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The War of Words: Language as an Instrument of Palestinian National Struggle
Abstract
This critical set of reflections addresses how the increasing visibility of the Palestinian struggle and the growing attention to Palestine in the (US) academy coincides with altered and depleted meanings for terms and concepts once central to a Palestinian liberation framework. The authors challenge the de-familiarization of the Palestinian political lexicon by ruminating on past, present and potential future meanings for words whose currency, they argue, has assumed a deceptively simple valuation. What are the unforeseen political consequences of visibility, of “incorporation,” and how might these be resisted within the arena of meaning and through the process of reviving language as an instrument of national liberation struggle? Revisiting old definitions of terms and contributing thoughts to the value of words such as Zionism, peace process and negotiations, statehood and violence, the authors contest the boundaries of disciplinary research in service of Palestinian liberation.
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Scott Jaschik, “MLA Votes to ‘Refrain’ from Backing Israel Boycott,” Inside Higher Ed, June 15, 2017, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/15/mla-votes-large-margin-refrain-backing-israel-boycott.
“2017 Delegate Assembly Resolutions,” Modern Language Association, accessed January 5, 2018, https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Delegate-Assembly/Motions-and-Resolutions/2017-Delegate-Assembly-Resolutions.
Mlaboycott.wordpress.com. “Protest MLA Ratification of Resolution 2017–1.” MLA Members for Justice in Palestine (blog), June 16, 2017, https://mlaboycott.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/protest-mla-ratification-of-resolution-2017–1/.
Lenora Hanson (former MLA Executive Council Member) in conversation with authors, August 31, 2019.
Jeffrey Sacks, “The Resistance to Boycott: Palestine, BDS, and the Modern Language Association,” Radical History Review 134 (May): 233.
“Letters to the MLA.” In the Moment (blog), January 1, 2018 (10:30 am), https://critinq.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/letters-to-the-mla/.
Lenora Hanson and David Palumbo-Liu. “Why we Resigned from the MLA Executive Council.” In the Moment (blog), accessed January 11, 2018, https://critinq.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/lenora-hanson-and-david-palumbo-liu-why-we-resigned-from-the-mla-executive-council/.
Ibid.
Other academic associations that voted to endorse the academic boycott include: the African Literature Association, American Studies Association, the National Women's Studies Association, the Association of Asian American Studies, the National Association of Chicana/o Studies, the Native and Indigenous Studies Association and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association. See for example: “ALA Resolutions and Executive Letters.” African Literature Association, accessed January 5, 2018, http://africanlit.org/about-the-ala/ala-resolutions-and-executive-letters/. See also: “What Does the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Mean for the ASA?” American Studies Association, accessed January 5, 2018, https://www.theasa.net/what-does-boycott-mean. See also: Elizabeth Redden, “Another Association Backs Israel Boycott,” Inside Higher Ed, December 1, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/01/national-womens-studies-association-joins-israel-boycott-movement. See also: “National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Endorses Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions,” Jadaliyya, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32001/National-Association-of-Chicana-and-Chicano-Studies-Annual-Conference-Endorses-Boycott-of-Israeli-Academic-Institutions. See also: “Usacbi Statement of Support for the Association for Asian American Studies.” USACBI, accessed January 5, 2018, http://www.usacbi.org/2013/04/usacbi-statement-of-support-for-the-association-for-asian-american-studies/. See also: “Declaration of Support for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions.” NAISA (blog), December 15, 2013, http://www.naisa.org/declaration-of-support-for-the-boycott-of-israeli-academic-institutions.html. See also: “Critical Ethnic Studies Association Passes BDS Resolution Supporting Academic Boycott.” USACBI, http://www.usacbi.org/2014/07/critical-ethnic-studies-association-passes-bds-resolution-supporting-academic-boycott/.
“U.S. B.D.S. Victories.” US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, accessed January 5, 2018, https://uscpr.org/campaign/bds/bdswins/#1499720610811-1ef54a63-054b.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal issued a comprehensive report that engages how Palestine is made an exception to legal free speech. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network has traced the informal financial networks' funding backlash against Palestine activism. Jewish Voice for Peace has examined how false charges of anti-Semitism are used to stifle Palestine human rights activism. See for example: “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.” Center for Constitutional Rights, accessed January 5, 2018, https://ccrjustice.org/the-palestine-exception. See also: “The Business of Backlash: The Attack on the Palestinian Movement and Other Movements for Social Justice,” International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, accessed January 5, 2018, http://www.ijan.org/resources/business-of-backlash/. See also: “Stifling Dissent,” Jewish Voice for Peace, accessed January 5, 2018, http://stiflingdissent.org/.
