Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia: Shared hatred?
Though it’s common in many Western countries to blame anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence on tensions in Palestine, these animosities are instead deeply embedded in local histories.
L'Orient Today / By Soulayma MARDAM BEY, 19 November 2023
Pro-Palestinian rally in Brest (Finistère), France. Oct. 28.
(Credit: Fred Tanneau/ AFP)
In Illinois, US, a landlord brutally stabbed two tenants more than a dozen times, resulting in the death of a six-year-old child. His mother survived the attack.
"You Muslims must die," the assailant shouted.
In Pennsylvania, an individual infiltrated a pro-Palestinian demonstration, hurling racist insults while pointing a gun at the gathering from his car.
In California, people vandalized synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.
Meanwhile, in France, a synagogue was defaced with a spray-painted message: "Victory for our brothers in Gaza. Pride." In another town in France, a message was left on an official’s gate: "Out, you bastard Jew." The wall of a French-Turkish cultural association in a different city was marred with the hateful message, "Death to Islam," juxtaposed with a Star of David.
These incidents represent just a fraction of the thousands of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts worldwide since Oct. 7 when Hamas carried out a deadly assault on Israel, which resulted in 1,200 dead, according to Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel unleashed a violent military campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli airtight blockade since 2007. The unrelenting Israeli bombings targeted hospitals, schools and refugee camps alike, compounded by dehumanizing political rhetoric and calls for forced displacement.
On Nov. 2, UN experts declared that the Palestinian people were "at grave risk of genocide."
The war may be confined to the local battleground, but its reverberations are felt globally. Today, as in the past, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict elicits unparalleled emotions and activism, especially in the West.
While not inherently a religious war, the fact that it is unfolding in the holy land of the three monotheistic religions prompts all kinds of civilizational fantasies, ranging from the most apolitical to the most ideological.
There are for instance those who perceive Israel as the front line in a global struggle against Islam. Meanwhile, others view Palestinian resistance to occupation as part of a broader battle against a world system, one with Jews allegedly pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Now, more than ever, the prevailing atmosphere is fertile ground for confusion with labels such as Jew, Israeli, Zionist, conspirator on one side, and Arab, Muslim, Islamist, terrorist on the other.
One consequence of this madness is the ongoing juxtaposition of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, as if one must pick one form of racism to condemn over the other, which results in two conflicting perceptions.
The first attributes the rise in anti-Semitism to "Muslims," while the second implicates "Jews" in the dissemination of Islamophobia.
For some, traditional European anti-Semitism seems to have waned, making way for a form of anti-Jewish hatred rooted in Islamic and/or Arab origins, often endorsed by some on the left under the guise of anti-Zionism. Conversely, another perspective posits that the traditional anti-Semitism has also diminished, only to be supplanted by the rise of Islamophobia.
In both scenarios, the terms "anti-Semitism" and "Islamophobia" are frequently manipulated for political and ideological purposes.
With ‘Jews’ or against ‘Arabs?’
Anti-Semitism has a long history spanning over 2,000 years, reaching its devastating peak with the Holocaust — the extermination of nearly six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during WWII.
Various factors contribute to the persistence of anti-Semitism, with one of the most enduring being the fact that Jews have been long viewed as being a nuisance to the communities in which they live.
Throughout history, Jews have been accused of being a deicidal people, of practicing ritual murder, poisoning wells, causing the plague, plotting against the Tsar to annihilate Christianity, being capitalists or communists, both stateless and cosmopolitan, and serving foreign interests, among other allegations.
In the Muslim world, the conspiratorial dimension of anti-Semitism was virtually nonexistent until the mid-19th century and the emergence of European influence, and later the rise of Zionism.
For centuries, Jews lived under the dhimma regime, a system that grants certain rights and protection to non-Muslims living in Islamic state. This gave them an inferior legal status in exchange for state protection. Christians were also subjected to this condition.
