510 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
The letter Derrida sent Lanzmann is in some ways similar to that he
had sent to Pierre Nora in 1961, on his book Les Français en Algérie.
Derrida reiterated in full his friendship for Lanzmann. Without it,
he would not have bothered to write to him, since he was not in the
habit of protesting every time he read things that angered him. But
this article had shocked him, both because of its place of publication
and by the seriousness of some of the accusations formulated in it.
Derrida refused to accept, for example, that anyone could say – as
Redeker had done –, ‘after all, in Sabra and Chatila, it was Arabs
who had massacred other Arabs’. Eager to avoid any confusion, he
took the opportunity to express his own convictions clearly:
You mustn’t think that my critical vigilance is unilateral. It is
just as alert to anti-Semitism or a certain anti-Israeli feeling,
just as alert to certain policies of various countries in the
Middle East and even the Palestinian Authority [.. .], not to
mention, of course, ‘terrorism’. But I feel that is my responsibil-
ity to express it more to the side to which, by ‘situation’, I am
deemed to belong: the ‘French citizen’ that I am will publicly
demonstrate a greater critical attention to French policies than
to others that are pursued on the other side of the world. The
‘Jew’, even if he is equally critical of the policies of Israel’s
enemies, will be more prepared to express his anxieties about
an Israeli policy that endangers the safety [salut] and the image
of those it is supposed to represent.^47If certain discourses were to be believed, Derrida continued, ‘one
should feel guilty or presumed guilty as soon as one murmurs the
least reservation about Israeli policies, [.. .] or even about a certain
alliance between a particular American policy and a certain Israeli
policy.’
Guilty under at least four headings: anti-Israelism, anti-
Zionism, anti-Semitism, Judeophobia (a concept that has
recently become, as you know, fashionable: it needs to be
discussed at length) – not to mention what is known as visceral
anti-Americanism...
Well: no, no, no, and no! Four times no. That’s exactly what
I wanted to say to you, and that’s why I’ve written to you. To
tell you of my anxieties and to ask you, as a friend, that this
will not become the ‘position’ of the ‘strategy’ of the Temps
modernes. [.. .] If there are totalitarian procedures of intimi-
dation, they lie there, precisely, in this attempt to silence any
critical analysis of Israeli and American policies. [.. .] I want
to be able to undertake this critical analysis, to make it more
complex here, nuance it there, sometimes radicalize it, without