Achille Mbembe: Where They Stand on Israel
This page records specific public conduct. It does not claim knowledge of private beliefs or motives.
Documented record
-
2015: In his foreword ("On Palestine," pp. vii-viii) to the 2015 essay collection Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy (eds. Jon Soske & Sean Jacobs, Haymarket Books), political theorist Achille Mbembe wrote that Israel's system of control "is far more lethal" than apartheid-era South Africa's and called the occupation of Palestine "the biggest moral scandal of our times... and biggest act of cowardice of the last half-century."
...is far more lethal. It looks like high-tech Jim Crow-cum-apartheid." ... "the occupation of Palestine is the biggest moral scandal of our times, one of the most dehumanizing ordeals of the century we have just entered, and biggest act of cowardice of the last half-century.
Source 1 Source 2
Where Galil stands
Our opinion: We don't stand behind rhetoric that brands Israel's existence as history's greatest act of cowardice while erasing the security reality Israelis actually live with.
Sources manually reviewed 2026-07-27. Corrections and later context will be appended to this page.