SeeO. Zahzah, “Special Issue Review Essay: The Intelligentsia In Dissent: Palestine, Settler-Colonialism and Academic Unfreedom in the Work of Steven Salaita,” Transmotion 5(1), 211–224. Accessed August 18, 2019, https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/640.
“Palestinian BDS National Committee,” Bdsmovement.net, accessed January 5, 2018, https://bdsmovement.net/bnc.
The intention behind making these claims is not to erase the essential work performed by pre-BDS organizations such as the Organization of Arab Students (OAS) or the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG). Both of these organizations, as well as many of their individual members and several organizations that followed in their wake, share a prime responsibility in introducing Palestine to the US academy as well as challenging reductive cultural discourse about Arabs and Muslims more broadly well before the advent of student organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). We cannot underscore enough the critical importance of groups such as the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) which came to forerun student activism for Palestine on US campuses between 1979 and 1993. Third World alliances and some anti-war formations have also centered Palestinian liberation as part of their own anti-colonial, anti-racist political programs as well. We further note that Jimmy Carter's advocacy for the Palestinian people and the challenges posed by the Israeli New Historians to the Zionist nationalist narratives were essential in bringing an awareness of the Palestinian struggle to larger intellectual and public audiences. However, this article concerns itself with BDS work and BDS discourse because of the present centrality that such framings have come to assume within Palestine academic activism and scholarship and solidarity organizing. The purpose here is thus not to draw a historical overview or genealogy of Palestine activist and intellectual efforts in the US so much as to intervene in present-day debates, to explore the possibilities for imbuing the rhetorical hallmarks of BDS-centered Palestine activity with a revolutionary character more in step with the original vision of the Palestinian national movement.
Einat Wilf, Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015).
Einat Wilf. “The War of Words Against Israel and the Fight Back.” A Lecture Given at the Truth Out Conference, Israel. Youtube Video, 4:40. Posted [June 2014]. Accessed March 5, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXLuO1YPSnM&t=568s.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of California at Los Angeles,” AAUP Bulletin 57:3 (1971): 382–420.
See Edward Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, New York: Columbia University Press. 1998.
Hanson and Palumbo-Liu, “Why we Resigned.”
See for example: Rona Sela, “Seized in Beirut: The Plundered Archives of the Palestinian Cinema Institution and Cultural Arts Section.” Anthropology of the Middle East 12:1 (2017), 83–114.
National Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestinian Youth Movement. “NSJP and PYM Condemn Repression, Racism and Islamophobia during NSJP Conference at UCLA.” Mondoweiss, November 26, 2018, https://mondoweiss.net/2018/11/repression-islamophobia-conference/
Ibid.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012).
Ibid.
Edward Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 3.
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” revised edition, from the ‘History’ chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason, in Rosalind C. Morris, ed., Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 21–81.
Mjriam Abu Samra. “The Road to Oslo and its Reverse #Palestine,” Allegra Lab (blog), October 29, 2015, http://allegralaboratory.net/the-road-to-oslo-and-its-reverse-palestine/.
For more on national identity and consciousness see for example: Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
James Carleton. “PFLP Ghassan Kanafani, Richard Carleton interview COMPLETE.” Filmed [1970]. Youtube video, 6:56. Posted [August 2017]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_drCmG2iM.
Ibid.
The Situationist International was an alliance of revolutionary intellectuals, writers, and artists formed in Europe that spanned 1952 to 1972. The Situationists believed that Marxist ideology was commensurate with the artistic avant-garde movements of the day, such as surrealism, and their critical output represents a unique fusion of these seemingly disparate orientations. For more on the Situationists, see: “Situationist International,” tate.org.uk, accessed August 16, 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/situationist-international. For the relevant excerpts from Khayati's dictionary, see Mustapha Khayati, “Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary,” anarchistlibrary.org, accessed January 5, 2018. Unfortunately, the work is currently out of print, though excerpted translations are available online. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mustapha-khayati-captive-words-preface-to-a-situationist-dictionary.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
In 1969, Khayati left the Situationist International to join the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) based in Jordan. In his resignation letter, he noted that he was politically opposed to “double appartenance” (belonging to more than one political formation) and that the seismic transformations of the Arab region and its mounting crisis obliged him to rather focus his efforts there. For more on Khayati see: “Mustapha Khayati.” Postwar Culture: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, accessed August 14, 2019, https://www.postwarcultureatbeinecke.org/copy-of-asger-jorn.