Attitudes toward Jews varied over time, with periods of open hostility or relative openness. But in general, their experience in the Muslim world is incomparable to the systematic persecution they witnessed in Europe.
However, after the Nakba, European anti-Semitism was introduced to the region in the form of conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, blending with Islamic anti-Judaism.
While it is common to depict Muslims as inherently hostile to Jews, the reality is far more nuanced. Several factors, however, contribute to the clever maintenance of this confusion today.
Israel, as a self-proclaimed Jewish state, has itself endorsed the association between Zionist ideology, the policies of ethnic cleansing pursued by its successive governments, and cultural or religious affiliation with Judaism.
What’s more, in many Western countries, including France, there is a current trend to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which not only serves to deny the Nakba but also aims to stifle any criticism of Israel. This inclination is not confined to a portion of the media discourse but is cultivated at the highest levels by governments and within mainstream political currents.
Similarly, in recent years, there have been instances of extremely violent anti-Jewish acts carried out in the name of Islam, often exploiting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a pretext. A poignant example is the 2012 attack on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, where a jihadist murdered a father, his two sons, and a little girl, claiming vengeance for Palestinian children killed by the Israeli occupation.
Meanwhile, in the broader international context shaped by the fight against terrorism, Israel and its supporters globally have vigorously worked to draw a parallel between the transnational jihadist threat and the Palestinian struggle against occupation. This concerted effort aims to delegitimize the latter within the framework of the broader counterterrorism narrative.
Consequently, the current presentation of the fight against anti-Semitism is perceived by many as a call to unite against Arabs and/or Muslims rather than a genuine effort to protect local Jewish communities. It is seen, at times, as an insistence to rally support for Israel within a context of escalating Islamophobia and racism.
In this context, Islamophobia is not understood as the criticism or rejection of Islam, but as hostility toward Muslims regarded as a homogeneous group, whose real or presumed members are reduced to their Islamic identity — sometimes to a mere attribute — from which they are relegated to an irreducible otherness, justifying discrimination against them.
Like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia can be directed at individuals who are not Muslims but are perceived as such. Its origins, however, are more recent compared to those of anti-Semitism.
The discourses fueling Islamophobia are primarily rooted in a colonial continuum that has been reignited by representations of "the other" emerging from the "war on terror" following the events of 9/11.
Soros deemed ‘evil’
Today, while anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are fueled by different rationales, these two forms of discrimination are interconnected and complementary.
For instance, "Jews" are often criticized for allegedly having what others want but lack, and "Muslims" get criticized for not supposedly having what people think they should have.
In the same vein, former US President Donald Trump's tenure has been particularly conducive to these forms of racism, which some mistakenly perceive as paradoxical.
For example, supporters of Trump, who introduced the "travel ban on Muslims," gathered in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting "Jews will not replace us."
In France, despite the current mood to rehabilitate the extreme right, which some believe has purged itself of anti-Semitic residues, the reality is that, over the past decade, the causes it has championed have been fueled in part by anti-Semitic tropes.
These narratives revive the grand Jewish conspiracy, portraying Jews as powerful, manipulative figures seeking to orchestrate the destruction of traditional societies through migratory invasion, the dismantling of the family unit, "gender ideology," compulsory vaccination, and so on.
An illustrative example of the intertwining of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discourse is the attention given to the American billionaire of Hungarian origin and Jewish faith, George Soros. He has become a focal point for nationalists worldwide, who accuse him, among other things, of financing the "great replacement" through his Open Society Foundations.
The persistent dichotomy between these two forms of racism is not just futile but also perilous.
This is exacerbated by the fact that, contrary to surface impressions, both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia transcend specific political affiliations, permeating a diverse array of rhetoric at various levels and intensities.
While the extreme right remains unparalleled in its expression of these prejudices, the confluence of both forms of racism is observable across different spectrums.
In the case of France, for instance, President Emmanuel Macron faced criticism for paying tribute to Marshal Pétain and thrusting the anti-Semitic theorist Charles Maurras back into the spotlight.
