I am appalled that there hasn’t been a larger response to Matt Nestler’s recent Wespeaks (“The Public Relations War,” Jan. 30, 2009, Volume CXLV, Number 1 and “Response from Nestler on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Feb. 6, 2009, Volume CXLV, Number 3). I know that people have various opinions about Palestine/Israel, and according to the editors of The Argus, it is “unproductive and embarrassing when people are arguing about the Israel-Palestine conflict,” but Matt Nestler’s depiction of Arabs and Palestinians is racist, colonialist, and should not be tolerated. The discourse that constantly pins Palestinians as terrorists, and Arabs as people who can’t do anything for themselves, needs to be critically engaged and dismantled now.
In his second paragraph, Nestler writes that the U.N. “ignore[s] actual human rights violations degrees worse by any human measure [than Israel’s]. For one example, while hundreds of thousands of innocent black Sudanese in Darfur were being butchered by the Arab government of Omar al-Bashir, this council was castigating Israel for constructing a defensive wall to protect its civilian population from suicide bombers.”
Why does Matt Nestler racialize the conflict in Darfur, but militarize (civilians vs. suicide bombers) the conflict in Israel/Palestine? It seems to me that he wants to emphasize that the wrongdoers in Sudan are Arab, giving an example of “Arab barbarism” at its worse. But, in the case of Israel, they are only defending themselves against suicide bombers. He does not mention that the suicide bombers are Palestinian, because he does not need to. So, all Palestinians get pegged as terrorists, and apartheid (building a wall that divides people) is ignored because it is displayed as not racial, but rather a military tactic, separating people (civilians) from irrational terrorists (suicide bombers).
In another paragraph, Nestler writes that “the Arab Palestinians were indeed not a different people from other Arabs and after World War II, when countries were being carved out of European imperialist mandates, these Arabs were offered a state just like their neighboring Arabs were.” I am interested in the passive voice that Nestler uses in this section. Is there a mention of the Arab Nationalist movement? Is there a mention of religious, and political movements among various Arab groups? No. Arabs are a generic blob of colonized people who happened to be placed in arbitrary countries. This passive voice makes Palestinians seem weak, and unable to control their own future, thus defending later that Palestinians continue to be unable to create a state because they were never meant to have one.
The most troubling part of Matt Nestler’s Wespeak is his final paragraph. That he refutes and draws into question the number of Palestinians killed is not only inhumane, but part of a colonial discourse that I fear will never end. The obsession with separating civilian deaths from “militant” deaths, and condemning affiliates of Hamas as legitimate deaths, is part of the dehumanization process of Palestinians. We still count the numbers of Israeli deaths, even though most of the Israeli deaths in the Gaza War have been military ones. Why do we feel so comfortable dismissing Palestinian deaths because we are not sure who is an “innocent civilian” and who is a “guilty terrorist?” Nestler asks, “when the Israel armed forces drop a pamphlet … on a house letting the people inside know of an imminent bombing and they decide to stay, even calling other family members to come over in order to commit mass suicide, are these people to be considered innocent civilians?” Nestler paints a picture of Palestinians as irrational, death-loving, people, while failing to mention that many Palestinians were too scared to leave their homes because Israel bombed the U.N.-sanctioned shelters. But I am sure that Nestler could find a reason why those people were “guilty” too. It seems, in Nestler’s Wespeak, that being implicated in any aspect of the Gaza War makes a Palestinian guilty; which ultimately would make all Palestinians guilty since the war happened in their own homes. If I follow Nestler’s logic, it seems, although it’s hard to say, we can never be totally safe from the Palestinians, because we will never really know who is innocent and who is guilty.
I am not writing this article with the intent of fighting over facts, or engaging in an argument about justification within Palestine/Israel. Rather, I write this because I think we need to take a strong look at the way that we think about Arabs, specifically Palestinians (which do exist, Nestler … if you don’t believe me, just ask me, because I am one.) Racist discourse is a contagious disease that needs to be stopped, at least on this campus.
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