Translation of a discussion with Usama Taraben of GegenStandpunkt on “99 zu EINS” (You Tube), November 12, 2023.

Are they allowed to do that? Who started it? What else are they supposed to do?
On these and other moral arguments for enacting state sovereignty.

Ukraine war, Gaza war, state sovereignty & morality

Nadim: Last year the Ukraine war began, this year the Gaza war, two very different conflicts. Why should we talk about the two in the same breath?

Usama: The reason for talking about the two in the same breath is that they are both the same crap, in two respects. First: both wars are informative about the nature of the subjects waging them and, for all their differences, they have many very deadly things in common. Second: the orgies of violence taking place, one in Eastern Europe, the other in the Middle East, are accompanied by orgies of morality and justification. And even when looking at this secondary theater of war, there are more unpleasant similarities than any subtle differences. This is the first rough justification for today’s topic.

N: The goal today is to try to deal with some of the common ideas that are being discussed in public. Usama will then show and prove how wrong these common ideas and the common way of dealing with these wars are, and also what conclusions can be drawn about the world of states and the function of morality within it. We inevitably also have to talk about the conflicts themselves and perhaps we will discuss something at one point or another if I want to interject something, and of course questions from the audience are also allowed ... Let’s go through these moral issues that are discussed in public and that were immediately on the agenda in both conflicts. The one big question that was always asked was: Are they allowed to do that? Was it justified? And if so, for whom? And how much of it is allowed? Is it against to international law? Was it self-defense? Is the right to self-defense being exercised? Was it legitimate resistance or did it really go too far? What do you think of this way of approaching the wars?

UT: I have two rebuttals in the form of two counter-questions. The first counter-question goes like this: If you are already asking “are they allowed to do that?” we can first reach an understanding about what that actually is. What are you talking about? What is it that everyone wants to know when they ask whether the people doing it are allowed to do it or not? That’s the first thing. The second counter-question is: Why do you care whether they are allowed to do it?

Regarding the first rebuttal: What is it actually about? My answer is actually not very theoretically sophisticated. For a few days now, people on Twitter have been afraid that I’m going to talk in lots of complicated sentences that nobody will understand. Today it’s going to be simple. Listen to those who are ordering these two wars. What are you dealing with? First of all, it’s no secret: in the event of war, they use the commanding power they have over their people as chairmen of a proper or not so proper state power, but a state power in any case, in such a way that they put the people they command in uniforms, equip them with weapons, send them to the front and give them the task of killing as many of the enemy’s people as possible before they themselves get killed in the line of fire. What are they having the people under their command die for? No secret, no theory: to heal the violated sovereignty that they have over their territory and over their people, that characterizes them as political powers and as holders of political power. This is because it has been violated by another, more or less powerful ruler. In any case, a state power does not put up with this when it wages war; then it elevates itself, its own existence, its own sanctity and health so absolutely that it sacrifices the people for it, the people in their entire existence, in their lives, in their living conditions and all their life prospects. They are sacrificed. For what? For the state authority over them not having to put up with the objections of another state authority, which it obviously takes so seriously as a violation, and reversing this objection. So what states practice in war and what they make clear, in the harshest and most existentially deadly way imaginable, is the contrast between themselves as state powers and the people over whom they rule. They make it the people’s fate, giving them no alternative, to be the basis, the resource, the material in war; in this absurd sense, they are the expendables of their state’s rule.

In this sense, these two wars are major “clean-up operations”: they do away with the lie which is pervasive in civilian times that the state exists for the people. In war, the state shows in practice that this is a lie, that the truth is exactly the other way around. At the same time, the following clarification is made: It is an inseparable part of this standpoint of a state power and the relationship it takes to the people that the state power itself defines the point at which it sees itself so injured, so insulted, so attacked by its state opponent that it must decide for its subjects that they have to die in order to eliminate this insult. Determining where this begins is part of the freedom and sovereignty of a state power; it determines this itself. It can’t allow others to define the extent to which it must put up with the violation of its sovereignty; state power, sovereignty, is precisely the opposite of this. This is what state powers demonstrate to each other and against each other.

A sovereign national state power has two very direct measures, if you will. One can be expressed in square centimeters: the reach of its rule; the other is the people it has at its disposal. For a state power, however, this is merely the prelude to defining the basis for what it represents, how far it wants to reach, and what it will not put up with from its peers under any circumstances. In war, it makes this an announcement with no alternative for all its beloved governed citizens, and it does this with the same lack of alternatives with which it already governs their lives anyway; this is the only reason why it can wage war at all, why it can order them to go to war. That’s why not going is not an option. There was this stupid saying “imagine there was a war and nobody came.” That’s not the way it is. The war comes to you in the form of a call-up order. And just when you think you can ignore it, here comes those who chase you onto the battlefield, which is why military police are appropriately called Feldjäger in German [trans.: literally, “field hunters”]. Run away? Where are you supposed to run away to? There’s no place to go. If you want to get rid of this risk to your life, then you have to get rid of these subjects and the power they have over you. Now I have answered the question about the alternative before anyone even asked it. Anything less than that doesn’t work. Over, end of announcement. I’ve already announced that today will be easy. That’s all there is to it in this respect.

