What can Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche tell us about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

This week, we’re joined by Zahi Zalloua (Whitman College) to discuss the final chapter of his most recent book The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury, 2024)– entitled “Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question”– which offers a fresh lens through which to understand the complex affects and power dynamics that continue to fuel this struggle, particularly through a focus on what 19^th C. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment—a deep-seated feeling of injustice and grievance.

Zalloua unpacks how a collective sense of moral outrage on the part of Zionists has been deployed to shield Israel from criticism, particularly by accusing pro-Palestinian advocates and the Left of “new anti-Semitism.” He contrasts this with Palestinian ressentiment, which he frames as a legitimate response to the ongoing reality of settler-colonialism and displacement. His work both critiques the complicity of liberal Zionism in maintaining the status quo and challenges us to reframe the way we make sense of both Zionist and Palestinian anger.

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/texts/ideas/etc.:

• Peter Salmon, An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida (Verso, 2021)
• The Comparatist (journal)
• On Frederic Jameson’s recent passing
• Slow Burn (podcast) Season 10: “The Rise of Fox News”
• Transcript of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech to the United Nations
• Maher Zain, “Free Palestine” (song, 2024)
• Zahi Zallou, The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury, 2024)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)
• On the “public” vs. “private” use of reason in the work of Immanuel Kant
• Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Princeton UP, 2015)
• On Le Pen’s anti-Islamism
• Udi Aloni, Forgiveness (Film, 2006)
• Identity politics
• On the psychoanalytic “pleasure principle” and “death drive,” see Timofei Gerber, “Eros and Thanatos Freud’s two fundamental drives” (Epoché, 2019)
• Jared Sexton, “On Black Negativity, Or The Affirmation of Nothing” (Interview with Danie Barber, Society+Space, 2017)
• Hansi Lo Wong , “The Complicated History Behind BLM’s Solidarity with the Pro-Palestinian Movement” (NPR, 2021)
• Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (Indiana UP, 2009)
• Alvin Rosenfield, “Jean Améry as a Critic of the Anti-Israel Left” (Fathom magazine, 2021)
• Steven Friedman, “The New Antisemitism?” (Africa is a Country magazine, 2024), in response to Noah Feldman’s “The New Antisemitism” (Time Magazine, 2024)
• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• On the fascist right in Europe today
• The “two-state solution,” explained
• Settler-colonialism, explained
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
• Zahi Zalloua, Žižek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future (Bloomsbury, 2020)
• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
• History of Israel’s occupation of Palestine
• October 6th (1973 and 2023)
• BADIL Resource Center, “From the 1948 Nakba to the 1967 Naksa”
• 1948 Nakba, explained
• 1967 Naksa, explained
• Raphael S. Cohen, “The West’s Incoherent Critique of Israel’s Gaza Strategy” (The Economist, 2023)
• Red Nation, “Indigenous Solidarity with Palenstine” (2023)
• Emmanuel Levinas, “Zionisms” (In The Levinas Reader, edited by Sean Hand, 1989)  PDF here
• Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning” (London Review of Books, 2023)
• Judith Butler: “October 7 was armed resistance, not terrorism” (Unherd, 2024)
• Michelle Alexander, “Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now” (The Nation, 2024)
• BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement 
• Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Duke UP, 2017)
• Public Image, Ltd. “Rise” (song); PiL home
• Rage Against the Machine (band)
• Bruno Chaouat, Is the Theory Good for the Jews? (Oxford UP, 2016)
•  Udi Aloni on YouTube
• +972 Magazine
• “From the river to the sea,” explained
• Sara Ahmed, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way  (2023)
• Badia Fahs, “Gaza: Women Are The Main Victims of the Israel-Hamas War” (WorldCrunch, 2024)
• June Jordan
• Angela Davis
• Sylvia Wynter, On Being Human as Praxis (Duke UP, 2015)
• Derrick Bell, “What’s Diversity Got To Do With It?” (Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 2007)
• Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (Verso, 1951)