Resisting Israeli State Terrorism: Knowledge, Power and the ‘Public Secret’

This paper examines the puzzle of why, despite the meticulous and extensive documentation of Israel’s practices of state terrorism, it remains for the most part unacknowledged and unspoken – or “unknown” in epistemological terms – in academic, political and media discourse. I explore this puzzle through a number of key concepts related to power-knowledge and dominant regimes of truth, such as “subjugated knowledge”, “unknown knowns”, “public secret” and the “epistemology of ignorance”. The analysis begins with a conceptualisation of state terrorism, before providing an overview of what is well known and documented about the nature, forms, causes and primary examples of Israeli state terrorism. I argue that the extensively documented use of state terrorism by Israel is intimately tied to the internal logic of its settler colonial project which necessitates the use of violent coercive power in its drive for “the elimination of the Native”. The paper then examines how the knowledge or “known” of Israeli state terrorism is subjugated and “unknown” in the academic and political fields of discourse, and with what primary consequences. The argument here is that maintaining the “public secret” of Israeli state terrorism serves a range of material, political and academic interests, including the broader geo-strategic interests of its primary ally, the United States. The paper concludes by arguing that there is nevertheless room for discursive resistance and de-subjugation.