The second rebuttal is in the form of a counter-question: Why does it even matter if they are allowed to do this, if what is at stake is the thing I have just explained? Funny enough, the answer to my stupid counter-question has the same content. Where does this need for justification come from? It comes from the brutality of the antagonism that exists in the world. On the one hand, you can say that the need for legitimation, which also applies in the domestic use of people, only arises in the context of some kind of antagonism. If someone has repeatedly been nasty to his wife, he has to somehow justify that it was okay; a rent increase never comes without a detailed explanation as to why it’s actually pretty fair. War is the absolute opposition of a state power to the lives of its people. And as absolute, as deadly, as existential as this opposition is, the need for justification is as just urgent. But it must also be rejected. Because the answer that is supposed to be given, which everyone knows is usually given even before the question of whether they are allowed to do that is asked, is aimed at making clear to people something you yourself would never see as clear. The most absurd struggle for existence, to which one should allow oneself to be conscripted, wants to be justified, and the justifications then looks the way you would expect. If you ask yourself what is being justified, the ultimate antagonism of a sovereign state power over the citizens it rules and to the citizens of the other state at the same time – that is the principle of war. And if anyone thinks that this is not true in Ukraine or the Gaza Strip, they should write it in the chat.

Does the morality that justifies this perhaps also have a principle? Yes. What does it consist of? The answer to that is simple and nothing new. The striking thing is that the principle of all moral justifications of such things is not to deny this antagonism between the state and its people that it imposes on them so that they die as a result; nothing is denied, not even glossed over, but this antagonism is announced, insanely. An example: What does Zelensky, who everyone likes so much, actually have to say? “The war will not stop until every last square centimeter of Ukrainian land has been liberated from Russian occupation.” He doesn't need to sugarcoat anything. He really tells you: You are dying for my command, and I value my command so jealously that I would rather let you suffer for years than give the Russians a square meter of Ukrainian soil. Then what one justifies, this brutal attack on the lives of one’s own people, this antagonism in all its existential and systematic ways, becomes its own good reason. One merely repeats it. They just say: I am determined to sacrifice you, and that is already the justification. And anyone who is listening can think about whether, for example, the treatment of the victims does not prove exactly what I am saying in this simple thought that I will stick to today.

The victims are not denied. Today, my smartphone showed me the message that there will soon be a Veterans Memorial Day in Germany, like there already is in France and the USA. So Germany is obviously planning to wage wars just like these great nations of the world. And at the moment they are not even doing it yet, but have it up their sleeve and are already looking forward to celebrating victims in the future because in the logic of state legitimization, the victims do not speak against the cause, but ennoble it. If you pursue the question of whether they are allowed to do this in this twofold way – what is the actual content of this and what is the need and the thrust of this question – then you have actually dealt with the issue in principle. And whatever other special questions are come up with, whatever tricks or sub-points of justification there are, it always boils down to this.

N: Let’s go straight to a statement from the chat: “The fact that it is this absolute antagonism needs more explanation. It is argued everywhere that in war one’s own people are being protected from rape, murder, etc.”

UT: The people who die aren’t being protected. It’s as simple as that. That’s actually off the table. The other thing that you are supposed to imagine is that the state, e.g. Ukraine, is a big babushka, an innocent victim that has been attacked by a bad gang of Russians. Is that really the case? Is the Russian army really targeting people in the sense that they are just standing around so alone in the neighborhood, and if the Ukrainian state doesn’t come around the corner, then they will be the victims of a Russian war of aggression? Is that true? It’s the other way around. What are people being targeted as by enemy armies? As citizens of their state. An enmity is being expressed against them, in this case by Russia, which Russia does not have towards them simply as people, but which the Russian state government has towards the Ukrainian state government, and in return has its uniformed citizens attack the uniformed or even non-uniformed citizens of the state defined as an enemy state. And it is well known what this means in the case of Russia and Ukraine. The Russian President’s position is that Russia is either a world power or nothing at all. And the good man sees this Russian world power, its equality with the American world power, as being decisively contested by Ukraine being drawn into the Western camp. He finds this so intolerable, defines Russian state power to be so identical with Russian world power and Russian world power so identical with hostility toward the integration of Ukraine into the Western alliance, that he decides this country will now have to be plowed up for this, and that’s why several hundred thousand people have now died. And vice versa: “Ukraine is defending itself against Russia as a protective power of its citizens.” But how does a Ukrainian citizen come to be in need of a protective power? The fact that you have such a protective power is the same as the reason why you need it. As I said, you can’t get out of this situation without abolishing these subjects. You obviously have to put a stop to them, quickly, precisely, and for good.

N: Maybe I’ll jump straight in, because the next question actually fits quite well. We have now discussed Ukraine and Russia quite well. The question from the chat is: “‘Are they allowed to do that?’ When it comes to Israel, very few people ask that question – at least not in the German press. What is meant is: Is Hamas allowed to do that? Because this is not war, but terror.”

I would like to tweak this last remark somewhat with what I just said. The principle of moral legitimization of war or delegitimization of the enemy simply consists in the ideal absolutization of what is happening anyway. If you ask yourself what does that actually mean: not war, but terror. You think to yourself: congratulations on this distinction. The victims definitely don’t care whether they were killed in a terrorist attack or in a real war. Again, the question that needs to be asked is: what does this refer to? And how does the legitimization or delegitimization of what these orgies of morality refer to work?

