The emails we are forced to send

It's been 9 months into this genocide yet we are still being gaslit

It is far from being a true problem in the grand scheme of things, but I am sure many of you will identify with me when I say how tired I am of being gaslit about the genocide in Palestine. It is especially galling when a combination of arrogance and ignorance is brandished; "gotcha” statements that reveal that those who make them are nothing but stenographers for the Zionist regime. That this often comes from liberals who make sure to acknowledge country and get everyone’s pronouns right lays bare the thin veneer of their progressiveness and displays their investment in propounding the mythologies that the West has told itself for centuries and through which racial-colonialism has, and continues to be, propagated. That this is wrapped up in supposed care for Jews is especially desultory given the extent of Israel’s responsibility for antisemitism, in addition to racist imperialism, around the world.

And so, on a Friday evening I was forced to write the email below. I don’t need to tell you what I was responding to because you have heard it all before.

Have a good weekend if you can!

---

Dear all,

The problem with obfuscatory positions of the kind expressed in Alexie’s email is that they play with language to manipulate our perception of the problem of colonialism. Such obfuscatory arguments have a real material consequence in Gaza as they create, unwittingly or ideologically, justification for the genocide and legitimate the heinous violence being carried out in disproportionate response to Hamas’s attacks. They also have a reverberation on Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims among our student and staff community who become tarred with the brush of ‘terrorism’ by association.

What does ‘wiping Israel from the map’ mean?

And before going further I wish to remind everyone that I am writing his from my informed position, not only as a scholar of race and colonialism, but as someone who was born in so-called Tel Aviv because my family was forced to flee to Palestine because of the Nazi Holocaust which, as the Hamas Charter of 2017 actually states, is due to ‘anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews [which] are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history.’

I thus have an intimate and scholarly knowledge of Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism.

To come back to the inflammatory statement ‘wiping Israel from the map.’ Just as Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa (albeit the latter retaining the name) were ‘wiped from the map’, so too Israel in its current form – a state based on racial-nationalism and white Jewish supremacy enshrined in law  – will one day cease to exist because it is simply untenable for such an entity to continue to be the source, not only of genocidal settler colonialism going back over 76 years against the people of Palestine, but also as a nefarious influence across the world (on this I invite you to peruse just one example) and antisemitism (see Israel’s admiration for antisemitic and racist parties) to not mention the disturbing antisemitic beatings of Chasidim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) by Israeli police and its eugenicist policies towards Ethiopian and Yemeni Jews (in relation to this latter case my own family member, Chaim Sheba, was a senior doctor who experimented on Arab-Jewish children. The Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv is named after him).

Several other allegations made in the email reveal a failure to follow the most up-to-date information and an uninformed replication of Israeli government propaganda. Here are a few links of note for everyone’s benefit.

The Times: Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?

Israeli Channel N12 reports on the extent of ‘friendly fire’ responsible for deaths on October 7 (use Google translate)

BBC: Hamas accepts ceasefire proposal

I will refrain from prolonging this further and will not enter into a debate but I wish to make to clear that if this event is not conducted in a manner that is free from Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism, or any other form of racism, I will not participate and will advise everyone else I care about not to either.

Alana