Marcon’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also came under fire for anti-Semetic remarks in his book, Le séparatisme islamiste – Manifeste pour laïcité, in which he praises Napoleon’s approach toward Jews, asserting that “some of whom practiced usury and caused unrest and complaints.”
In an effort to draw parallels with his own strategy on “Islamist separatism,” Darmanin later references a letter from the emperor, in which he expressed his desire "to reconcile the beliefs of the Jews with the duties of the French and to make them useful citizens, being resolved to remedy the evil in which many of them indulge to the detriment of our subjects."
As for Western leftists, a notably harmful narrative has gained traction within significant circles. This is exemplified by their interpretations of the Syrian revolution: since 2011, a pervasive discourse has emerged according to which claim that the Mossad was behind the outbreak of the Syrian popular uprising. According to this narrative as well, the Assad regime's crackdown on its opponents is justified as being a battle against imperialism and jihadism.
This representation is laden with insinuations, suggesting an underlying bias that deems it inconceivable for Arabs, particularly Muslims, to aspire to freedom and social justice. According to this perspective, if they do harbor such aspirations, they are either perceived as being influenced by "Jews," or potential jihadists, or a combination of both.
In these circumstances, the victims of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia should ideally unite, especially in Western contexts characterized by the ascent of the extreme right and retreats into cultural identities.
This entails a concerted effort to combat all forms of racism, irrespective of the political or religious beliefs of the victims, even when such prejudice arises within their own "community of belonging."
However, a significant challenge arises: It is nearly impossible to divorce the fight against racism from the complexities of the Palestinian question, as some may wish.
Even if these hatreds are locally brewed and cultivated, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily serving as an amplifier, any anti-racist effort cannot afford to overlook history.
This underscores a major difference between moral anti-racism and political anti-racism.
Moral anti-racism views racism as an individual problem tied to fear of the other and ignorance.
Meanwhile, political anti-racism emphasizes the historical conditions that facilitated its rise and shaped its dimensions. It contends that the repercussions of racism persist in contemporary societies, and that they are inherently structural in nature.
Considering the historical links to the Nakba in the context of European imperialism, its evident colonial dimension, and the influence of European anti-Semitism in the ascent of Zionism, it becomes challenging to envision how the ongoing Palestinian tragedy could disappear through a discourse that romanticizes the friendships between Jews and Muslims (the former being considered as the descendants of Isaac and the latter those of his half brother Ishmael) set to the melodies of Arab-Andalusian music.
For the moment, there seems to be no way out of the quagmire.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
In Illinois, US, a landlord brutally stabbed two tenants more than a dozen times, resulting in the death of a six-year-old child. His mother survived the attack.
"You Muslims must die," the assailant shouted.
In Pennsylvania, an individual infiltrated a pro-Palestinian demonstration, hurling racist insults while pointing a gun at the gathering from his car.
In California, people vandalized synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.
Meanwhile, in France, a synagogue was defaced with a spray-painted message: "Victory for our brothers in Gaza. Pride." In another town in France, a message was left on an official’s gate: "Out, you bastard Jew." The wall of a French-Turkish cultural association in a different city was marred with the hateful message, "Death to Islam," juxtaposed with a Star of David.
These incidents represent just a fraction of the thousands of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts worldwide since Oct. 7 when Hamas carried out a deadly assault on Israel, which resulted in 1,200 dead, according to Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel unleashed a violent military campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli airtight blockade since 2007. The unrelenting Israeli bombings targeted hospitals, schools and refugee camps alike, compounded by dehumanizing political rhetoric and calls for forced displacement.
On Nov. 2, UN experts declared that the Palestinian people were "at grave risk of genocide."
The war may be confined to the local battleground, but its reverberations are felt globally. Today, as in the past, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict elicits unparalleled emotions and activism, especially in the West.
While not inherently a religious war, the fact that it is unfolding in the holy land of the three monotheistic religions prompts all kinds of civilizational fantasies, ranging from the most apolitical to the most ideological.