It can’t be denied that there is a difference between Hamas and Israel that everyone knows. Namely: Hamas is totally inferior in the terms of the violence on its side. I wouldn’t recommend talking about powerlessness, because they have enough power to kill 1200 people within a few hours and have been unleashing rockets for several weeks now. So there can be no question of powerlessness, but it is clear that it is a party with inferior means of violence. And it is also clear that this violent action by Hamas was never intended to defeat Israel or even to achieve a balance of terror. No, the logic of this violence works differently; this violence makes it clear that it is directed against a superior force. The insane thing is that this factual inferiority, and the very far-reaching superiority of Israel, are, in the logic quoted in this chat post, their own good justification. The inferiority that makes this violence terrorism is held against it as a moral accusation of “terrorism.” In terms of violence, you are actually almost a zero number, which is why it is countered on a moral level by saying that we do not believe there is a purpose that you are pursuing with inferior violence, however fiercely. Terrorism as an accusation is the assertion that they have no political purpose; they are evil. If you think about it for just half a minute, you will realize that Hamas’s clear inferiority – at least for the time being – which also characterizes the whole way they use violence, is turned into a means of justification and delegitimization.

The opposite is true for Israel. We have now been told again that the Israeli army is the most humane army in the world. What is the humane nature of this army? The humane nature of this army is the moral version of the total superiority it shows in this violent conflict, which is linked to the viewpoint that we are not waging war, but fighting a terrorist organization. Hamas is denied the status of being a regular war enemy. Israel is so serious about this position of total superiority that it takes it upon itself to give warnings. They call in advance and say: “We are about to strike and not a blade of grass will ever grow there again. So run as quickly and as far away as possible.” This is humanism versus terrorism. Humanism is the moral version of superiority; we are also so superior that we don’t have to fight them peer to peer. In the meantime, the “surgically precise” bombing of the Gaza Strip has been going on for a month. Where does it come from, all this emphasis on how humane this violence is? The need to talk like this comes from how cruel what is being done is. And the fact that people think they can credibly present this war to themselves and sell it to everyone as a great humanitarian campaign that makes this distinction, that sorts Hamas, as if it were garbage, from the other residents of Gaza, is simply the ideological processing of the superiority that comes out of gun barrels.

N: The next argument that is then brought up and ultimately revolves around answering the first question – are they allowed to do that? – in an affirmative way, is couched in the question: Who started it? So Russia started it, they started this war of aggression; Hamas started its terrorist attacks on October 7th, putting an end to everything that came before. What is actually wrong with this question?

UT: You already said that this actually leads back to the first question again, but it’s so nice and clear today. “Who started it?” I would prefer to ask: what actually started it? Can we talk about that? If you think about it a bit, you realize that you are being shown and told that a conflict is being put into practice here: war; one sovereign power no longer wants to keep to the arrangement it has maintained with the other sovereign power up until now, and in doing so it throws its own under the bus and foreign citizens as well. The antagonism that is maintained in the form of war is never born with war. Instead, it develops into a war.

If you take the question objectively, you realize that there is a presupposition in this question, a prior thought that goes something like this: first of all, states are somehow milling around in the world, somehow living side by side, and then someone gets the conflict going. Is that true? What are states then? Again: institutionalized social powers of command that extend over certain parts of the earth’s surface and the people who live there. What is the limit to such violence? As it is, only the other states. They limit themselves; they are in an antagonistic relation with each other the moment they are born. And I don’t want to spread the lie that war is the normal state of affairs between states; that would really be counterfactual. But this much is certain: war is an arrangement, they put up with it; peace is an arrangement that is all the more stable the more clearly the states that are at peace with each other arrange themselves in such a way that one is superior in terms of violence and can impose peace on the other as a dictate and that the inferior state does not consider it useful to terminate the peace due to its own calculations. The question of who started it disappears. It begins as soon as they exist; they are this antagonism, namely the exclusive command over their own people and their own territory, which is jealously guarded internally. And to the outside world, this means that they exclude all other claims to command over their people and their territory and will not put up with them.

Everyone knows this: Putin destroyed the beautiful European peace order. How did it actually start? If you don’t ask who started the war, but who started the peace that he violated, the answer is that this wonderful Europe fought two wars within 30 years, between 1914 and 1945. And because the first one obviously ended in a draw, it needed a second. The peace that followed owed its stability primarily to the beautifully clear outcome of the war. Again, that isn’t very theoretical. Every September 1st, for example, states remind us that they started a terrible war against each other, and once a year, on August 6th and 8th, we are reminded that the Americans really used atomic bombs, and that was peace. But then you should also take it seriously. Then it is absurd to try to search inside this relationship for who started the antagonism.

You also notice that the question cannot be answered. You realize that the starting point is this assumption of a fundamental antagonism between states which is not supposed to be addressed, and the follow-up becomes very historical. The question of the beginning cannot be answered objectively in that sense, but is a question of deciding where you want to see the beginning. Claim: The Russians launched an unprovoked war of aggression. Russia’s response: You have been massacring Russians in Ukraine since 2014. Ukraine’s response: You have always interfered in our affairs, etc. etc. If you talk about Hamas and Israel, you immediately have to listen to a history lesson about the Middle East conflict, and you end up with Abraham. Netanyahu seriously waves a Bible around in the UN and says that he has actually known for 5000 years that he can do whatever he wants.

