“Zionism’s Political Unconscious” by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Verso Blog, 17 November 2023.
“From the river to the sea” is “threatening” and “intimidating” speech; it is a call to “genocidal violence.” Perhaps such interpretations are revealing in ways those voicing them cannot quite hear—or admit.
Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago, 2001), and most recently Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post 9/11 America (Verso, 2022).
