Israel's Missteps with Palestine - Slavoj Žižek January 5, 2009

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Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek accuses Israel of a "systematic" political effort to make life difficult for Palestinians, and blames the current Israeli/Hamas crisis on a mishandled approach to religious fundamentalism.

This excerpt is taken from a debate between philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy and Slavoj Žižek on the modern Left. For the complete video, visit: http://fora.tv/2008/09/16/Violence__the_Left_in_Dark_Times_A_Debate

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Bernard-Henri Levy, France's "rock-star philosopher," and Slavoj Zizek, the Slovanian "Elvis of cultural theory," will scrutinize the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those of the future, as they argue for a new political and moral vision for our times and investigate the limits of tolerance.

Does the advent of capitalism cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbor? asks Zizek in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.

Are human rights Western or Universal? How is it that progressives themselves-those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism-have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes? asks Lévy in Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against New Barbarism - New York Public Library

Slavoj Žižek's work triggers continuous controversy; Welcome to the Desert of the Real, his analysis of 9/11, was attacked both as anti-Semitic in Israel and as Zionist in Egypt. He is the author of more than thirty books and is the subject of the documentary Žižek. His own critically acclaimed documentary, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, was the subject of a film retrospective in 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art. Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Princeton, and The New School.