There are for instance those who perceive Israel as the front line in a global struggle against Islam. Meanwhile, others view Palestinian resistance to occupation as part of a broader battle against a world system, one with Jews allegedly pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Now, more than ever, the prevailing atmosphere is fertile ground for confusion with labels such as Jew, Israeli, Zionist, conspirator on one side, and Arab, Muslim, Islamist, terrorist on the other.
One consequence of this madness is the ongoing juxtaposition of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, as if one must pick one form of racism to condemn over the other, which results in two conflicting perceptions.
The first attributes the rise in anti-Semitism to "Muslims," while the second implicates "Jews" in the dissemination of Islamophobia.
For some, traditional European anti-Semitism seems to have waned, making way for a form of anti-Jewish hatred rooted in Islamic and/or Arab origins, often endorsed by some on the left under the guise of anti-Zionism. Conversely, another perspective posits that the traditional anti-Semitism has also diminished, only to be supplanted by the rise of Islamophobia.
In both scenarios, the terms "anti-Semitism" and "Islamophobia" are frequently manipulated for political and ideological purposes.
With ‘Jews’ or against ‘Arabs?’
Anti-Semitism has a long history spanning over 2,000 years, reaching its devastating peak with the Holocaust — the extermination of nearly six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during WWII.
Various factors contribute to the persistence of anti-Semitism, with one of the most enduring being the fact that Jews have been long viewed as being a nuisance to the communities in which they live.
Throughout history, Jews have been accused of being a deicidal people, of practicing ritual murder, poisoning wells, causing the plague, plotting against the Tsar to annihilate Christianity, being capitalists or communists, both stateless and cosmopolitan, and serving foreign interests, among other allegations.
In the Muslim world, the conspiratorial dimension of anti-Semitism was virtually nonexistent until the mid-19th century and the emergence of European influence, and later the rise of Zionism.
For centuries, Jews lived under the dhimma regime, a system that grants certain rights and protection to non-Muslims living in Islamic state. This gave them an inferior legal status in exchange for state protection. Christians were also subjected to this condition.
Attitudes toward Jews varied over time, with periods of open hostility or relative openness. But in general, their experience in the Muslim world is incomparable to the systematic persecution they witnessed in Europe.
However, after the Nakba, European anti-Semitism was introduced to the region in the form of conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, blending with Islamic anti-Judaism.
While it is common to depict Muslims as inherently hostile to Jews, the reality is far more nuanced. Several factors, however, contribute to the clever maintenance of this confusion today.
Israel, as a self-proclaimed Jewish state, has itself endorsed the association between Zionist ideology, the policies of ethnic cleansing pursued by its successive governments, and cultural or religious affiliation with Judaism.
What’s more, in many Western countries, including France, there is a current trend to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which not only serves to deny the Nakba but also aims to stifle any criticism of Israel. This inclination is not confined to a portion of the media discourse but is cultivated at the highest levels by governments and within mainstream political currents.
Similarly, in recent years, there have been instances of extremely violent anti-Jewish acts carried out in the name of Islam, often exploiting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a pretext. A poignant example is the 2012 attack on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, where a jihadist murdered a father, his two sons, and a little girl, claiming vengeance for Palestinian children killed by the Israeli occupation.
Meanwhile, in the broader international context shaped by the fight against terrorism, Israel and its supporters globally have vigorously worked to draw a parallel between the transnational jihadist threat and the Palestinian struggle against occupation. This concerted effort aims to delegitimize the latter within the framework of the broader counterterrorism narrative.
Consequently, the current presentation of the fight against anti-Semitism is perceived by many as a call to unite against Arabs and/or Muslims rather than a genuine effort to protect local Jewish communities. It is seen, at times, as an insistence to rally support for Israel within a context of escalating Islamophobia and racism.
In this context, Islamophobia is not understood as the criticism or rejection of Islam, but as hostility toward Muslims regarded as a homogeneous group, whose real or presumed members are reduced to their Islamic identity — sometimes to a mere attribute — from which they are relegated to an irreducible otherness, justifying discrimination against them.
