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CounterPunch
December
4, 2002
Ted Honderich:
A Philosopher
in the Trenches
by PAUL de ROOIJ
It is unusual to find philosophers getting into
the debate on current events; most of them are safely ensconced
in their ivory towers pondering questions of higher importance.
It is therefore gratifying to find some philosophers in the trenches
tackling questions pertinent to all of us -- trying to understand
current events and to untangle the meaning of propaganda-frayed
language. Paul de Rooij recently had the opportunity to ask Prof.
Ted Honderich some questions pertaining his latest book and the
furor surrounding it.
About Ted Honderich: he is a distinguished
British philosopher, has been Grote Professor of the Philosophy
of Mind and Logic at University College London, and also taught
at Yale and CUNY. He is the author of the most-translated living
philosopher's book on determinism and freedom, "How
Free Are You?" He is the proponent of an alternative
view of the nature of perceptual consciousness, and the editor
of the most-used one-volume reference work of its kind, "The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy". His new book "After
the Terror" addresses questions raised by September
11. The British branch of Oxfam International recently declined
to accept a donation of £5,000 in royalties from the book
after a Canadian newspaper raised the issue of a statement made
in the book as to the rights of the Palestinians.
Paul de Rooij-(1): Isn't the issue of the justification of political
violence old hat? The UN recognizes the right for an oppressed
people to resist. There is an enormous body of work in this area.
So, why was it necessary to traverse this ground again? Why did
you write "After the Terror"?
Ted Honderich:
I know the UN has recognized the right of peoples to self-determination
and to freedom from foreign occupation, and indeed recognized
the legitimacy of struggles by national liberation movements.
But I have been under the impression that the UN also condemns
terrorism. Certainly, its Secretary-General has done so, no doubt
on the basis of UN resolutions or the like. So surely the fact
of the matter is that the UN doesn't recognize the right
of a people to engage in what is now the most common form of
resistance and liberation-struggle.
Claiming that the Palestinians have a
moral right to their terrorism, which I do, can hardly be old
hat given the reaction to the claim. If some people readily accept
it, some of them out of anti-Semitism, many are shocked or disturbed
by it. The moral feelings of people at Oxfam GB were shocked
by it, as their public statements clearly show.
As for my reason for writing "After
the Terror", I was like so many of us in being overwhelmed
and then thrown into reflection by September 11. In my own case,
September 11 also came as a kind of charge against or question
about things written by me in the past, notably the book "Violence
for Equality: Inquiries in Political Philosophy".
The new book is an account of what you
can call the moral state of the world. It is only about Palestine
in passing. Only a few pages are on Palestine. The most important
thing you come on, in thinking about us and our world, is our
omissions rather than our commissions. One large thing we omit
to do, most notably in connection with Africa, is to help people
with short and even brief lives -- half-lives and quarter-lives.
In one sample there is a loss of 20 million years of living time.
This is yet more terrible than what we
positively do -- say aid the Zionists, by whom I mean overt and
covert supporters of and participants in Israel's ongoing aggression
against the Palestinians, the violation and occupation of their
homeland.
PR-2:
So what is your definition of terrorism? Isn't terrorism generally
understood to be illegitimate violence? Resistance on the other
hand is legitimate, and may employ terrorism as a tactic. So
how do you define these terms?
TH:
Terrorism has a number of features, but fundamentally it is a
kind of violence, which is to say physical force that injures,
damages, violates or destroys people or things. It is this: violence
with a political and social end, whether or not intended to put
people in general in fear, and necessarily raising a question
of its moral justification because it is violence -- either
such violence as is against the law within a society or else
violence between states or societies, against what there is of
international law and smaller-scale than war. It is illegitimate
in terms of law, but not necessarily in terms of morality.
Terrorism understood in this uncontentious
way evidently includes suicide bombings. As evidently, it also
includes state-terrorism and cat's paw terrorism.
You say resistance as ordinarily understood
is "legitimate". Do you mean it's ordinarily taken
to be lawful? Then it itself can't include terrorism, and I guess
it can't employ terrorism. If saying resistance is legitimate
means it is morally defensible, which is certainly different,
then it can't employ any old terrorism whatever, because not
all terrorism is morally defensible. But it is obviously possible
that some morally justified resistance can employ some morally
justified terrorism.
PR-3:
What terrorism do you justify, and how do you arrive at those
conclusions?
