How denial sustains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities for a talk by Saree Makdisi about his recent book, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (University of California Press, 2022). Introduction by Nadia Abu El-Haj.

The question that Tolerance Is a Wasteland aims to answer might seem simple: how can a violent project of dispossession and discrimination be imagined, felt, and profoundly believed in as though it were the exact opposite––an embodiment of sustainability, multicultural tolerance, and democratic idealism? Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by the most liberal sectors of European and American society as a manifestation of the progressive values of tolerance, plurality, inclusivity, and democracy, and hence a project that can be passionately defended for its lofty ideals.

For more info about Tolerance Is a Wasteland, click here.

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA. His most recent book is Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022). His other books include Reading William Blake (2015), Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race and Imperial Culture (2014); and Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2010).

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies.

Important Notes about the Venue

The Heyman Center is located in the East Campus Residential Facility. Please allow extra time if you are attending an event and have not visited before.

If you wish to use Google Maps to help you navigate to the Heyman Center, please search for Ancel Plaza and use the map above to find your way.

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Please note that access to East Campus and the Heyman Center is controlled by a guard and advanced registration for this event is required.

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DUE TO CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them.

Join us for an online conversation with Fida Jiryis and Rashid Khalidi in celebration of her recent memoir, Stranger in My Own Land, (Hurst, 2022).

This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present—a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother’s death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into.

Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer and editor who has written on life as a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. Her published works include Stranger in My Own Land (Hurst, 2022); three collections of Arabic short stories: Hayatuna el-Sagheera (Our Small Life), al-Khawaja (The Gentleman), and al-Qafas (The Cage); and a collection of her short stories in Hebrew translation, Ha-Cluv (The Cage). Fida contributed to Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller on fifty years of Israeli occupation, and BeLashon Kruta (Amputated Tongue), a Hebrew anthology of Palestinian literature. 

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in the Alwehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, and began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked as a journalist and a cultural Director. He has been a full-time writer since 2006, publishing 14 poetry collections and 22 novels, including his epic series The Palestinian Comedy of 12 novels covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history. Four of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including his novel Time of White Horses which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009 and for the 2014 London-based Middle East Monitor Prize for the Best Novel about Palestine. Lanterns of the King of Galilee was also long listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013. Three of his novels have been translated into Italian, one into Danish and one into Turkish. He is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight literary prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever was listed by The Guardian newspaper in the top 10 most important novels written about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro won the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in 2016. He was awarded the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog. In 2020 he became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the “Katara Prize” for Arabic Novels for the second time for his novel A Tank Under the Christmas Tree.