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Call for Papers for the Special Issue “Positioning, Militancy and Public engagement”

Journal: Public Anthropologist, https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/puan-overview.xml

Guest editor: Angela Biscaldi (University of Milan)

Format: We welcome both research articles (between 6000 and 9000 words) and shorter essays (between 3000 and 5000 words).

Abstracts submission: Please send your abstract to angela.biscaldi@unimi.it by September 9, 2024.

Full papers submission: If your abstract is accepted, you will be asked to submit your full paper by January 27, 2025.

Papers will be submitted through Editorial Manager:

https://www.editorialmanager.com/puan

Instructions for authors: https://brill.com/fileasset/downloads_products/Author_Instructions/PUAN.pdf

Thematic focus: In the past few decades, social and cultural anthropology has engaged in a critical debate on researcher’s positioning. There is a growing consensus on the necessity for researchers to be fully aware of the theoretical and methodological perspectives from which they conduct fieldwork, as well as the subjectivity involved, encompassing attitudes, experiences, expectations, and values.

In this context, we invite anthropologists to explore the relationship between positioning (understood as an exercise in reflexivity by the researcher on the perspectives, questions, and values they bring to the field) and two other concepts that are sometimes conflated with it: researcher’s militancy and public engagement. By militancy, we refer to the active participation of researchers in an organization, party, or social movement, as well as their intimate adherence to a worldview that they identify with and that informs their lifestyle. Public engagement, on the other hand, can be defined as the ability to consistently disseminate research outcomes in the public sphere, lead participatory approaches, inform more dialogic teaching methods, and engage at different levels with the multiplicity of research subjects and stakeholders.

We call for papers that will help clarify both the distinctions and interactions between these three “angles,” using field research examples. The questions we pose include, but are not limited to:

  • How does militancy interact with positioning? Is militancy (always) a resource, or does it risk undermining the researcher’s critical reflexivity on positioning? Can the researcher’s militancy compromise research outcomes and diminish scientific authority?
  • How does militancy interact with public engagement activities? If public engagement requires a certain degree of compromises and forms of mediation (linked to the need to address a wide audience an different stakeholders) is militancy always reconcilable with it?
  • Can strong critical positioning (and thus the ability to understand the relativity and partiality of one’s viewpoint) lead researchers to be skeptical of totalizing affiliations and the plausibility of public engagement as a neutral tool for scientific dissemination?

For questions regarding the special issue, contact angela.biscaldi@unimi.it

For questions regarding the journal, contact the Editor-in-Chief, Antonio De Lauri, antonio.delauri@cmi.no

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The Rise of a Lone Soldier Influencer: Radicalization and Daily Life in the Context of Israel War on Gaza, 2023-2024

This paper analyzes the depiction and promotion of the most recent escalation of the Israeli war waged on Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory through social media by a specific “lone soldier influencer” and Israeli and pro-Israel non-profit organizations during a six-month time frame (October 7, 2023 – April 7, 2024). The research delves into the definition of a lone soldier, how they showcase the war, and their everyday experiences on the battlefield through social media.

Since October 7, advocates for Israel have swiftly utilized media channels and online platforms to voice their perspectives, aiming to defend and uphold the State of Israel in the digital realm. They are conducting a parallel battle on the Internet and are positioning themselves as a new alternative to traditional media sources with informal language and first-hand evidence. However, the web is not enough. These influencers aim at indoctrinating and inciting their audience to take matters into their own hands and move to action. For my research, I have chosen to focus on lone soldiers. Their unique nature places them outside the conventional framework, making them suitable for a new analysis of radicalization[1] within the information warfare surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Methodology

In this study, I examined the social media engagement of a prolific lone soldier influencer, Noy Leyb, by analyzing various social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and YouTube. I also collected data from other accounts of organizations like Friends of the IDF, Nefesh B’Nefesh, Sar-El, and individuals like Daniel Judkowicz in order to contextualize Noy Leyb’s media behavior. The selection of these accounts was based on their social media engagement, with a focus on the frequency of posts, number of followers, content type, and outreach. I considered only accounts which posted a minimum of two conflict-related updates per week since October 7, 2023, aiming to influence audience opinions. Additionally, a threshold of ten thousand followers for organizations and one thousand for individual accounts was set, and engagement rates were classified as low (up to 2.9%), good (3% to 5.9%), and high (above 6%) based on data from AgencyAnalytics. Comments were not factored in due to content creators’ control over audience interaction on social media. Only two out of seven lone soldier accounts were included due to the difficulty in confirming other soldiers’ status and other limitations such as private accounts. Noy Leyb and Daniel Judkowicz have open-access accounts. It is important to note that all data was collected manually on April 22-23, 2024, without the use of digital tools like scrapers.

Lone soldier influencer

Lone soldiers are foreign volunteers who are unique to the State of Israel and they cannot be classified as foreign fighters. In accordance with the definition of lone soldier given by the Lone Soldier Center: “A ‘lone soldier’ is an IDF soldier with no family in Israel to support him or her. A lone soldier may be a new immigrant, a volunteer from abroad, an orphan or an individual from a broken home.” The soldiers are also entitled to a monthly stipend, as stated by the Center. Moreover, individuals of Jewish descent and their immediate non-Jewish family members have the opportunity to apply for Israeli citizenship, provided they meet specific criteria.

I considered two definitions, with the first definition coming from the paper “Islamic Foreign Fighters: Concept and Data” authored by Colgan and Hegghammer in 2011, where they articulate:

“I build on this formulation [Malet’s definition] and define a foreign fighter as an agent who (1) has joined, and operates within the confines of, an insurgency; (2) lacks citizenship of the conflict state or kinship links to its warring factions; (3) lacks affiliation to an official military organization; and (4) is unpaid.”

The second definition comes from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (2014): “A foreign fighter is an individual who leaves his or her country of origin or habitual residence to join a non-state armed group in an armed conflict abroad and who is primarily motivated by ideology, religion, and/or kinship.”

Lone soldiers are not classified as foreign fighters as they do not meet the second and fourth requirements of Colgan and Heggammer’s definition, nor do they fit the Geneva Academy definition due to their association with the IDF, a state armed group.

The research does not exclusively focus on lone soldiers, but rather on lone soldiers who might also be considered “influencers.” When referring to influencers, I mean those who have gained popularity on social media platforms and use specialized and marketized content to influence their audience.[2] The unique status of a lone soldier influencer positions them in a new and powerful role, different from the traditional influencer, allowing them to exert influence not just through their military authority, but also through their popularity. Their content may be more inclined to propaganda and radicalization narratives compared to the average social media influencer. This new link allows for the direct dissemination of sensitive information between the military and the public, bypassing government and authorized media channels. In relation to this study, the analyzed lone soldier influencers showed a greater tendency towards radicalization.

An Active Content Creator

The most active lone soldier is the 32-year-old man, Noy Leyb.[3] He is a former Israeli soldier, now reservist, who flew to Israel on the first plane from New York after the October 7 attack and documented his experience. With 27.6 thousand followers, Leyb can be considered a mid-tier influencer.[4] He publishes an average of 49 posts a month, with 293 posts in total of which 219 were on Instagram.[5] On the latter, he received 721.288 likes (an average of 3.294 likes per post). After a revision of his posts, I categorized the content as follows: on the battlefield, critique and support, interview and storytelling, news update, companionship, celebration and rest, prayer, mourning, family, and others.[6] 71,6 percent of his posts on Instagram can be traced back to four categories: on the battlefield (67 posts), critique and support (36 posts), interview and storytelling (16 posts), and news update (15 posts).[7]

Throughout the six months and mainly through the four main categories, the influencer expressed his opinions about Hamas, the conflict, and external secondary effects caused by the war.

