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The fascists may spread over the land, blasting their way with weight of metal brought from other countries. They may advance aided by traitors and cowards. They may destroy cities and villages and try to hold the people in slavery. But you cannot hold any people in slavery. The Spanish people will rise again, as they have always risen. The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny.
- Ernest Hemingway, 'On the American Dead in Spain', 1939.1
In 2013, Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder published Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics.2 Their intervention can be situated within an admirable trajectory of collaborative efforts in Europe to press both hermeneutics and deconstruction into service on behalf of all those today who are disempowered by the machinations of global capitalism - not only the Palestinians. As a contributor to Vattimo and Marder's collection, I have followed with interest the diverse critical responses to this important new volume. David Lloyd wrote a thoughtful review for the Los Angeles Review of Books, which was trolled nearly from the moment it appeared.3 Others, such as Rumy Hasan, Netta Van Vliet, Nigel Parsons, Zahi Zalloua and Shagul Magid, have also written careful responses to and analyses of Deconstructing Zionism, drawing welcomed attention to the book's strengths and its weaknesses, and encouraging further reflection in the days to come.4
In the US and Israeli contexts, however, I cannot say that I have been surprised by some of the more hostile responses to Vattimo and Marder's book, both from those who reflexively defend Zionism and those who dismiss deconstruction as 'pretentious gibberish'. In journalistic paraphrases, but also in more lengthy scholarly reviews of his writings, Derrida himself was subject to hostile and sometimes bizarre distortions of his views. Many of Derrida's critics wrote scathing and insulting analyses of his work, typically without bothering to read him.
Derrida exercised admirable restraint in responding to his critics. He once stated:
I prefer to come before [my critics] disarmed and 'speak to' them that way at the moment they do me the honor of addressing me ... [I] seek...