Like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia can be directed at individuals who are not Muslims but are perceived as such. Its origins, however, are more recent compared to those of anti-Semitism.
The discourses fueling Islamophobia are primarily rooted in a colonial continuum that has been reignited by representations of "the other" emerging from the "war on terror" following the events of 9/11.
Soros deemed ‘evil’
Today, while anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are fueled by different rationales, these two forms of discrimination are interconnected and complementary.
For instance, "Jews" are often criticized for allegedly having what others want but lack, and "Muslims" get criticized for not supposedly having what people think they should have.
In the same vein, former US President Donald Trump's tenure has been particularly conducive to these forms of racism, which some mistakenly perceive as paradoxical.
For example, supporters of Trump, who introduced the "travel ban on Muslims," gathered in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting "Jews will not replace us."
In France, despite the current mood to rehabilitate the extreme right, which some believe has purged itself of anti-Semitic residues, the reality is that, over the past decade, the causes it has championed have been fueled in part by anti-Semitic tropes.
These narratives revive the grand Jewish conspiracy, portraying Jews as powerful, manipulative figures seeking to orchestrate the destruction of traditional societies through migratory invasion, the dismantling of the family unit, "gender ideology," compulsory vaccination, and so on.
An illustrative example of the intertwining of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discourse is the attention given to the American billionaire of Hungarian origin and Jewish faith, George Soros. He has become a focal point for nationalists worldwide, who accuse him, among other things, of financing the "great replacement" through his Open Society Foundations.
The persistent dichotomy between these two forms of racism is not just futile but also perilous.
This is exacerbated by the fact that, contrary to surface impressions, both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia transcend specific political affiliations, permeating a diverse array of rhetoric at various levels and intensities.
While the extreme right remains unparalleled in its expression of these prejudices, the confluence of both forms of racism is observable across different spectrums.
In the case of France, for instance, President Emmanuel Macron faced criticism for paying tribute to Marshal Pétain and thrusting the anti-Semitic theorist Charles Maurras back into the spotlight.
Marcon’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also came under fire for anti-Semetic remarks in his book, Le séparatisme islamiste – Manifeste pour laïcité, in which he praises Napoleon’s approach toward Jews, asserting that “some of whom practiced usury and caused unrest and complaints.”
In an effort to draw parallels with his own strategy on “Islamist separatism,” Darmanin later references a letter from the emperor, in which he expressed his desire "to reconcile the beliefs of the Jews with the duties of the French and to make them useful citizens, being resolved to remedy the evil in which many of them indulge to the detriment of our subjects."
As for Western leftists, a notably harmful narrative has gained traction within significant circles. This is exemplified by their interpretations of the Syrian revolution: since 2011, a pervasive discourse has emerged according to which claim that the Mossad was behind the outbreak of the Syrian popular uprising. According to this narrative as well, the Assad regime's crackdown on its opponents is justified as being a battle against imperialism and jihadism.
This representation is laden with insinuations, suggesting an underlying bias that deems it inconceivable for Arabs, particularly Muslims, to aspire to freedom and social justice. According to this perspective, if they do harbor such aspirations, they are either perceived as being influenced by "Jews," or potential jihadists, or a combination of both.
In these circumstances, the victims of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia should ideally unite, especially in Western contexts characterized by the ascent of the extreme right and retreats into cultural identities.
This entails a concerted effort to combat all forms of racism, irrespective of the political or religious beliefs of the victims, even when such prejudice arises within their own "community of belonging."
However, a significant challenge arises: It is nearly impossible to divorce the fight against racism from the complexities of the Palestinian question, as some may wish.
Even if these hatreds are locally brewed and cultivated, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily serving as an amplifier, any anti-racist effort cannot afford to overlook history.
This underscores a major difference between moral anti-racism and political anti-racism.
