Nadia Abu El-Haj delivers the Annual Lecture on Racial and Social Justice at Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology on Monday, March 30, 2026.
Impunity and Disavowal in a Time of Genocide
There have long been debates about bystanders to genocide and other forms of mass violence. What did they know? How did they just “go along”? If Hannah Arendt famously argued that in Nazi Germany there was "nothing but propaganda”, can the same be said with respect to a very different political regime and media environment that characterizes contemporary Israel? In this paper, I explore practices of denial, disavowal and impunity through which I sketch a portrait of Israeli society amid the genocide in Gaza.
ATTEND | Impunity and Disavowal in a Time of Genocide by Nadia Abu El-Haj, 03/30/26
