In today’s episode of the TPPI Podcast, Gabriel Noah Brahm talks with scholar and writer Abe Silberstein. Their podcast follows a webinar about the role of critical theory in the response within higher education to the atrocities of October 7. During the webinar, which also featured Cary Nelson and Manuela Consonni, Silberstein had presented a working paper about Frantz Fanon. The podcast conversation with Silberstein and Brahm is available as a video or in audio-only form. A podcast conversation with Cary Nelson is also available here.
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Once on the bus, the conversation quickly turned to our musings on the war and the future of the region. As those who attended were quite knowledgeable, it was a pleasure to listen to their erudite analysis. Conversation quickly subsided once we drove past the area in which the cars from the Nova party were parked. The enthusiastic conversation died down, and everyone looked slack-jawed upon the cenotaph. The rest of the journey was quieter. Upon arriving at the Kibbutz, there was a palpable change in mood from when we had first departed. Though faces of those in attendance were concealed by the benches on the bus throughout the journey, it was now clear that their expressions had hardened. We donned our vests and helmets, and set out.
And then, it turned out that we were not so safe over here. Within days—within hours, actually—the antisemitic impulses that had been hiding in American culture started to come out in the open. That wave hit the Modern Language Association, where it was framed as progressive. First, the boundaries of the debate about Israel moved. Before October, there was pressure to scorn Israel through boycotts, and to portray Israel as a colonial or apartheid state. What was a debate turned into a denunciation. October 7, for some, rapidly became background noise to what they see as a need for an immediate ceasefire. Israel’s actions could easily be understood as self-defense, but there are some who contend that those actions can only be understood as an act of vengeance. REMINDER:
Click here to register for the event. All subsequent panels are likewise scheduled for noon EST on the seventh day of each month throughout 2024. Panels will run between 90 to 120 minutes long, followed by colloquy among panelists and audience Q&A. Building on the success of our thought-provoking first panel, which laid the groundwork for ongoing discussion of critical theory and the Israel–Hamas conflict, our next panel features renowned historians, Jeffrey Herf, Matthias Küntzel, and Benny Morris. Herf’s presentation is titled “Israel’s Moment: The Forgotten International Politics Regarding the Establishment of the State of Israel.” Küntzel will present on “Nazi Antisemitism and the Hamas Massacre.” Morris will consider October 7 and the 1948 Arab–Israeli war as jihad. Series organizer Gabriel Noah Brahm will moderate.
Cüppers’s argument about Nazi ideology as a source for Palestinian and more broadly Arab antisemitism is part of a larger body of scholarship that includes the publications by Jeffrey Herf, Matthias Küntzel, and Elham Manea in particular. Thanks to this research, the claim has become incontrovertible that Nazi Germany played a significant role in shaping the ideology of the Arab–Israeli conflict in ways that continue today and that explain the unique brutality of the October 7 Hamas attacks as well as the aspiration for a massive elimination of Jews from the region. It is exactly that which finds expression in the frequent call for Arab Palestine––فلسطين عربية—which means Arabs only, and no one else (one looks in vain in the founding documents of the PLO or Hamas for any commitment to minority rights). |
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