Based on a meticulous examination of archival material documenting the process of Zionist land accumulation and the expulsions of Palestinians from 1936 to mid-1950s, I argue that the 1948 Nakba was neither the beginning nor the end of a process of settler-colonial expropriation. Instead, I claim that the mid-1930s signaled intensified efforts to expel Palestinian sharecroppers, a practice which culminated in the Nakba. In particular, I will discuss the case of a thickly populated closed frontier of Marj Iban ‘Amer (Jezreel Valley) region located in Northern Palestine. In this context the Zionist settlers utilized forceful practices, perpetrated in this region by the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza’ir movement, self-described as a socialist and bi-national movement, to vacate the lands of its Palestinian inhabitants. I will also explore how the politics of remembering by members of H a-Shomer Ha-Tzair kibbutzim reconstructed memories of the pre-1948 colonization practices and their role in the Nakba.

Nadia Abu El-Haj, Professor of Anthropology & Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University

In their book The Empire of Trauma, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman ask, "[W]hen we consider the soldier suffering from nightmares and flashbacks as psychologically wounded rather than as a malingerer or a hero, what does this view of war and those who participate in it tell us," (2009: 8)? Taking inspiration from their question, I consider the political and ethical consequences of shifting understandings of the trauma of soldiers for how an American public might come to know and understand U.S. wars-past and present. I recuperate a different reading of the emergence of PTSD in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, exploring an understanding of (soldier) trauma that, I argue, preceded trauma's equation with victimhood. I then turn to the post-9/11 wars and examine the ways in which the trauma of (U.S.) soldiers has come to be understood and that "we" as "American civilians" are called upon to recognize and bear responsibility for the psychological suffering of those sent off to war in "our name."