Moral anti-racism views racism as an individual problem tied to fear of the other and ignorance.
Meanwhile, political anti-racism emphasizes the historical conditions that facilitated its rise and shaped its dimensions. It contends that the repercussions of racism persist in contemporary societies, and that they are inherently structural in nature.
Considering the historical links to the Nakba in the context of European imperialism, its evident colonial dimension, and the influence of European anti-Semitism in the ascent of Zionism, it becomes challenging to envision how the ongoing Palestinian tragedy could disappear through a discourse that romanticizes the friendships between Jews and Muslims (the former being considered as the descendants of Isaac and the latter those of his half brother Ishmael) set to the melodies of Arab-Andalusian music.
For the moment, there seems to be no way out of the quagmire.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
Translation by Sahar Ghoussoub.
Despite its chequered history, transitional justice is achievable in Gaza
One particular segment of Palestinian society might just hold the key
JANINE
DI GIOVANNI
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People mourn outside a hospital in Khan Younis following Israeli strikes in Gaza Strip earlier this week. Reuters
With more than 10,000 people dead in Gaza – nearly half of them children – and many Israeli hostages still missing, it is hard to envisage an endgame to the current conflict. What will the landscape of the embattled Gaza Strip look like when the war ends, not just from a political or governance point of view, but from a societal?
How wars end is crucial because it determines how sustainable the future peace will be. Transitional justice is meant to connect the present to a traumatic past. Consider it psychotherapy for countries, allowing societies to rebuild and heal by addressing their past trauma.
It seems counterproductive to think about how transitional justice will look when the Israeli military is still carpet-bombing Gaza, and millions are seeking refuge. However, it is imperative to at least try because this is how people will come together in the future to address the legacies of large-scale human rights violations.
Transitional justice takes several forms: youth initiatives; peace processes; truth and memory; gender justice; institutional reform and criminal justice. However, at the core of transitional justice is prevention. This is a priority for any peace, development or governance.
We can look at past examples of conflicts and what happened when the fighting ended. Argentina, for instance, went through the horrific Dirty War from 1973 to 1984 during which 30,000 people disappeared.
Thousands of citizens – including mothers who wore white headscarves in memory of their lost children – would fill the streets of Buenos Aires to remind people of exactly what had happened. But it was also a reminder of what must never occur again.
An important healing process after this terrible period was the country’s “Never Again” report for the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. It was a crucial piece of Argentina’s Truth Commissions, and a window on dealing with the past.
The aim of transitional justice is to break the cycle of impunity and violence. Studies done by the International Centre for Transitional Justice in the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Morocco and other countries showed how transitional justice can prevent future conflict. But to do this, there must also be policy reform to ensure that it never happens again.
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The aim of transitional justice is to break the cycle of impunity and violence
Germany has also done extensive work on healing and coming to terms with the past. The German word often associated with looking backwards to find answers is “vergangenheitsbewaltigung”, which translates to “struggling to come to terms with the past”. Extensive work has been done in modern Germany to try to understand the Nazi period. How did it happen? Is there collective culpability? By analysing the Holocaust, the belief that by learning from the bleak past, one will not repeat such terrible mistakes.
Perhaps it helps us to look at examples of where justice has not worked. This is a way of illustrating what must be done in current wars, such as in Ukraine and Palestine-Israel.
In Bosnia, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia estimated that between 20,000 to 50,000 women were believed to have been raped during the 1992-1995 war. More than 80 per cent of them were held for long periods of imprisonment.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the UN special rapporteur on human rights at the time, whose research cited a figure of 12,000 victims of sexual violence, concluded that “rape has been used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing”. Yet very few of the rapists were ever presented for trial at The Hague.
I once interviewed a woman whose life had been utterly broken by what happened to her in those camps. And yet she went back to live in her village and had to face her rapists every single day in the streets. Chillingly, she told me that it was she who dropped her eyes in shame, not them.
