Revital Madar will present her paper, which explores a military court's attempt to define the nature of a Palestinian death by an Israeli soldier as either exceptional or banal. The court's rejection of selective enforcement claims in Azaria's trial for Al-Sharif's killing sheds light on Israeli settler society's indifference to Palestinian deaths. Through an analysis of open fire regulations, Madar argues that the logic employed by the state strips these deaths of their singularity and political meaning, categorising them as an exceptional repetition and setting them aside, even when soldiers are prosecuted for killing Palestinians. Her insights challenge conventional narratives and offer a unique perspective on the complexities surrounding violence, sovereignty, and legal structures.
Benoit Challand, Associate Professor of Sociology at the New School New York, will join the session as a discussant.
Abstract:
This article delves into a military court's quest to determine the nature of one Palestinian death by an Israeli soldier as exceptional or banal. The court’s rejection of selective enforcement claims in Azaria’s trial for Al-Sharif's killing allows unpacking Israeli settler society's indifference to Palestinian deaths. As I show, the logic of open fire regulations strips these deaths of their singularity and political meaning, constructs them as an exceptional repetition, and sets them aside even when soldiers are prosecuted for killing Palestinians. Exploring whether a different epistemology could account for the singular yet repetitive nature of Palestinians' deaths in Israel, I turn to Deleuze. His understanding of repetition as the maximality of differences and reversal of the order of trauma lead me to conclude that the state of Israel does not repeat (killing Palestinians) because it represses (the death of Palestinians). It represses because it repeats.
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