Palestinian thinker Joseph Massad, professor of politics and the history of modern Arab thought at Columbia University in New York, USA (Al Jazeera)
Palestinian thinker Joseph Massad, professor of politics and the history of modern Arab thought at the prestigious Columbia University in New York City, was recently subjected to a campaign aimed at expelling him from the university, as a female student at Columbia University organized a petition to pressure the university to expel Massad.
It was later revealed that the student had previously worked as a content creator for the Israeli occupation army, and the petition received nearly 80,000 signatures, including important names, making the questions related to who is moving it legitimate questions that need to be answered.
The petition accuses Joseph of supporting and tolerating “terrorism,” and that he refuses to denounce the actions of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). This student then said that she and many of her fellow students feel “unsafe” when they are taught by someone like Joseph who supports the killing of civilians.
These campaigns show the importance of Professor Joseph Massad’s positions as they are built on a strong cognitive foundation in which he demonstrated the connection of the Israeli settler occupation with colonialism and colonialism movements in the Western world.
What does Professor Joseph Massad tell us about the campaign he was subjected to and who was behind it? How did Western universities begin to tighten their grip on academics who support the Palestinian cause?
In the first part of Massad’s interview with Al Jazeera Net, he showed how the Israeli settlement occupation is linked to the Western colonial movement, and compared - on the other hand as well - between the resistance in Palestine and the history of resistance movements in the world, considering that Israel has adopted the ugliest images of Western civilization represented by its racism, superiority and bias. of violence against civilians.
In this second and final part of the dialogue, the academic and writer explains the structure of violence in Israel and its lack of connection to a specific party, and explains how Western universities have begun to clamp down on academics who support the Palestinian cause.
Is the arrival of a right-wing party to power in Israel the reason for what is happening today in Palestine?
There is a consensus in Israel today by all parties to annihilate the Palestinian people in Gaza, and there is a consensus in Israel that this war will be a cruel war.
The differences are about the tactics used, not about the goals of the war. They are about how Israel can promote this war in the media and globally, and how the discussion of the number of Palestinians killed has spoiled the image of Israel in the West. Therefore, the differences are in similar things that are always in Israel’s interest and antagonizing the Palestinian people and their interests. These differences are formal, and are not about the essence of the state’s major goals of preserving the State of Israel in accordance with what was established as a state based on the superiority of the Jewish race and the inferiority of the Palestinian race.
The superiority of the Jewish race and the inferiority of the Palestinian race in particular is a point that the West refuses to touch. Negotiations can take place through the West with Israel on several points regarding the Israeli occupation and its practices (before the Al-Aqsa flood), but it is not possible to negotiate with Western countries on the nature of the State of Israel and its right to Being a racist state based on Jewish racial superiority is unacceptable and non-negotiable, because of their investment in the continuity of this settlement approach.
The scope for negotiation is only about the nature of the Palestinian “reserves” that we can call a “state,” for example, even though this project also no longer exists. In general, the opposition against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel since December 2022 has arisen due to the legal approach followed by Netanyahu, which the Israeli opposition considered to affect the rights of Jews, so demonstrations took place against him throughout the past year.
These demonstrations did not show any sympathy for the Palestinian people, but rather focused on the future of Jewish rights under the Netanyahu government. Hence, the differences revolve around “settlement management” and what rights should be preserved for Jewish settlers in Israel, but there is no real discussion about the status of the Palestinians, and therefore there is no real Israeli opposition. Everyone who talks about the existence of a real Israeli opposition is against Israeli policies. Applied to the Palestinian people, they do not know Israel from the inside, and speak out of ignorance about what is happening at the political level inside Israel.
You criticized "peace initiatives" such as the "Oslo Accords", and you go further by criticizing what you called the "occupation dictionary" that the Arabs repeat. How is that?
I believe that there is a Zionist ideological vocabulary that is constantly used as a neutral vocabulary that Arabs often use, so what is called the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” What is meant by “conflict” here? We have never heard that there is an “Algerian-French conflict,” for example, or a “dispute” between whites and blacks in South Africa. Rather, there is a movement to resist settlement and liberate from colonialism, and these are not conflicts. The conflict is between two neighboring countries disputing over borders, and this is what happens between the Palestinians and Israel. Not a conflict, but a liberation movement from colonialism.
Accordingly, we are faced with Zionist terminology that was introduced by the West, and which the Arabs, unfortunately, repeat without realizing it, are neutral. Accordingly, the term “peace” is an American term that was established by the foreign policy engineer at the time, Henry Kissinger, as a “peace process,” requiring the continuation of the “process.” Without achieving any “peace,” on the basis that there cannot be any negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization except after it recognizes Israel’s right to exist, that is, its right to exist as a Jewish state based on the superiority of the Jewish race.
