“Your work doesn’t look good in this political context. If someone asks me about your work, I won’t say anything positive about it. You need to think about how you are becoming a liability to me and to the institution… It is best to keep your head down and remain silent.”
These are the words of a colleague. The political context he was referring to was the harassment and attacks many of us faced for publicly criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza and highlighting the long history of Palestinian suffering that preceded the October 7 attack. . He then reminded me of the importance of being “nuanced and balanced” and recognizing the emotions and feelings of “both sides.”
“Nuance” is an interesting word that I’ve been hearing a lot over the past 80 days. Recently, I received a request from a European media outlet, seeking to commission a “nuanced” article explaining “what Hamas really is.”
I also heard about the so-called “lack of nuance” that independent presidential candidate and former Harvard professor Cornel West identified in the letter expressing solidarity with Palestine published by Harvard students a few days after the attack of October 7.
In this war against Gaza, we have seen many weapons deployed against the Palestinian population. However, the call for “nuance” appeared to be the most improbable. But what does it mean to be nuanced in a time of extreme Palestinian suffering?
From the perspective of those who use the word as a weapon, this means that the history and context of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship cannot be recalled. This of course results in the suppression of all forms of public criticism of the actions of the Israeli state.
Sociologist Muhannad Ayyash describes this as a form of toxification of any perspective rooted in the aspirations of the Palestinian people and their lived experience of occupation and siege as invalid, irrational, disruptive, or simply “too nuanced” for debate. respectable on Palestine-Israel policy.
Accusations of “lack of nuance” often turn into accusations of anti-Semitism. Harvard students who signed the “no nuance” solidarity statement immediately became the target of a doxing campaign. A truck equipped with digital billboards, funded by the conservative watchdog Accuracy in Media, was seen circling Harvard Square, displaying students’ photos and names and labeling them “Harvard’s top anti-Semites.”
They also faced pressure from professors and donors. Wall Street executives “demanded a list” of students to “prohibit their employment” and a prestigious law firm rescinded job offers for some students.
But while the students were accused of supporting a terrorist group and their violence, they were actually targeted for insisting that the events of October 7 did not occur in a vacuum and that the history of Palestine and Israel did not start there. day. Rather, according to the statement, it is a consequence of nearly two decades of siege of Gaza and 75 years of structural violence inflicted by the Israeli state on Palestinians, which includes airstrikes, land seizures, arbitrary detentions, checkpoints and targeted killings.
When Columbia University students issued a statement equally “unnuanced” and uncompromising in their support of the Palestinians, they too were stunned. The statement said that the “weight of responsibility” for the violence and its human cost rests “with the extremist Israeli government and other Western governments, including the US government, which finance and strongly support Israeli aggression, l ‘Apartheid and Settler Colonization’.
He added that the problem in question was not the timing of the attack but its “root causes and… the Israeli occupation and deprivation of human rights, including the lack of respect for legitimate law of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
In addition to allowing their students to be harassed and harassed for their pro-Palestinian views, universities have also censored academics and public figures deemed “unnuanced” and therefore “disruptive.”
The University of Vermont has canceled a public lecture on “the representation and misrepresentation of Palestinians in the United States” by renowned Palestinian poet and journalist Mohammed el-Kurd, citing “security concerns.”
Liverpool’s Hope University has canceled a lecture by British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, also citing “security” concerns. Shlaim’s lecture was intended to be “critical of the formation of the State of Israel.”
Arizona State University has canceled a speech by Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. The university spokesperson insinuated that the event was not organized in a way to minimize “disruption to academic and other activities on campus.”
Institutions including Brandeis, Columbia, George Washington, and Rutgers have also suspended their respective chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), citing violations of a wide range of university policies, including hosting events that were “disruptive.” lessons.
University leaders have also been keen to control how their teachers and students talk about Israel-Palestine – often advising a middle ground. The University of Exeter has published ‘general advice’ which first highlights Hamas’ status as a terrorist organization banned under UK law. Subsequently, he advises staff and students to be “inclusive” in the way they comment on social media and to be aware of the feelings of the “other” side, adding that “in the absence nuance or context, comments often don’t help and can create more division, pain and hatred.
At other universities, faculty members and administrators have sought to demonstrate how student activism can be “misinformed” and create a polarized campus environment “lacking sophistication and nuance.”
While claiming to be “sophisticated,” such uses of “nuance” actually seek to obscure history and the reality on the ground in Palestine. They advocate a narrative that overlooks the structures and institutions of violence, oppression, subjugation and erasure that have marked Palestinian lives since the Nakba of 1948. Instead, what is happening in Palestine and in Israel is described as a conflict between two seemingly equal countries. parties competing for the same ground.
As one proponent of this narrative recently wrote in The Nation: “The intellectual poverty that would reduce human history to a battle between the oppressed and the oppressors is also just plain lazy. »
But there is nothing “lazy” about knowing and emphasizing historical circumstances and context. Moreover, recognizing the long history of Palestinian suffering that precedes and exceeds the events of the day does not preclude mourning the civilian deaths in Israel following the Hamas attack on October 7.
A word meant to indicate a subtle difference in nuance or meaning from what seems obvious has become an important weapon in this war that seeks to distract from the structures and institutions of violence and oppression that Palestinians face. .
Within academia, “nuance” has been used as a weapon to target those who seek to draw public attention to the plight of the Palestinians and demand that a different nuance or meaning be assigned to what is being said. is seen by many as a genocidal military attack by the oppressor against the Palestinian people. oppressed.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
