WEIRD: Political feeling and the emergence of dissent in Israeli Solidarity Activists

Based on ethnographic research on Palestinian Solidarity Activism in and around Jerusalem, this paper argues that Weirdness is a political feeling. Taking emotion as a form of ‘wordless knowledge’ (Damasio, 2000), mediated through the Israeli national narrative, the feeling of Weirdness emerges when the expectations of Israelis fail to accord with the practices of military occupation. This is not an intense or overwhelming affect, it does not drive us to fight or flight, nor bring us to tears. However, repeated encounters with the failure of their knowledge systems, have brought some Israelis to doubt the validity and logic of hegemonic Zionism. Doubt, Hannah Arendt (1971) believed, was the outcome of Thinking, a human faculty which could condition men against evil-doing. In enabling and augmenting the emergence of doubt, Weirdness is a political emotion and one which may play a significant role in the emergence of resistance to the vested interests of oppressive structures in societies everywhere.