The PLO’s recognition of Israel necessarily means the Palestinian people lose most of their rights, which is exactly what happened in 1988, which led to the “betrayal” of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and all the betrayals that have been inflicted on it to this day by the Palestinian Authority, which cooperated with the racist regime in Israel, which It coordinates with him to this day to suppress the resistance of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Accordingly, I believe in general that most of these ideas have Zionist roots. For example, we can discern in the “two-state solution” that the word “solution” is Zionist, because the only solution to colonialism is its end, and not by finding alternative “solutions” to it, and also an attempt to Likening what is happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis to a misunderstanding, or based on historical hatred between the two peoples, which can be dismantled by building a consensual discourse between them. What this discourse aims to do is to erase the power relations between the Israeli side as a colonizer and a colonized Palestinian people whose land and homeland were stolen from them. He suffers under the Israeli occupation and racist regime to this day.
The failure of the “two-state solution”, initially proposed by the British colonial Peel Commission in 1937, and formalized by the United Nations a decade later through the support of the 1947 Partition Resolution by the Western imperial powers and the Soviet Union, had a major impact on the future of the settler colony. Zionism in Palestine.
Before this, the Zionist movement had failed to convince the majority of European and American Jews to come to Palestine between 1897 and 1947 (or even since then), especially in light of its failure to acquire more than 6.5% of Palestinian lands during that period, which necessitated devising an arrangement to establish A Jewish settlement colony in parts of Palestine at least, as a result of the difficulty of establishing it on the entire territory of Palestine.
Despite the failure of this solution, on which billions were spent, and which some Arab rulers, some Arab liberals, and the Palestine Liberation Organization after 1988 cling to as a “practical solution,” it is in fact a path to destruction, as we have seen, and it has led to the transformation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which It was a resistance organization that represented the Palestinian people and their aspirations for liberation and independence, to a cooperative and traitorous organization cooperating with the enemy of the Palestinian people. This in itself is an important achievement for Israel, which was constantly searching to find an alternative Palestinian leadership that would speak on behalf of the Palestinian people instead of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
As a result of the recognition by the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League and the United Nations of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole representative of the Palestinian people in 1973 and 1974, Israel chose to deal with the mayors of the West Bank and Gaza Strip who were elected under its supervision in the 1972 elections as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians instead of The Palestine Liberation Organization, and when Israel decided to hold these elections again in 1974, coinciding with the PLO gaining international legitimacy.
The mayors who won the elections were affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, so the Israeli project failed at that time and it went directly to another plan, represented by “village associations” in the Palestinian countryside, which installed some collaborators with Israel over the Palestinians as they are the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Of course, it failed in that and the project failed. He was condemned. The Palestinian people and those who cooperated with this attempt.
Israel took advantage of the time of the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, which was providing some support to the Palestinian people in international institutions and the international community, as well as misunderstanding Yasser Arafat’s position on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the consequences it had in the form of the cessation of all Gulf countries’ financial aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization, including Iraq, which was under siege after 1991.
All of this led the Palestine Liberation Organization to financial and diplomatic bankruptcy during that period. Which prompted it to adopt a weak position at the international level, so that Israel took advantage of this opportunity and stopped trying to find an alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization, and adopted a new approach that required transforming the Palestine Liberation Organization into an alternative to itself, and this is exactly what can be considered the Oslo process for the “two-state solution.” “Which actually began at the Madrid Conference in 1991, but its desired results did not appear until after secret negotiations between Israel and Yasser Arafat and his negotiating team in 1993, transforming the Palestine Liberation Organization into a cooperative and traitorous organization to its people, and no longer representing the Palestinian people. Only then did the PLO gain The Palestinian liberation was recognized by both Israel and the West as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The "two-state solution" also legitimizes Israel, while granting a consolation prize to the Palestine Liberation Organization in the form of a statelet postponed indefinitely. For the Israelis, who wrote the texts of the Oslo Agreement alone and without a partner, the Oslo Agreement was nothing more than a public relations ploy to market the “two-state solution,” while they were preparing for the final solution, which is the “one-state solution,” and Israel does not have a long-term strategy. To "end the conflict" and end the "fighting" or end "racial supremacy" or colonialism, insofar as it works according to immediate, short-term tactics to perpetuate the situation.
Recently, we have witnessed an increase in the pace of Arab normalization with Israel. Could normalization stop as a result of what is happening in Gaza?
There is a danger to the normalizers from the popular reaction that has diminished recently and whose pace has increased recently after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.
I also believe that most of the rulers who are adopting the normalization approach are not in their interest for a Hamas victory. Rather, they are betting on its defeat, which is what the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah hopes for, because a Hamas victory harms them and will harm their interests. However, they are disappointed in Israel and its military performance, which is characterized by a lack of preparedness. Western powers, as they relied on Israel’s ability to protect their thrones from any internal or external threats, and it became clear that Israel could not protect itself without protection from the West, as Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” revealed that Israel had turned into a third world country in one day due to a breakthrough. Hamas, which reached the heart of Israel.
Here lies the irony that military and financial supplies have not been cut off from Israel since the events of October 7. On the other hand, no supplies have reached the resistance. Indeed, no aid has reached the Palestinian people or Hamas in Gaza to ensure the continuation of their resistance. Despite this, we find that the resistance is doing an excellent job. This paradox is important, and I believe that the rulers who seek peace with Israel have realized that Israel is not reliable. Rather, they have realized that they are in a dilemma similar to the United States of America, which found itself involved in Israel’s wars in order to defend it, which makes the United States’ approach unclear. We find the US Secretary of State visiting the region not to stop the war as much as he seeks to prevent it from “extending” to the countries surrounding Israel, which shows the difference between the Israeli strategy and what the American side wants.
