The Violent “Othering” of Palestinians Has Political Roots

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

In my book, Black Bodies, White Gazes, I interrogate the white gaze, which I describe as a structural and habitual way of racially distorting the world in binary and hierarchical terms, buttressed by ideological, material and institutional power. In that book, I argue for the dismantlement of whiteness and the eradication of the white gaze. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon tells the story of being on a train when he is confronted by a young white boy who says to his white mother, “Look, a Negro!” The white boy says to his mother that he is frightened by Fanon, which is indicative of the white gaze which perceives Fanon’s Black body as monstrous and dangerous. I’ve personally felt the sting of the white gaze.

In this interview, I want to understand what it is like within the Palestinian context to be confronted by Israeli racism. I can only imagine being a Palestinian at a checkpoint and feeling the weight of an anti-Palestinian gaze and a voice that says, “Look, a Palestinian!” To get clarity on this issue, I spoke with Yasmeen Daher, a political philosopher, writer and feminist organizer. Daher taught previously at Bir-Zeit University in Palestine and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute in Canada. She currently resides and works in Berlin. In this exclusive interview, we also discuss issues of grievability, Germany’s guilt vis-à-vis its support of Israel and what real solidarity looks like.

George Yancy: I would like you to speak about the racist discourse and the gazes that violate the integrity of Palestinian embodiment; that is, how Palestinians experience “otherness.” I’m sure that you have felt this.

Yasmeen Daher: In the Palestinian context, racism and otherness are more complex than this. Ethnicity, nationality, religion, class and skin color all play roles in shaping the language of Israeli racism toward Palestinians. The way it is applied is rooted in similar human experiences of slavery, apartheid and colonialism. However, it is important to emphasize that its roots are political. Generally, Palestinians have brown skin, but it’s important to recognize that the largest Jewish ethnic group in Israel today is the Mizrahim, who come from Middle Eastern and North African origins. In other words, they resemble us in terms of appearance. If you were to board a train with Palestinians and Israelis, it would not be easy to identify everyone there, unless there were distinctive religious symbols, such as those indicating Jewish or Christian or Muslim Palestinians.

The political roots of racism against Palestinians are tied to the history of the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel was founded as a settler-colonial project on the land of Palestine. Ontologically, Zionism was based on the negation of the Palestinian person, symbolized in the Nakba (the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland). This negation takes many forms and dimensions, including imprisonment, displacement, land and home confiscation, cultural appropriation, direct killing, destruction of the future, restriction, and many other practices. The history of the Nakba, which has been extensively documented, reveals the power dynamics and control mechanisms employed by Israel to suppress, subjugate and negate Palestinians. The logic behind the checkpoints, which you mentioned in your question, stems from the desire to control, monitor and create an apartheid reality where Palestinians live in a parallel, albeit narrow and distorted world. For instance, Israel builds large, fast highways for settlers while Palestinians are left in a burning box for hours during the scorching summer just to reach their land, a hospital or a workplace. The checkpoint is, of course, a symbol of the master’s “superiority,” demonstrating their physical and material ability to humiliate the Palestinian. A Palestinian might have to wait at a checkpoint for permission from the master, who could be a soldier no older than 20 years old. The logic reproduced in Israel’s actions is a reaffirmation of “sovereignty”: Who owns the house? In all of Israel’s actions since its establishment, its assertion of existence is only realized through its confirmation of sole ownership of the place, space, time and material resources, most importantly the land. The ideas and visions that fuel Palestinian otherness have evolved; they were once based on racism and hatred of the Indigenous population, and in recent decades, this racism has drawn strength from the rhetoric of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments prevalent in Europe and the United States.

Some Israelis have the illusion that they do not live in the Middle East. You might be surprised to learn that similar to the reaction of a white child when encountering Frantz Fanon is one I have encountered, for example, at university or on the street when someone discovered I was Palestinian. They didn’t know this immediately from my appearance though, but often from a direct question like, “Where are you from?” The irony is that I am “from here.” My family has a history that extends 400 years in the Palestinian Galilee. I am always at odds with this question that is directed at endogenous people by those who occupied their lands. In general, many in Israel are surprised when they hear Arabic in their towns, such as Tel Aviv, but how can you live in the Middle East and be surprised to hear Arabic? Racism can make people delusional toward their reality and surroundings, and toward the history and its teachings.

I recently read that “Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people from their homes.” The discourse of “war” is inappropriate here. And while I detest war, what Palestinians are experiencing is genocidal, it is a form of gratuitous violence (from bombings to the obstruction of food, clean water and medical supplies) that seems to render Palestinian people existentially irrelevant, disposable. In Precarious Life, Judith Butler asks, “What makes for a grievable life?” Given the human catastrophe in Gaza, it is clear to me that the State of Israel doesn’t grieve the lives of Palestinians. You would think that more Israelis would understand this as an unacceptable and egregious process given the treatment of Jews under Nazism. What must change in Israel for Palestinian lives to be grievable by the state of Israel? To pose this question places an unfair burden on you as a Palestinian. I understand that. Yet, the dehumanization of Palestinians is inextricably linked to the humanization of Israeli Jews. So, I must ask the question.

