Archival Imperialism: An Analysis of Racial Hierarchy in the Six Day War Files by Tamara N. Rayan A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Faculty of Information University of Toronto © Copyright by Tamara N. Rayan 2020 Archival Imperialism: An Analysis of Racial Hierarchy in the Six Day War Files Tamara N. Rayan Master of Information Faculty of Information University of Toronto 2020 Abstract Using a theoretical framework of critical race theory, settler colonialism, and symbolic annihilation, this research investigates how records creators and archivists of the Six Day War Files Collection have constructed their own narrative of the War, thereby legitimizing a racial hierarchy between Palestinians and Israelis and sustaining Israeli imperialism. Chapter One problematizes why there is little written about Palestine from the archival perspective, despite the abundance of scholarship on the colonial power of the archive. Chapter Two analyzes the content of the Collection, investigating how records creators used symbolic annihilation to construct Palestinians as a racialized Other. Chapter Three analyzes the context of the Collection, investigating how archival practices have sustained the colonizer’s representation of the colonized and furthered racial inequality. This thesis offers a novel perspective to the current archival scholarship regarding Palestine, revealing how symbolic annihilation in the archive extends, and is an extension of, systemic annihilation. ii Acknowledgments This thesis is dedicated to my mother and my maternal grandmother for all the sacrifices they made so that I could be living this life as a second generation Palestinian-Canadian. Throughout my research into the Six Day War I often thought about the butterfly effect of decisions that you both have made during your lives that led to me being in a position to produce this thesis. I hope that one day I can say that I have been half as strong and capable as you both. I want to thank my thesis committee for all the support they have shown me over the past two years. Thank you to Dr. Wendy Duff for agreeing to supervise this thesis. Thank you for creating a warm, receptive space for me to see the value in my half-formed thoughts and for pushing me in the right directions without any handholding. Thank you also to Dr. T.L. Cowan, my second reader, for painstakingly going through each line of this thesis with me and for your endless words of encouragement. Thanks to you both I’m a far more confident writer than I ever could have imagined at the start. Finally, I want to thank my friends, work colleagues, mentors, and fellow iSchool students for being my network of support. Thank you for being here alongside of me throughout this journey, for asking questions just to hear me go off about a topic I am passionate about, and for lovingly berating me for taking it upon myself to complete a second master’s degree (with a thesis, no less). Thank you to my loving partner, John, for your patience, your humour, and your encouragement to just slow down. It’s a blessing to have a partner who makes you remember how to feel like a human again and not just a schedule of deadlines. Finally, thank you to Boris the cat, who curled up beside me during many mornings, afternoons, and evenings of writing. iii Statement of Positionality This research is a study of the Israel State Archives and seeks to explore its recordkeeping practices through the critical lens of the settler colonialism that has disenfranchised Palestinians from the region’s documentary heritage over the course of the past 72 years. Palestine is largely understudied within archival scholarship, and in general, academics who choose to specialize in studying Palestine typically see their work vilified as anti-Semitic.1 In the tradition of feminist and critical race theory, which work to dismantle the pretense of neutrality in professional disciplines by placing value on “the knowledge gained through lived experience,”2 I begin this study first and foremost by positioning myself. I am a second generation Canadian of Palestinian heritage. Like many other Palestinian families, in 1948, my maternal grandparents were forced to leave Jaffa under the threat that if they remained, they would be murdered by the approaching Israeli military. When the military arrived in the town, they decreed all the homes to be willfully “abandoned” and to this day their legitimate Palestinian owners have been denied the right to return. My mother’s family were placed in a refugee camp just outside of Ramallah in the West Bank, where my mother and most of her siblings were born and raised in poor conditions until my grandfather could afford a plot of land to build a home on the outskirts of the small village of Al-Bireh. As a result of being raised with this intergenerational trauma while making sense of my own racialized identity within diaspora, I seek to empower Palestine and Palestinians through my work. The parameters of my critique, however, are focused upon Israel’s recordkeeping practices, Zionism as an ideology, and Israel as a state, not Israelis as a people. 1 For a notable example, see Nadia Abu El-Haj and the controversy sparked by the publication of her work Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. 2 Michelle Caswell, “Dusting for Fingerprints: Introducing Feminist Standpoint Appraisal,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3, no. 1 (2019): 1. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................................ iii Statement of Positionality ............................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................................... v Introduction: Race is a Construct, but it is Made Real in the Archive .......................................................................... 1 Background .............................................................................................................................................................. 4 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Outline ..................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter I: Finding Palestine in Archival Literature ..................................................................................................... 11 Archives and Settler Colonialism .......................................................................................................................... 11 Reworking Archives of the Past ............................................................................................................................ 14 Mobilizing Archives as a Site of Resistance .......................................................................................................... 16 Redefining Recordkeeping Practices for the Future .............................................................................................. 18 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 21 Chapter II: Disturbing the Specter of Imperialism Within the Records ...................................................................... 23 Transcripts of the Full Cabinet .............................................................................................................................. 24 Transcripts of the Security Cabinet........................................................................................................................ 29 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 32 Chapter III: History Belongs to Those Who Archive It .............................................................................................. 35 Analysis of Archival Description........................................................................................................................... 36 Analysis of Censorship and Restriction ................................................................................................................. 41 Analysis of Appraisal for Digitization Purposes .................................................................................................... 44 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 47 Conclusion: Mitigating the Bulldozer of History ........................................................................................................ 50 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................................................