The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives in the Israeli—Palestinian Conflict

Abstract

NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives 107 ERIC CHEYFITZ The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict There has been a turn, for many people, in recognizing that Manifest Destiny was a horror, and the supposed “exceptionalism” or “idealism” of American “foreign” policy—these first inhabitants from whom the land was stolen were long not treated as having American “rights,” as foreigners—will not survive this evidence. We have come to a turning point in our society, where we might recognize the truth of what was done and resolve to go forward, as best we can, as a serious, multiracial society in which the stories of each person are acknowledged and the dark history which still afflicts us rejected. —ALAN GILBERT, JOHN EVANS PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER, 2014 But it’s hard sometimes, letting go of the stories you think you know. —PAMELA J. OLSON, FAST TIMES IN PALESTINE: A LOVE AFFAIR WITH A HOMELESS HOMELAND (2013) My initial interest in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict comes from the fact that I am a Jew and one of my daughters and three of my grandchildren are citizens of Israel. But this personal connection is deeply embedded with my intellectual , scholarly, and political interest in the conflict. In this last connection, I am a member of both the American Studies Association (ASA) and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) and a supporter of the resolutions published by both groups, following that of the Asian American Studies Association (AAAS), in solidarity with the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education .1 These nonbinding resolutions, it should be stressed, are focused not on individual scholars, but on Israeli academic institutions because of the complicity of these institutions with Israel state policies in Gaza; the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; and the Golan Heights. These policies, which impose martial law on the Palestinian territories and are in violation of international law, interdict the academic freedom and human rights of the Palestinians. As the title suggests, this essay focuses neither on American nor Israeli exceptionalism per se but on how the intersection of the two narratives results in the historical denial by both nation-states of the actual history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict—the way in which American exceptionalism reinforces that of Israel is a particular focus. As I argue, this denial, which Eric Cheyfitz NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 108 erases the Palestinian narrative of the conflict, makes a just resolution of the conflict impossible. We should remember in what follows that nations are narratives that rationalize, or idealize, the material force of the state. That is what is implied in the formation of the nation-state, a synthesis of rhetorical and material power. The state, then, requires the narrative of the nation to cover its tracks. The nation is the state’s alibi. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been continual, at least in the formal sense, since 1917. In that year the Balfour Declaration was proclaimed in a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour to Lord Rothschild: His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country.2 The Declaration is manifestly a colonial document. Edward Said notes, That is the declaration was made (a) by a European power, (b) about a non-­ European territory, (c) in flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group, so that this foreign group might, quite literally, make this territory a national home for the Jewish ­people.3 The British transferred their colonial project in Palestine to the UN in 1947, which, without the agreement of the over 700,000...