N: At this point I would like to make my first objection. It sounds a bit as if historical context doesn’t play a role in understanding a conflict such as in Ukraine or the conflict between Hamas and Israel. But in order to understand these conflicts, don’t we also need to analyze the global historical development of the West’s confrontation with Russia or, in the case of Israel, the history and politics of Israel, Zionism, the Islamism of Hamas, etc. Maybe that’s the answer not to the question of who started it, but even if it’s about first understanding the conflicts themselves and not taking any sides, you still have to ask yourself historical questions in order to get to the content of these conflicts. Or maybe not?

UT: It depends. Let’s take the Gaza war and the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Even if I talk about a conflict between Hamas and Israel, some people will no longer agree with me that it is even permissable to talk like this. If you think about why Hamas did what it did in 2023 – sending 1,000 fighters across the border and inflicting a bloody embarrassment on the Israeli state’s claim to protect its citizens – then that’s a statement about what it did and obviously what it wants, and I don’t need any history for that. All you have to do is listen to the Hamas leaders who have cordially told you how they calculate, and of course always in a form that is very difficult to accept. Then I can understand it, and I’m still not in history class. Rather, you are told there is a people who Israel has declared with all its sovereignty to not be its own people, who are called Palestinians; this is just the other side of what I have described as a state power’s exclusive claim to sovereignty and command, which means inclusion and exclusion, and in this case it has the special feature that it excludes from its own people those who are living on the territory claimed by Israel, that Israel is keeping open how much territory it really wants to claim as its own, what it might want to annex in the near future, or how much it wants to refrain from doing so and only wants to prevent another state from being founded there. That’s what I am being told in 2023. Hamas counters this with the political claim that, first, these are its people, they have a state which is its state, even if this state has not yet really been achieved, and secondly, Hamas is keeping the territorial question just as open as Israel is. Hamas lays claim to Israel’s core territory and in this respect makes it clear that it does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over its own territory. That is the conflict in all its terrible simplicity. The people there are the object of this, which is why they are not allowed to live. This is easy to grasp. And if you grasp this, then you have the only real basis for finding anything in history other than mere justifications.

I could also take your question good-naturedly: of course, you can be interested in the history. You just have to realize that the interest in history and the historical scholarship that exists in relation to this war aims from the outset solely to use history for justifying the violence that one is now guilty of, that one is now imposing on people, both one’s own and others. This justification includes exposing the stupid logic of the other side, which one takes for granted as the most reasonable thing. For example, why does someone say “unprovoked war of aggression”? This is the moral prohibition against trying to find any reason in the antagonism that obviously exists. The complementary ethical category is the word “context.” When someone says that something must not be “taken out of context,” they are not trying to explain something, but to justify it. Anyone who says that the Hamas attack took place in a context that should not and must not be ignored usually wants to justify it; and vice versa, the taboo against establishing a context is an imperative of delegitimization. This is called relativization or whataboutism. Example: The Russians are always talking about the Donbass when we want to talk about Bucha. In this back and forth, you’re lost, it’s highly unproductive intellectually. If you want to do it rationally, you have to look at the antagonism that exists now, and then one might want to say that it has a history. But then you are explaining history and not using history to explain what is happening now, and above all you are not justifying it.

N: The next objection that is used in defense by all sides is: What else are they supposed to do? There is talk about how Russia has to defend itself against the West, has to assert itself, that Ukraine has no choice but to go to war against Russia, that Hamas has no choice but to use force to break away from the occupation, or Israel is now forced to kill thousands of civilians to eliminate Hamas. Maybe you want to consider this question again. What’s behind it, and maybe we can do that using the current example of Israel and Hamas?

UT: Here, too, I will go back to what has already been said. Counter-question: Who actually are “they”? And what have “they” been doing for so long? If you take the Palestinians and ask what they should be doing, then at some point you have to realize that you’re not talking about the same people. Then not only the difference, but also the antagonism between the Palestinians and Hamas becomes obvious. We can’t do anything else, Hamas tells me. I don’t know if you’ve heard the speech by the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Shortly after the war began, he gave a completely valid answer to the question of what they should do: “We are here to remain in our homeland as long as there is thyme and olives.” What is he actually saying? How does he talk about his compatriots? He says in all seriousness that they are so unfree, they are so lacking in will that they can’t want anything else than to stay in the country where they are; they are like a plant compared to which every amphibian and every shitty earthworm leads a quasi-emancipated existence. Is that how you want to be spoken of? You also have to say that the man has nerve; I wouldn’t dare tell two and a half million touchy Arabs that I think they’re like soup vegetables. But everyone also knows that when he talks like this, the unfreedom that he attributes to them as their human nature is the unfreedom that he wants to condemn them to. When he says “we are here to remain,” it’s actually a command to “remain here, don’t run away.” Anyone can accuse him of that, and I don’t know if there’s any truth in these rumors, because Israeli military propaganda goes to great lengths to always find out that Hamas itself is preventing the Palestinians from taking the escape routes that Israel is humanistically allowing them to take between 1 and 3 pm. It doesn’t matter whether this is true or not. Because it’s the cheeky claim that Hania doesn’t hide or conceal and brings me back to the second of the two thoughts I’m tossing back and forth today. Justification works for Haniyeh in such a way that he simply announces it. He would rather sacrifice the lives of Palestinians than give up his claim to political resistance against Israel. That is the answer to the question he gives with the power he has, to the extent that he has any. If you ask me what else he could do, then my suggestion for a start would be, how about leaving the people alone for a bit? If you think you want to die for Palestine or your mother or something or someone, then suit yourself. But detaining two million compatriots for it is going a bit far. And if any politician thinks he’s a thyme, then he should stand in a herb box and shut up. But that’s really not in the program. What’s so infuriating about people like him, what makes him so objectively dangerous, is actually the fact that he’s not just some Sunni nitwit, but the official of the Palestinian national branch of a principle that is globally enforced by violence without any alternative: That every human being, no matter where he lives, as soon as he comes into the world and until he kicks the bucket, exists only as a member of a national collective which is one because a more or less sovereign state power makes it one and then consistently treats it as such. I would also like to think that he is exercising his authority, that he decides to pursue his political opposition to Israel in such a way that it then affects people. I don't want that to be understood to mean that he could do something completely different. If you don’t want the Palestinians to have only this alternative, to be marginalized, chased around and bombed out of their holes like rats, or whether they live under a proper state power that only becomes proper by waging a war for the establishment of a state and then winning it, if you don’t want that, then you have to abolish the principle. Get rid of it. There’s no alternative. That’s bitter. And you can and should make that clear when it comes to the other kind of Palestinians. The question of what else should I do doesn’t arise for them. Everything is done to them that is commended. Basta. I saw on TV a Palestinian with a car full of children who said that he had to leave his wife behind and then asked what should he have done. I have no answer and there isn’t one. But this is not just the way the world is; it is brought into the world, it’s done by subjects who take out their antagonisms on people with all the violence in the world. But then you should take note of that and not ask the really bad question as to whether they could do something else; when some can’t do anything anyway and the others are up to something, they’ve already been doing something for a long time. They look after their violence and their claims to violence, their majestic claim to freedom, their freedom to determine people’s lives, which they look after in opposition to each other. And they have people killed as a result.