The death toll in Gaza as of August 14 has reached 40,000. The destruction, starvation and killing that Gaza is enduring has surpassed imagination, and it’s difficult to bear. Like many other Palestinians, I do not know what needs to change in the world to stop this carnage. Let me first answer your question and then return to the idea of what needs to change.

I would go one step further and claim that the State of Israel does not grieve the lives of its own citizens. It merely uses them as fuel for its upcoming wars and for further violence against Palestinians. The state’s prestige, power and the Zionist project as a whole are more important than the lives of its citizens. If the State of Israel were genuinely concerned with preserving lives, it would naturally choose what any person concerned with human lives would choose — peace and coexistence. The Palestinian Authority accepted this in the 1990s, yet Israel did not honor any of the agreements it signed and committed to, despite the immense concessions made by the Palestinian Authority.

The State of Israel does not grieve the lives of its own citizens. It merely uses them as fuel for its upcoming wars and for further violence against Palestinians.

As you mentioned, Israel does not value any Palestinian life. Palestinian lives hold no worth. Israel was built on the myth of the nonexistence of Palestinians, and every day since the beginning of this century, it has been trying to implement this notion — a land without people to a people without land — by all available means, under the watchful eyes and ears of the entire world. The question of life and the sanctity of life in the context of settler colonialism is a political question. On one hand, you might find a group of Israelis who oppose the killing of Palestinians, but aside from their humanitarian or moral stance on the right to life, can they imagine Palestinians as equal citizens? Do they believe Palestinians deserve full political rights? That they should live freely on their land? This question can be generalized beyond the context of the State of Israel. It is also relevant to the ruling European classes who, while they might think the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic, ignore the clear truth that the Palestinian people have a just political cause that must be resolved. Humanizing Palestinians today means politicizing them, seeing them as beings with political rights, with a political plight and a desire to own their land, means of production and history, with a desire to live in freedom and justice without imprisonment or oppressors. In other words, humanizing Palestinians is linked to recognizing their political and existential rights to their land.

Valuing the life of a Palestinian will happen when their aspirations are valued. This will only occur when Israeli society — since it was your question — acknowledges that there will be no peace as long as the Indigenous people are under occupation and apartheid, and that dismantling the Zionist apparatus — which asserts the need to rule over and subjugate others through a disdainful view of them — is essential. This must happen at the level of political imagination and discourse and at the level of practical and material implementation on the ground.

Human suffering, including the Holocaust you mentioned in your question, teaches us a great deal. But learning from history is not guaranteed, unfortunately. Historical lessons and insights are often lost. For example, one of the crucial historical lessons in humanizing people everywhere is maintaining the balance and tension between the uniqueness of suffering — what peoples or even individuals have lived through as something particular — and the ability, indeed the necessity, to see others also through your own suffering, what is known as comparison.

Israeli Jews have never been able, on a collective level (for example, through their educational system) to recognize the people they oppress and to use the comparison you made in your question to say: “We do not want to do what was done unto us, we do not want to continue being the perpetrators. This should end.” They do not make this comparison in the first place; they remain stuck in the part of the incomparable atrocity, and the moralizing that comes out of this logic is apparent now to all of us: Israel’s army commits a genocide, not only that they do not admit culpability, but they say they are “the most moral army in the world” — a phrase Israel and many Israelis are accustomed to repeat. Why would any army claim morality as part of their conduct? The claim is flawed, but the sentiment of justification takes us into this psyche that in public refuses to compare and anyone who dares draw such necessary comparison between the Jews under Nazism and the Palestinians is antisemitic, but the Israeli propaganda is mired with it. It is there, unfortunately, to justify the killing and not to stop it.

Talk about the important work that you have done in Germany, specifically in Berlin, regarding the Palestinian cause. As with the U.S., Germany has been unconditional in its support of Israel’s military destruction of Gaza. As you know, in the U.S., protests have been brutally suppressed by police. Share what is happening in Germany in terms of the crackdown on free speech and protests that critique the atrocities experienced by Palestinians. How has Germany negatively responded to such efforts? And how do you see Germany’s guilt vis-à-vis the Holocaust as a powerful (though problematic) psychic mechanism through which Germany feels obligated to support Israel despite the latter’s appalling violence to Palestinians?

