It is an inherent part of the colonization process to create racialized mythos of people native to the lands. US politics, during much of the “Manifest Destiny” period of spreading further west (and prior, mind you), racially lumped people of the Americas as “savage” or “inferior” to the white American. As Nadine Naber, Eman Desouky, and Lina Baroudi point out in “The Forgotten -Ism”, this racialization is heavy throughout much of Zionist discourse, painting Arabs as inferior to the white Israeli or the westerner.
I feel as though I was ignorant to how far back the visibility of Arab peoples as a racial formation went. Post-reading this piece, I feel more knowledgeable. Granted invisibility is also in and of itself, a way of constructing a non-import around a people’s oppression, but my process was that the formation around Arab people in US discourse today was really shaped around 9/11, having become hyper-visible as a result. What this essay did was really enhance my knowledge of the racial mythos of Arabs (particularly Palestinians) surrounding much of American discourse. Though Zionism as a framework extends beyond just being that of American thought, having been birthed in Europe and the very building block of the Israeli state existence, zionism is heavily present in America’s approach to Israel (Naber, Desouky, Baroudi 2001). The US is frequently defending and supporting the state of Israel and their colonization of the Palestinian land. Much of US policy around Palestine serves to further the US’s own imperialist agenda, supplying the state of Israel with the powers and tools to continue to oppress the Palestinian natives. The image of Arab peoples within much of US discourse has been shaped by a hyper-visibility centered around colonization within the land that conveniently, pits Palestinians as violent and threatening to the Israelis. In turn Israelis are painted as victims.
What The Forgotten-Ism really had me thinking due to both this hypervisibility under this image and the invisibility they face in fighting for justice, Arab people, most particularly Palestinians exist and have existed in this space between hypervisibility and invisibility. They are painted as violent and overly volatile due to this racial mythos and due to this, are often talked over and unheard in most spaces. Because of this Zionist fear mongering targeted on scapegoating Arabs, Palestinians have no voice within most of, if not all of the public domain.
I was raised Jewish and being raised Jewish is constantly being informed that Israel is your true home. Mind you, none of my family was particularly Orthodox, but this was always insisted upon when Palestine was brought up. It took a lot of personal research and discussion to solidify that I wasn’t going to be a Zionist like, a good 70% of my family. I’ve been called anti-semitic, my cousin went as far to liken my anti-zionist beliefs to Hitler. Maybe the shoe fits on the other end, that is on the Israeli government and all of the west for withholding necessary resources to the Palestinian people and killing them in masses. This is something I often struggle with; how could a people go through something as horrific as the Holocaust, then turn around and push another peoples into the same conditions? The entire zionist movement to me is built on hypocrisy.
IMAGE LINK: https://i2.wp.com/www.jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BAzioness-1-e1519752707984.jpg?resize=1280%2C720px&ssl=1
I choose this image mostly because it encapsulates the same hypocrisy set forth with the rest of the zionist movement. How can one stand for equality of any kind yet still endorse major human rights violations? The feminist-zionist movement (as with many of the aspects of the third wave this image shows so generously) needs to die as it has no place in an inclusive model of feminism that is in fact, anti-zionist.
QUESTION: We’ve talked a lot about stepping outside the boundaries that the state provides us in our own activism. How can we step outside these boundaries in solutions for Palestine?
What The Forgotten-Ism really had me thinking due to both this hypervisibility under this image and the invisibility they face in fighting for justice, Arab people, most particularly Palestinians exist and have existed in this space between hypervisibility and invisibility. They are painted as violent and overly volatile due to this racial mythos and due to this, are often talked over and unheard in most spaces. Because of this Zionist fear mongering targeted on scapegoating Arabs, Palestinians have no voice within most of, if not all of the public domain.
I was raised Jewish and being raised Jewish is constantly being informed that Israel is your true home. Mind you, none of my family was particularly Orthodox, but this was always insisted upon when Palestine was brought up. It took a lot of personal research and discussion to solidify that I wasn’t going to be a Zionist like, a good 70% of my family. I’ve been called anti-semitic, my cousin went as far to liken my anti-zionist beliefs to Hitler. Maybe the shoe fits on the other end, that is on the Israeli government and all of the west for withholding necessary resources to the Palestinian people and killing them in masses. This is something I often struggle with; how could a people go through something as horrific as the Holocaust, then turn around and push another peoples into the same conditions? The entire zionist movement to me is built on hypocrisy.
IMAGE LINK: https://i2.wp.com/www.jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BAzioness-1-e1519752707984.jpg?resize=1280%2C720px&ssl=1
I choose this image mostly because it encapsulates the same hypocrisy set forth with the rest of the zionist movement. How can one stand for equality of any kind yet still endorse major human rights violations? The feminist-zionist movement (as with many of the aspects of the third wave this image shows so generously) needs to die as it has no place in an inclusive model of feminism that is in fact, anti-zionist.
QUESTION: We’ve talked a lot about stepping outside the boundaries that the state provides us in our own activism. How can we step outside these boundaries in solutions for Palestine?
I love love love your inclusion of the words "hypervisiblity" and "invisbility" to describe Arab communities here and overseas. It is so true that there are stereotypes floating around Arabs and Arab Americans that either put them in the forefront of negative news reels about them, or are ignored when the time comes to bring up issues of their struggles. A prime example of both the hypervisibility and invisibility of Arabs is the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The invisibility of Arabs creates a discourse of the Occupation not being as big a deal as it is, and more of a civil conflict than anything else. The hypervisibility of Arabs creates the stereotype of them being terrorists and anti-anything western. It makes it hard for Arabs to get alliship from other countries and promotes the immobilization of them.
ReplyDeleteYour discussion of being encouraged to uphold Zionism as an American Jew I feel really relates to this piece's point of "[t]he emancipation of women in the Arab region" being "... closely linked to the regimes under which we live, regimes which are supported by the USA..."(Forgotten -Ism, ii).
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated your articulation of this phenomenon as a fellow Jew who has stopped going to temple and lost a sense of religious community due to the pressure put on me by my rabbis and other congregants to support the State of Israel and the oppression of the people of Palestine. I often ask the same question you have in your reflection: "How could a people go through something as horrific as the Holocaust, then turn around and push another peoples into the same conditions?" The state of Israel itself is a paradox-- a "homeland" for European Jews displaced by the Holocaust created by displacing Palestinian people,and in response to the discussion question you have posed, I feel that in order to step outside of state boundaries, and in our case community boundaries as well, it is important for us to seek out like-minded Jews though participation in grassroots organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace and the If Not Now movement in an attempt to shift other members of our communities toward support of BDS and away from Israel is a political entity (and perhaps toward acceptance of a free Palestine as a place where our Holy Land happens to exist).
I’m really glad that you brought up the Zionist ideology connection with American imperialism. It’s really important to educate and be educated on America’s role and how we, as Americans, contribute to furthering the agenda of a settler colonialist state. I already knew that money from our taxes go to helping this agenda but I didn’t know around 6 billion dollars go annually to the state of Israel!
ReplyDelete