I’m not sure I totally grok Zadie Smith in her recent New Yorker essay, but it seems to be a case for supporting the protesters for their moral witness to the injustifiable scale of the death in Gaza.

But at the same time she’s saying that “it is in the nature of the political that we cannot even attend to such ethical imperatives unless we first know the political position of whoever is speaking.” To which I would add (and I would guess she would agree) that we would have to know their thoughts on how their actions are likely to achieve their desired ends.

But this, which woudl “normally be [her] own view,” is trumped in this case by the horror of the dead.

I genuinely don’t get it, but it feels like there’s something profound that’s almost being said here.