Views on Hamas

On Hamas, Leyb’s views alternated between personal perceptions and general statements parroting the stance of the IDF. Noy Leyb described Hamas as worse than ISIS and comprised of people who should not be considered human beings, since they carry on inhumane actions, for instance: they kill innocent people; they kidnap, rape, and behead women; they use children as shields; Hamas promotes misogyny and homophobia.[8] Evidence of the disastrous conditions in which the Gaza Strip finds itself today accompanied every post about Hamas. On January 5, 2024, Noy Leyb shared a post featuring an abandoned school with a tank in the playground, alleging that Hamas had been using schools for launching rockets and storing weapons. Considering the significant number of likes received on posts discussing Hamas (9.9% of 72,030 likes), it seems that his audience supported and agreed with the influencer’s strong opinions about those he referred to as “heartless savages.” His language is overall characterized by derogative generalizations about the enemy as well as dismissive and apologetic rhetoric about Israel’s destruction of Gaza. He reiterates a narrative – widely used by the Israeli government to justify the devastation brought to Gaza and the Palestinians – depicting Israelis as civilized heroes sacrificing their soldiers for the greater good, i.e. the liberation of Israel from Islamic terrorism.

The final point underscores the concerning polarization of his views on the enemy, revealing his adoption of beliefs that justify violence as a political tool, portraying a shift toward radicalization (Uzair Ahmed and Milan Obaidi, 2020). As worrisome as the radicalization is the high rate of appreciation from his audience.

Views of the October 7 War

His stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict suggests a potential Americanization[9] of the war. I define Americanization as the absorption and imitation of what is commonly seen as the “American way of doing things,” encompassing American-centric beliefs and exceptionalism. I am specifically alluding to the government’s efforts to win over global public opinion. In this case, I think this process occurs in two different manners: call for a war on terror legitimized at different levels, from the general public, to news agencies and state authorities; drawing parallels between a new 9/11 for the State of Israel and the patriotic sentiment which emerged from that event in the United States. The close relationship between Israel and the United States of America, which is home to the second largest Jewish population after Israel (6.3 million people in the USA compared to 7.2 million in Israel)[10], may have had an impact on the Americanization of the October 7 events. Encouraging the public to unite with the IDF in fighting Hamas included showing support during pro-Israel protests, being vocal on social media in favor of the Israeli cause, and not supporting pro-Palestine protests (because, allegedly, most of them end in violence and incite more support towards Hamas), covering (only) positive news about Israel. Two videos posted on Instagram helped me highlight these viewpoints. The first video, with 125,937 views, showed destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip with the caption: “Gaza Roads, Take Me Home, To the Place, Where I Belong”. The caption refers to the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. The song talks about the homesickness that the author feels since he is far from his native state. He is asking the roads to lead him to his origins. This post was just one of the many which displayed the State of Israel as an actor forced to intervene in the territory of Gaza to bring peace and eliminate the threat of terrorism.

The second video confirmed this ultimate and sole savior’s perspective. With 305,784 views, the video showed his military unit walking in the streets of Gaza, the caption stating:

“We walk these Gaza roads not because we want to – but because we have to. For the kidnapped. The injured. The dead. The living. And we will continue to walk these roads until we will destroy the heartless brutal killers who turned October 7th into one of the darkest days of our history. We, the Jewish people, will continue to defend ourselves and will never, ever, EVER, back down”.

Such a caption also relates to the generation of a new 9/11 for Israelis and Jews worldwide. The rhetoric used is similar to the news coverage after the terrorist attack in New York City, for instance: sharing of other people’s stories who lost a close relative or friend, reasons for signing up with the army, classification of the event as one of the darkest days in the country’s history, and enduring recollections of their activities at the time of the attack.

Noy Leyb went further claiming that Jews have been combating two wars, one in the frontline against Hamas and the other in the streets and social media against antisemitism.[11] By October 9, the idea of the “darkest” and “bloodiest” day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust had already spread through the Israeli population.[12] By October 18, Joe Biden emphasized: “But for a nation the size of Israel, [the attack] was like fifteen 9/11s. The scale may be different, but I’m sure those horrors have tapped into some kind of primal feeling in Israel, just like it did and felt in the United States.”[13]

The process of Americanization has dragged Israel’s position at two opposite ends, but still related, standpoints. It borrows another country’s humanitarian disaster, known to attract public sympathy worldwide, to be perceived and endorsed through the same sympathetic lenses. On the other side, the comparison between October 7 and 9/11 deprived Israel of the ability to characterize the event based on its political, social, and cultural connotations. More importantly, it overshadowed its historical context, namely the decades of occupation and violence suffered by the Palestinian people. The extremist ideology and violence committed through the IDF mutually reinforce each other, showcasing a high degree of radicalization that encompasses behavioral, religious, and political elements (Uzair Ahmed and Milan Obaidi, 2020).

Merely a Second Point of View

The second influencer, Daniel Judkowicz, is a younger man who had already established himself as a prominent TikTok figure when he started posting about the war. Reaching more than 167,000 followers, he posted only 4 posts, 3 of which could be categorized as “on the battlefield” and 1 as “companionship.” Based on the content available, he did not expose his opinions about the war and his account is less political than that of the first influencer profiled in this article. The captions contained the only illusion that approached a political message, half of which said the same phrase: “We only have one country… we must protect her”. Of the 25,454 viewers he reached, 6.9 % of them liked his posts. The same pattern could be stressed about Noy Leyb. Of 767,046 viewers, up to 7.1 % of them showed appreciation to the content.

Amid the controversial posts relating to the conflict and the considerable number of interviews by pro-Israel US American news agencies, only Leyb presented a complete depiction of the daily life of a lone soldier. Starting from an early morning with a quick breakfast, the soldiers spend the day between patrolling shifts and training sessions. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, they apply what they learned when training while their only sources of nutrition come from canned food and homemade meals that the soldiers brought with them.

War crime influencer

The emergence of a new type of influencers has been observed in connection with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine – they are referred to as “war crime influencers.”[14] These individuals are military influencers who actively promote and endorse warfare. According to a 2024 BBC article on War Influencers, these influencers tend to downplay the human suffering resulting from the conflict while showcasing the “frontlines and the trenches of war.” They adhere to a specific set of guidelines centered around the dissemination of information and often resort to “joke and devalue the plight” of the enemy (Shado Magazine, 2024). Even though Noy Leyb does not publish explicit content on the people murdered and humiliated by the IDF, his social media engagement checks on every other criterion for war crime influencers. He uses a pseudo-journalistic professionalism to narrate one ideological vision the war while antagonizing pro-Palestine supporters and justifying the Israeli “war on terror.”

Even considering a more generic definition for such influencers, given by Shoda Magazine – “Anyone who uses social media trends to taunt the Palestinians as they are being slaughtered can be deemed a war crime influencer, as they are building their own brand on crimes against humanity and the misery of others.” – I cannot classify the second content creator as a war crime influencer because of the lack of data needed for the assumption.

