The Moral Economy of Settler Colonialism: Israel and the “Evacuation Trauma”

Abstract

Trauma does not in itself legitimate a political claim [ . . . ]. Trauma does not produce entitlement [ . . . ]. In a reactive relation to trauma, the trauma determines us unilaterally, even as we operate within its horizon and by way of its internal logic [ . . . ]. Trauma presents us with a specific responsibility precisely because it threatens to render us pure victims who, by definition, cannot take responsibility for the conditions we impose on others. —Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism