[News] Palestinians ‘Are Not Animals in a Zoo’: On Kanafani and the Need to Redefine the Role of the ‘Victim Intellectual’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestinians-are-not-animals-in-a-zoo-on-kanafani-and-the-need-to-redefine-the-role-of-the-victim-intellectual/>
Palestinians ‘Are Not Animals in a Zoo’: On Kanafani and the Need to
Redefine the Role of the ‘Victim Intellectual’ *By Ramzy Baroud
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud>* - June 29, 2022
------------------------------
Late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. (Photo: File)

*By Ramzy Baroud <https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud>*

*(To the memory of Ghassan Kanafani, an iconic Palestinian leader and
engaged intellectual who was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad on July 8,
1972)*

Years before the United States invaded
<https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/march-2013-us-invasion-iraq-10-years-later?language_content_entity=en>
Iraq in 2003, US media introduced many new characters, promoting them as
‘experts’ who helped ratchet up US propaganda, which ultimately allowed the
US government to secure enough popular support for the war.

Though enthusiasm for war began
<https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/06/03/remembering-iraq>
dwindling in later years, the invasion of Iraq had indeed begun with a
relatively strong popular mandate that allowed US President George W Bush
to claim the role of the liberator of Iraq, the fighter of ‘terrorism’ and
the champion of US global interests. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup
poll
<https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans-support-war-against-iraq.aspx>
conducted on March 24, 2003 – a few days after the invasion – seventy-two
percent of Americans were in favor of the war.

Only now are we beginning to fully appreciate the massive edifice of lies
<https://www.dw.com/en/the-iraq-war-in-the-beginning-was-the-lie/a-43301338>,
deceit and forgery involved in shaping the war narrative, and the sinister
role played by mainstream media in demonizing Iraq and dehumanizing its
people. Future historians will continue with the task of unpacking the war
conspiracy for many years to come.

With that task in mind, it is also important to acknowledge the role played
by Iraq’s own ‘native informants’, as late Palestinian professor Edward
Said would describe
<https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/edwardsaidbio.pdf> them. The
“native informant (is a) willing servant of imperialism”, according to the
influential Palestinian intellectual.

Thanks to the various American invasions and military interventions, these
‘informants’ have grown in number and usefulness to the extent that, in
various western intellectual and media circles, they define what is
erroneously viewed as ‘facts’ concerning most Arab and Muslim countries.
>From Afghanistan, to Iran, to Syria, Palestine, Libya and, of course Iraq,
among others, these ‘experts’ are constantly parroting messages that are
tailored to fit US-western agendas.

These ‘experts’ are often depicted as political dissidents. They are
recruited – whether officially via government-funded think tanks or
otherwise – by western governments to provide a convenient depiction of the
‘realities’ in the Middle East – and elsewhere – as a rational, political
or moral justification for war and various other forms of intervention.

Though this phenomenon is being widely understood – especially as its
dangerous consequences became too apparent in the cases of Iraq and
Afghanistan – another phenomenon rarely receives the needed attention. In
the second scenario, the ‘intellectual’ is not necessarily an ‘informant’,
but a victim, whose message is entirely shaped by his sense of self-pity
and victimhood. In the process of communicating that collective victimhood,
this intellectual does his people a disfavor by presenting them as hapless
and lacking no human agency whatsoever.

Palestine is a case in point.

The Palestine ‘victim intellectual’ is not an intellectual in any classic
definition. Said refers
<https://delphinius56.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/edward-w-said-representations-of-the-intellectual-intellectuals-as-representatives/>
to the intellectual as “an individual endowed with a faculty for
representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude,
philosophy or opinion”.  Gramsci argued
<https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/231299688.pdf> that intellectuals are
“(those) who sustain, modify and alter modes of thinking and behavior of
the masses”. He referred to them as “purveyors of consciousness.” The
‘victim intellectual’ is none of those.

In the case of Palestine, this phenomenon was not accidental. Due to the
limited spaces available to Palestinian thinkers to speak openly and truly
about Israeli crimes and about Palestinian resistance to military
occupation and apartheid, some have strategically chosen to use whatever
available margins to communicate any kind of messaging that could be
nominally accepted by western media and audiences.