Non-profit Organizations’ Role

I learned from the online posts of pro-Israel non-profit organizations, including Sar-El, Nefesh B’Nefesh, and Friends of the IDF, that combatants are not confined to army camps and the frontlines. They also participate in recharge programs, such as SOULdier Recharge, BBQ4IDF, and Operation Hug, with SOULdier Recharge and Operation Hug being the longer-lasting programs that allow fighters to temporarily leave their camps for some rest. For instance, SOULdier spans a week and is designed to divert the combatants’ attention away from the war, assist them in managing mental health challenges, and equip them for the future ahead.[15] Hence, the aim of this program is to help Israeli soldiers process their traumatic experiences. As some Israeli troops rotate out for rest and rehabilitation, they are quickly replaced by others, leaving little time for internally displaced people in Gaza to seek medical attention and cope with their trauma. By engaging in activities to address their emotional responses to combat, Israeli soldiers should come to understand the significant impact of their actions on the majority of the population in Gaza, who are living in extremely dire conditions and on the verge of survival. This understanding should lead to a certain level of accountability for their actions and a greater recognition of the humanity of Palestinians, which is currently lacking.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is concerning the power held by a single lone soldier influencer. His position, next to the work of algorithms, brought him closer to the masses, and the masses further away from traditional news outlets. The divisive content surrounding the conflict has drawn in an extreme audience, with the high levels of interaction indicating that tens of thousands of individuals on social media support an extremist narrative and actions. This conflict has escalated beyond online disagreements and spilled over into the streets of foreign lands.[16]

When it comes to lone soldiers, I identify two primary factors contributing to the radicalization of Israel’s backers: propaganda, which is the idea that the enemy is obstructing their ultimate goal, a strong Israeli state; group influence, meaning that, even when they should be resting, they are spending their time in the same circle of people, discussing the same topic, and within the same perspective. Additional elements pushed over the limits of the narrative of radicalization. The elements are the Americanization of October 7 and a savior complex condoned by a victimized position within the conflict. The victimization has allowed them to redefine self-defense and, simultaneously, to avoid any accountability related to the humanitarian disaster caused in Gaza by Israel.

References

“Influencer, N., Additional sense.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4737815373.

Grigor Atanesian. Ukraine War: Putin Influencers Profiting from War Propaganda. BBC. September 2, 2023. Ukraine war: Putin influencers profiting from war propaganda (bbc.com)

Hamas’ October 7 Attack: The Tactics, Targets, and Strategy of Terrorists. Center for Strategic and International Studies. November 7, 2023. Hamas’ October 7 Attack: The Tactics, Targets, and Strategy of Terrorists (csis.org)

He left NYC tech startup to rejoin Israel’s military. CNN. October 11, 2023. He left NYC tech startup to rejoin Israel’s military | CNN

Jen King. Guide to Influencer Marketing: Trends, Tactics, and KPIs. eMarketer. January 26, 2024. Influencer Marketing: Audiences, Platforms, Strategies, & KPIs (emarketer.com)

Jewish Population Rises to 15.7 Million Worldwide in 2023, The Jewish Agency for Israel, September 13, 2023. Jewish Population Rises to 15.7 Million Worldwide | The Jewish Agency

Meet two of the Canadians who’ve returned to Israel to join the war effort. The Canadian Jewish News. October 13, 2023. Meet two of the Canadians who’ve returned to Israel to join the war effort (thecjn.ca)

Nell Irvin Painter. The History of White People. W. W. Norton and Company. 2010. p. 300

Never Again Mean Now. The Algemeiner. October 10, 2023. Never Again Means Now – Algemeiner.com

Remarks by President Biden on the October 7 Terrorist Attacks and the Resilience of the State of Israel and its People – Tel Aviv, Israel. October 18, 2023. Remarks by President Biden on the October 7th Terrorist Attacks and the Resilience of the State of Israel and its People | Tel Aviv, Israel | The White House

SOULdier RECHARGE. Friends of the IDF. July 27, 2023. SOULdier RECHARGE – FIDF

The CBC’s Marianne Dimain speaks with Noy Leyb, a Canadian-Israeli Reservist. CBC. January 14, 2024. The CBC’s Marianne Dimain speaks with Noy Leyb, a Canadian-Israeli Reservist | CBC.ca

Uzair Ahmed and Milan Obaidi. What is Radicalization? C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism. September 7, 2020. What is radicalization? – C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism (uio.no)

Was Hama’s attack on Saturday the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust? The Times of Israel. October 9th, 2023. Was Hamas’s attack on Saturday the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust? | The Times of Israel

What must be done, no more excuses for the CIA. New York Post. September 12, 2001. WHAT MUST BE DONE ; NO MORE EXCUSES FOR THE CIA (nypost.com)

Witness to Apocalypse. The New York Times. September 8, 2011. The 9/11 Decade: Witness to Apocalypse. A Collective Diary. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[1] The definition I am using is taken from Uzair Ahmed and Milan Obaidi. What is Radicalization? C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism. September 7, 2020: “Behavioral radicalization, on the other hand, encompasses the behavioral outcome and refers to the process of participating in extreme activities, which could be either violent and illegal or non-violent and legal. Thus, behavioral radicalization can be defined as a ‘collectively defined, individually felt moral obligation to participate in direct action’. Consequently, radicalization can be seen as a social and psychological transformation whereby an individual increasingly adopts an extremist belief system, regardless if it ultimately results in actual violence or not.”

[2] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an influencer is “A person who has become well-known through use of the internet and social media, and uses celebrity to endorse, promote, or generate interest in specific products, brands, etc., often for payment.”

[3] He left NYC tech startup to rejoin Israel’s military. CNN. October 11th, 2023; The CBC’s Marianne Dimain speaks with Noy Leyb, a Canadian-Israeli Reservist. CBC. January 2024; Meet two of the Canadians who’ve returned to Israel to join the war effort. The Canadian Jewish News. October 13th, 2023.

[4] According to Jen King. Guide to Influencer Marketing: Trends, Tactics, and KPIs. eMarketer. January 26, 2024. There are five types of influencers: nano-influencers (1000 to 4.999 followers); micro-influencers (5.000 to 19.999 followers); mid-tier influencers (20.000 to 99.999); macro-influencers (100.000 to 999.999); mega-influencers (over 1 million followers).

[5] Most of which is cross-posting.

[6] The categorization relates to the most prevalent topic covered by the post and its caption. Some posts deal with two or more topics but for simplicity it was decided to define them based on their most relevant theme. The category ‘other’ refers to every activity which is not military and war related and includes everything not indicated by the other categories, for example donations, social media collaborations, shoutouts to other influencers, and so on.

[7] The category ‘other’ was excluded from the count. It amounted to 32 posts on Instagram and 11 on TikTok.

[8] Video posted on January 11th, 2023, addressed to Western minority groups supporting Hamas.

[9] I am not referring to the traditional definition of Americanization which relates to foreigners residing in the USA and assimilating the so-called US American standards, values, and beliefs according to Nell Irvin Painter. The History of White People. W. W. Norton and Company. 2010. p. 300.

[10] Jewish Population Rises to 15.7 Million Worldwide in 2023, The Jewish Agency for Israel, September 13, 2023.

[11] For better reference: Never Again Mean Now. The Algemeiner. October 10, 2023. Witness to Apocalypse. The New York Times. September 8, 2011. What must be done, no more excuses for the CIA. New York Post. September 12, 2001.

[12] For references, see Was Hama’s attack on Saturday the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust? The Times of Israel. October 9th, 2023; Hamas’ October 7 Attack: The Tactics, Targets, and Strategy of Terrorists. Center for Strategic and International Studies. November 7, 2023.

[13] Remarks by President Biden on the October 7 Terrorist Attacks and the Resilience of the State of Israel and its People – Tel Aviv, Israel. October 18, 2023.

[14] Grigor Atanesian. Ukraine War: Putin Influencers Profiting from War Propaganda. BBC. September 2, 2023.

[15] According to the website of Friends of the IDF: “SOULdier Recharge is a week-long educational program that takes soldiers out of their day-to-day operational activities and provides them with a chance to process their experiences and mentally prepare for what inevitably lies ahead”. The program is run by the IDF’s Education and Youth Corps.

