This year’s Hugo Chavez reading list
Given his normal man-of-the-people schtick and weekly telethons, Hugo Chavez’s international appearances are notable for his habit of recommending books. He sent sales of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival skyrocketing with his 2006 UNGA speech and did the same for author Eduardo Galeano when he gave a copy of Open Veins of Latin America to ...
Given his normal man-of-the-people schtick and weekly telethons, Hugo Chavez's international appearances are notable for his habit of recommending books. He sent sales of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival skyrocketing with his 2006 UNGA speech and did the same for author Eduardo Galeano when he gave a copy of Open Veins of Latin America to Barack Obama. This year, with Palestinian issues on the agenda, Chavez is plugging the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Spanish poet Juan Goytisolo in a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
Given his normal man-of-the-people schtick and weekly telethons, Hugo Chavez’s international appearances are notable for his habit of recommending books. He sent sales of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival skyrocketing with his 2006 UNGA speech and did the same for author Eduardo Galeano when he gave a copy of Open Veins of Latin America to Barack Obama. This year, with Palestinian issues on the agenda, Chavez is plugging the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Spanish poet Juan Goytisolo in a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
In his memorable essay The Grandeur of Arafat, the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote with the full weight of the truth: The Palestinian cause is first and foremost the set of injustices that these people have suffered and continue to suffer. And I dare add that the Palestinian cause also represents a constant and unwavering will to resist, already written in the historic memory of the human condition. A will to resist that is born of the most profound love for the earth. Mahmoud Darwish, the infinite voice of the longed-for Palestine, with heartfelt conscience speaks about this love: We don’t need memories/ because we carry within us Mount Carmelo/ and in our eyelids is the herb of Galilee./ Don’t say: If only we could flow to my country like a river!/ Don’t say that!/ Because we are in the flesh of our country/ and our country is in our flesh.
Against those who falsely assert that what has happened to the Palestinian people is not genocide, Deleuze himself states with unfaltering lucidity: From beginning to end, it involved acting as if the Palestinian people not only must not exist, but had never existed. It represents the very essence of genocide: to decree that a people do not exist; to deny them the right to existence.
In this regard, the great Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo is quite right when he forcefully states: The biblical promise of the land of Judea and Samaria to the tribes of Israel is not a notarized property contract that authorizes the eviction of those who were born and live on that land. This is precisely why conflict resolution in the Middle East must, necessarily, bring justice to the Palestinian people; this is the only path to peace.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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