“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth” (Orwell, 1984).
It has now been over 17 months since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, and yet life outside of Gaza continues undisturbed. We are witnessing a genocide unfold before our very eyes and yet the tactics of the Zionist narrative have partially succeeded in reframing genocide as an act of “self-defense”, effectively aiming at erasing Palestinian history from public consciousness, at erasing history from Palestinian history. One wonders: how can a narrative built on falsehoods come to be accepted as truth? “How is it that, as has been the case for much of this century, the premises on which Western support for Israel is based are still maintained, even though the reality, the facts, cannot possibly bear these premises out?” (Said, 1984).
To resist the erasure of the past, the tactics of hegemonic Zionist methodologies must be critically scrutinized. This panel will address the historical dimension of the Palestinian struggle, drawing on Ghassan Kanafani’s analysis of the 1936–1939 Palestinian revolt, with the aim of re-contextualizing the current genocide as part of a settler colonial project that predates October 7, 2023. The panel will then examine the testimonial tactics employed by complicit media outlets in distorting evidence to serve the Zionist narrative and argue for different strategies in deconstructing the correspondent narrative that has been dominant for decades in order to make critique possible. The discussion will conclude by focusing on the role of academia, philosophy, and theorizing in reinforcing the perspectives of the oppressor over those of the oppressed, and in promoting a deceptive ideal of impartiality within intellectual spaces. What we may say or write now cannot itself stop the genocide. However, what we can at least do – what we should at least do – is to ensure that we do not lose sight of what has happened and is still happening. We should make sure that the world never forgets that history is not falsified and atrocities are not normalized.