Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-12-2014 12:00 AM The Violence of Representation: The (Un) Narration of Palestine in Public Discursive Space in Canada Peige Desjarlais The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Randa Farah The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Anthropology A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Peige Desjarlais 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Desjarlais, Peige, "The Violence of Representation: The (Un) Narration of Palestine in Public Discursive Space in Canada" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2438. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2438 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE VIOLENCE OF REPRESENTATION: THE (UN) NARRATION OF PALESTINE IN PUBLIC DISCURSIVE SPACE IN CANADA Monograph by Peige Desjarlais Graduate Program in Anthropology A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Peige Desjarlais 2014 Abstract The thesis examines representations of Palestine and Palestinians in Canada by drawing on the historical literature, statements from Canadian officials, media items, and through interviews conducted with Palestinian exiles in London and Toronto. Based on this research, I argue that the colonization of Palestine went, and still goes, hand in hand with a particular narrative construction in North America. I propose that the pervasiveness of Zionist discourse in Canada is sustained by drawing on three main ideas or sources: a long colonial and Orientalist tradition (which sees Arabs and Muslims as the uncivilized and inferior others of Europeans), the instrumentalization of particular Biblical stories, and a narrative of eternal Jewish and Israeli victimhood. These powerful and pervasive narratives have displayed remarkable historical continuity, as they are reproduced in ways which appeal to Canadian national mythologies at given historical moments. Keywords: Palestine-Israel, Palestinians in Canada, discourse, representation, narrative, Orientalism, colonialism, Zionism, nationalism, history ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my great appreciation to all of the Palestinians (and the three non-Palestinians) who invited me into their homes, and took the time to share their stories, experiences and thoughts with me. Your resilience and determination, especially in a country where representations of Palestine and Palestinians are often reductive and de-humanizing, is truly inspiring. I have learned so much from you. This thesis would not have been possible without the support, encouragement, and guidance of my wonderful supervisor Dr. Randa Farah, who has been a mentor to me in every sense of the word. You inspired me to study Anthropology in the first place, and showed me what it truly means to engage in “politically committed and morally engaged anthropology.” I cannot thank you enough for your intellectual guidance and thoughtful critique on this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Adriana Premat for her immensely helpful feedback and commentary over these two years. Lastly, I want to thank my family, friends, the ladies of 789 and Rob for just generally being awesome. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ vii Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 Introduction: Displacing Bodies, Erasing Narratives ..................................................... 1 1.1 Justification and objectives ..................................................................................... 3 1.2 Thesis statement and methodology ......................................................................... 5 1.3 Theoretical framework ............................................................................................ 7 1.4 Chapter summaries................................................................................................ 14 1.5 Writing Palestine: Politically committed and morally engaged anthropology ..... 16 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 19 2 An Historical Examination of Zionism and the Palestinians in Canadian Discourse .. 19 2.1 Palestine in the imperial imagination .................................................................... 20 2.2 Zionism and the Palestinians under the British Mandate...................................... 26 2.3 1948: The destruction of Arab Palestine ............................................................... 31 2.4 Expelled from history: silencing the victims of Zionism...................................... 34 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................... 37 3 ‘A Light upon Nations’: The Israeli ‘Us’ and the Palestinian Other in Canadian Public Discourse ...................................................................................................................... 37 3.1 The great White north: Whiteness, racism, and the making of a settler state on Turtle Island .......................................................................................................... 39 3.2 “Those without lips”: Un-narration in the Canadian public sphere ...................... 43 3.3 The Israeli ‘us’ ...................................................................................................... 56 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 59 iv Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................... 62 4 The ‘Old New Land’: Historicizing the Bible, Claiming Indigeneity and Erasing the Palestinian Past ............................................................................................................ 62 4.1 The Living Stones: Arab Palestine in Canadian churches .................................... 63 4.2 ‘They stole our land, why shouldn’t they steal our culture?’ ............................... 81 4.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 87 Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................... 89 5 ‘The Victims of the Victims’: Hierarchies of Suffering and the ‘New anti-Semitism’ 89 5.1 Displacing suffering: erasing the Nakba with the charge of anti-Semitism ......... 90 5.2 Palestine-Israel in Canadian academic space ...................................................... 102 5.3 Ungrievable lives: race, colonialism, and hierarchies of suffering ..................... 112 6 Conclusion: ‘The Truth is like Water’ ....................................................................... 118 References .................................................................................................................. 124 Appendix A ..................................................................................................................... 140 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................ 141 v List of Figures Figure 1: Poster template submitted by CJPME to the Toronto Transit Commission.......... 113 vi List of Appendices Appendix A: Research and Ethics Board Approval .......... Error! Bookmark not defined. 141 vii 1 Chapter 1 1 Introduction: Displacing Bodies, Erasing Narratives In a 1984 poetry anthology entitled “Victims of a Map” world-renowned Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish asked: … Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air? (Darwish 1984, 13) Darwish, the most well-known and beloved national poet of the Palestinians, was born in 1941 in Birweh, a Palestinian village which was destroyed and depopulated in 1948, the year Israel was established. Until 1970 he wrote poetry from within his homeland, where he was often imprisoned and placed under house arrest by the Israeli authorities. His poetry expresses and asserts Palestinian rootedness in their historical land, their suffering, resistance, and their longing to return. The verses above express in poetic form the Palestinian experience of exile, and of multiple and ongoing violent evictions. The first exile is the Nakba (or catastrophe),