Raef Zreik traces Kant’s struggle to establish the concept of “autonomy” as an organizing principle in his practical philosophy. While describing the inherent tensions facing this project, this book offers a fresh way of understanding contemporary debates.

This Article makes three moves. First it suggests and elaborates a distinction—already implicit in the literature—between what I will call the first and second order of arguments for justice (hereinafter FOAJ and SOAJ). In part, it is a distinction somewhat similar to that between just war and justice in war. SOAJ are akin to the rules governing justice in war or rules of engagement, while bracketing the reasons and causes of the conflict. FOAJ on the hand are those principles of (...) justice and arguments that derive their power from the distribution of entitlements, rights and duties of the parties prior to the conflict they are supposed to adjudicate. FOAJ aim in many ways to restore the distribution of entitlements that existed on the eve of the conflict. Thus, all arguments for corrective or historical justice could be viewed as FOAJ. The second move in the paper associates FOAJ with the Palestinians and SOAJ with Zionism first and Israel later on. The more the settler Zionist project became a reality, the more the Palestinian population felt a threat to their national project and exercised resistance, including violent resistance. The more Palestinians showed resistance, the more appealing and more relevant SOAJ of self-defense, security, and emergency. The third move in the paper is to ask questions regarding the relation between FOAJ and SOAJ offer a critique of the distinction itself, and offers a critique of the way the distinction is being deployed in the case of Israel-Palestine. The Israeli claims for self-defense and security(SOAJ) are becoming so pervasive that they threaten to suspend the claims for historical justice forever (FOAJ), to the point that everything, even the regime that is crystallizing in front of our eyes as an Apartheid regime, is being justified as a temporal necessity. Israel deployment of SOAJ is done in bad faith. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the current war on Gaza in 2024 that followed the Hamas attack on October 7th 2023, reading the events is a wider historical context. The paper has three main parts. In the first part, the paper argues against the fragmentation of the question of Palestine historically and geographically, arguing instead for the importance of the overall context of the conflict. The second part considers the issue of Palestinian resistance. How can the Palestinians resist occupation? This part (...) is mainly descriptive and indicates the impasse that the Palestinians found themselves in it after the Oslo accords in 1993. The third and last part moves to normative questions regarding the question of self-defense both on the part of the Palestinians and on the part of Israel and tries to outline the ways these arguments can develop. (shrink)

This article engages the analogy of Palestine/Israel to apartheid South Africa, and probes the political imaginary that contours this discussion while explicating the circumstances of its emergence. Accordingly, it contends that apartheid is not merely a system of institutionalized separation; rather, it organizes the facts and reality of separation(s) within a frame and against a background unity that effectively allows it to be perceived as such. To that end, the article explores four key factors that created background unity in apartheid (...) South Africa: labor relations; political theology; role of language; and geo-political unit(y), and scrutinizes their political and experiential ramifications in Palestine/Israel. (shrink)

The case of Israel generally, and specifically regarding the justifications put forth for the Law of Return by a wide range of liberal scholars, accents the main problems and weaknesses of liberal legality. Part one of the paper rethinks aspects of liberal legality and its artificial nature in light of debates surrounding the Law of Return. Debating both the case of Israel and the insistence of many Israeli scholars on justifying the Law using liberal terms, this part reveals certain aspects (...) of liberalism that usually remain hidden. Part III comments on Israel and evaluates the Law of Return while comparing it to similar laws, arguing that even after revisiting liberal legality, the Law of Return scores badly according to the criteria of liberal legality. Thus, the first analysis places Israel within a paradigm, revealing that Israel may not be so exceptional. For those who view liberalism as a pure, ideal theory this paper points to the dark side of liberalism, and thereby suggests that Israel might not be the only “pariah” state, but even within the new paradigm , the Law of Return is at the extreme end of the spectrum and scores badly. (shrink)

Utility of third party funding is an undeniable fact, especially where a party is under financial strain, yet its increased usage in private arbitration has given rise to a number of substantive and procedural issues. In view of this, the present paper attempts to map the growing utility or otherwise of the mechanism of third party funding, and analyses its various nuances and legal sustainability within the framework of international arbitration. Further, an attempt is made to analyse the ways and (...) means of ameliorating the utility of third party funding and for enhancing its acceptance in the global arbitration community. (shrink)

This article is a close reading of Edward Said’s image of the intellectual and offers a critique and restatement of that image. Said characterizes the intellectual in contrast to two other images:...

