The war to erase Palestinians goes from the Middle East to a one person show in NYC
This is personal.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions,” proudly declared Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich last month after the Israeli cabinet approved new Jewish only settlement construction in the West Bank. Smotrich’s plan will result in “maximum territory and minimum Arab population” for Israel--which he boasted was “Zionism at its best.”
This the same Smotrich who in March 2023 –months before the Gaza war began—declared there is “no such thing” as a Palestinian people and “There is no Palestinian history.” While jarring, however, that sentiment is nothing new for Palestinians. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir infamously declared that there is “no such thing as Palestinians.” She then added in an effort to rewrite history, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people…and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”
This dream of “erasing” Palestinians has taken various forms. The most hideous effort now is the horrific genocide in Gaza and plans to remove the two million Palestinians from that enclave. In the West Bank, there is also the Jewish only settlement construction and ongoing efforts to drive Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their homes . In fact, my own Palestinian relatives who live in Battir near Bethlehem now find themselves confronted with an embolden Israeli settler/terrorist movement.
Other recent attempts to erase Palestinians have manifested in well-fundedcampaigns in the United States designed to silence those who champion the humanity of Christian and Muslim Palestinians along with enacting state lawsthat punish “unapproved” criticism of Israeli policy. And there are even efforts to silence Palestinians artists trying to tell their story because the “permission to narrate” as the late Edward Said called it --is a threat to those who desperately want to control the narrative.
What these right-wing actors don’t get is that support for Palestinian humanity is growing faster than they can erase us. Recent polls find that nearly 60% of Americans believe every country in the United Nations should recognize Palestine as a nation—the highest percentage ever. Support for Israel—given Netanyahu’s horrific actions in Gaza—has now dropped to a record low. In fact, 53% of all Americans now view Israel negatively. And a recent Gallup poll found that of people 18 to 34, only nine percent approve of Netnayahu’s actions in Gaza. Yes, just nine percent!
All of this has made the right even more desperate to silence pro-Palestinian voices. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther”—as the NY Times reportedin May—has gone into high gear with the goal being to “dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, along with its support at schools and universities, at progressive organizations and in Congress.”
The Trump regime has embraced the Heritage Foundation’s goals by targeting schools that allowed pro-Palestinian protests. Plus they have arrested and attempted to deport pro-Palestinian activists such as green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi.
And just a few weeks ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would not issue visas to Palestinian officials to prevent them from attending the annual United Nations General Assembly opening in September. Rubio’s official reasons included that he wanted to prevent Palestinian diplomates from asking countries to recognize a Palestinian state. Again, this is all part of the desperate effort to “erase” Palestinians.
Beyond this headline grabbing action, there is another place I’ve seen an effort to erase the Palestinian experience—and that’s in the arts. We saw in March, the Mayor of Miami Beach Steven Meiner threaten to evict a movie theater that operated on City property for daring to show the Oscar winning documentary, “No Other Land" that follows Palestinians in the West Bank as Israeli soldiers and bulldozers tear their homes down. Mayor Meiner claimed the film was “hateful propaganda” --when in reality the issue was it dared to tell a narrative about Palestinians in a human way.
And now I’m seeing first-hand the ugly effort to erase Palestinians in response to a one person play about to open in New York City titled, “Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness.” The show is written and performed by Palestinian actress Hend Ayoub—who I should note is my fiancé which makes this personal.
“Home?” follows Hend’s autobiographical story of being a Palestinian born and raised in Israel--a story not heard in the United States. Plus it’s very timely, given recent polls find that nearly 60 percent of Israelis support the forced expulsion of people like Hend and her family together with all other Christian and Muslim Palestinians from Israel.
The NY Arab American Comedy Festival-- that I co-founded with comedian Maysoon Zayid—is involved in producing this “Home?” When we posted images for the show on the Festival’s Facebook page announcing the upcoming Off-Broadway run, the hate-filled and bigoted responses was unlike anything I’ve seen before in the two decades of our shows.
Sure, in the past, there were ugly comments here or there. But what we’ve seen over the past month has been what appears to be a coordinated effort (or one driven by the algorithm) with waves of people coming to the page to spew vile comments about Palestinians.
Here is a screen grab of just a tiny fraction of the garbage. (Please do NOT fight with these people nor attack them on Facebook- that is what they want.)
Other comments representative of the tsunami of comments over the past few weeks include, “Fuck this terrorist,” “Terrorist alert” and “Fuck you, go back home.” Another wrote, “Just how I want to spend an evening: listening to some Hamas shill ranting about the apartheid, colonialist, racist “Zionist entity.” Many though took aim at the idea of a Palestine: “The real joke? The "Palestinian cause” and “There is no such place as Palestine so there can be no Palestine woman.”
I clicked on the profiles of the authors of some of the worst comments. Many were very real people with active accounts that featured Israeli flags or other pro-Israel comments. Others were clearly right wing, Trump loving bigots. And a few were clearly accounts made to troll people.
I deleted a bevy of comments and blocked countless people because the show is not about inciting people to anger. In fact, as the San Francisco Chronicleput it when reviewing the show during its run in San Francisco, “This Palestinian woman’s solo show insists on hope over hate.” Add to that the show is directed by award-winning director Carey Perloff-who is proudly Jewish.
But with that said, the show does not hold back in sharing the truth about what it’s like to be born and raised in a country where most people don’t want you there. And as Hend told Broadway World, her goal with the show is to invite people to “see a Palestinian beyond labels, beyond what they think they know,” and instead see the humanity.
I’m not naïve. I understand that by showing a human side to Palestinians, Hend’s show is disrupting the narrative of those who want to dehumanize and erase them. But after all the challenges, heartbreak and horrors Palestinians have endured, if these bigots believe we are going to simply be silent and allow them to erase us, they are wrong.
We are no longer asking for the “permission to narrate.” We have demanded it--And we are doing just that!
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