[16] Noy Leyb shared some videos on Instagram documenting protesters’ clashes in the USA on March 31, 2024, April 01, 2024, and April 09, 2024.

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Episode 10: Fragile Instruments and Frontier-making Science in the Himalayas

In the 10th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey speaks with geoscientist Jakob Steiner and historian Lachlan Fleetwood on the 19th century imperialist traditions of remaking the Himalayas as geographical frontiers. We reflect on the genealogy of this Himalayan-frontier science. Jakob and Lachlan discuss the fragile instruments and modes of measurements that reveal the limits of science and imperial projects in making sense of the Himalayas. The conversation reflects most on the reproduction of inequalities and biases in the field sites towards the local communities, and the political implications of similar scientific projects, today.

Fragile instruments and frontier-making science in the Himalayas by Public Anthropologist Podcast (spotify.com)

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Winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2024

The winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2024 is Maria-Theres Schuler for her book Disability and Aid. An Ethnography of Logics and Practices of Distribution in a Ugandan Refugee Camp (Brill, 2023). Maria-Theres Schuler is a social anthropologist, journalist, and filmmaker with expertise in global inequality, corporate responsibility and social movements. Disability and Aid is an important book written with a commendable ethnographic sensibility. Of potential interest to experts and students of humanitarian, development and disability studies, as well as anthropology and African studies, the book provides a nuanced investigation of the dynamics of aid to disabled people in a Ugandan refugee camp.

—

Antonio: Can you tell us something about your journey as an anthropologist within and outside of academia?

Maria-Theres: I still remember the very first lecture I attended as an anthropology student. My professor said at the time: “No matter what you do with it, anthropology will teach you something important for life.” To this day, I find it immensely valuable in everyday life how much this field of study has taught me to question my own values and world views. Very important moments in this process of understanding were my fieldwork experiences. During my studies, I was part of an exchange program with Ugandan students in which we explored the interplay between disability and technology, and the regular exchange in this intercultural learning setting was enormously valuable. The exchange program grew into a long-term research collaboration between Makerere University in Kampala and the University of Zurich, and I was able to learn from the intensive collaboration with stakeholders such as disability organizations as well as from the exchange with the Ugandan researchers during my PhD on refugees with disabilities, on which the book Disability and Aid is based.

While writing my dissertation, I discovered my love for narrating stories and so, after my PhD, I quickly found my way to journalism: this allowed me to combine what I was passionate about – asking questions, researching and discovering in detail – with writing engaging stories for a wider audience. In order to allow me to maintain some level of autonomy that I was used to as an academic, I joined a self-organized journalistic collective in Zurich. In our online magazine, we write from a leftist perspective on topics such as climate, inequality, feminism, social welfare, migration and tax policy. In this work, I continue to apply anthropological perspectives, although it was initially a big challenge for me to deal with topics in a shorter time and not spend a whole five years on them! Somewhat by coincidence I came across the medium of film: when I was in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo in March 2020 for a journalistic project, Covid-19 was spreading drastically, and horrific scenarios were expected for the African continent. Together with a friend who had already made films, we began to chronicle what we experienced on an everyday basis. The resulting documentary “Corona in Congo. A Diary of Uncertainties”, tries to show how the global Corona crisis has even reinforced existing inequalities. So meanwhile I am working more and more outside of academia, yet still with a strong relationship to science. For example, I recently started teaching as a guest lecturer in a CAS in Science Journalism.

Antonio: What’s the story of Disability and Aid? What motivated you to write this book and what hopes and goals did you have for it?

The story of Disability and Aid is, on the one hand, a rather familiar one: in the context of aid, different perspectives collide and good intentions often have unintended consequences. In the Ugandan refugee camp where I did my research, this was for example the case for an aid program focused specifically on access to water for refugees with disabilities. The project built boreholes that were accessible to a person in a wheelchair, for example, yet the people concerned did not start using them – because fetching water was usually the duty of children, and my research participants had no problems finding this help. Moreover, it was an important aspect of personhood to be able to count on this help. The aid project, however, assumed that the most desirable thing was for people to be autonomous. Their help was therefore more focused on the individual than on what was necessary or even desirable in this context.

On the other hand, the story of Disability and Aid is perhaps a little surprising. This concerns an overall shift from charity or emergency aid to sustainable development. That was the case for Uganda’s refugee policy, which pursues a self-reliance strategy by providing refugees with land to cultivate in order to become as independent as possible from aid. With regard to refugees with disabilities, this shift has been particularly relevant since the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found its way into humanitarian aid. Refugees with disabilities were viewed less and less as helpless, vulnerable victims, but as actors with abilities who make important contributions. Participation, independence, and empowerment were important aspects of this rights-based approach, which seemed promising – not least because charity and dependency run counter to any goal of transformative development aid.

However, I found that this approach was neither very helpful nor very relevant in disabled people’s everyday lives in the refugee camp. My interlocutors did usually not use the language of rights when claiming help and support, but they understood their entitlement based on comparisons with aid given to other people, at other times or in other places. Such concrete everyday concerns and personal experiences were more readily available and meaningful for them than abstract human rights. Maybe more importantly, the aid delivered through this rights based approach – which preferred skills trainings and sensitization workshops over material and financial hand-outs – did not really help disabled refugees to build social relations, realize projects to make a living and invest sustainably in their futures – and thus did not support them in their pursuit of attaining personhood, which meant above all taking care of one’s children and family. Furthermore, I observed how my interlocutors experienced this shift towards a rights-based approach: in order to promote their inclusion, refugees with disabilities were increasingly asked to express their opinions on what would help them most and thus have a say in the services provided. What they repeatedly asked for were higher food rations, medication, support for their children’s education – preferably in the form of money so that they could decide on spending themselves. However, most of these demands could not be met, either because they were not in line with the criteria of the donors or with the project budgets. What’s more, from the perspective of my interlocutors, they fulfilled what was expected from them: they constantly provided the necessary information for the aid agencies’ reports and working procedures, allowed themselves to be photographed and filmed for their promotional material or played in a drama group that fought negative attitudes around disability when donor delegations visited – all things that helped the aid agencies acquire resources. This experience, whereby people with disabilities were recognized within the framework of universal rights, but in the end hardly benefitted in a manner that would have made them more equal, is what I call “disappointed recognition”.

I felt it was important to highlight these issues, especially now that disability is so high on the humanitarian agenda. By describing the different logics and practices of distribution at play in Kyangwali – one rather based on equality, wage labor or social welfare, the other one on hierarchy, social relationships and exchange – I also hope to contribute to a better understanding of the mutual mistrust so prevalent in this aid setting. Refugees felt the aid agencies were “eating their money” as they did not receive what they expected, while aid workers suspected the refugees of lying in order to receive more support. What the aid agencies perceived as excessive demands and unjustified complaints resulting from the “dependency syndrome” – the view that people remain dependent and do nothing for themselves when they receive help – could, however, be understood as rightful claims for resources and more equality. The book also shows how important it is for service providers to consider very different forms of dependency and to recognize how they are intertwined. Then one quickly can see which kind of aid strengthens other forms of important connectedness and which even reinforces problematic dependencies. Above all, direct aid enabled refugees with disabilities to invest in important and desired relationships of interdependence – and this was enormously important for them, as many had lost important relationships through war and migration.

Antonio: Thinking of your ethnographic fieldwork, what were the most rewarding aspects of it, and which ones the most challenging?