TH:
In the book what I say is morally permissible is the terrorism
of the Palestinians in the present situation. It seems to me
very similar to the terrorism of the African National Congress
against the South Africa of apartheid.
I also say that the only general kind
of terrorism that is likely to be justified, in the world as
it is, is what you can call liberation-terrorism: the violent
struggle of a people to come to freedom and power in their own
homeland. The likely justification depends importantly on the
fact that the suffering that is caused does have a probability
of success. What is wrong with other terrorism is that it is
the causing of suffering for no probable gain, with no reasonable
hope.
You will notice that what I have said
does not amount to a complete answer to the question of what
violence is justified. I don't have one worked-out. What does
seem to me clear is that the Palestinians have a moral right
to their struggle. It seems to be a fact about morality that
one can be sure of a particular moral proposition, a particular
case, without having a complete answer to the large and general
question in the neighborhood.
How do I arrive at the conclusion about
the Palestinians? Well, I have a lot of reasons. The book gives
various premises for the conclusion. One is my fundamental moral
principle, which is the Principle of Humanity, about taking rational
steps to getting people out of bad lives. Another is that the
Israelis certainly claim a moral right to their state-terrorism
and perhaps war. In consistency, which is necessary to actually
saying anything, the Palestinians can claim the same, and they
can do it truthfully.
Another reason for their moral right
is that 50 years of history have proved that the Palestinians
have no alternative whatever to terrorism in trying to secure
freedom and power in their homeland. What they were offered in
the Clinton negotiations at Camp David was not a state, but,
if anything, a dog's breakfast of a state. That is proved, incidentally,
by the fact that everybody now speaks of their need for a viable
state.
But still more has to be said in support of the moral right,
and can be. There is no simple proof of the claim about their
moral right. That is because there are no simple proofs in morality.
PR-4:
What do you think elicited the criticism of your book? How has
your book been received in academic circles?
TH:
The book has been seriously and respectfully received in meetings
in nine universities here and in America, including Oxford and
Columbia. There has been a little Zionist fuss, but not much.
That has to be kept in mind when thinking about the Oxfam business.
As for newspaper reviews, for starters, The Guardian lauded
it, The Times said it was the best reflective book on
9/11, and The Sunday Telegraph, owned by the man who also
owns The Jerusalem Post, said it was the worst book ever
written. All of those three reviews, to my mind, given the newspapers
in question, proved I must have written something decent.
PR-5:
Your arguments are ahistorical. Isn't the historical context
crucial to understanding violence?
TH:
I don't quite understand what you mean by saying that my arguments
are ahistorical. The way the argument goes forward is pretty
typical for a moral philosopher. It is a kind of logical sequence,
but most certainly it does not ignore history. Another principal
premise for my conclusion about the moral right of the Palestinians
is that they have indeed been treated horrifically in their homeland
for 50 years. Population figures I give in the book for Arabs
and Jews at various stages overwhelm the familiar stuff about
who did what in what year in terms of massacres, negotiations
and the like. The Palestinians are right to say they are the
Jews of the Jews.
My reflections are an attempt to try
to give a good argument for a moral conclusion about what is
right and what we ought to be doing. To do so is not just to
engage in historical explanation, of course, but historical explanation
must enter into the thing.
PR-6:
In the context of the Middle East violence is usually referred
to as "terrorism". This word has become very politically
charged, and its meaning has changed from its dictionary definition.
Has terrorism become the violence of the "other", actions
that don't require explanation? How do philosophers cope with
words whose meaning keeps changing aren't you dealing with
a moving target?
TH:
Of course the word has been kidnapped by the Israelis above all,
and used just for the violence of the Palestinians. "Democracy"
is used as mindlessly -- you might add as viciously. "Terrorism"
is also used in such a way as to suggest wholly irrational evil
and whatever else. That is pretty obvious. It is also one of
the facts that affected me in the writing of my book. I was outraged
by the endless parade of Israeli government spokesmen on television
going on about the unspeakable terrorism of the Palestinians
and the murdered children of the Israeli democrats. It turned
my stomach, as it did many other stomachs.
But that is not to say that changes in
uses of a word, and a word's being kidnapped, stand in the way
of using it correctly. To my mind, I do that. This is more or
less necessary to actual thinking. It is also necessary to strong
argument. You just weaken your argument, on whatever side you
are, by self-serving definitions. It is plain that pretending
that terrorism can exist only on the other side is usually lying
in the aid of killing, maybe killing in the aid of taking more
of another people's land.
