I recently reread the book Orientalism from 1978 by Edward W. Said, in an attempt to get a grip on what is currently happening on the international political stage. I hoped to find an answer to the question of why asking for a ceasefire in Gaza is so politically controversial.
We are all familiar with the images of charred Palestinian children’s bodies, of desperate Palestinian men crying for mercy, pulling the dead Palestinian bodies from under the rubble of the destroyed Palestinian residential areas. Of Palestinian mothers who carry their children close to them, to protect them from the bombs and death. We have seen the tears of pleading Palestinian children and the images of Palestinian babies.
I hoped that the late Said could tell me how it is possible that ‘the Palestinian’ is so dehumanized that the Netherlands did not vote for a ceasefire at the UN. And that my country thereby made basic human rights and humanitarian matters such as water, food and a safe escape route inaccessible to the Palestinians. Resulting in (at the time of writing) more than 11,500 people being murdered. Perhaps the Palestinian-American academic could explain to me posthumously what it will take to convince the world that Palestinians, including Palestinian men, are people, and not – in the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – “human beasts”?
The book did indeed provide the desired relief, although Said also left me somewhat bewildered. The demonization of ‘the Arab’, he shows, is centuries old. And what was true in 1978 is even more persistent today.
In the TV program Media storm I recently explained, with the help of a video which had gone viral on X, from what confirmation bias is. The video shows a young Palestinian man talking to a girl of no more than two years old on the street. The text above the tweet reads: “#Hamas terrorist with kidnapped Jewish girl in #Gaza.” One of the editors of the TV show was so shocked by the video that he called it “disgusting.” The editor saw the Arabic-looking boy, the Arabic language, within the context of the renewed violence, confirming his prejudices about Arabs.
„We are a culture of life,” said Frans Timmermans WNL on Sunday about Hamas, after which he dismissed pro-Palestine demonstrators as identifying “with the most radical Palestinian position.” You are either with us, or against us.
Based on (among other things) literature research, Said explains the origins and function of the image of ‘the Arab as barbarian’. In his work, Said goes back to the ancient Greeks and classical European works to demonstrate how centuries of portrayal of the Arab have made the enemy.
He lists a staggering number of examples. The 1975 Arabic course book for graduate students at Columbia College notes that “every second word in this language involves violence, and the Arab spirit as ‘reflected’ by that language is bombastic in its entirety.” Said gets an article in the magazine Harper’s which states that “Arabs are essentially murderers and that violence and deceit are ingrained in the Arab genes,” as well as a book claiming that hatred of Jews is the only thing uniting the people of the Middle East. Moreover, the Arabs, the Muslims or the Orientals are a monolithic and unchanging people. Everything that was said about the Middle East in 1978 still applies today.
In the aforementioned video on X I did not see a terrorist, but a young man who could have been my brother or cousin. His body language tells me he thinks the girl is cute. The editors had the video translated, and guess what? The boy indeed chats pleasantly with the girl, asks if she is Arab and where her parents are. The ordinary Palestinian young man turns out to be nothing more than that: an ordinary Palestinian young man, who does not ask for a ‘culture of life’, but to simply be able to live.
Hasna El Maroudi is a journalist, columnist and program maker.
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