One of the rewarding aspects of my fieldwork was certainly when I felt that my interlocutors appreciated the relatively longer engagement over more than a year and not just a few days or weeks like many other researchers or visitors from abroad. However, this engagement was also a great challenge, especially in terms of what I hoped to achieve. I was aware from the start that refugees with disabilities saw me as a potential helper – be it to get a mobility appliance or to receive resettlement to a third country like the U.S. Therefore, I tried to distance my type of research as much as possible from the work of the aid organizations, for example by cycling or walking around the camp instead of driving a car like the aid workers, or by taking a lot of time to visit people outside office hours, helping them prepare cassava leaves for dinner or accompanying them to church. What unfolded spontaneously during such visits, often provided a different picture than what people were telling me initially in interviews, as I was for example introduced to relatives that I had not known about. Still, the closer my relationship grew with my interlocutors, the less I could escape the role of a potential helper, as I somehow intended. The claims for support towards me did not decrease, and this left me wondering as to whether I really had built rapport or if people were talking down the help they received.

So, I was often unsure how to react, when disabled people asked for things such as a small contribution for transport or to buy medicine, as I feared both enforcing the already asymmetrical relations and undermining the validity of my research findings. But then I took a closer look at these often uncomfortable experiences, and I tried to understand why I felt more at ease giving someone something without being asked, or when I felt it was reciprocated, for example when a recipient mended my broken sandal in return for helping out with money. Through these reflections I became increasingly aware that in many respects, my discomfort resulted from my unquestioned assumptions about what it is appropriate to ask for in which situations, or from my own expectations of how gratitude should be expressed or what equality meant. It was especially when I read James Ferguson’s book Give a Man a Fish, in which he demonstrates how people seek hierarchical connections to others and that this kind of dependency can also be productive and desirable, that I understood the importance of people’s claims for my research. These insights certainly did not resolve my concerns about reciprocity and research integrity. Yet they allowed me to understand the claims as a kind of sociality that was very important in this context.

Antonio: What are your plans for the future?

Maria-Theres: I intend to continue working at the interface between the social sciences and the public, and I can currently reconcile this very well with the kind of journalism I pursue: an ethnographically-oriented journalism that takes anthropological questions into account. In journalism, of course, there is a need to simplify very complex stories to a certain extent in order to reach a larger audience. Nevertheless, I always try to stay true to the very important nuances of how things work, which I think is particularly important in today’s reporting, which sometimes tends to oversimplify complex issues. I’m currently in the process of furthering my education in journalism and familiarizing myself with investigative journalism, for example by making inquiries to state institutions via the Freedom of Information Act. It’s often tedious work, but it gives you access to such important and exciting information, and there are so many stories lurking that should be told.

From an anthropological perspective, I am especially curious about human rights discourses and practices in connection with mining. There are so many initiatives to prevent human rights violations in this sector, which is of course very important. But what exactly do they mean on the ground? And are they enough to really bring about the necessary changes? During my journalistic work on mining, I came across similar mechanisms to those I experienced in the refugee camp, such as how communities are consulted when an industrial mining project is planned. There is a lot being done to ensure that human rights standards are met, and that, for example, schools and wells are being built and skills training is being offered to the communities. Yet, claims on the rightful share by these people seem to have no place in the current discourse and practice on human rights around mining.

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Dove sei, Europa?

Il 26 gennaio 2024 la Corte di Giustizia dell’Aja ha accolto la denuncia presentata dal Sudafrica e ordinato a Israele di prendere misure immediate per evitare il genocidio dei palestinesi a Gaza.

Nonostante il cessate il fuoco rimanga un obiettivo complicato, è stato un momento importante perché l’ordine della Corte ha confermato quello che diversi rappresentanti delle Nazioni Unite hanno ripetuto negli ultimi tre mesi, cioé che quello che sta avvenendo a Gaza non può in nessun modo essere considerato una campagna militare di difesa ma, anzi, potrebbe configurarsi come un genocidio. La Corte ha ricordato alcuni dati essenziali, tra i quali l’elevato numero di vittime civili, inclusi migliaia di bambini, la distruzione di case, scuole e strutture sanitarie, lo spostamento forzato della maggioranza della popolazione della Striscia di Gaza, il tutto in un contesto nel quale il governo e l’esercito israeliano hanno continuamente rivendicato il proprio diritto di bombardare, spesso utilizzando un linguaggio deumanizzante nei confronti dei palestinesi, come quando il Ministro della Difesa Yoav Gallant ha detto “stiamo combattendo contro animali umani,” oppure quando Ron Prosor, ambasciatore di Israele a Berlino, ha affermato: “Questa è civilizzazione contro barbarie. Bene contro male.”  

E l’Europa? Silente e complice. Nessun paese occidentale ha supportato la richiesta del Sudafrica presso la Corte dell’Aja. Ora che la Corte ha deciso di accettare il caso, l’apatia politica europea si fa ancora più imbarazzante. Perdipiù, a seguito delle accuse mosse nei confronti di alcuni operatori di UNRWA (l’agenzia delle Nazioni Unite per i rifugiati palestinesi) di aver collaborato con Hamas per gli attacchi in Israele del 7 ottobre 2023, paesi come Stati Uniti, Regno Unito, Germania, Italia, Olanda, Svizzera, Finlandia, Australia e Canada hanno deciso di sospendere i finzanziamenti all’agenzia, di fatto contribuendo alla punizione collettiva della popolazione civile di Gaza. L’esatto contrario di quanto ordinato dalla Corte di Giustizia. UNRWA ha aperto una indagine interna ma, al di là di quel che emergerà, l’agenzia non è certamente priva di aspetti critici e problematici. In generale, le varie agenzie delle Nazioni Unite, incluso UNRWA, sono tutt’altro che perfette. Ma il punto ora non è discutere i termini di una necessaria riforma strutturale delle Nazioni Unite. Le proporzioni della catastrofe umanitaria a Gaza sono tali per cui, tagliare gli aiuti ora, equivale a esacerbare la portata e la sofferenza di tale catastrofe.   

Nei salotti della politica internazionale così come negli ambienti culturali istituzionali e nella comunicazione di massa, molti rappresentanti dei paesi occidentali continuano a percepirsi come protettori e promotori di valori come la dignità umana e il rispetto dei diritti fondamentali, spesso con un atteggiamento di superiorità e arroganza nei confronti di altri paesi e culture. Questa narrazione autocelebrativa, di fatto sempre contraddetta dalle guerre e dai saccheggi perpetrati dai paesi europei e dagli Stati Uniti in tutto il mondo, è oggi nuovamente smentita dalla storia. Portando Israele davanti alla Corte Internazionale di Giustizia con l’obiettivo di porre fine ai massacri in corso a Gaza, il Sudafrica ha di fatto messo ancora una volta in luce l’intrinseca ambiguità della moralità umanitaria occidentale e l’insostebibile logica per cui a volte (quando conviene) è giusto battersi per i diritti umani e per il rispetto del diritto internazionale, altre volte no.

È molto significativo che sia stato proprio il Sudafrica, un paese che ha vissuto la traumatica esperienza dell’apartheid, ad avere avviato la procedura presso la Corte di Giustizia. Dopo oltre tre mesi di bombardamenti ininterrotti, e nonostante la devastazione documentata da operatori umanitari e giornalisti che hanno pagato con la vita, gli alleati occidentali di Israele rimangono indifferenti o, addirittura, apertamente solidali con la violenza in corso.

Significa che il Sudafrica o gli altri stati che hanno supportato il caso all’Aja siano senza problemi politici e sociali? Ovviamente no, ma in quanto europei, dovremmo imparare a essere più coscienziosi nel guardarci allo specchio, soprattutto in momenti storici come questo.