N: If you listen to your very fundamental statements, it sounds as if what is now happening in Israel is being portrayed as two mutually exclusive nationalisms, or even more banally, you can see what bad projects nation states are for the masses of people who are their states’ disposable masses. The discussions I’m involved in always revolve around whether that’s actually enough to understand what’s actually happening. It is true that Hamas certainly and probably many Palestinians, as well as many Ukrainians, represent a nationalism that is critical and deserves to be attacked, and that it must be made clear that the whole story must be abolished. But has this conflict been properly understood? There is also a nationalism among the Palestinians for which they give their lives; there are also communists, socialists and Christians who talk like that. And I just want to say that they are actually Palestinians through a negative decree, you’ve actually already said that; firstly, by definition they do not belong to the Israeli ethno-state project; secondly, they are not allowed to have their own state under any circumstances, even in the last 75 years; thirdly, they will not be accepted by any other state so that they can become a people there; they are a people as a non-people in the truest sense of the word. They are in this position and they have no say, regardless of how they feel about it, be it nationalist, Islamist, communist... In a world of states, they are the ones, not the only ones, but they are among the few who are really stuck in this limbo. So aren’t you making it too easy for yourself if you simply attribute the core of the conflict to the fact that two opposing positions are competing with each other? – Another question that keeps coming up in the comments is: What advice should be given to the Palestinians? Should they be advised to give up nationalism, perhaps even become communists, or take part in the overthrow of Hamas? Would that help them in any way? And back to the historical question: The FAZ asked the question how could Hamas act so brutally, killing children, women, babies, slitting their bellies, raping, etc. etc. The answer in the article was illustrated with a photo of a soldier holding up a big bag of drugs to the camera, and it says the Hamas people took drugs and that’s why they were so violent. Isn’t this always an attempt to abstract from the actual goals that Hamas is pursuing and from the violence that is suffered there? Don’t you actually have to include all of that when you talk about this conflict? Is it enough to simply say that they stand in this nationalist antagonism that they themselves create?

