If the occupation is permanent, is an ethical Jewish future possible? by Marc H. Ellis

“… when I think of Unholy Alliance, I first think of the title I gave to the book and which is relevant to my lecture this evening: Atrocity and the Language of God. My book is less about how religion and power come together in atrocity, others have covered that territory and been heartily rewarded for it. Rather my book is about how atrocity, mass death but also genocide and ethnic cleansing, leads to, must have, and is in intrinsically bound up with, distortions in language and religion. After mass death, genocide and ethnic cleansing the language these horrors were carried out in carry the trauma it enabled. So, too, religion that blesses atrocity.

In Atrocity and the Language of God, I began with the Holocaust and the scholarly work on the effects Nazism has had on the German language and religion. Then, I extended my analysis to Hebrew. After all, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the formation and expansion of Israel was carried out in many languages, including Hebrew, and modern Hebrew was formed within the events that brought about and sustains the state of Israel.”