L’11 gennaio 2024, Ronald Lamola, il ministro della Giustizia del Sudafrica, ha iniziato il proprio intervento di fronte ai giudici della Corte citando Nelson Mandela: “tendendo le nostre mani al popolo palestinese, lo facciamo con la piena consapevolezza che facciamo parte di un’umanità che è una.” I membri della delegazione legale del Sudafrica hanno espresso, in maniera efficace e poi ribadita dalla Corte, un chiaro monito nel considerare la capacità genocida della campagna militare in corso a Gaza, ma hanno anche palesato la loro vicinanza e solidarietà nei confronti del popolo palestinese. Il Sudafrica ha anche ricordato l’importanza di collocare gli eventi attuali in un più ampio orizzonte storico contraddistinto da una situazione di oppressione e violenza strutturale che hanno portato al lento ma costante soffocamento dei palestinesi preparando il terreno per i tragici eventi di questi giorni.

Mentre la Germania, di nuovo dalla parte sbagliata della storia, dopo le prime sessioni della Corte  si impegnava a prendere posizione e sostenere Israele in sede di udienza, la Namibia, che agli inizi del XX secolo subì il genocidio degli Herero e dei Nama inflitto dai colonizzatori tedeschi, ha suggerito al governo tedesco di riconsiderare la propria decisione: “Nessun essere umano amante della pace può ignorare la carneficina commessa contro i palestinesi a Gaza”, ha dichiarato la presidenza della Namibia.

Il Sudafrica ha offerto all’Europa una lezione che va ben oltre gli aspetti giuridici legati alla Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sul Genocidio (che pur rimangono assolutamente importanti). Quello che è in gioco oggi è il valore stesso del principio di umanità. La violenza, l’instabilità e la distruzione che le cosiddette guerre umanitarie, i tentativi di esportare la democrazia e la “guerra al terrorismo” hanno prodotto in Afghanistan, Iraq e Libia, per fare alcuni esempi, sono crimini della storia con cui l’Europa deve riuscire a fare i conti. L’idea sempre latente che il massacro o la sofferenza dei “civilizzati” siano più traumatici del massacro o della sofferenza degli “altri”, non può più essere accettata da nessuno.

Gli ex colonizzati sono ora potenze globali emergenti o in molti casi ampiamente consolidate che non solo mettono in discussione la retorica occidentale di una superiorità morale proclamata sostenendo il massacro dei palestinesi, ma agiscono ridefinendo (o in altri casi negando) quei valori di cui l’Europa voleva farsi baluardo.

Le gerarchie globali si stanno significativamente riconfigurando e c’è molta incertezza sulle prospettive di pace in diverse regioni del pianeta, ma le sfide che tutti noi abbiamo davanti richiedono un cambio di mentalità, non solo azioni e riparazioni ad hoc. Infatti, il grande rischio è che, di fronte ai fallimenti e all’ipocrisia dell’Europa nel contesto internazionale, anche valori come la pace, la diplomazia e i diritti umani vengano messi in discussione. Se i paesi occidentali sceglieranno di ignorare le decisioni della Corte Internazionale di Giustizia, a farne le spese, oltre ai palestinesi, sarà la credibilità stessa del diritto internazionale.

Manifestazioni di solidarietà con il popolo palestinese si stanno svolgendo in tutta Europa, ma la maggior parte dei leader politici non sembra essere toccata dallo sterminio di migliaia di civili a Gaza. Persiste un clima repressivo in cui la libertà di espressione e l’autonomia intellettuale vengono messi seriamente in discussione. È un momento storico chiave in cui è necessario che la coscienza europea si risvegli attraverso una comprensione rinnovata del concetto di umanità, non più espressione di asimmetrie e gerarchie globali, ma fonte di un umanesimo postcoloniale.

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Call for Papers | Special Issue: Speaking out against genocide and repression

Journal: Public Anthropologist
Editor-in-Chief: Antonio De Lauri
Special issue guest editors: Lori Allen and Heidi Mogstad

From Cape Town and Jakarta to London and DC, masses of people have taken to the streets demonstrating against Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Across the world, scholars have also used their pens and voices, publishing statements and op-eds, organizing teach-ins, and demanding national and academic boycotts, disinvestment, and sanctions against Israel.

However, in Europe and the United States especially, repression of Palestinian rights activism is intensifying, as censorship by governments and universities spreads. Palestinian students and scholars are particularly targeted, as are people of color. Those calling for Palestinian rights are being harassed, intimated, silenced, hounded out of their jobs, and criminalized. This includes anti-Zionist Jews who have been accused of betraying their people, their heritage, or of hating themselves for demanding justice for Palestinians.

In this political climate of ruthless and sanctioned assaults on Palestinian lives, academic freedom, and humanity, it is more important than ever that scholars speak out. And this despite the fact—and maybe because of the fact—that scholarly interventions can come at personal and professional costs. This is a time to speak out even though writing and talking may seem futile weapons against military violence. Because speaking out from a position of academic privilege may risk crowding out others, especially Palestinians, whose rights, freedoms, perspectives, and voices have so long been denied by the international community, this is a time for humility. But it is also a time for energy and all hands on deck.

In this special issue, we invite anthropologists to reflect on their responsibilities and experiences of speaking and acting out in response to Israel’s assaults on Gaza, and to consider what is at stake and what is possible through intervening inside or outside the academy. We also invite contributors to reflect on broader questions raised by the current situation, including but not limited to topics such as: the exceptionalization of Palestine/Israel, institutional voice and silence, personal and institutional incentives not to speak out, the possibilities and limitations of solidarity within and outside the bounds of the neoliberal university, ethical dilemmas and complicity, the limitations of language, academic freedom and freedom of speech, and anthropology as a launching pad to collective action. While we ask contributors to situate their interventions within the current historical and political moment, we welcome reflections on past engagements, cross-case comparisons, and pieces that trace longer histories of censorship and repression.

Submission details
We invite submissions of 1) scholarly articles between 6000–9000 words; and 2) alternative and experimental forms, such as poems, notes, short stories, interviews, conversations, and essays between 1000–3000 words.

An abstract/pitch (approx 250 words), title, and author bio should be sent via email to both of the Special Issue co-editors, Heidi Mogstad, Heidi.mogstad@cmi.no and Lori Allen, laa72002@gmail.com, before 1 March 2024.

The authors of selected submissions will receive initial feedback from the guest editors by 20 March. Full submissions will be due in to the Public Anthropologist’s editorial manager via this link by 30 June 2024.

Instruction for authors, including format and referencing can be found here.

Contributions will be double peer-reviewed, and we aim to reply to all submissions within 2 months.

The estimated publication date of the special issue is December 2024.

Please email the Special Issue co-editors with any questions: Heidi Mogstad, Heidi.mogstad@cmi.no and Lori Allen, laa72002@gmail.com. 

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How South Africa rescued humanity (and International Law) at the International Court of Justice

Since the creation of the United Nations, and in line with the civilizing mission’s rhetoric used to justify colonialism, racist arguments about the African continent as halting, obstructing, defying and subverting accountability for mass atrocities have been rehearsed in major political and academic circles in the West. In international diplomatic arenas as well as in institutional cultural environments, Western countries tend to perceive themselves as the protectors and promoters of human rights, responsible for showing other – mostly non-Western – countries the path toward ethical and democratic behavior. This self-celebratory narrative, always contradicted by wars and plunder perpetrated by European countries and the United States around the globe, is now again proven wrong by history. By bringing Israel before the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, with the objective of putting an end to the ongoing massacres in Gaza – while the West continues to side with and provide military supplies to the oppressor – South Africa (with the support of its partners, all of which are exclusively from the Global South) is challenging the West’s moral high ground and exposing its double standards.