See: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: Heinemann; Studies in African Literature. 1986).
For more on the Palestinian ontology of Nakba, see: Loubna Qutami, “Before the New Sky: Protracted Struggle and Possibilities of the Beyond for Palestine's New Youth Movement” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2018).
See: Frank Barat, “We Teach Life Sir: Palestinian Poet Rafeed Ziadeh Launches New Album.” Middle East Eye, accessed August 16, 2019, https://www.middleeasteye.net/features/we-teach-life-palestinian-poet-rafeef-ziadah-launches-new-album.
See for example: Lisa Lowe, Intimacies of Four Continents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). Also: Maria Josefina Saldana Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). See also: Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
For more on the dubious ways the 1948 construction of the legal apparatus of “human rights” has been used to sustain the pre-1948 colonial divisions of the world along economic, political, and racial lines, see for example: Randall Williams, The Divided World: Human Rights and its Violence (Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xvi.
Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)
See: Keith Feldman, A Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 23–57.
“It is not incidental,” Feldman writes, “that Resolution 3379 is the only General Assembly resolution to be formally revoked by the United Nations,” for “the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of a unipolar world” cemented an epistemological embargo upon the counter-narratives of all dispossessed by the project of so-called Western liberal democracy.” A Shadow Over Palestine, 56.
Amplifying the Palestinian narrative to the global arena was especially important, not only because Palestinians had endured a great catastrophe which shattered their livelihoods, but also because the Zionist narrative purported their project to be a solution to rectify the violences of anti-Semitism, and compared their aspirations for settlement in Palestine with other anti-colonial movements taking shape across the world, particularly in India. Palestinians therefore needed a counter-narrative that could argue that Zionism is a form of colonialism, which Sayegh illustrated so beautifully in his 1965 piece. For more on how Zionists paralleled their aspirations through anti-colonial sensibilities, see Joseph Massad, “The ‘Post-Colonial’ Colony: Time, Space, and Bodies in Palestine/Israel,” in The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).
Fayez Sayegh, “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965),” Settler Colonial Studies 2:1 (January 2012), 214. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648833.
Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8:4 (2006), 387–409.
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, “Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression,” IJAN, accessed August 31, 2019, http://www.ijan.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IWoRR.pdf.
David Lloyd, “Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Palestine/Israel,” Settler Colonial Studies 2:1 (January 2012), 59. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648826.
Edward Said, “A Tribute to Abu Omar,” Hanna Mikhail Abu Omar: Man, Intellectual, Freedom Fighter. Accessed, January 5, 2018. http://www.abu-omar-hanna.info/spip/spip.php?article103.
“Zumlot: US Move ‘Kiss of Death’ to Two-State Solution,” Aljazeera: News, December 8, 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/zomlot-move-kiss-death-state-solution-171208112719252.html.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 2.
Ibid.
Brooks Kirchgassner, “On Frantz Fanon: An Interview with Lewis R. Gordon,” Black Perspectives, February 11, 2016.
Ibid.
Ali Abunimah, “Israel Using “Black Ops” Against BDS, Says Veteran Analyst,” Electronic Intifada. September 5, 2016, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-using-black-ops-against-bds-says-veteran-analyst.
Loubna Qutami, “Rethinking the Single Story: BDS, Transnational Cross Movement Building and the Palestine Analytic,” Social Text, Periscope dossier special issue: Circuits of Influence: US, Israel, Palestine, published June 17, 2014; accessed January 5, 2018, http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/rethinking-the-single-story-bds-transnational-cross-movement-building-and-the-palestine-analytic/.
J. Sexton, “People-of-Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery,” Social Text 28:2/103 (June 1, 2010), 31–56. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2009-066.
Fred Moten, “Fred Moten's Statement in Support of a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions,” MLA Members for Justice in Palestine, September 7, 2016, https://mlaboycott.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/fred-motens-statement-in-support-of-a-boycott-of-israeli-academic-institutions/.
Nora Barrows-Friedman, “UC Berkeley Reinstates Palestine Course, But Tried to Change Content,” Electronic Intifada. September 20, 2016, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/uc-berkeley-reinstates-palestine-course-tried-change-content.
Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America's Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013).