The other day I was browsing the July issue of Palestine in America (an excellent magazine) featuring a profile of fashion designer Rami Kashou. Kashou is best known for his appearance on season 4 of Project Runway (2007-08), a design competition in which he placed second. He went on to a successful career in fashion.
Although I didn’t follow Kashou’s career, I remember him well. My wife and I liked Project Runway in its heyday and were watching when Kashou was introduced. His accent, his body language, his facial features—all felt deeply familiar. We glanced at each other. “Gotta be,” she said. The energy in the room got happier. We would have the rare opportunity to cheer on a Palestinian contestant.
All doubt was removed when Kashou provided his bio. I don’t have to check the footage; I remember it perfectly. “I’m from the city of Jerusalem,” he said.
We had found our rooting interest.
Kashou’s answer gnawed at me, though. After a few minutes, I turned to my wife. “What’s this ‘city of Jerusalem’ shit? Why didn’t he just say ‘Palestine’?”
“You know why.”
“Yeah, but still.”
“I’m not mad at him,” she declared, challenging me to an argument. Already she was prepared to throw hands on behalf of her brethren.
I wasn’t mad at Kashou, either. I was mad because I had recognized the outline of a familiar situation.
I have no idea why Kashou described his country of origin as the “city of Jerusalem” and don’t care to find out. The comment is over a decade old and sparked no discussion that I’m aware of (beyond the one in my living room). In his PIA profile, Kashou presents as a sympathetic and thoughtful human being. It would be unfair to marry him to an old snippet in which he did nothing wrong.
I remember these trivial three seconds of reality television because of the context: a viewer sensitive to suppression of Palestinians suspecting that craven television producers had dissuaded a powerless compatriot from saying “Palestine.” Sure, Kashou might have been voluntarily circumspect or just super-proud of Jerusalem. We’ll never know. But nearly every Palestinian has experienced at least one moment in which citing nation of origin would have been controversial or provocative. It’s a defining feature of our identity. Circumstances often force us to be suspicious.
That’s why the moment rankled and why I retain the memory. I was in sympathy with Kashou, even if there was no need of the feeling, because he had encountered a problem common to Palestinians: inability to access the simple joy of an unquestioned existence. Zionism has inspired countless, horrible crimes. Perhaps the biggest is having so voraciously separated an ancient community from its claim to peoplehood.
Let’s imagine somebody told Kashou that saying “Palestine” was a no-go, that doing so would elicit complaint and controversy and would politicize the show. (Note that any time there’s a complaint about something being politicized, it’s the people complaining who have made the issue political.) Now imagine the situation Kashou was forced to navigate: play nice and retain a terrific opportunity, or refuse to accede and get kicked to the curb. Yeah, he could have told them to fuck off, but resentment, nice as it can feel, isn’t exactly the stuff dreams are made of.
It’s not an outlandish hypothetical. In the PIA article, Kashou laments that “I’ve been told no in so many moments in my life just because I’m Palestinian.”
In fact, the hypothetical represents a typical constraint for Palestinians. Participating in national life, even of the ostensibly unpolitical variety, is apt to cause trouble wherever Zionism is present.
Dispossession is a constant, brutal condition. Palestinians face not only a savage occupying army, but also the nagging ubiquity of the settler’s psychic limitations. The Palestine solidarity movement in North America isn’t exempt from those limitations, either. Comportment is the backbone of good politics. And solidarity doesn’t function without empathy. Expecting Palestinians to support politicians who cosset our oppressor, or to promote Western pundits who exploit Palestine for leftist credibility, reinforces a kind of alienation only the native truly understands, and no appeal to logic or pragmatism can mitigate the problem.
That long-ago episode with Kashou still highlights an existential condition sometimes ignored or exacerbated in anti-Zionist spaces: a lack of attention (or sensitivity) to the pain of dispossession. Liberation isn’t limited to treaties or civil rights, to citizenship or economic development; it also means cultivating a world in which Palestinians can proffer the same trivia that people with legible identities take for granted.
Funny. Rami Kashou’s hometown is listed as Ramallah, the capital city of the Palestinian Authority and soon to be the capital of the eventual Palestinian Arab state when the Palestinian Arabs overthrow Fatah and Hamas. Perhaps he used Jerusalem as his “hometown” for the same reason Arafat lied about being from Jerusalem. Regardless, when he was born, he was born in Israel. However, his mother was Miss Jordan. So he is actually a Jordanian Arab born in Israel. Interesting.
It is interesting to note that Kashau is the name of a Hasidic dynasty.
It’s not an outlandish hypothetical.
Funny. In a blog where a Palestinian scholar eloquently describes the feeling of dispossession shared by all Palestinians due to the creation of a racist, settler colonial “state”, an apologist of said state writes a comment further proving the scholar’s point.
Interesting.
What is truly interesting is that so many whine when Israel is not racist, is not a settler-colonial state (why the quotation marks? Other than Arab states for political reasons, everyone recognizes Israel as a legitimate republic with a liberal democratic form of government), and certainly provides the best living conditions for the everyday citizen in the Middle East.
That feeling of disposition is taught to Arab children at home, school, mosque, street, what passes for newspapers and TV. Brainwashed 24/7 to feel dispossessed and humiliated to the point of willing to commit suicide as long as a Jew dies, makes for a very sick culture. Eloquent enough for you?
The best living conditions for a everyday Jewish Israeli is not this racist settler-colonial state of Israel. Paradoxically the town of Berlin in Germany has given home to tens of thousends young liberal Jewish expats from Israel not being able to bear the Apartheid state of Israel.
In Israel, with its liberal democratic form of government, all of its citizens have the right to leave and return for whatever reason, real or imagined.
The reason he did not say he was from “Palestine” is because there is NO such place. Plain and simple. Nor will there ever be realistically. And he also understands that the minute there would be a Palestine, he will have a miserable life just as the Arabs in all their other countries have. Don’t kid yourself about a “brutal occupation”. It’s a horrible public relations myth. Palestinians are better off in Israel than anywhere else. Wake up.
Well spoken brother. We can go all the way back to Father Abraham to find where Hashem said that he would make Abraham’s seed as numerous as the sands in the sea and the stars in the sky. And they would have their land stretching from what is now Turkey down to Egypt and that would be Israel.
When I visit Israel I sit in the Jaffa triangle and often have with Arab Israelis who would not trade places with Muslims anywhere else in the world. I swear this is true.