We have to ask how we can stretch and how sometimes we can break the norms that determine what's intelligible and readable and what is not.
Judith ButlerIndeed, even if one believed that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-semitic (by Jews, anti-semites, or people who could be described as neither), it would become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to distinguish between criticism of Israel and a hatred of Jews.
Judith ButlerThe idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation.
Judith ButlerI wonder about economic sanctions, though, since that is a way that states engage in boycotts against one another.
Judith Butler