It is symbolically significant that of all the 193 United Nations member states, it is South Africa, a country that has made the painful experience of apartheid, and therefore understands too well that ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians’ (Nelson Mandela), that is initiating this procedure. After more than one hundred days of uninterrupted bombings, and in spite of killings being livestreamed as they occur, the Western allies of Israel remain unshaken. Biden and Trudeau, Sunak and Macron, Borrell and von der Leyen continue to marshall pretenses to excuse the violence of ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ and ‘the most moral army in the world’ and the atrocities it is committing with their help.

‘In extending our hands across the miles to the people of Palestine, we do so with the full knowledge that we are part of a humanity that is at one.’ It is with this quote from Nelson Mandela that Justice Minister Ronald Lamola opened South Africa’s statement before the ICJ, perfectly encapsulating the essence of their intervention. Because what stood out in South Africa’s intervention was precisely their humanity. Each member of the South African legal team went beyond presenting a legal case and, instead, offered a genuine expression of sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians and solidarity with their struggle.

Whereas most human rights mechanisms tend to focus on contingent facts and limit the room for broader contextualization and discussion about root causes, South Africa took the opportunity of this hearing to emphasize the importance of placing the current events in a longer history marked by ongoing denial of self-determination and right to return, Nakba, and occupation, all of which have led to the slow but consistent suffocation of Palestinians and prepared the ground for genocidal acts to take place. It stated that decades of impunity have emboldened Israel to intensify its crime.

As Germany committed to take a stand and support Israel in front of the Court, Namibia, which at the beginning of the 20th century suffered the Herero and Namaqua genocide inflicted by the German empire, cautioned Germany to reconsider its decision. ‘No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza,’ the Namibian presidency declared.

Already in 1961, Franz Fanon concluded his essay The Wretched of the Earth, by saying: ‘If we want to meet the expectations of our peoples, we have to look beyond Europe’. This statement can be read as a prediction of the role South Africa is taking today. His call to ‘look elsewhere’ in the quest for a true humanism, where concern for humanity is no longer eclipsed by the interests of dominating nations or the identities of conquering peoples, is reflected in South Africa’s outstretched hand to Palestinians at the very moment when Western hypocrisy is exposed.

South Africa is presenting the West with a lesson that goes far beyond legal aspects in relation to the United Nations Genocide Convention. The different degrees of humanity that so-called humanitarian wars and attempt to export democracy have produced, whereas the massacre or the suffering of the ‘civilized’ is considered as more tragic than the massacre or the suffering of ‘others’, can no longer be accepted. The former colonized are now emergent or in several cases largely consolidated global powers that question the Western rhetoric of a moral superiority proclaimed while supporting the massacre of the Palestinians. Global hierarchies are being reconfigured and much is uncertain about the prospects for peace in several regions. But the challenges we all have before us require a change of mindset, not only ad hoc actions and reparations.

Demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza are taking place around Europe but most political leaders remain untouched by the cry of thousands of innocent civilians. It is a key historical moment for European conscience to wake up and, inspired by South Africa, protect the idea of humanity, before it is too late.

This paper was published simultaneously on both Allegra Lab and Public Anthropologist.

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Episode 9: The humanness of humanity has a history 

In the 9th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews anthropologist Mark Goodale on the history of human rights. The humaneness of humanity has a history. And Goodale’s work shows that this history is foregrounded in relation to geopolitical and economic history. He asks if a distinction at all can be drawn between politics and economy especially when there are clear empirical links between how the financial world has come to see human rights as relevant only to the extent that it is not an obstacle to political economic growth. The conversation takes a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of human rights as a moral project; its political implications; the emergence of the anthropology of human rights as an analytic frame; the post 9/11 turn to a collective erasure of human rights with the emergence of the surveillance state; and the place of human rights in the changing nature, texture, and form of the voices that are becoming increasingly dominant in contemporary movements for justice.

The humanness of humanity has a history by Public Anthropologist Podcast (spotify.com)

Note: this episode was recorded on 07.04.2023.

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Anger on the move

24 November 2023. Gaza: at least 14,854 people killed, including 6,150 children and 4,000 women; and at least 36,000 injured. At least 6,800 missing. The Al Jazeera ‘Israel–Gaza war in maps and charts: Live tracker’ also shows the dead in the Occupied West Bank, which, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, and the Israeli Medical Services, number at least 229, at least 52 children. In Israel, figures show, the total number killed is at least 1,200.

While images of and individual stories about some of the hostages held by Hamas continue to flow across Italian (and other Western) TV media and political talk shows, the Palestinians who are killed day by day remain a remote, vague, and shadowy presence.

Anger is on the move. It grows, nourished by some of the most potent fertilizers: hate, violence, and fear. When the treatment for a wound becomes the combination of any of these ingredients, the medicine shows its other face. The pharmakon can alleviate pain or cure a disease, but it can also become lethal. The escalation of violence across the world in speech and action that followed Hamas’s 7 October attack and the unfolding of the responses of the Israeli government reveal, once again, the poisonous effects of remedies that seek to alleviate pain or find justice through the production of more pain and injustice.

As antisemitism is increasingly expressed in isolated actions by extremists across the world, so too is Islamophobia. As some observers seek justice for the horrors of 7 October, many others dismiss the subsequent massacre perpetrated by the Israeli government and forget the ongoing oppression that has been the normalized reality of a horrific story for the Palestinians in the past 75 years. This story begins with the establishment of Israel and the empowerment of Zionists among the Jewish people.

The outcome of this history of oppression is a reverberation of violence, hatred, fear, and a loss for the whole of humanity, that is, for more innocent people whose lives will be sacrificed in the name of a blind positioning on one or another side of the barricade.

The roots of violence

On the Italian Friday TV show Propaganda Live, journalist Francesca Mannocchi reports on her work in the weeks following 7 October in both Tel Aviv and the Occupied Territories. The children who live in the West Bank Occupied Territories tell how their ordinary life unfolds through the indiscriminate and illegal acts of violence perpetrated by the colonizers or otherwise called “settlers.” They may be beaten up, detained in administrative custody, threatened, blocked on one or another side of the checkpoints installed by the colonizers, and killed. Their life is one of permanent terror, humiliation, and violence. Children lose their friends, miss their parents, and see their loved ones killed in a chaotic, unreasonable, and absurd game of asphyxiation, where the muscular power of Israel must be constantly demonstrated through an uncountable and unaccountable series of crimes.

Military occupation has been the only reality that young, adult, and old people have lived since they were born. As a result, most of these children tell the journalist that their dream is to become fighters in the name of God. They feel that fighting is their responsibility – it is the only chance they have to exist since their right to live in peace and freedom, to hope and dream a better life, has been violently taken away. At the same time, their older brothers, sisters, and their parents attempt to protect their families through daily acts of resilience. This can take multiple forms, from daily acceptance of injustice through patience and struggle, to fighting (which will mean dying or being imprisoned) against the occupying groups.

It is within this humiliating and dehumanizing normalized hell on Earth, which the most powerful governments in the world have produced and maintained in absolute silence and/or by supporting the perpetrators of this human catastrophe, that we need to frame the debate related to the violent events of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent revenge taken by the Israeli government, which has taken the form of the indiscriminate mass killing of Palestinians – a programmed and spectacularized live genocidal war.

