At first glance, it might seem that this is a legitimate cultural or humanitarian reflection.
However, at least a rigorous analysis of the concept, its use and its historical context forces us to ask an uncomfortable but necessary question. Are we facing an exercise in honest critical thinking or an ideological construct that trivializes history and reintroduces dangerous rhetorical markers?
The term “aesthetics” does not refer to a consolidated academic field or an international sphere. It is not a recognized legal category or a consensual historiographical concept.
It is a recent rhetorical construction, loaded with emotions, which does not describe them until it ascribes intentions. In doing so, we do not condemn only the material destruction resulting from armed conflict (a tragic thing, but common to all wars) until we accuse Israel of supreme willfulness. “borrar la belleza”, the culture or aesthetic identity of a nation.
This charge is not innocent. The idea that Jews “destroy culture”, “spoil aesthetics” or “destroy beauty” has become one of the classic pillars of European anti-Semitism.
Israeli soldiers in the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza.
Reuters
The Nazi regime expressed this without questioning the classification of modern art as “degenerate art” and attributing it to Jewish influence.
Now, the same Marco reappears with a seemingly progressive vocabulary but with a disturbingly recognizable genealogy, which must be raising all the alarms in the cultural spaces to which the critics and the people in charge are reporting.
There is serious historical decontextualization here. Gaza was under Egyptian administration from 1948 to 1967 until there was a Palestinian state. Prior to the creation of the State of Israel, the region’s historic Jewish communities suffered expulsions and attacks that are rarely discussed in processes of violence and ethnic cleansing.
“The urban destruction caused by war thus turns into a metaphysical indictment. Specific military decisions are not discussed until the state is credited with a culturally obliterating impulse.”
The anti-judicial riots of 1929, extensively documented throughout the region under the British mandate, show that violence against the judiciary predates any narrative of “occupation” by decades.
Ignoring these things is not a question, but an ideological choice. The result is a simplistic and monotonous story in which there is only a demonized actor and a single passive solution that eliminates all historical, political and moral complexity.
The urban destruction caused by the war thus turns into a metaphysical accusation. Yes No, if they are discussing specific military decisions, until the state is credited with a culturally obliterating impulse.
This dislocation of language has consequences. When one abandons legal, political, or humanitarian analysis and enters the terrain of symbolic demonization, one crosses a dangerous line. The situation does not need to be understood or improved, but rather pointed out, stigmatized and insulted.
This is not the paper of culture or the public institutions that represent it.
Nevertheless, this conference should not be held in a public institution that requires a compromise with culture, critical thinking and human rights. Because the gratification of Gaza does not require attention (grace and much), but because it is instrumentalized through concepts loaded with historical and anti-Semitic resonances, it does not contribute to peace, justice and truth.
Critical thinking requires rigor, culture requires honesty, and historical memory requires responsibility. When language is turned into propaganda, we are not dealing with a cultural act, but with a form of legitimate disinformation from a public institution.
And so not with my hints.
*** Esther Benarroch is a member of the Jewish community in Madrid.
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