Horacio González is a sociologist by profession and is currently director of Argentina’s National Library. He has never been slow to get involved in public debate on matters of controversy and Página/12 here devotes a full page to an essay of his bearing the title “Philosophy and Army”. As far as I can tell, the essay constitutes an intervention in the debate about recent events in Gaza.

I wrote “As far as I can tell” because González’s writings, at least those that appear in the press, do not appear to have been composed primarily with the intention of being understood. The idea seems rather to be to demonstrate the breadth of the author’s reading and to insinuate a line, or lines, of thought that are always phrased in such a way as to make it very difficult to attribute anything with certainty to him. Conscious of this difficulty I will now attempt to see what I can make of “Philosophy and Army”.

1.

In the course of its 2,184 words the essay mentions or cites Menachem Begin, Rodolfo Walsh, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, Cândido Rondon, Darcy Ribeiro, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Socrates, Leon Trotsky, Theodore Herzl, Vladamir Jabotinsky, Moshe Menuhin (described as “a Hasidim” ), Yehudi Menuhin, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, T.E. Lawrence, Franz Fanon, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Paul Sartre, Edward Said (described as an “Egyptian - Palestian writer” ), Jorge Luis Borges and Victoria Ocampo.

2.

Gonzaléz lauds the example of Rondon, the soldier who explored and mapped Brazilian Amazonia, for refusing to use violence against the indigenous peoples he encountered as well as the Haganah, for the policy of restraint which at various times it implemented in Mandatory Palestine.

3.

Without saying it in so many words, Gonzaléz seeks to portray the Irgun as the Hamas of its day.

However, Begin finally admits that the fight is to the death and that one has to be prepared to sacrifice all in the struggle.

No mention is made of Begin’s decades in the political wilderness of opposition before finally becoming prime minister through the ballot box in 1977.

4.

[ Martin ]Buber [and Hannah Arendt] would finally disagree on a very important question, the possibility that Israel, with its armed State, would complement in its circular nightmares the conduct that characterized the Nazis. [… ] The debate which now makes us tremble was already quietly installed among the Jewish sages and would prove useless for anything except for that spiritual consternation. If it’s not filled with that precise language which it requires in order to recreate a more lucid universal conscience in the face of the drama of Palestine, then it’s no more than a lazy balancing act. Victims and those who make victims of others, uncertain roles in historical life, instead of becoming a question for all the men of the universe, becomes no more a handy theme in the passing diatribe. We have to escape from that, for in order to undo the infinite massacre we must think about the fact that we can all confirm the terrible dream of being the reverse of that which we criticize.

It reads a little strangely because I’ve translated González’s florid prose as literally as I could in order not to inadvertently tip the balance against him. However, it would seem that we are being invited to consider, consider with due care and attention and with great exactness of language of course, whether Israel is a Nazi state. And relax, it’s okay to do this as “Jewish sages”, no less, have been doing the same thing for decades.

Of course it’s possible that I’ve missed or misunderstood something here so feel free to write in with suggestions.

5.

The essay ends like this:

Reading is an unfathomable interpretative act, a voluntary truce in daily life in the name of a speck of gold which isn’t “Enlightenment” or “an edifying moral”, but rather the possibility of arriving at the raw truth of an epoch. In the debate which shakes us over Gaza, we should be careful about how easy it is to say things - what’s in play is the clarity of the condemnation of the material and symbolic destruction of the Palestinian people - that don’t originate in the recognition of the dark force of history and the philosophical capacity of a peace which would not be merely well-intentioned. What, then? Perhaps a word kneaded in the force of rupture of the imaginary equivalences that lie in ambush. Perhaps a Socraticism that’s not intimidated by violence because it’s mission is to stop it. And that, in the face of armies would hurl a vigorous rock at them that would oblige them to contain themselves.

Make of that what you will.