UT: Here, too, I want to make a very firm case for distinctions. I don’t think we need to talk about one point. We agree that the life they lead is squalid, that it is at the limits of what is bearable, how they are cut off from the outside world in their Gaza Strip on the one hand and then have an administration over them that is somehow financed from outside, which always wants to be more than that, namely a Palestinian state of its own, that all of this is as bad as it gets. Now the question is: what now? Let me try to come close to an answer, maybe it’s a criticism of what you’re saying, maybe it’s just sorting it out. An example: The other day I saw a video of a camera crew filming in a hospital in the Gaza Strip. They were pointing the camera at a small child whose two legs had been operated on and who was screaming the whole time: “I want my legs back.” Do you or should I go up to the little thing and say: you won’t get your legs back, but you might get your own state someday; and if you even survive that long, then in 15 years you can pick up your ten dollars of state handouts at an office somewhere, and it won’t say New Israeli Shekel anymore, but Daulat Filastin [State of Palestine]. Is that what you’re asking? Then everyone says again, no, it wasn’t meant like that, and I shouldn’t be so dramatic here. But what do you mean? And if you really take the Palestinians as a mass of people – you said that they are the object of exclusion on all sides, the state of Israel doesn’t want them as a people and it also wants to have sovereignty over the land, and the Arab states in the area say they are brothers and sisters, but please over there and not here. So I want to make this statement, yes, it is quite fundamental, they are objects, victims of the principle, to which no alternative exists, the fact that the globe is divided up between state powers which define and govern their territories and their peoples and on that basis make further claims against each other. Yes, this is a very fundamental statement; and it should be noted that the Palestinians are not simply somehow left out, they have not been forgotten by world history or did not line up fast enough in the line where states were awarded, but they are affected by this principle. They are a striking example of how inexorably this principle applies. Now I have said it is a principle, it is fundamental. That’s different from saying it’s a banal piece of commonplace wisdom. Is it true or is it not true? And if they are suffering from this principle, then it is clear that tinkering with a perspective for them is irrelevant because the principle includes the fact that normal people are made powerless. If you ask me whether I would advise them to do something, then the question really boils down to whether I wish them anything. I don’t have anything up my sleeve anyway. I doubt that I would wish them their own state. It doesn’t even exist yet, and they are now suffering badly from the way they are being treated by foreign states. But the only ones who are even pretending that they would claim them as their people, Hamas or this friendly grandpa in Ramallah, are already making clear how brutal this ownership status is that they want to claim; as I said, Hamas, by taking into account that the most humanistic army in the world would respond to the October 7 massacre in a way that already eclipsed after only three days anything Israel had ever done in terms of violence against the Palestinians, and Hamas has never been fun loving. Hamas are bad actors, but there are reasons for this; if you then say to yourself, instead of Hamas, it should be Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah. Now you can read in the newspapers that Abbas wants to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip after the Gaza war. The war isn’t over yet, there’s a lot of bombing and dying, and a lot of people will probably die of cholera soon, it’s all still going on, and he’s already standing up and saying he knows what to do, he’s making a non-binding proposal, saying that he will take over this pile of rubble and this community of depraved characters. He leaves no doubt that he too takes to heart the cynicism of the state’s claim to power. People exist for the state, and when they die, the most important thing is for what and whether it’s worth it. You want me to wish this asshole on the Palestinians? No, I won’t. There is no alternative, only this crap, that’s the way it is, and that’s a bitter realization. But check whether it is correct. Check the argument to see whether it’s true that it’s the operation of the principle of state sovereignty that is now killing the Palestinians, and not the absence of this principle. If the former is true, then it is clear what the only alternative is and what is not an alternative at all. There is no happier message.

N: To follow up again, when you say that this is the principle, and if you have something against these conditions, you have to be against this principle. Would it then be helpful to advise the Palestinians to abandon this principle and not demand their own state?

UT: The principle means that I can’t give them any advice. They get advice every day, dropped from airplanes as leaflets by the Israeli army. Go here and there as quickly as possible. The spokesperson for the Israeli army is on Twitter and he says the same thing. You ask me if I want to give them advice; if I had any advice, I wouldn’t even know how to get it to them. Should I charter a plane from the Israeli army? Is that what you mean? I can tweet, but I don’t have any followers. The principle has a content; the world is appropriated by state powers, and that puts them in a position, when they come to the conclusion that a war is due once again, to make a situation in which there is no alternative for the people they command, or to the extent that they make the enemy people suffer. The validity of this principle implies that I would be the stupidest and most megalomaniacal pig under the sun if I imagined that I had any advice to give the Palestinians. Run away! Yes, but can they run away? Don’t run away! They are not doing that anyway. Should they stay there? Nothing remains for them. But really the most disgusting part of this handing out advice is when democratic experts tell them that if they hadn’t voted for Hamas, they wouldn’t have to suffer constant Israeli bombings.

N: Or if they had abolished Hamas.

UT: Exactly, if they had abolished Hamas. That’s where it gets really stupid. I have no advice, and I want to say the same thing to the other side. The Jews who are Israeli citizens, or who are claimed as potential Israeli citizens for Israel all over the world, still exist. And in Europe they see themselves being subjected to a wave of hostility toward Jews that is quite something. And you can’t advise them either. What advice could I give them? In France, where things are really getting ugly, including knife attacks and so on, they probably remember 2015 when an Isis fighter drove to a kosher supermarket after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and killed half a dozen people. Should I tell them to shop online? The Jews here in Berlin or in Germany in general, you read in the newspapers are afraid to send their children to Jewish schools, but they’re also not very sure what will happen to them if they go to a normal German school. Should I advise them to dye their hair blonde, give themselves different names and send their children to a Catholic grammar school? We know Catholics always have a lot of fun with small children. Should I tell them this when everyone knows that no matter how fiercely they try to integrate or even assimilate, to make every difference unrecognizable, it hasn’t helped the Jews in their European history? The exclusionary and then destructive will of German nationalism took steps toward the delusion that, in view of the fact that it could no longer find any differences in them, it invented them. It made racial laws and knew who would go to the gas chambers and who would not. Should I say to them: Oh, you can bet that that’s not being called for at the moment. You can see that it’s the other way around. The ruling armchair pundits of this wonderful European West, from Macron to Merz, are more happy at the moment pillorying the Arab minorities by referring to the Arab’s hostility against Jews and pursuing their anti-immigrant policy against the Arabs who are showing Jews this hostility. Should I wish that this goes on forever, that the chalice of the exclusionary and xenophobic will of the state passes the Jews by and focuses on the Arabs? Should I wish them their own state? Oh, they have one. So what’s the matter now? Apparently, the violent conflict that Israel is waging against its enemies in the Middle East is not protecting them as European Jews. In fact, one almost gets the opposite impression. And what about the Jews in Israel? Do I have any advice for them? But who then? 350,000 of them have received their draft notices. That’s not a question of whether or not they are critics of the state.

