For the past year, the “On Gaza” speaker series has been highlighting different disregarded issues of the Palestinian people and shedding light on the importance of questioning Western narratives. For a long time, the history of Palestine has been denied and deformed. This tendency has been reinforced since October 7, 2023, with the spread of a popular false narrative refusing to acknowledge historical context leading up to this day.
“Overwriting Palestine: History, Genocide and Denial Today” is the title of the seventh installation of the “On Gaza” speaker series co-sponsored by the Critical Media Lab (CML) and the Research Group on Democracy, Space and Technology (RGDST). On Monday, October 10, students and faculty were invited to come listen to Dr. Ussama Makdisi talk about the importance of acknowledging the active denial and replacement of Palestinian history and the importance of promoting and supporting Palestinian narratives. Dr. Makdisi, is a Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley.
Co-organizer Professor Ipek Türeli emphasized the importance for universities to have an active role in challenging dominant Western narratives. “What has been unfolding before our eyes in Gaza and now in Lebanon on media screens is not an issue that is detached from our campus, nor from our academic communities. Students and faculty demand for events such as the “On Gaza” series which are critical to imagining liberated futures for all of us.”
In the past year the whole world has witnessed the killing of an estimated 43,000 Palestinians, a majority of which are children, women and elderly, and over 2,865 Lebanese people, by the Israeli military. Scholars and media have categorized the ongoing brutal killing of Palestinians as the “first livestreamed genocide in history,” however Dr. Makdisi insisted that facts are not enough. He explained that “Calling history into question helps us understand how colonialism in the name of protecting civilization has been legitimized and what is ethically unbearable becomes morally tolerated.” The lecture he gave provided the answer, shedding light on “the ruthless double standard which underlies Western support of Zionism, with Jewish and Israeli life cherished as part of an alleged enlightened Europe after World War II, while Christian and Muslim Palestinian life and history is devalued.”
Makdisi continued his lecture by discussing the history of Palestine, the rise of Zionism and the systematic work of Western liberal leaders and thinkers for the past hundred years to not only deny Palestinians of their history, but also substitute it with Eurocentric visions and racist portrayals. He emphasized that we should go beyond obvious denial of history, and focus on what it has been substituted for. What is actually chosen to be talked about? And how does this play into the passivity we see around us?
The central issue discussed in the talk was how we approach history, emphasizing the need to recognize the instrumentalization of historical narratives and misinformation in shaping public opinion and influencing the international community’s response to the genocide in Gaza.
“The obvious reality is that long before October 7, there was October 6, and October 5, going all the way back to 1948, and before that 1917, and before that 1897 when European Jewish Zionist nationalists met in Basel to put Herzl’s vision of a Jewish State in motion […] even when they knew that there were people living on that land,” explained Dr. Makdisi.
While the Holocaust was a turning point in solidifying international sympathy to the Zionist cause and led to a massive displacement of European Jews, Dr. Makdisi pointed out that neither the U.S. or Britain allowed for big waves of migrations into their territories. Instead they pushed for European Jewish survivors to settle in Palestine in the name of “decency and humanitarianism.” This led to the 1947 UN partition plan, “which gave the Jewish minority a majority of Palestine.” The Nakba followed as a result of this partition plan, with Zionist militias expelling between 750,000 and one million Palestinians from their homelands and forcing them into refugee status.
He explained in this partition plan western leaders “rationalized the idea that the creation of a Jewish state trumped the suffering of Palestinians, and that the natives of this land were irrational, primitives, and aggressive, because they opposed what Western philosophers and politicians thought of as a fundamentally decent and good thing.” Before adding that for the next 60 to 70 years the “consistent denial of the Palestinian relation to Palestinian land and the substitution of Palestinian history with a different narrative had profoundly corrosive moral, political and ethical effects.”
Dr. Makdisi concluded his presentation by highlighting three dominant dogmas. The first is that, in the liberal West, questioning Israel as a Jewish state — regardless of its actions or history — is proscribed, as it challenges the West’s self-perception as having moved beyond its antisemitic past. The second is the philo-Zionist view of Israel as an extension of an idealized West. The third dogma is that Palestinians are increasingly erased—not only stripped of historical context but also depicted as incompatible with Western humanism. Except when they are considered “negative value” as expressed by Palestinian scholar Edward Said, and any attempt to challenge this narrative is framed as violent or antisemitic.
The lecture was aimed at helping us understand the “self-righteous morality” that has been widespread since October 7, 2023. Makdisi highlighted how despite the clear evidence of genocide most Western leaders and politicians are reluctant to acknowledge this history and condemn Israel’s genocidal actions.
Dr. Diana Allan, associate professor in Anthropology at the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill and co-founder of the Critical Media Lab, told the Daily that “Ussama Makdisi’s scholarship has done so much to illuminate the richness of Palestinian civilization in the multireligious Ottoman Mashriqi region prior to the Nakba, and to trace how the historical arc of Zionism — a European solution to a European problem — began in racist ignorance and erasure of that world, and bends now toward its complete destruction.” She added that “his talk was a rigorously detailed reminder of the devastating cost of mainstream anti-Palestinian colonial ideology, which our governments and institutions continue to uphold.”
Another point Dr. Makdisi touched upon was the crucial role of students in the creation of new narratives. “The students in particular who have not been indoctrinated in the same way into this liberal language and narrative […] who are empathizing with people that they can see suffering, and are not overwriting that suffering with a completely ideological narrative, are outraged. And the students represent the future,” he told the audience.
Will Roberts, co-organiser alongside Professor Türeli, wrote to the Daily saying that “the importance of Dr. Makdisi’s talk — and of the “On Gaza” series in general — is that there is far too little basic truth-telling in the academy about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” He denounced the McGill administration for making “the University into a space hostile to basic public scholarship and truth-telling, stoking people’s fears and inciting paranoia.” One example of this hostility was the vandalization of posters promoting Dr. Makdisi’s talk, even during the event itself.
“It is so clear, once you know some history, that racism, apartheid, [and] the weaponization of charges of antisemitism will not succeed in making Palestinians disappear as people, nor stop them or their allies around the world of all faiths from fighting and advocating for liberation,” Dr. Makdisi concluded. “But until that future is achieved each of us has a fundamental choice to make. Each of us has to decide on which side of history we want to stand.”
The livestream of the event is available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/live/ORq2yUC1dd0. You can follow the Critical Media Lab on social media to stay updated with their upcoming events.