PR-7:
You mean that Israel is not a democracy?
TH: I
don't mean that. It is a hierarchic democracy, like the
hierarchic democracies of the United States and Britain. But
that you are a democracy, even a better one, most certainly doesn't
legitimate you in anything like the sense of making all your
actions and policies right, or even your main actions and policies.
No chance whatever of that. Did anybody even say it who
was actually thinking about the matter rather than engaged in
doing something else?
PR-8:
After the recent Palestinian attack in Hebron, the Israelis engaged
in a wave of "retaliation", and people living in Gaza,
totally unrelated to the original attack, were targeted. One
Israeli soldier was quoted as saying that "none of them
are innocent." On the other hand, when a terrorist attack
occurs in the West the condemnations always refer to "innocent"
civilians. What do you make of this, and are there any innocent
civilians? Does the civilian's responsibility for actions of
their state diminish their innocence?
TH:
I think that lying is a part of such conflicts as the Palestinian
one. It enables people to do unspeakable things. They should
say and let themselves know what they are doing. This comment
applies to both Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis and the
Palestinians should not engage in awful stuff about young children
not being "innocent". Of course and unquestionably,
these children and some other people who have been killed are
innocent in an ordinary sense.
These truths cannot possibly be overlooked,
and nor can they be taken by themselves to decide the main questions.
To take but one example, we British did not take it that our
terror-bombing of Germany in World War 2, which in fact was called
just that, was wrong because it killed innocents and civilians
and children. Remember Hiroshima too.
PR-9:
Israelis often justify their violent actions as a deterrent.
Pulling out of Lebanon without gaining anything was seen as weakness,
thus encouraging the Lebanese resistance. The other side of this
story is that any Palestinian action must be met 100X as a deterrent.
So, is there any merit to the deterrence argument?
TH:
I don't quite see what this comes to. You can engage in deterrence,
so-called, in a good cause, and you can engage in it in a bad
cause. To the extent that the Israelis are engaging in deterrence,
they are engaged in wholly wrongful deterrence. What they are
trying to do is to destroy the desire and will of a people to
be free in the place to which they have a moral right.
PR-10:
In the media, the Israelis are always portrayed as "responding"
or "retaliating," thus justified in their actions.
Palestinian actions are never described this way. Can there be
a "cycle of violence" with only one party "responding"?
Furthermore, Israeli violence is usually unrelated to original
Palestinian action, and it is usually called "collective
punishment." So, do the Israelis have any justification
for their violence in this case?
TH:
There is all this use of language to a particular purpose, a
wrongful purpose. The main one, of course, as already mentioned,
is the use of the term "democracy" in such way as to
suggest that what a democracy does must be right, and the use
of the word "terrorism" in such a way as to suggest
or declare that this terrorism is always wrong or barbarous.
It is just self-serving commandeering of language.
What is most important about it is that
it does not amount to serious moral argument. Nor will it in
the end be decisive. It seems to me that just about everybody
in the world, including all supporters of Israel, do in fact
see through this vile stuff. Vile stuff with a vicious purpose.
As for whether Israel does in fact have
an argument for its own existence, it seems to me very clear
that it does. It also has an argument for defending itself, where
that actually means what the word "defending" does
mean. It does not mean attacking somebody else in order to seize
more land. What Israel does not have an argument for, whatever
wretched terminology and talk it goes in for, is the taking of
more and more land beyond its justified borders, these to my
mind being its borders before 1967.
PR-11:
Amnesty International in their latest report [1] recently stated:
"Israel has the right and responsibility to take measures
to prevent unlawful violence [referring to Palestinian violence].
The Israeli government equally has an obligation to ensure that
the measures it takes to protect Israelis are carried out in
accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law."
What do you think of the first sentence, and isn't it in contradiction
with the second sentence?
TH:
I think this stuff from Amnesty as it stands is typical unreflective
moralizing, avoiding the issue. What Israel ought to do is give
up, withdraw from the homeland of another people. That is the
main thing.
How they do this, how they go about protecting
Israeli lives and what they do to Palestinians in the process,
is a secondary matter. It is a large matter, but a secondary
matter. Needless to say, they should cause the least possible
suffering and death, to the Palestinians and themselves.
