FJP hosts Palestine in Focus panel to ‘historicize’ conflict

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Around 50 people met in Syracuse University’s Kittredge Auditorium for SU Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s “Palestine in Focus” teach-in Friday afternoon. Three faculty speakers presented academic perspectives to “historicize” and contextualize Palestinian perspectives.

The panel — co-sponsored by groups blackatcuse, the Resilient Indigenous Action Collective, Democratizing Knowledge and the Syracuse chapter of Jewish Voices for Palestine — featured faculty panelists Amy Kallander, Sarah Miraglia and Biko Gray. Each speaker delivered their own presentation before opening the floor to an audience Q&A.

Kelly, an SU faculty member who did not give her last name during the panel, began the event by presenting the themes of each panelists’ lectures, which included Palestinian history, “rupturing of time as a form of violence” and Black-Palestinian solidarity.

“Access to education equals responsibility,” Kelly said. “This is only the first step.”

Kelly began the discussion by reciting two passages: one, an excerpt from the New Red Order statement on land acknowledgments and the other a poem, The Deluge and the Tree, by the late Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan — whose work primarily surrounded the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Kelly said she read the excerpts to draw connections between the indigenous histories in Palestine and the United States.

Kelly said she hoped the event would create a “knowledge-making space” on campus for community members to gain more insight into the perspective of Palestinian liberation amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Kallander, a professor in the SU’s History Department, presented first. Kallander noted that she was a white, Jewish woman but said her portion of the teach-in would not reflect her identity. Rather, she said she wanted to analyze Palestine as a “scholar and as a historian.”

Her lecture, which referenced Rashid Khalidi’s “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine,” outlined what she called the underlying “settler-colonial history” of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“(The book) situates today’s Israeli assault on Gaza as part of a longer experience of Israeli warfare against Palestinians,” Kallander said.

Beginning in 1917, Kallander described the over 100-year history of conflicts in Palestine, beginning with the region’s British-Colonial rule following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. She then discussed the Balfour Declaration — a Nov. 2, 1917 British statement which called for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

At the time, Jewish groups in historic Palestine represented less than 10% of its population, she said.

Kallander continued, highlighting the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan — which ended the British mandate and led to the establishment of Israel. She then described the Nakba — the mass displacement of Palestinians during the Arab–Israeli war — and the years of resistance to “colonialism” and the “restricting” of Palestinian rights.

Kallander also emphasized the historical and modern-day resistance efforts of Palestinians, referencing what she called the “three Intifadas”— one beginning in 1987, the next in 2002 and the last being today, she said. Intifada is an Arabic term which directly translates to “shaking off” but often is used to refer to political uprisings.

“In each of these instances, we see the same pattern as in earlier instances of Palestinian organizers engaging in civil disobedience … the Israeli military responds with live ammunition — killing a disproportionate amount of Palestinians,” Kallander said.

The next speaker, Miraglia — an adjunct sociology professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies department — centered her discussion on the Israel-Hamas war, saying it served as a “rupturing of time,” citing several sociological essayists and theories.

In the context of her presentation, Miraglia used the ideas of time “rupturing” and reaching “a zero point in time” to demonstrate how historical narratives usually reflect the perspective of those who hold “power.” She said the perspectives create a “primary prism” through which people perceive the “framework” set by these dominant groups.

She said groups in power will often use specific points in time to hide the historical nuances of the power dynamics involved with settler-colonial regions.

“That relationship between power, place and time all work seamlessly to obscure, to hide, to not acknowledge the long term power relations,” she said.

Miraglia compared the histories of Palestine and the U.S., saying both were ruled by colonialist powers. She cited a Thomas Payne passage in which he called the colonization of America “the cause of all mankind.”

“Genocidal violence perpetrated by the United States … served as a model for violence in Palestine,” Miraglia said. “Both of them are driven by this sort of idea of having a divine right, which is another aspect of this.”

The final presenter, Gray, an assistant professor of religion at SU, drew parallels between the Black American experience and those of Palestinians.

Echoing Miraglia’s talk, Gray said many individuals will often use pivotal moments in Black American history to obscure the “complex and contoured historical narrative” of racism in the U.S.

He said he wanted to remind attendees that, though Black Americans and Palestinians share a similar history of oppression, a Black individual’s decision to support Palestine is not a given but rather a commitment.

Gray then described the Black and Palestinian experience in the context of necropolitics, an academic theory which suggests dominant groups hold the systemic power to choose an individual’s value of life.

Throughout his presentation, Gray referenced a piece by Cameroonian academic and political theorist Achille Mbembe also titled Necropolitics. In the book, Mbembe calls the relationship between Israel and Palestine as the best example of modern-day necropolitics, Gray said.

Gray said Black Americans and Palestinians have historically lived in “Death Worlds,” which he said are “worlds in which your death is not only tolerated, but it is sanctioned,” citing Mbembe’s book.

He also described the police killings of several unarmed Black people in the U.S., such as Michael Brown — an 18-year-old who was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Gray said around a month before his death, Israel had also launched a 50-day attack that killed over 2,000 Palestinians.

“Once you get to the point that the people in power will not simply kill you, they will celebrate that killing — all cops aren’t bad, the IDF are heroes — you ain’t got nothing to lose … we (Black Americans and Palestinians) tried it the nice way,” he said, explaining why he believes some groups may turn to violence in response to oppression.

Concluding his portion of the presentation, Gray urged oppressed individuals to “make life” in the face of violence through artistic expression. He ended by reading an excerpt from “Moving towards Home,” a poem by American activist and essayist June Jordan.

After the panel, moderators opened up the floor to an audience Q&A.

Carol Fadda, an associate English professor involved with SU’s Middle Eastern studies program, urged her fellow attendees to express their varying reasons for attending the teach-in. Fadda was previously a panelist at FJP’s Jan. 29 teach-in session at SUNY ESF.

“We might be here today for different reasons attending this teach-in,” Fadda said. “One thing that’s important to talk about in this space is what brings us together. We’re here to learn, to listen … in a space that continues to erase these voices.”

Another attendee who spoke during the Q&A, Mara Sapon-Shevin — a professor of inclusive education at SU and member of both FJP and JVP, said she came to the panel to support a “meaningful discussion” surrounding the varying perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war.

“The focus should be figuring out how to create as many spaces as possible for productive dialogues among students, among faculty, between students and faculty and between faculty and staff rather than having a punitive response of intimidation,” Sapon-Shevin said.

Sapon-Shevin said she believes the university should facilitate more conversations with faculty regarding how to address Palestine in an academic setting rather than “silencing” voices on campus.

“We need a lot of conversation about what’s the difference between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, and those are very different things,” Sapon-Shevin said. “So many people are confused about them, and that leads to paralysis and silencing rather than productive discussion.”

Throughout the panel, faculty and student attendees expressed their frustration with the university’s response to the conflict, referencing administration’s reaction to a Nov. 9 pro-Palestine protest. After the protest, Provost Gretchen Ritter and Senior Vice President Allen Groves condemned the “reprehensible behavior” of one speaker in a campus-wide emails

During the protest, a speaker criticized the university for allowing a collection of Jewish groups to participate in an event to buy, pack and ship supplies for Israel, adding that the organizations were “complicit in genocide.”

FJP will continue to hold similar events throughout the semester, the next being a rally at the Federal Building in downtown Syracuse on Feb. 14.

“Even if that’s what the world has designated for us. We still can make life. We still do it,” Gray said. “We still do it at universities where certain words can ‘allegedly’ not be said.”