Another example of a pain that was never healed is Iraq. According to Nadim Houry, in a report on transitional justice for the Brookings Institution think tank, said “Iraq’s failed approach to transitional justice post-2003 illustrates the dangers of tackling the past without addressing the present”.
“Policies that were adopted to address violations committed during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship did not heal, but rather fuelled new cycles of violence,” he added.
MORE FROM JANINE DI GIOVANNI
Sometimes justice can take decades. In El Salvador, which endured a horrific conflict in the 1980s, survivors and families have spent years fighting for recognition. In 2016, El Salvador’s Supreme Court struck down an amnesty law that made it impossible to prosecute those involved in massacres as well as other gross human rights abuses. This meant it was finally possible to investigate crimes that took place decades before, but which were still raw in the survivors’ memories.
The Attorney General’s office, working together with civil society, helped human rights defenders fight for reparations and justice. Miriam Abrego, a victim who was shot twice, is one of these advocates. “The government and others keep telling us to shut up. But me, I won’t shut up. We victims are tired. We want to be recognised as victims. We want to be heard,” she told a UN report.
Looking at Gaza being bombed and millions being made homeless makes me wonder whether any kind of justice will ever emerge. The crimes of both Hamas and the Israeli military will have to be carefully investigated. Yet so many Palestinians have become used to not seeing justice, having endured the misery of the Nakba since 1948.
Perhaps one of the most effective transitional justice tools is engagement with the youth. My last trip to Gaza, in 2021, was spent with young people such as the impressive coding institute, Gaza Sky Geeks. Most probably it is rubble now, but back then it was a clear example of empowerment.
Some of the young people I spoke with there were trying to meet their Israeli counterparts to begin back-channel engagement, to feed into eventual peace processes. This is known as Track 2 and Track 3 diplomacy. Will they be able to rebuild these processes and restore trust after October 7 and the destruction of Gaza?
The sorrow of war is that the same mistakes are endlessly repeated. But cycles of violence can and must be broken. The philosopher George Santayana’s best-known quote is perhaps the clearest illustration of transitional justice in action: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
November 18, 2023
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Janine di Giovanni is the executive director of The Reckoning Project and a visiting fellow at Yale Law School Schell Centre for Human Rights
A lecture on the American Concept of
Terrorism and the Palestinian Issue:
a Legal Perspective
QATAR Published: 19 Nov 2023 -
The Peninsula
On Wednesday, November 15, 2023, the programs of Political Sciences, Critical Security Studies, and Conflict Management and Humanitarian Action in cooperation with the Human Rights Program, organized a lecture entitled: “The American Concept of Terrorism and the Issue of Palestine: A Legal Perspective,” presented by Dr. Wadih Edward Said, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, USA, and was moderated by Dr. Moataz Al-Fajiri, Assistant Professor and Head of the Human Rights Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI).
Dr. Saeed spoke in general about the American concept of terrorism and its dimensions that are related to the Palestine issue.
He also spoke about the stereotypes on which these concepts were built, pointing out that the Palestinian issue, according to American law, does not exist as an issue of human justice and national liberation, but rather as a source of “international terrorism.”
Through this reality, the principles of solidarity and freedom of expression are not protected, and this is a situation that contradicts the fundamental foundations and principles of the Constitution.
The law professor at the University of Colorado also touched on the prevailing intellectual climate in Western countries and its relationship to addressing the physical violations committed by the occupation forces against the Palestinian people, pointing out that there is pressure and self-censorship in various institutions, including academic institutions, on many intellectuals and academics in the issue of showing their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Dr. Saeed highlighted the repercussions of combating terrorism on procedural and criminal justice guarantees and constitutional rights in the United States of America and its international implications, pointing out the problem of classifying “organizations” as terrorist organizations, and how this classification expands in a way that leads to confusion between the concept of terrorism on the one hand and the right to resistance on the other hand.
He also stressed the expansion of the application of these concepts and classifications to include people who have no connection to violent or “terrorist” acts, which directly affects the exercise of basic human rights, especially freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly.
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