N: Maybe I can relate the next point to something you said earlier about the leadership of this nation or this would-be nation or would-be state and to what extent they really have the interests of their subjects in mind. I don’t want to claim that you said this, but it reminds me of an argument that everyone involved keeps making, namely that this or that state doesn’t really represent its people and its nation, that it actually oppresses them and forces war on the people. You hear this quite often in relation to Russia, for example, but also in relation to Ukraine; Russophile people in Ukraine are being oppressed by Nazis, or Putin and his oligarchs are not thinking about the well-being of the Russians, they are just sending them to the slaughter. And of course the same is true in Israel and Palestine. As you said, people are actually being forced into these wars that are not in their interests. So what can you say against this argument?

UT: If it’s supposed to be an argument, then it should be taken seriously. The striking thing is that this state-theoretical clairvoyance always only exists with regard to states that you don’t like. As you said, when it comes to Russia, anyone who knows nothing else about Russia and has never been interested in it can tell you that Putin is plunging his people into a war, that the people have nothing to gain from it and that he is a bad dictator and the Russians should actually overthrow him. On TV they always quote the British secret service, and they always tell you about a Russian battalion that is short on food or something like that, that they’re being very badly used up, forcibly recruited and so on. The same relationship, a state that wages war against another state, of course uses the power it has over its people ruthlessly against them; how else? It does not make its war dependent on whether they want it, when it is clear that this is the ultimate antagonism against the people. So they are obliged to do this and the state unites the whole people under itself and practically asserts that it is the life premise of all its people, who are then also sacrificed for this premise. You can see the same relationship in Ukraine. Zelensky has also struck a major blow against corrupt army officials who take bribes to get out of conscription. And anyone who speaks Russian in public must be questioned and interrogated. The fact that his command is precisely this type of command, the point of view and implementation of political rule, is just the same there as in Russia, but not only does no one want to realize that it is this antagonism, but the same crap is really celebrated there; that he manages to make his command so consistent and closes the gaps and loopholes by replacing these military district commanders. No German commentator here is saying, “Shitty for the poor Ukrainians who can no longer buy their way out of this,” but rather respect, when this bit of anti-corruption isn’t even a good reason to admit him to our EU values club in the near future. The fact that he simply says that he is sacrificing people for his Ukrainian territory is celebrated – by him anyway, but also by all those who have a political affinity with him – by making the victims themselves, who he says are worth it, testimony to the fact that what he is sacrificing them for is also worth it. Actually, it’s about nothing else, and it’s obvious, the most brutal possible antagonism that he has toward his commanded Ukrainians as their war time commander-in-chief, that’s exactly what’s going on, and it’s being celebrated, and then it’s supposed to be okay. Then the victims are not just victims, but martyrs; and that applies to every side. On the one hand, I would like to congratulate anyone who discovers this antagonism and say, well, you’ve finally discovered something. But on the other hand, you know that it’s only good for one thing: legitimizing one side and delegitimizing the other. That’s what the antagonism is good for, it’s its own good reason, and every victim stands for it. It’s so insane, which is precisely why they are constantly being put on display.

N: The next point was raised in relation to the Palestine conflict, but also in relation to Ukraine, namely the idea that it may be true that these are national liberation struggles, but they are liberation struggles that you have to support as a Marxist because they are against imperialism; therefore you even have to be willing to join with reactionary forces such as Islamists, for example, because you have to support this national liberation movement in the first place. Trotskyists, for example, talk in a similar way. What does a Marxist say to such almost cynical tactical considerations?

UT: As a Marxist, nothing. The statement has a double meaning. First, liberation is a nice word. You just have to ignore who is being liberated and why. I would like to remind you that Adolf Hitler also decreed a great war of liberation for his people. That’s one case. One can simply have no interest in who is doing what, regardless of the consequences, and their reasons for it. And the fact that some wacky German leftist can put this carnage in the Gaza Strip to use, he then must merely tell that to those who are burning in the sand there. Now you can say that this is pretty cynical, but it’s a cynicism that really doesn’t have any practical significancee; it’s a different kind of cynicism than that of a statesman whose calculations really do lead to the victims that they lead to. When they talk like this, the main thing you have to say is: you’re talking rubbish because, on the one hand, you’re admitting that a conflict is blowing up here that you have no control over, which has its own subjects; they have their interests, their demands, for which they are letting hell break loose. And then at the same time you act as if this is not the whole bitter truth, but as if you can somehow find something in the conflict that fits world history or is supposed to be brought forth by it. It’s a tricky but actually rather shabby way of noticing this violence and trying to extract a few viewpoints from which it can be found good. At the very beginning, I said that legitimization is actually discredited by the need for it; wisely, legitimization bans the reason for which it always seems so necessary, which consists in the fact that there is a contradiction, and in a war it is purely a contradiction to the people. It is no good taking a stance on a conflict like this by coming up with a viewpoint from which one can endorse what’s happening. As long as it’s just a left-wing gang playing these types of mind games, it doesn’t hurt any Palestinians or Israelis in any way; in this respect, it’s harmless stupidity. But what is not at all harmless and not at all banal is that one acts as if the war somehow is in line with oneself by attaching some viewpoint to it; the only thing one does – and this is pretty harsh – is that one makes oneself in line with the war. That’s nothing but legitimization, even if its usually done differently, i.e. plied differently by states than by these Trotskyists. But both actually amount to the same thing: asserting viewpoints from which this bullshit should make sense. That’s legitimization. Instead of realizing that these two wars, the Ukraine and Gaza wars, show us the powerlessness to which we are condemned, they use this method of fibbing to themselves, as if the war is taking place for something they want, at least a little bit. I said the sentence – as a Marxist, nothing at all – has two meanings. You are always confronted with the following: If you criticize fundamentally and in principle, then of course all this looks like shit, and then you don’t notice any of the alternatives which somehow do exist and the viewpoints from which something could be fained from this slaughter. Let me say this: it’s the other way around. It’s not that I, as a Marxist or communist, stand above it and look at it and say: it’s all bullshit because it’s not what I want. Rather, if for once you took the time to let it sink in what is practically being handed to you with a war like this, and how it is then also presented to you in a really propagandistic way, if you let that sink in, then you will come to the not very difficult conclusion that this is not happening by accident, but is necessarily part of the nature of the subjects who rule this world, and that there is really only a negative criticism of them or none at all. I don’t see this as bad because I am looking at it as a communist, but because that is the way it is; and in war it simply becomes unavoidably and existentially clear. That’s another reason to be a communist and criticize it and say you have to get rid of it. And if you can’t get rid of it, then you can wish the Palestinians well, then you can wish the Ukrainians well, then you can wish yourselves well and otherwise hope that there is still a bit of peace. Then you can learn peace songs like a child at school; then you can come to terms with the immaturity to which you are condemned and hope and pray to the good Lord that he will ensure that you are spared.

