theory

The passage that stands out the most to me from chapter 1:

To practice a politics of appeal is to utilize all the tools made available by the institution, “the master’s tools,” often haplessly, though sometimes with moderate success. And always in line with the institution’s logic. Not only have we been taught to “ignore our differences” and indulge “in the pathetic pretense” that they do not exist, but also to mimic an impossibly congruous, mythical creature—the innocent civilian—in hopes to be acquitted of the crime of being Palestinian. Now and then, every once in a while, the judge—the thief! the burglar!—might decide an execution is bad optics or that a robbery does not justify the headache. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Though rare, such a deviance is bound to happen.† However, the day the judge sets the court on fire is the day “the donkey goes up the minaret.”‡

But then again we have seen stranger things than a donkey braying the call to prayer. We have seen a nation punished for another nation’s genocide. And we have seen God employed as a real-estate agent, bestowing Jerusalem houses to Brooklynites.18 So nothing is impossible. It might be true then: if we trim our bushy eyebrows and extract our canine teeth, if we pluck the thorny and offensive from our lexicon, if we renounce the Quran and its boisterous Arabic, and if we would only leave those rocks and planes alone, we will be set free. Free to be depicted in documentaries and plastered on newspapers. Free to be grieved. To speak of Palestine, from Palestine, from Palm Springs, from Prichsenstadt. From podiums and pulpits (never from minbars, of course). Free to pronounce our Ps at last.

APPEALING TO THE MORAL SENSE of the people who are oppressing us is not the nucleus of the politics of appeal; rather, it is one facet among others. One that some would argue was once historically necessary. Other tactics include ingratiating oneself with traditional and nontraditional structures of power, exploiting certain social and political phenomena, or appealing to socioeconomic interests. Etcetera. One tactic I find myself using often is reminding US taxpayers that the Zionist regime receives an annual gift of billions of their dollars in the form of military aid. Emphasizing the subordinate clause, that the weapons used to subjugate Palestinians are American-made, is a sad attempt at refocusing the issue or beautifying my rationale: most Americans might not think much of Palestinians, but their money is always on their mind.

The list of tactics goes on. Appealing to authority, emotion, purity: “Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says ...” † “Imagine if this Palestinian kid was your child ...” “No true Jew would support Israel ...” Intersectionality: highlighting police exchange programs, cyber warfare, climate change, the arms trade, “tested on Palestinians, used in Kashmir,” “there are Christians in Gaza,” and so on. Diplomatic maneuvers: sending delegations of children to speak to politicians, talking about your “Israeli friends” on international platforms, anti-antisemitism disclaimers before every speech, “security coordination,” peace accords. And one should not forget how the politics of appeal has shaped cultureand knowledge-production: for every radical work of literature, there are several more Palestine-related books with children, ragamuffin and smiling, on the cover, no matter the specific topic of the book; for every unabashed, unfiltered film, there are several more desperately persuasive documentaries that border on “trauma porn” and movies whose protagonist is a docile, doe-eyed young girl. Some of these tactics are effective to an impressive degree, others not so much, and all are (almost) always applied sincerely.

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The tactics and strategies, or, more frankly, the attitudes that I am mostly interested in and engrossed by are those that rely on “humanization” (or: defanging) and what I will refer to as miraculous epiphanies. The latter, in short, are characterized by an obsessive curation of “reliable narrators,” whose testimonies are unthreatening, authoritative, or impartial. To illustrate: favoring Jewish and Israeli sources (books, human rights organizations, rabbis, historians, ex-soldiers, soldiers, cops, government officials, political analysts) over Palestinian sources, not based on the content of their contributions but on an identitarian basis, a choice rooted in the farcical, though deep-seated notion that the former are somehow more credible, more reliable. As if they are unbiased bystanders, as if they have no horse in the race. As for humanization, which I discuss in the following pages, one example is the fine, often mandatory art of making hagiographies for the living and the dead, to manufacture for them a solemn reverence, a remedy to the profanity of their perceived affiliations. Simply put, the perplexing demand to make humans out of humans.