Visions of violence

In the Introduction to his book The Question of Palestine, Palestinian scholar Edward Said (1979) writes:

‘I suppose that to many of my readers the Palestinian problem immediately calls forth the idea of “terrorism,” and it is partly because of this invidious association that I do not spend much time on terrorism in this book. To have done so would have been to argue defensively, either by saying that such as it has been our “terrorism” is justified, or by taking the position that there is no such thing as Palestinian terrorism as such. The facts are considerably more complex, however, and some of them at least bear some rehearsal here. In sheer numerical terms, in brute numbers of bodies and property destroyed, there is absolutely nothing to compare between what Zionism has done to Palestinians and what, in retaliation, Palestinians have done to Zionists. The almost constant Israeli assault on Palestinian civilian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan for the last twenty years is only one index of these completely asymmetrical records of destruction. What is much worse, in my opinion, is the hypocrisy of Western (and certainly Zionist) journalism and intellectual discourse, which have barely had anything to say about Zionist terror.’

Over forty years after this text was published, on 15 October 2023, in the online magazine Ebb, Hassan Harb names the operation launched on 7 October by Hamas and other fighters from Palestine as ‘the Palestinians’ way to enter decisively in this historical moment of US decline, launching a war of liberation against the Zionist entity that, like the muqawama, combines the past and present towards the future’.

The conceptualization of the killing of over a thousand civilians as a ‘war for liberation’ should not lead us to argue for or against the legitimacy of the violence perpetrated by Hamas and other groups of fighters on 7 October. Rather, we should pose another crucial question: where does such a horrific event come from? What could possibly have caused people to reach the point where violence became the only solution they could embrace in seeking freedom and justice?

The 7 October killings represent one extreme attempt by groups of fighters from Palestine to move against the oppressors whose legitimacy has been normalized and justified by the most powerful countries in the world. The consequence of such a war for liberation has been the killing of more than a thousand innocent people and the kidnapping of about two hundred children, women, and men (part of them opponents of the present Israeli government who were active in peace-making initiatives in support of Palestinians). It goes without saying that the indiscriminate killing of innocent people who had no responsibility for the crimes committed by the Israeli government is a horrific reality and any intention to destroy all Israelis and Jewish people must be condemned. Such horror, however, is not the outcome of the incursion of mad terrorist fanatics who have completely lost their minds, as a large portion of mass media tend to frame the question. The so-called “terror” has roots.

The violence one breathes and learns from (being an ordinary subject of injustice and discrimination) rarely vanishes into thin air. Horror produces horror, and the violence to which Palestinians have been structurally subjected sadly transformed and turned innocent civilians into targets. An eye for an eye – the law of violence; this is the only option left to a people whose right to exist has been negated since before they were born, and whose lives have been violated by Zionists and the European and American imperialist project born of the very idea of eradicating the Palestinians who inhabited Palestine.

This imperialist (US-led) project of the so-called “Global North” does not begin with the events following the 7 October killings and it does not have much to do with the specific context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The horrific events we are witnessing daily are only one expression of a much larger and ongoing process of discrimination, displacement, mass-killing, and dehumanization of certain groups of people – these “others,” being the Palestinians, the Arabs, the terrorists, the ethnic/religious minorities, or the illegal (one should rather say “illegalized”) migrants.

As people wait to be killed and plead with the world to hear their call to be recognized as human beings with dignity and rights, the world is watching. We are all – those who can afford it – active witnesses and observers, participants, and responsible fellows of those who are actively committing crimes against humanity, which are otherwise crimes against every one of us, including the perpetrators.

When oppression becomes the norm and the denial of freedom and the use of indiscriminate violence is perpetrated and justified, resistance can take the form of violence, and this is simply because all other possible forms of democratic or peaceful opposition end in inevitable defeat when violence is used on the other side. This is the history of Palestine in the past seventy-five years. As a result of this overlooked and normalized paradox, hate has been growing, and it is now, even more clearly to the rest of the world, on the move.

Halt!

Hate has been growing for many years. Diatribes, especially in politics, are filled with anger. Violence is everywhere and it is endemic. It proliferates and expands, and it modifies the way in which we see the world. As it affects how we think, it also affects what we are – because, after all, we are what we think.

Protests in defense of the Palestinians, who are being abandoned to death through the imposed lack of access to vital resources, or actively killed, are witnessing increasing episodes of violence and anger against Jewish people. Antisemitism is re-emerging as a profound distortion of contemporary society. Again, the logic is that of two opposing sides: if you are not with me, then you are against me. This dichotomy builds on a great misunderstanding, that is, if you are with the Palestinians, then you do not recognize the Jewish people and their rights or the horrible killings committed by Hamas on 7October; and if you condemn Hamas, then you should support the indiscriminate genocidal actions perpetrated against the Palestinians by Israel. The false conflations of Hamas’s violent attacks with all Palestinians and the Israeli state/Zionist project with the Jewish people continues to stoke conflict. Hate grows, but such sentiment is the outcome of circles of false narratives which distort the facts.

Being able to recognize the horrors committed by Hamas on 7 October does not prevent one from being equally capable of understanding the historical context which has led to such events and therefore firmly condemning the horrible killings committed by Israel in recent weeks and throughout the seventy-five years of occupation. Cause and effect are inevitably and inextricably tied together in the world-history of oppression for domination.

The blood of innocent people and civilians does not have flags or sides. One possibility we may have as we try to orient ourselves into the future is a response to this growing violence through the deactivation of hate and the cultivation of peace, understanding, and comprehension. It is important to learn how to examine an extraordinary event by paying attention to a series of less noticeable and often hardly visible ordinary events, and to observe the common threads through which power emerges, violence proliferates, and the violation of people’s rights becomes an almost invisible and mostly accepted reality.

We must work together to deactivate such a paradigm. The memory of the violence suffered by our predecessors cannot become the trigger for more violence. If that happens, we have lost before we have even started on the path to (ir)reconciliation.[1] When violence calls for more violence, we have fallen victim to a historical cycle of horror. Such a vicious cycle must be halted.

As Antonio De Lauri well elucidates in The Courage of Historical Truths, we all have a responsibility in the process. Being united to bring an end to violence and the flowering of peace is what I wish to orient our life towards. Peace requires knowledge. And knowledge requires the ability to turn negative and corrosive emotions into strength and creative energy. This is possible, and it is necessary – for all the civilians who have been killed and for those who are condemned to die because of our complacency; for the migrants of the past, the present, and the future; for all those whose premature deaths are being neglected, forgotten, or turned into a justification by political propaganda; for something better to come through a collective and shared act of responsibility, justice, and comprehension.

This new horizon of humanness must break from purely rhetorical humanitarian narratives filled with empty promises and unfulfilled ideals, and critically question (to drastically change) the world-order of capitalism and economy-led principles which shape our lives and produce others’ deaths in circles of violence.

References

Harb, H. 2023. Al-Aqsa Flood: Imperialism, Zionism and Reactionism in the 21st Century, Ebb. Available at: https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/al-aqsa-flood . (Accessed: 15-10-2023).

Said, E. 1979. The Question of Palestine. Vintage Books Edition, New York.

[1] For a critical ethnographic view on irreconciliation – taken as instances when survivors refuse to forgive in response to persistent impunity of past injustices, see Mookherjee, N. 2022. On Irreconciliation. John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

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Episode 8: Writing history beyond disciplinary constraints 

In the 8th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews anthropologist Jeevan Sharma on how to write a history and ethnography of the speedy transformations in Nepal. Sharma’s work looks beyond disciplinary boundaries to study the political and economic inequities that has historically informed the social life in Nepal. There is no way of ethnographically understanding social change in Nepal without a careful engagement with these historical shifts. Eventually, Sharma reflects that the call for radical transformation in Nepal has not necessarily led to greater political emancipation, freedom, better livelihoods, and economic opportunities.

Writing history beyond disciplinary constraints by Public Anthropologist Podcast (spotify.com)