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SYMPATHY_EXPRESS
December 4, 2011
Once upon a time, I was puzzling over these remarks:
"Sartre's public appearences in support
of these far-left splinter groups were LAST_DITCH
the occasions for his most unfortunate
statements, including the most
regrettable one of all, when he
expressed sympathy with the terrorists
who killed the Israeli Olympic athletes.
With this one foolish remark, he undid If the idea is that you need
years of work in support of Israel and to support Israel in order
the Jews." to support the Jews, this
seems pretty dubious.
It looks like the old rhetorical
dodge of accusing anyone critical
of Israel of being anti-semitic.
And: one can "express sympathy"
without condoning action.
COWARDLY_LIONIZED
UNDERSTAND_JUSTICE
And so, I wanted to know the details
of precisely what Sartre said:
The event this is about is the kidnapping of
Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olypics
in Munich, Germany. The Palestinian side
kidnapped nine, killing two in the process-- Actually, three of the
the Munich police then killed everyone Palestinians were only
involved, including the hostages. wounded.
Sartre wrote a very short piece commenting By present-day standards,
on these events, and published it in an that shows a remarkable
obscure place where it was essentially amount of restraint on the
ignored... it was not re-discovered until part of the police.
around 2003: what controversy there is
about this is fairly recent.
The idea that this
single-handedly undid "years
of work" is pretty nutty.
Some of Sartre's commentary, [link]
as reprinted in "Sartre
Studies International", Vol [link]
9, Issue 2, 2003:
"Those who affirm the sovereignty of the Israeli
state and also believe Palestinians have a right to
sovereignty for the same reason, and who take the
Palestinian question as fundamental, must admit that
the Israeli establishment’s policy is literally crazy
and deliberately aims at avoiding all possible
solutions to this problem. It is therefore politi-
cally accurate to say that a state of war exists
between Israel and the Palestinians. In this war the
Palestinians’ only weapon is terrorism. It is a
terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no other,
and the French who approved FLN 2 terrorism against
the French must approve in turn the Palestinians’
terrorist action. "
" ... it seems perfectly outrageous that the French
press and a segment of opinion should judge the
Munich attack an intolerable outrage while one has
often read dry reports without comment of strikes in
Tel Aviv that cost several human lives."
"The Palestinians aimed not at massacring the
hostages on the spot but at taking them to an Arab
country where they would have negotiated an exchange
of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for the
hostages. Similarly, while we disagree with the
Israeli government on all other points, we can
understand that, being at war with the Palestinians,
Israel would reject all concessions. "
I can see why one might disagree with Sartre's angle
here-- kidnapping civilian hostages doesn't seem like
a way cool thing to do-- but I have to say that his
opinion doesn't strike me as terribly outrageous.
These days, we regularly shrug off things like drone
attacks on civilian gatherings in Pakistan, because
there might be a terrorist in there somewhere.
I don't see how you can justify one and not the other.
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