In other words, in order for Palestinian intellectuals to be able to
operate within the margins of mainstream western society, or even within
the space allocated by certain pro-Palestinian groups, they can only be
‘allowed to narrate’ as ‘purveyors’ of victimhood. Nothing more.

Those familiar with the Palestinian intellectual discourse in general,
especially following the first major Israeli war
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/04/israel-gaza-hamas-hidden-agenda>
on Gaza in 2008-9, must have noticed how accepted Palestinian narratives
regarding the war rarely deviate from decontextualized and depoliticized
Palestinian victimization. While understanding the depravity of Israel and
the horrendousness of its war crimes is critical, Palestinian voices who
are given a stage to address these crimes are frequently denied the chance
to present their narratives in the form of a strong political or
geopolitical analyses, let alone denounce Israel’s Zionist ideology or
proudly defend Palestinian resistance.

Much has been written about the hypocrisy of the West in handling the
aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine war especially when compared to the
decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestine or the genocidal Israeli wars
in Gaza. But little has been said about the nature of the Ukrainian
messaging if compared to those of Palestinians: the former demanding and
entitled, while the latter mostly passive and bashful.

While top Ukrainian officials often tweet such statements
<https://www.farsnews.ir/en/news/14010305000475/%E2%80%98G-F**k-Yrselves%E2%80%99%27-Ukrainian-Diplma-Tells-Wesern-Officials>
that western officials can “go f**k yourselves”, Palestinian officials are
constantly begging and pleading. The irony is that Ukrainian officials are
attacking the very nations that have supplied them with billions of dollars
of ‘lethal weapons’, while Palestinian officials are careful not to offend
the same nations that support Israel with the very weapons used to kill
Palestinian civilians.

One may argue that Palestinians are tailoring their language to accommodate
whichever political and media spaces that are available to them. This
however hardly explains why many Palestinians, even within ‘friendly’
political and academic environments can only see their people as victims
and nothing else.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. It goes back to the early years of the
Israeli war on the Palestinian people. Palestinian leftist intellectual,
Ghassan Kanafani, like others, was aware of this dichotomy.

Kanafani contributed to the intellectual awareness among various
revolutionary societies in the Global South during a critical era for
national liberation struggles everywhere. He was the posthumous recipient
of the Afro-Asia Writers’ Conference’s Lotus Prize for Literature in 1975,
three years after he was assassinated
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ghassan-Kanafani-the-Palestinian-Revolutionary-Killed-by-Israeli-Intelligence-20170708-0022.html>
by Israel in Beirut, in July 1972.

Like others in his generation, Kanafani was adamant in presenting
Palestinian victimization as part and parcel of a complex political reality
of Israeli military occupation, western colonialism and US-led imperialism.
A famous story <https://newint.org/columns/letters-from/2002/12/01/legacy>
is often told about how he met his wife, Anni, in South Lebanon. When Anni,
a Danish journalist, arrived
<https://newint.org/columns/letters-from/2002/12/01/legacy> to South
Lebanon in 1961, she asked Kanafani if she could visit the Palestinian
refugee camps. “My people are not animals in a zoo,” Kanafani replied,
adding, “You must have a good background about them before you go and
visit.” The same logic can be applied to Gaza, to Sheik Jarrah and Jenin.

The Palestinian struggle cannot be reduced to a conversation about poverty
or the ills of war, but must be expanded to include wider political
contexts that led to the current tragedies in the first place. The role of
the Palestinian intellectual cannot stop at conveying the victimization of
the people of Palestine, leaving the much more consequential – and
intellectually demanding – role of unpacking historical, political and
geopolitical facts to others, some of whom often speak on behalf of
Palestinians.

It is quite uplifting and rewarding to finally see more Palestinian voices
included in the discussion about Palestine. In some cases, Palestinians are
even taking a center stage in these conversations. But for the Palestinian
narrative to be truly relevant, Palestinians must indeed assume the role of
the Gramscian intellectual, as “purveyors of consciousnesses” and abandon
the role of the ‘victim intellectual’ altogether. Indeed, the Palestinian
people are not ‘animals in a zoo’ but a nation with political agency,
capable of articulating, resisting and ultimately winning their freedom, as
part of a much greater fight for justice and freedom throughout the world.


*- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé,
is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and
Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is*
*www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
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