You are a victim of the Israeli lobby’s pressure on universities. Does what is happening today in Western universities undermine the myth of “freedom of expression” and “academic freedom” in the West?
Academic freedom is a right guaranteed in American and Western universities, and it is not necessarily freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is guaranteed only in the American Constitution, and applies only to public universities and does not apply to private universities. For example, I study at the prestigious and private Columbia University, and its president assured us The former president and her current president said that we do not have the right to free expression within the university, and that this is not a guaranteed right in private universities, but academic freedom is our right and this is guaranteed despite the presence of many pressures.
In my case, for example, a petition was signed by 80,000 people promoting “genocide against the Palestinian people,” inciting the university to expel me. We did not find a similar petition signed by 80,000 Americans to stop “the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people”!
So this petition, which appeared by a student at Columbia University who worked in the Israeli Defense Forces, and which was signed by billionaires and ambassadors like Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, I do not think that a student at Columbia University had the ability to do such a petition that mobilized all of these people without... Significant external support comes from institutional forces that support Israel.
It is no secret that Israel has been keen to finance campaigns of this kind as an attempt to defeat those who speak critically about Israel.
Western universities today are in great trouble, due to their increasing dependence since the beginnings of neoliberalism on private donations, which have become conditional on following certain policies, which has resulted in an implicit acceptance of them, and not necessarily an official acceptance of them by the universities, which today has led to donors bragging that they are threatening these universities with cutting off... Their donations if these universities continue to allow any voice in defending the Palestinians within them.
It is no secret to anyone that such practices have precedents that began in the 1950s, when any attempt to defend communism or the Soviet Union on university campuses was met with this type of repression. Therefore, academic repression in the United States is an important institution. Only some weak souls in The Arab world believes the liberal propaganda that these academic institutions are liberal and free.
Of course, Western universities still provide an important space for the expression of academic freedom (which is what drives me to stay there, especially in light of the lack of universities that have the ability to support scientific research in the Arab world). In a university like Columbia University, where I work, there is a margin that enables me and people like me to defend The Palestinian issue and humanitarian issues by producing knowledge about the history of colonialism and settlement and about the history of resistance, which is exactly what I do within the university, despite the official and unofficial restrictions implied and unindicated.
I think that the university’s refusal to defend me is in itself a position that indicates this type of complicity with the attack that was perpetrated on me, or at least shows a kind of cowardice, but what is positive is that the university also did not join the chorus of attacks on my right to express myself to any extent. Now, if you compare the university’s position today with what happened 20 years ago in the midst of a similar campaign against me, we find that the president of the university at that time, Lee Bollinger, had joined the chorus of those restricting freedom of expression and restricting everyone who defends Palestine.
But what is surprising is that people like Lee Bollinger are welcomed in the Arab world, as he came to Jordan and was celebrated officially, and by businessmen, after he denounced Edward Said and the boycott campaign against Israel, and after he tried and failed to expel me from the university, as well as Some Egyptian liberals received him as a representative of academic freedom in the world at the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” and he used to make visits to the Arab world by some Arab and Palestinian professors working at Columbia University, who were promoting him among the Arab elites, not caring about what he was doing against everyone. He criticizes Israel.
Therefore, the margin available to us in these universities must be preserved, and academics in American universities must resist this growing approach that suppresses the Palestinian voice, and there is indeed strong resistance, but I do not know if it is sufficient to deter university administration from an approach that is not clearly defined in terms of the oppression that is taking place. Preparing for it today, as well as making decisions about what is allowed to be spoken at the university and what is not.
What is your position on academic boycott? Is it useful or is it a thinly veiled embodiment of Western centrality?
I believe that the boycott movement in general, for more than two decades, has made tangible progress in spreading its opposition to Israel on several cultural and academic levels, if not commercially. This is, of course, important, although in itself it is insufficient, even if it has achieved important progress in popular consciousness.
The problem is that the Western "leftist" popular position ultimately supports the Palestinian people only as a "victim," as it may constantly criticize Israel for violating Palestinian human rights and stealing their lands, but this type of solidarity does not amount to supporting the Palestinian right to " “Resistance,” unless the resistance does not go beyond throwing roses at Israeli tanks, then it will not be criticized by anyone on the Western left, which now stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people as victims.
Western solidarity with Palestine is no different at all from the old Western solidarity with the colonialists, as they criticize the abuse of these peoples as their object (as a victim), but if these peoples take positions of armed resistance, they are described as terrorists, and support the continuation of violence.
Therefore, it can be said that boycott movements are important, because they contribute to exposing the ongoing Israeli violations and crimes against the Palestinians, but they must not be relied upon alone, as there is an urgent need for armed resistance as well to confront the Israeli occupation, which is guaranteed by international law for the colonizer to resist the violent colonizer with military resistance, which he rejects. Most Westerners, including those who support consumer boycotts.
Source: Al Jazeera