On March 26, co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies and Ann Whitney Olin Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University Nadia Abu El-Haj gave a lecture titled “The Impossible Genocidaire: Gaza, the Jewish State, and the Shadow of Auschwitz” as a part of the “South Africa to Gaza: World History and the Politics of Accountability” series. The series is sponsored by the Aydelotte Foundation, the President‘s Fund for Racial Justice, Swarthmore College Libraries, Arabic, art history, Black studies, educational studies, English literature, French & francophone studies, history, the InterCenter, Islamic studies, religion, and sociology and anthropology.
Abu El-Haj received her Bachelor of Arts from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D from Duke University. She taught at the University of Chicago from 1997 to 2002 before joining the faculty at Barnard College, where she has remained since. Abu El-Haj is the author of the book “Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society,” which received the Middle East Studies Association of North America 2002 Albert Hourani Book Award.
Associate Professor of Anthropology Farha Ghannam introduced the event by opening with a moment of silence to “remember the millions of men, women, and children who have been subjected to an unimaginable suffering, and who as we speak are being bombarded and shot by the Israeli government and complicit Western countries, namely the U.S.”
Abu El-Haj started her talk by delving into the recent discussions surrounding anti-Zionist speech, particularly in light of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
“Over the past four months, those of us in the U.S. and Europe have spent a lot of time arguing about the meaning of particular words. A lot of ink has been spent condemning allegedly anti-semitic speech: from the river to the sea, intifada,” she said. “What do those words really mean? What motivates those who chant them in peaceful rallies around the U.S. and in the world?”
Abu El-Haj highlighted the contrast between how closely some words are being watched if they’re seen as anti-semitic, compared to the language used by Israeli officials and military leaders, which are more charged and aren’t given enough attention to.
highlighted the contrast between the scrutiny placed on certain words considered anti-Semitic and the seemingly overlooked rhetoric from Israeli officials and military leaders.
“There is no need to dig beneath these other words to discover what they really mean and what they intend. I quote, ‘They are human animals and will be treated as such.’ In October, a military spokesman, Daniel Hagari said, ‘The emphasis is on damage and not accuracy.’ And Israel’s President Isaac Herzog declared, ‘The entire nation of Gaza is responsible for the attacks. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved,’” she stated.
“A former head of the Captive & Missing Division in the Mossad told an Israeli news anchor, ‘There are no civilians in Gaza over the age of four,’ and then he went on to explain that only those between zero and four deserve humanitarian aid,” Abu El-Haj added. “Such words are not exceptional. This is everyday speech among Israelis. These are words spoken by politicians, military leaders, and journalists across the political spectrum.”
She then proceeded to explain South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), citing alleged violations of the Genocide Convention.
“South Africa’s case charging Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice took them at their word. Israel, they charge, has ‘failed to curb incitement to genocide by its own officials in violation of the convention.’”
Israel’s allies’ reactions to South Africa’s charge concerned Abu El-Haj.
“In response, over 200 members of the United States Congress wrote a joint letter to the US Secretary of State expressing disgust at South Africa’s filing, labeling it ‘grossly unfounded’ and ‘perpetuating false and dangerous allegations against the Jewish state,’” she explained. “Germany declared its rejection of the accusation, stating that ‘the accusation has no basis in fact’ and opposing its ‘political instrumentalization’ in light of the Holocaust.”
Israel’s response, said Abu El-Haj, denied the South African charge, “deeming it ‘outrageous to liken the Jewish State’s military response to the Hamas attacks launched from Gaza to Nazi Germany and the systematic extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust.’”
Abu El-Haj discussed the allegations of genocide against Israel, critiquing Israel’s denial of these charges and emphasizing the ethical and political implications inherent in the language used to dismiss them.
“‘The charge is outrageous, disgusting,’ they deny, repeatedly referring to the Jewish state rather than Israel to show up the idea of accusing the Jewish state of genocide when the very Genocide Convention on which the charges base was drawn up in response to the Final Solution,” she said.
Furthermore, Abu El-Haj reflected on the dehumanization of Palestinians, asserting that it is through this dehumanization that acts of slaughter can persist indefinitely. In questioning the notion of a “Jewish genocide,” Abu El-Haj drew parallels to historical events like the Haitian Revolution.
“In his book, ‘Silencing the Past,’” Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues, ‘When reality does not come to coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings devise formula to address the unthinkable and bring it back within the realm acceptable discourse.’”
Additionally, Abu El-Haj reflected on the intertwining narratives of the Holocaust and the Nakba in Israeli and Palestinian history, stressing the urgent need to reconcile these competing narratives for a better understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“There’s a foundational asymmetry here. The Nakba is the foundational tragedy for the cause for Palestinian nationalism and the Palestinian people. The Holocaust is a foundational narrative, the political and moral foundation that has become a central hegemonic narrative of the entire West. In short, one is a tragedy of a particular people. The other is a lesson for humanity,” she said. “The Holocaust imaginaries did not simply emerge once and for all out of the Second World War force or the ratifying of the Geneva Convention in 1949. The Holocaust is not just a singular event, but an incomparable and foundational one developed over the next few decades.”
