TEHRAN – A professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS, University of London, tells the Tehran Times that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has staffed his cabinet with “mad bigots” for political gains.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam says the Netanyahu government has placed Israel “into a dark place where even their most ardent defenders are hard-put to defend the crimes that are being committed.”

Israel’s relentless bombing campaign on the small enclave of the Gaza Strip has been described as an example of genocide, war crime, and crimes against humanity by certain international law experts, UN officials, and certain countries, including South Africa.

The assault on Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, has so far led to the death of at least 21,700 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and injury of 56,000.

Following is the text of the interview with Professor Adib-Moghaddam:

Q: The West claims that Israel is the only democratic country in the region that also respects human rights. If so, why are the laws of war, proportionality, and international law being disregarded in the Gaza war?

A: Democracy is a wide-ranging concept. In terms of the electoral process and the various checks and balances of the state, Israel is a democracy. The demos has the ability to choose their government, which is an essential element in the sovereignty of a people, Israelis included. However, my conception of democracy in this day and age relates back to the philosophical demands expressed in the ancient texts, from Plato and Farabi to Maimoinides and Ibn Rushd. Here, democracy is equated with normative requirements that go beyond mere elections, as the “happy polity” that the philosophers described is also about universal rights, human justice and social equality. The Netanyahu administration has placed the state of Israel far away from such lofty goals, into a dark place where even their most ardent defenders are hard-put to defend the crimes that are being committed. So democracy is also about human conduct and it is from this perspective that this war shattered the image of Israel as a democratic state in the wider sense of the concept. 

Q: The ultra-right government of Netanyahu has declared that it wants to eradicate Hamas. Can Israel succeed in doing so, or if it succeeds can it prevent the emergence of new armed groups?

A: The war can seriously disrupt, even destroy, the material infrastructure that translates the ability of Hamas to govern, which is one of the reasons why Gaza is razed to the ground with no regard for human life. The terrorist attack on October 7th certainly flagged the necessity to disrupt that ability of Hamas to project their type of politics beyond Gaza. But there is an ideational dimension to life and politics, too. Ideas can’t be nullified. If anything, the Netanyahu administration is creating an incredible trauma for a whole generation of Palestinians. History and serious research shows clearly that trauma can be translated into extremism, and it is here where the current campaign is likely to backfire. Some trends are even clearer: The dream of Israeli society to find peace in their own nation-state will be postponed by this war, as it has a) destroyed the image of the country, b) displayed the global support for Palestine in every major city of the world, c) indicated the limits of the militaristic approach favoured by the Israeli right-wing and d) clearly exposed the incompetence of that coterie around Netanyahu. 

Netanyahu has put Israel in a dark place

Q: Psychologically speaking, can a nation, not just Palestinians, tolerate subjugation, occupation, injustice, and suppression for long years or decades?

A: No individual or collective can function in a constant state of trauma. But I also think that Hamas is not a movement, that is suitable to mitigate the trauma of the Palestinian people. In fact, I believe this movement is an outcome of that trauma, as Hamas was born and sustained in periods of intifadic violence. But that also disqualifies Hamas as a viable panacea to channel the collective pain and suffering of the Palestinian people into a viable future. The same applies to Netanyahu, who is not only a corrupt individual, but has proven to be incredibly incompetent in safeguarding Israeli security. He is all too willing to sacrifice his people for political gains, which is why he staffed his cabinet with mad bigots, rather than with competent individuals. The current horror faced by the civilian population is as much an effect of the failure of Palestinian governance, as it is a function of right-wing politics in Israel. Conceptually, the Palestinian people and Israeli civil society have been paying the price of bad politics, both in Israel/Palestine and among a biased and hypocritical “international community”. 

Q: Given the realities on the ground, can one expect a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?  

A: This is a question that merits a separate interview, as it touches upon various issues. However, an anecdote may help:

The United States has formal mechanisms to ensure freedom of expression, yet the country has a powerful informal infrastructure that has turned US civil society into the most surveilled and administered society in the world.

These days, I recurrently remember a conference in Wales I spoke at many years ago, where a former IRA operative featured together with the daughter of a victim whose father he killed in a terror attack. In fact, both of them appeared all over the world, as a sign that reconciliation is possible even between perpetrator and victim. I was deeply impressed by the way both of them created a dialectic of pain and suffering, a disjunctive synthesis that allowed them to transcend their common trauma. It is exclusively in such acknowledgement of a common humanity with all the emotions that this implies, that a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be rooted. An acknowledgement of the common pain and suffering, the common history written in blood, common memorials of the fallen, joint remembrance of the wars and a cemetery of peace that buries the past in a common space of mutual recognition. Only with such acknowledgement of a common humanity can the hierarchisation of life be defeated. This is the mantra of the civil society movements of the world and the heroic peace activists that are calling for justice from a common humanistic standpoint and it is this non-ideological approach which is opening up the prospects of a better future. I can see this on an everyday basis on the streets of Europe and similar sentiments have been expressed in South and North America and in Asia, as well. It is only in the celebration of a common humanity, where the value of life is divested from the violence emitted by hierarchies of power.

Q: The presidents of Harvard University and MIT, along with the now-former president of the University of Pennsylvania were subpoenaed by the House Education and Labor Committee as anti-Israeli feelings are rising in universities because of the carnage in Gaza. Given such a move by the House, can the U.S. claim support for freedom of expression?

A: Going back to our concepts, the United States has formal mechanisms to ensure freedom of expression, yet the country has a powerful informal infrastructure that has turned US civil society into the most surveilled and administered society in the world. It is within the tension between the shifting balance of that formal infrastructure geared to human rights and democracy and the murky politics confining the benefits of that freedom to act, which has shifted the image of recent US governments away from their democratic pretensions. At the same time, the invented image of the country as a nation where freedom is celebrated continues to be a hopeful theme for a better future in the US, too. One thing is for sure: The battle for human freedom is an ancient one, and it will be demanded wherever limitations are placed upon that most fundamental human sentiment. To be free and to live in a just and equitable society, Farabi would have agreed, is the most fundamental requirement of any functioning society.