel does. They lift the Jewish state's public mask and reveal the naked force beneath, arguing in turn that Israel is itself a terrorist state (Ashmore); that its tactics (many of which are, of course, officially tagged "antiterrorist" are repugnant to a human rights ethic (Graff); and in fact Israel may be charged with "s econdary genocide" (a charge McKenna rests upon a very skillfully compressed history of Israel's ideologically driven, i.e., premeditated, conquest of Palestinian land, its disastrous consequences, and the pretense of legality which has provided its political cover). Another trio of essays--Hugh R. Harcourt's "In Search of the Emperor's New Clothes: Reflections on Rights in the Palestine Conflict," Robert...