N: Let’s get to the last point. Germany is now also very busy domestically with the current war, and it was no different with the Ukraine war, which was also a huge issue domestically. But now a few words regarding the reasons of state, regarding Israel. It says that we are or should be in unwavering solidarity with Israel. Steinmeier, Habeck and Co. are quite bluntly demanding this solidarity, especially from Muslim citizens, otherwise there is a risk of expatriation or withdrawal of the right to asylum in some cases. A completely new trend: people are buying hoodies with German and Israeli flags next to each other, underneath the text “We stand with Israel. Deal with it or leave.” It is becoming increasingly clear that someone who does not profess solidarity with Israel, does not profess Israel’s right to exist, is less and less considered to be a German. What is this demand for solidarity all about?

UT: What is this solidarity all about? It’s the same old story. Who is actually showing solidarity with whom and with what consequences? Annalena Baerbock says: I am an Israeli. And then your friend Moshe Zuckermann [Israeli-German sociologist – trans.] says: That’s definitely not right. She is not. Ok. But what is she trying to tell you? You can take a naïve look at the three components of this formula: we, with Israel, in solidarity. What does “with Israel” actually mean? Who are we supposed to be in solidarity with? With Benjamin Netanyahu or with some people who are now in prison in Israel because they went too far in criticizing the war? Or should we show solidarity with your friend Moshe Zuckermann? Or should we show solidarity with the Israelis who, because they are Arabs ethnically, are now afraid of soon becoming victims of a pogrom? Or should we show solidarity with the Israelis who are allowed by Itama Ben Gvir [Minister of Public Security in Israel] to stock up on weapons? Or should we stand in solidarity with the Israeli settlers who use Palestinian prisoners as ashtrays and urinals? Or with the 350,000 newly conscripted soldiers? That’s the first counter-question I have. The second question is: What does solidarity actually mean? What is solidarity actually supposed to consist of? For a normal German, it doesn’t consists of anything anyway. The state isn’t waiting for, and doesn't have to wait for, some nitwit to put on a hoodie with bad taste in slogans. And the solidarity on which this state depends, it gets, if at all, from completely different people than those Baerbock is addressing. Namely, from Baerbock herself, but above all it comes down to solidarity with America, and that’s all that matters. So once again a slogan like that is null and void. But everyone also knows what Baerbock means when she says that we are all in solidarity with Israel; she is demanding approval for her Israel-Palestine policy, which at the moment is to confirm that Germany as a power has the right to confirm Israel’s violent war against terror, to possibly equip Israel with the means of power, and to make policy on that basis. It has to be said that when Baerbock talks like this, it’s a call to show solidarity with her, to nod at what she thinks is necessary. Not only is she not afraid to come out counterfactually as an Israeli, but above all she has no problem at all balancing out every twist and turn of her policy of solidarity. She recently appeared on the ZDF program “Was nun, Frau Baerbock.” The interviewer asked about the meaning of the recent German abstention in the UN vote [on a resolution aimed at improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza]. After all, it is the German raison d'état to show unwavering solidarity with Israel. How could such an abstention be possible? Baerbock, guided and educated in values as she is, had no problem with the fact that she held back a bit in opposing the condemnation of Israel, justifying it as no less in solidarity with Israel than when she says that Israel is entitled to carpet bomb as much as we allow them to. Then she talked about how this was important for the Hamas hostages; if you want to free them, you have to keep communication channels open and not blow a lot of hot air. She can use this to justify any support and any disengagement. That is the meaning of this sentence; it has no other meaning. And the fact that she gets on your nerves with this and that it is actually important to the woman in terms of solidarity with Israel, in contrast to these hoodie buyers, that in turn is due to the – now I’m coming back to it – first point. What she is showing off when she demands such fundamental approval of her policy on this war from her fellow German patriots is the sovereignty she has over her people. That’s what makes her a foreign policy expert in the first place. She shows off her power, puts it into action, uses it to examine this war, and looks at what it means for German power and German influence and what, if possible, can be gained from it, and she cleans it up a bit. It is then always invoked as the exact opposite. If we use our power wisely, then it will be good for everyone who is affected.