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Introduction
This is a talk about the solitude of the Palestinians, that is their abandonment and rejection by the so-called international community, starting with the Western powers that see themselves as the vicars of the democratic values and the human rights; this is in the context of the destruction of Gaza by the Israeli Army and the constant brutalization of the colonization of the West Bank, not to mention the current extension of the «war against terrorism» led by the state of Israel to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
This is a talk that suggests that we should change the terms of the conversation on state criminality – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide – to considering and analysing them not only from the angle of facts (human cost, technology of killing, intentions of the perpetrator, planing of exterminations, etc.) but from the angle of its conditions of possibility – what enables the perpetrator (the criminal state) to commit these massive crimes, that is, what gives it free rein to wreak havoc in a topography inhabited by a population designed as «the enemy», as a whole? What makes it possible that «the last of the colonial states» can exert with impunity its «right to conquest» in an era placed under the aegis of the globalization of democracy with the values attached to it, human rights and the rule of law? What makes it possible that this rogue state can carry out a scorched-earth policy not only without being pilloried by the Western democracies, but by being relentlessly supported by these, all this in the name of the defense and promotion of democracy?
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