Palestine Archives - Steve Salaita

Scrolling Through Genocide

Zionist massacres are livestreamed to the masses in high definition and still nobody can stop them.

Not so long ago there was a common theory to which I subscribed: that in an era of mass media and instant streaming the Zionist entity is unable to fully displace or wantonly slaughter Palestinians because of the scrutiny it would invite. You can get away with a lot worse, the thinking goes, if nobody is watching.

It’s a theory I’ve considered over the years while working in the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies. From the beginning of this work, over 25 years ago, interlocutors stressed the importance of differences in comparative analyses. One crucial difference between Euro-American and Zionist colonization, everyone agreed, was the timeline. While colonization is ongoing in North and South America, often in situations of great struggle or tension, settlement of the so-called New World precedes the conquest of modern Palestine by a few centuries.

A Practical Appraisal of Palestinian Violence

Palestinian violence, a complicated and ambivalent category, requires thoughtful analysis, not Orientalist commonplaces and liberal platitudes.

I. Terror and Jubilation

When I was a graduate student many years ago, I got to spend time in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. Life in the camp was challenging, but community bonds were strong despite the adversity. Internal tensions existed, but return to Palestine served as a unifying principle.

It was an active era of Palestinian resistance—what Western journalists and intellectuals lazily refer to as “Palestinian violence.” A major tactic at the time was the suicide bomb. Sometimes the attacker would go after a military installation. At other times, he (or she) targeted public spaces. Western pundits and intellectuals, along with a fair number of their counterparts in the Arab World, declared the tactic a byproduct of atavistic evil and collected the usual plaudits in return. To even suggest the possibility of sociological factors was a monstrous breach of professional standards. According to the orthodoxy, Palestinian behavior was rash and unreasoned.

Palestine Never Goes Away

Those who want to forget Palestine, can’t. Those who say they forgot Palestine, haven’t.

I’ve never thought of my devotion to Palestine’s liberation as contingent on any kind of productivity. It’s there whether or not I write about the occupation, whether or not I attend a conference, whether or not I argue with trolls on the internet, whether or not I read Electronic Intifada, whether or not I donate to Red Crescent, whether or not I do archival history, whether or not I buy revolutionary paraphernalia. It doesn’t matter if I visit Palestine, avoid Palestine, ignore Palestine, or visualize Palestine.

Palestine and the Anxiety of Existence

How do we communicate with folks who have deeply emotional responses to criticism of Israel?

I delivered the following comments (originally published at MondoWeiss) at Israeli Apartheid Week events at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Oxford University during the week of February 22, 2016. I remember the intensity of the audience at SOAS. I’d often heard that Zionism in the USA is a uniquely fervid phenomenon, but that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve had police turn up at my public events in two countries: Canada and the UK. In both cases, it was because of rambunctious pro-Israel partisans. At SOAS, a man kept yelling into the back of my head as my hosts escorted me out of the building. We made it to the sidewalk to find a bunch of constables trying to restore order. Some in the audience wanted to argue with them. The Arabs hightailed it out of there.

This evening I’m going to talk about the challenges of talking about Zionism. I begin with a question I often hear in some variation when people discuss Jews and Palestinians: how do we communicate with folks who have deeply emotional responses to criticism of Israel?

Is Palestine a Muslim Issue?

Sorting the intricacies of an impossible debate.

Is Palestine a “Muslim” issue? I regularly see some variation of the question these days—with predictably passionate, and sometimes acrimonious, responses.

In short: yes, it is.

Betty McCollum Takes on the Israel Lobby

A close reading of “Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living under Israeli Military Occupation Act”

Betty McCollum (D-MN) recently introduced legislation, with (thus far) thirteen cosponsors and dozens of organizational endorsements, that has generated significant interest. The main gist of the legislation is to condition U.S. aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to international human rights standards. The interest derives in part from the fact that what can be considered “pro-Palestine” legislation is a rarity in the U.S. Congress. McCollum is bucking the near-complete fealty to Israel customary among her House and Senate colleagues.

Palestine is not a Quagmire

The metaphors that attempt to render Palestine complicated obscure the simple brutality of Zionist colonization.

Palestine is not a minefield. Palestine is not complicated. Palestine is not a morass. Palestine is not tricky. Palestine is not a quagmire.

Palestine is not almost impossible to navigate.

The Muslim Zionists

A generation of compradors has learned that Palestinians are valuable raw material for careerism.

A few days ago, I finally managed to synthesize an observation that has bothered me for decades: “Being an asshole to Palestinians is an excellent way to launch a media career in the United States.” From Martin Peretz to Bari Weiss, the strategy has rarely failed writers seeking bylines in prestigious newspapers.

Does It Matter If Israel Annexes the West Bank?

Annexation is bad news, but we should understand it as a material expression of Zionism.

Annexation of the West Bank isn’t a new idea. Zionists always had their eye on what they call Judea and Samaria, the actual sites of biblical significance as opposed to the coastal and desert areas they conquered in 1948. As soon as Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, its leaders began discussing annexation.

In fact, Netanyahu’s effort isn’t much different from Yigal Allon’s 1967 proposal (the so-called Allon Plan). It’s still not clear exactly how the Israeli government will proceed—apparently it intends to annex Area C, including the Jordan Valley, although some officials reportedly want to claim the entire West Bank—but the idea is to make a viable Palestinian state impossible, in keeping with Allon’s vision.

How Bernie Sanders Became a Fighter for Palestine

On the importance of mythology to presidential campaigns

With the Democratic primary in full swing, the outlines of public debate are pretty much entrenched. Common wisdom on the left says that all of the candidates are bad on Palestine except for Bernie Sanders. Despite some problems, pundits declare, Sanders is still the best. Is the statement true, though, or is it a convenient truism?