Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism PDF
Preview Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism
Traces of Racial Exception Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought Series editors: Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone This series interrupts standardized discourses involving the Middle East and the Islamicate world by introducing creative and emerging ideas. The incisive works included in this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of vast experiential typologies— such as violence, mourning, vulnerability, tension, and humor— in light of contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate thought. Other titles in this series include: Gilles Deleuze, Postcolonian Theory, and the Philosophy of Limit, Réda Bensmaïa Against Moderate Islam, Farhang Erfani The Qur’an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: From Taha to Nasr, Mohammad Salama Hostage Space of the Contemporary Islamicate World, Dejan Lukic On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution, Arshin Adib- Moghaddam The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman The Writing of Violence in the Middle East, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism, edited by Lucian Stone Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question, by Zahi Zalloua Sorcery, Totem and Jihad, Christopher Wise Orientalism and Imperialism, Andrew Wilcox Revolutionary Bodies, Kristin Soraya Batmanghelichi Plural Maghreb, Abdelkebir Khatibi Traces of Racial Exception Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism Ronit Lentin BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Ronit Lentin, 2018 Ronit Lentin has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa Cover image © Hani Zurob All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-3206-4 ePDF: 978-1-3500-3205-7 eBook: 978-1-3500-3207-1 Series: Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents Series Foreword vi Preface vii Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Tracing Race in the Settler Colony 1 2 Is Israel a Racial State of Exception? 21 3 Unexceptional Exceptionalism: Israeli Settler Colonialism 49 4 Racializing the Israeli Settler Colony 79 5 Beyond Femina Sacra: Gendering Palestine 121 6 Conclusion: Traces of Race and Acts of Decolonization 147 Notes 171 Bibliography 226 Index 259 Series Foreword Poets, artists, theologians, philosophers, and mystics in the Middle East and Islamicate world have been interrogating notions of desire, madness, sensuality, solitude, death, time, space, and so on for centuries, thus constituting an expansive and ever- mutating intellectual landscape. Like all theory and creative outpouring, then, theirs is its own vital constellation—a construction cobbled together from singular visceral experiences, intellectual ruins, novel aesthetic techniques, social- political- ideological detours, and premonitions of a future— built and torn down (partially or in toto), and rebuilt again with slight and severe variations. The horizons shift, and frequently leave those who dare traverse these lands bewildered and vulnerable. Consequently, these thinkers and their visionary ideas largely remain unknown, or worse, mispronounced and misrepresented in the so- called Western world. In the hands of imperialistic frameworks, a select few are deemed worthy of notice and are spoken on behalf of, or rather about. Their ideas are simplified into mere social formulae and empirical scholarly categories. Whereas so-c alled Western philosophers and writers are given full leniency to contemplate the most incisive or abstract ideas, non-W estern thinkers, especially those located in the imagined realms of the Middle East and Islamicate world, are reduced to speaking of purely political histories or monolithic cultural narratives. In other words, they are distorted and contorted to fit within hegemonic paradigms that steal away their more captivating potentials. Contributors to this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of the vast experiential typologies of such regions. Each volume in the series acts as a “suspension” in the sense that the authors will position contemporary thought in an enigmatic new terrain of inquiry, where it will be compelled to confront unforeseen works of critical and creative imagination. These analyses will not only highlight the full range of current intellectual and artistic trends and their benefits for the citizens of these phantom spheres, but also argue that the ideas themselves are borderless, and thus of great relevance to all citizens of the world. Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone Preface We stole the lands of another people, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We expelled 800,000 of the owners of the land, or made them flee; we renamed their villages and urban neighborhoods and settled our own people in them, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We uprooted the trees planted by the owners of the land and planted European conifers to cover the ruins of their depopulated villages, which they are not allowed to settle in and many of which we have made our own, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We massacred the populations of whole villages, tortured their men, raped their women and beat and tortured their children, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We occupied and annexed those parts of the land we had conquered in our “war of independence” that the owners of the land call their Nakba, or catastrophe, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We bombed their cities, demolished their homes, flattened their refugee camps and since 2002, built a 700- kilometers long concrete wall, which we call the separation barrier and the owners of the land call the apartheid wall, to cut off the owners of the land from each other, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We installed hundreds of checkpoints preventing the owners of the land from getting to work, visiting their families, or reaching the hospital to receive medical treatment or to give birth, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We started war after war outside the 1949 armistice borders of our state, making hundreds of thousands homeless, claiming self-d efense, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We put the owners of the land under a military government regime, ruled them with emergency regulations inherited from the British colonizers, enlisted them as collaborators and informers, and controlled their freedom of movement and expression, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We operate a separate military court system to try the owners of the land, imprison thousands of them including women and children, and put hundreds viii Preface in administrative detention without trial, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We build our settlements on their lands and allow our illegal settlers to prevent the owners of the land from herding their flocks, tilling their fields and picking their olives, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We allow Jewish settlers to take over the homes of the owners of the land and to beat their children while on their way to school, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We transferred thousands of Bedouin citizens off their lands and left them in “unrecognized villages” without electricity, water, roads and schools, and demolish these “unrecognized villages” again and again, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We extrajudicially execute the owners of the land when we suspect that their resistance amounts to “terrorist” acts, even after they are “neutralized” and lying defenseless on the ground; we arrest their children in dawn raids, interrogate them without any adults present, and try them in military courts, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We lock up asylum seekers, who we call “infiltrators,” and most of whose cases we never process, in concentration camps away from our towns that they are not permitted to enter, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. We deny the owners of the land the right to remember and commemorate their Nakba and force them to study our history and our writers and poets, but that’s not who we are, we are better than this. You see, we are victims of persecution and Holocaust survivors, and their land had been promised to us by our god, and is thus legally ours, and anyone questioning our right to conquer, settle, expropriate, kill, imprison, shoot, bomb, torture, transfer, and deport is an antisemite or a “self- hating Jew.”1 Acknowledgments This book owes above all to the Suspensions series editors Lucian Stone and Jason Mohaghegh for inviting me to submit a proposal for the series— my sincere thanks to you both, and to Frankie Mace, assistant editor for philosophy at Bloomsbury, for accompanying the project so supportively. The book is the result of my passionate lifelong commitment—a s an anti-Z ionist Israeli Jew who has lived most of her life in the Republic of Ireland— to Palestinian liberation, and of being invested in race critical theory. Two women were indispensable in developing this project: my daughter Alana Lentin, who challenged me to go beyond Eurocentric theorists and read black scholarship and who introduced me to the work of Alexander Weheliye, among others; and my soul sister Nitza Aminov, who read drafts of each chapter and helped me sharpen my thinking and writing. I am also grateful to the Palestinian feminist scholar Nahla Abdo, the Palestinian legal scholar Raef Zreik, the Palestinian- Canadian sociologist Elia Zureik, and the Palestinian- American scholar Steven Salaita, whose work, as well as the writing of the late Patrick Wolfe, have (en)lightened my darkness, and to Elaine Bradley for our endless conversations about Palestine. Finally, I am most grateful to two Palestinian artists who have allowed me to use their work in this book. First, I thank the Palestinian artist Hani Zurob who gave us permission to use his Low quality love for the cover illustration. Hani Zurob was born in the Rafah camp, Gaza, and not being allowed to return to his homeland after a period of residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, now lives and works in France. His work presents Palestine through a personal perspective as well as a conceptual context that transcends borders and geography. Second, my thanks to the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour for allowing me to quote in full her poem “Resist my people.” At the time of writing Dareen Tatour has been under house arrest for two years for posting her poem on Facebook. May she be released before this book is published.
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