Palestinian refugee status is reframed as manufactured and self-inflicted

Evidence

In the West Bank Manji finds Palestinians who mouth ‘the script,’ the line of argument that Israel has occupied Palestine. Recognizing that this claim requires a complicated historical counter-claim, Manji offers the same argument as Chesler does. Palestine really belonged to Jews anyway, and in any event Jews needed a refuge from anti-Semitism. If there are Palestinian refugees, it is only because of the ‘disruptions of war – a conflict initiated by Arab countries that couldn’t accept Israel’s existence in their midst.’ The United Nations has deepened the crisis by acknowledging that the descendants of the originally displaced people are also refugees. Not really refugees to begin with, Palestinians face the additional disadvantage that their fellow Arabs will not help them and they themselves keep refusing reasonable deals. Only Israel has ever been prepared to help Palestinian refugees. Israel, Manji concludes, ‘brings more compassion to “colonization” than its adversaries have ever brought to “liberation.” The Jewish state negotiates tensions openly. That’s the stuff of genuine democracy.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 237 (#expands, via linked claim)

Exile and exilic can be productive for thinking on the secularization of Israel. This is particularly important considering the fact that the result of the idea of “negation of exile” is the exile of the Palestinian people, the denial of its homeland in the name of the biblical promise as justification for the project of colonization. “An ancient time grants to this new time the keys of our doors,” wrote Mahmoud Darwish, and this is the point of departure for the discussion of exile, and of Jewish existence. The voice that may generate the discussion on exile and renew sensitivities of previous generations is the Palestinian. After all, secularization is meaningless if not including its victims. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 376 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Trump’s unabashed labeling of Palestinians as terrorists accompanied abandoning refugee funding — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 537; Palestinian refugees named the 1948 dispossession the nakba; Palestinians are lasting middlemen minorities since return is impossible (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Palestinian refugee status is reframed as an Arab-created refusal crisis, not an Israeli cause #expands (0.93) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 237
• Zionism’s negation of exile caused the Palestinian exile and denial of homeland #complicates (0.78) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 376