Abu El-Haj then discussed the role of survivors and witnesses in shaping historical narratives, particularly in the aftermath of events like the Holocaust and the Eichmann trial, stating, “The figure of the survivor and the survivor as witness to wars was also born on that traditional stage. The final decades of the twentieth century, this witness was bearing witness to absolute radical evil. The trial was less about the man himself, who was guilty prima facie, than it was a history lesson.”
Abu El-Haj continued to navigate the difficulty of discussing genocide allegations against Israel, finding it complex due to the sanctification of the Holocaust, notably Auschwitz, in Western discourse.
“The Halo for sanctification is words, that is, Auschwitz haunts any attempt in the Euro-American world to consider whether or not in its war on Gaza, Israel or the Jewish state is committing genocide,” she explained. “This was the ground that makes it impossible to hear the word genocide.
Following this, Abu El-Haj presented the facts on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which she said many in the West refuse to acknowledge.
“Over 40,000 people have been killed. An estimated 65,000 tons of bombs have been dropped. Every university has been leveled. Archives and libraries destroyed. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Hundreds of academics, journalists, and physicians, among others have been killed and invested in what looks like a deliberate policy designed to eliminate the educated classes. Children are dying of starvation,” she said. “The North is especially dire but the [Gaza] Strip as a whole is on the edge of famine as the UN warned a few days ago. Medicine and fuel are unavailable. They will die in the months to come. They are starved by the Israeli military that is using famine as a weapon of war, even as it continues to be reported as a humanitarian crisis as if we do not know who is the cause.”
“All of this is unfolding in full view of the world,” she added. “And yet many and especially the political, cultural and economic power brokers in the West refused to acknowledge the scale of the devastation, let alone its intent.”
Abu El-Haj subsequently described how, for those living adjacent to the violence, genocide becomes an ambient presence, a grim reality lurking behind the mundane.
“It is in Jonathan Glazer’s words that genocides become ambient to their lives. I am quoting Namoi Klein again: ‘More than five months into the daily slaughter in Gaza, and with Israel brazenly ignoring the orders of the International Court of Justice, and Western governments gently scolding Israel while shipping it more arms, genocide is becoming ambient once more—at least for those of us fortunate enough to live on the safe sides of the many walls that carve up our world. We face the risk of it grinding on, becoming the soundtrack of modern life.’”
“The ambient noise of this genocide, however, may not be quite the same kind of ambient noise. Hannah Arendt argued it was its bureaucratization, a distancing in language. There was nothing but propaganda in Nazi Germany. It was those kinds of structures and procedures that made the Holocaust possible that enabled evil to unfold through its inherent banality rendering an ambient noise,” she stated.
Alluding to ambient noise, Abu El-Haj explained the role of the media in shaping public perception and framing the narrative surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“There’s a live-streamed genocide,” she said. “On the one hand, the devastation is being live-streamed by Palestinians, journalists, and ordinary citizens who are trying to let the world know what is unfolding on the ground. Palestinians are harnessing new media technologies to do an end-around to press censorship, the absence of foreign reporters and Gaza in order to get images and text testimonies and reports out to the world. But on the other hand, with Palestinians or streaming information in order to alert the world to the horrors, Israeli soldiers are doing so seemingly in celebration of their work of their own brutality?”
Nearing the end of her talk, Abu El-Haj showed the audience a collection of videos on social media, displaying Israelis’ horrific acts of violence against Palestinians. The social media posts included celebrations of bombings, references to violence in a “Shager” pop song, boasts about torturing Palestinian detainees, and a woman laughing about being a Jewish fascist.
“There are thousands of these kinds of images and all sorts of destruction, torture, etc. There’s pleasure in these videos and enjoyment. For all the talk of emotional detachment it apparently takes to kill human beings and destroy other life [it] is worth remembering that is not always necessarily the case. What’s more, this genocide is being performed in the camera, there is a project of self-fashioning here, one for all to see. It is as if these acts and the recordings of these acts are no different than posting of a party, on a date, or on a vacation. This is ordinary life, the banality of evil as it appears in the warzone today.”
Abu El-Haj closed by stressing the importance of creating a space for dialogue about the Gaza conflict that surpasses historical weight.
“If we are to be able to have a conversation about genocide in Gaza, it’s essential to clear space to return once more to a frame within which we can discuss this catastrophe outside of the sanctification condensed in the name Auschwitz and the ethical frame within which its survivors and their descendants,” she concluded.
Visit swarthmorephoenix.com for an exclusive interview with Abu El-Haj conducted after her talk.