In this paper I respond to the replies of David Heyd and Yitzhak Benbaji to my paper ‘War and Self-Defense: Reflections on the War on Gaza’. Heyd’s relativizing of narrative overlooks the epistemic hierarchy among narratives and their important role in establishing facts, and his claim that Israel’s history is not colonialist in character fails because it is based on a misunderstanding of colonialism in general and settler colonialism in particular. Historically, I outline how Benbaji’s appeal to the legal status (...) of the Mandate is problematic, because it ignores the illegitimacy of the legal regime behind it, such that accepting his argument would be to legitimize colonialism. Theoretically, I defend the view contrary to Benjabi, that instead of their being a moral tie between two equal sides, the Palestinians have always had fundamental legal and moral rights that the Zionist project violated ab initio and continues to violate. (shrink)

The article critically examines the arguments of Raef Zreik regarding the 2023 war in Gaza. It first analyzes the use of the concept of narrative in defending political causes and actions. It shows that due to their subjective nature two opposing narratives can be equally valid as long as they satisfy conditions of internal coherence and fidelity to the facts. It then shows that Zreik’s argument of ‘fragmentation’ is double edged and cannot be used for laying full responsibility (...) on Israel. It then proceeds to criticize the claim that Zionism is a colonialist enterprise and shows that Zionism does not consist of all the basic characteristics of colonialism. Finally, it analyzes the common argument of self-defense as the only justification of starting a war and shows the limitation of such an argument in a theory of war, mainly because in most wars both sides have the right to defend themselves, including the allegedly unjust party. All that remains after showing the weakness of most arguments for this or that side to the conflict is the conclusion that compromise is the only way out of the deadlock, having the virtue of being pragmatic rather principled. (shrink)

L'Etat est généralement considéré, à tort comme une création des société occidentale. L'œuvre de Ibn Khaldoun, dans sa contribution innovante à la théorie de l'Etat montre au contraire combien essentiel est la nouveauté du rôle qu'il accorde au contrat social. C'est dans l'Etat que l'individu connaît son plus entier développement, le rôle du souverain n'étant pas de créer ou de promouvoir en l'homme une vie vertueuse, mais de le protéger de son propre égoïsme. Une telle mutation a eu aussitôt (...) d'incalculables répercussions dans le domaine du droit, comme celui du pouvoir. " L'Etat est à lui seul l'origine du Droit et de l'Autorité ". Cette conclusion a amené Ibn Khaldoun à envisager autrement le rapport du spirituel et du temporel. On mesure aujourd'hui l'importance de cette affirmation, qui malgré les événements qui défrayent les fragiles équilibres politiques à travers le monde, a grandement influencé le courant rationaliste arabe. L'auteur, s'appuyant sur l'œuvre d'Ibn Khaldoun, pose la question dans cet ouvrage, de l'évolution de la crise de l'Etat dans le monde arabo-musulman. (shrink)

After one has read for a while in the history of Western thought, one becomes cognizant of how many great intellects, believers and non-believers alike, have presented compelling examinations of Christian theism. And until recently, religious skeptics, following in the wake of David Hume, assumed that the ship of Christian philosophy of religion was too damaged to sail again. However, something unexpectedly emerged recently from the weathered ship, even after many pilots advised cautious hugging the shores, especially in light of (...) the ‘death of God’ storms of the 1960’s. Many abandoned the ancient mother ship, some escaping on rafts, lifeboats, or flotsam, transferring to modern vessels, such as SS Darwin, Freud, Marx, or Nietzsche. Still, a number of sailors stayed on board the ancient craft, and responded to the latter secularist fleet, honing their skills as navigators, first mates, and lookouts, so as to safeguard the ancient ship from secularist vessel forays.The anthology under re .. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 3-18, March 2022.

This essay explores a view held by many critics of Israel, which posits that the October 7th massacre is a war crime that is part of a just war of independence, fought by Palestinians against Israel for over a century. Raef Zreik recently presented such a view in these pages. However, this essay argues that a proper understanding of traditional just war theory renders this view false. Even if Zionism is considered a colonial wrong, Palestinians did not have a (...) just cause for war against Zionism until after the Six-Day War in 1967 and perhaps later. Furthermore, the essay contends that the massacre is not a part of this war, as Hamas lacks the moral power to represent the Palestinian people and to fight in their name. (shrink)

Working in four scholarly teams focused on different global regions—North America, the European Union, the Middle East, and China—the contributors to _Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging_ examine how new political worlds intersect with locally specific articulations of religion and secularism. The chapters address many topics, including the changing relationship between Islam and politics in Tunisia after the 2010 revolution, the influence of religion on the sharp turn to the political right in Western Europe, understandings of Confucianism as a form of (...) secularism, and the alliance between evangelical Christians and neoliberal business elites in the United States since the 1970s. This volume also provides a methodological template for how humanities scholars around the world can collaboratively engage with sweeping issues of global significance. Contributors. Markus Balkenhol, Elizabeth Bentley, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, David N. Gibbs, Ori Goldberg, Marcia Klotz, Zeynep Kurtulus Korkman, Leerom Medovoi, Eva Midden, Mohanad Mustafa, Mu-chou Poo, Shaul Setter, John Vignaux Smith, Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Ernst van den Hemel, Albert Welter, Francis Ching-Wah Yip, Raef Zreik. (shrink)