Humanizing Palestinians today means politicizing them, seeing them as beings with political rights, with a political plight and a desire to own their land, means of production and history

Talking about political activism for Palestine and the Palestinians has never been easy in the German context. It has always been persecuted, threatened and restricted. Since October 2023, the situation has become dire. There have been countless incidents where workers, school and university students, artists, academics, and others have been subjected to political persecution, withdrawal of invitations and awards, closure of platforms, cancellation of performances, dismissals from workplaces, and other actions by official German institutions, as well as academic, artistic and even private institutions. The intensity and frequency of these incidents, which began years ago, have increased, especially since the German Bundestag passed the BDS resolution in 2019, which is a resolution that restricts the freedom of expression [and labels the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as antisemitic].

It is indeed good that Germany, both its government and people, bear responsibility for their past. It is important to remember that Germany’s past with genocide includes more than just the Holocaust; there are other genocides that do not receive the minimum attention in Germany, such as the genocide in Namibia at the beginning of the 20th century, which is completely absent from history books and public opinion. Responsibility toward the past should be truly equal and comprehensive, not selective.

What exactly does Germany’s responsibility mean? This responsibility should involve preventing its participation in any genocide in the world, and actively preventing genocides from happening. Is this what we are witnessing in Palestine? Quite the opposite. Germany uses the pretext of protecting Jews to support a genocide committed by the State of Israel, which it could have prevented from the very beginning.

It is difficult to talk today, especially after the genocide in Gaza, about German guilt. As I said, guilt should encourage one to take responsibility to prevent the recurrence of such crimes altogether — not in your name, nor in the name of anyone else. Your past should not become a tool to enable genocides against different races and nations. The genocide in Palestine today is taking place with the financial and military support and political impunity Germany bestows on Israel.

The term “shame” might be closer to understanding Germany today. Shame makes us run away from our responsibility and project it onto others. This is what is happening in Germany. Shamefully and vulgarly, the pretext of antisemitism is being used to silence voices against war, occupation and apartheid in Palestine in general. Palestinians and their supporters are forced to stand in the dock to defend themselves against a crime they did not commit. Through its shame, Germany projects its past of persecuting Jews onto the Palestinians. The conflict in Palestine is not religious or ethnic; it is a political struggle over land, liberation and a dignified life.

Today in Germany, the term “imported antisemitism” has been normalized, which is absurd and irrational. In Germany, where the greatest crime was committed in the name of antisemitism, other peoples are accused of migrating and bringing with them a homegrown antisemitism. It is not the discourse of the right wing only, but the entire political spectrum. German political strata use the charge of antisemitism to organize its internal affairs regarding migration and immigrants. It is a convenient accusation that is difficult to erase once it sticks to a person. Now, new immigrants, especially those of Arab and Muslim origin, are stigmatized with the charge of antisemitism, despite German statistics indicating that the vast majority (95 percent in 2020) of incidents related to antisemitism are committed by white Germans. In short, new imperial and racist politics are behind the wave of persecution and attacks on the Palestinian community in Germany and those in solidarity with them.

The ruling political class and large parts of the media are trying to take advantage of these demographic changes in German society and wash their history with antisemitism by attaching it to others. The Palestinian people pay the highest price for this shame with their blood, land and future.

I am something of a pessimist when it comes to the full liberation of Black people from the horrors of anti-Black racism. I have articulated some of this in one of my interviews with Black historian Robin D.G. Kelley. Earlier I asked about processes of othering. The way that I see it, Black people appear to be othered by non-Black groups, even those that experience violence. I realize the importance of solidarity, but I’m skeptical of how anti-Blackness often functions as an obstruction to “genuine” forms of solidarity with non-Black groups. You have rightly critiqued white neoliberal feminists, especially regarding their silence when it comes to the mass killings of Palestinians. Speak to how solidarity might help the Palestinian cause. How do you conceive of a form of solidarity that really involves a dynamic sense of political and human sharing?

The unprecedented solidarity movement with Palestine over the past 10 months is a powerful testament to the exposure of the colonial order that governs the world. Palestine stands as a symbol of this colonial violence; it is where epistemicide intersects with ecocide. The obliteration of land, water and food resources parallels the destruction of childhood and the annihilation of the medical system and human lives.

For this reason, I believe that the only viable and meaningful solidarity is one rooted in and pursued through liberation. This is not merely solidarity with the suffering of a people, but a deeper, more transformative solidarity. While both forms of solidarity require varying degrees of sympathy and action, solidarity for and through liberation holds greater potential for politically and ethically transforming the individuals and communities involved. As they become entwined in the pursuit of justice, the boundaries between “me” and “you,” between “us” and “them,” and between “your cause” and “mine” begin to dissolve.

These movements of solidarity invite you to become an integral part of the cause, and through this engagement, you inevitably become an advocate for a multitude of other causes. To participate, to speak out, and to act, is to set in motion a chain of actions, each leading to another.