PR-12:
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have proscribed any violence against
civilians, settlers, and even off duty soldiers. Violence in
Israel is proscribed completely. It seems that Palestinians are
only allowed to fight one of the most powerful armies in the
world within the occupied territories. What do you make of this?
TR:
Probably I disagree with it. I guess I disagree with it. My view
of the Palestinians' moral right to their terrorism is most confident
with respect to the occupied territories, but I also extend it
to Israel itself.
PR-13:
Amnesty equates the nature of the violence perpetrated against
Israelis and Palestinians. That is, it will condemn to the same
degree when an Israeli is killed, and when a Palestinian is killed.
It also calls on "both parties to respect human rights,
and to make human rights central to their agenda." Is AI's
stance valid?
TH: Everyone
should object to the terrible "even-handedness" of
such statements as the Amnesty one. Everyone should choke on
such attempts at "balance". In an ordinary sense of
the words, there is no place at all for even-handedness and balance
in actually dealing with the rapist engaged in the rape of the
woman with a knife at her throat. The rapist has no rights that
bear significantly on the question of whether he should stop
or be stopped. The analogy with Israel is not a wild one, but
exact.
If Amnesty were taking the view that
any killing is as bad as any other killing, it would be taking
a view that is denied by all of history. If it is saying that
you can settle any question of killing by making a declaration
of a right to life, that is nonsense. It has the upshot, to mention
but one, that it would have been wrong to kill a single German
guard in order to save a thousand Jews from death in gas chambers
in a concentration camp.
PR-14:
A few months ago Cherie Blair, the wife of the current British
Prime Minister, stated: "As long as young people feel they
have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going
to make progress." This seemingly bland statement elicited
a barrage of criticism, and a statement from the Prime minister's
office announced that she retracted the statement, and apologized
for it. So, why do you think her bland statement elicited this
response?
TH:
It elicited this response as a result of Israeli and Zionist
activity. There is no puzzle about that. Cherie Blair's statement
did not elicit the response because people in general thought
the comment was terrible. In fact, probably, most people thought
the opposite.
PR-15:
I understand that you recently arranged to donate £5,000
($8,000) to Oxfam GB, and that this was then rejected on account
of the statement in your book about the moral right of the Palestinians.
Why did Oxfam refuse your donation?
TH:
Well, there was a Zionist threat. But I think Oxfam could pretty
easily have accepted the £5,000 without thereby losing
a larger amount of money as a result of Zionists or others not
making donations. Oxfam could have done this by declaring that
it would not dream of endorsing or agreeing with my view, which
it hated, but that regretfully Oxfam was obliged legally and
morally to save 2,000 lives, the lives of 2,000 dying children,
by taking the money. This is just obvious. Those who suggest
otherwise are trying to avoid a clear truth, for whatever reason.
So what happened has some other explanation
in place of or in addition to the Zionist threat. You get to
it by reading Oxfam's own statements. What it comes to is that
some people -- certainly not all -- in the Oxfam GB office in
Oxford were disturbed or outraged by my view. They were upset,
as I said in answer to an earlier question.
That is all right by me. Philosophers
are used to disagreement. What isn't all right is allowing more
people to die for certain of your conventional moral feelings.
That is neither a legal nor a moral possibility for Oxfam. Its
objects, which are defined in the foundation document lodged
with the Charity Commission, do not include refuting moral philosophers
it thinks are mistaken. In particular it can't do this if it
reduces their income to serve their real objects of saving lives
and preventing suffering.
Mr. John Whitaker, the Deputy Director
of Oxfam GB, who has taken responsibility for the decision to
turn away the £5,000, should resign. If he does not, he
should be relieved of his duties by the Trustees of Oxfam, who
have authority over the charity.
There is also the fact that Oxfam's acting on the moral feelings
of some of its officers raises a bigger question not about their
raising of money but their use of it. In particular, it raises
a question about their policy with respect to Palestine. For
a start, this is a matter of their political activity, which
is one of their stated policies, and their literature. Why aren't
they putting out a lot of forceful and effective literature against
the violation of Palestine? Why is this missing from the stuff
we all get in our mailboxes?
Paul de Rooij
is an economist living in London and can be reached at proox@hotmail.com. He
will forward legitimate emails to Prof. Honderich.
Notes:
1 Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations
in Jenin and Nablus, Nov. 4, 02
2 There is an extensive account of the
Oxfam dispute by Ted Honderich at www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/ATTOxfam1.html
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