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Witnessing Genocide in Palestine
Witnessing Genocide in Palestine
The Genocide Convention of 1948 defines genocide as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” At the time of writing this toolkit, the world is witnessing multiple possible genocides. For the purposes of this toolkit, we will focus on Palestine as a case study in witnessing genocide, the tensions of which continue to escalate across academic and public contexts. At the time of writing this toolkit, Israel had not yet escalated warfare into the West Bank and Lebanon, and we acknowledge that this toolkit can only speak to the context up to publication.
On 23 April 2024, with Massy Arts Society, the Public Humanities Hub co-hosted a roundtable of humanities experts who spoke to the ongoing genocidal contexts happening in Palestine while considering what it means to bear witness to such devastation. Rather than an act of spectatorship, “to witness is to be accountable to naming and struggling against the fascistic and colonial structure of Zionism that seeks the extermination of Palestinian people” (Cait McKinney, "CM"). Together with an audience at the Massy Arts gallery, five scholars across different disciplines reflected on modes of witnessing — journalism, photography, trial and testimony, and other forms of cultural production — and considered what it means to bear witness under threats of censorship, denial, erasure, and suppression.
Brenna Bhandar (Associate Professor, Peter Allard School of Law, UBC) on contextualizing the ongoing genocide and legal conversations unfolding publicly around it
Adel Iskandar (Associate Professor of Global Communication, SFU) on the current systematic attack on journalists and bearing witness to their work
André Mazawi (Professor, Department of Educational Studies, UBC) on a broad historical approach to thinking about genocide in Palestine, issues of complicity as a scholar, the role of public scholars
Jasbir Puar (Professor, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, UBC) on unpacking the meaning of genocide, mass maiming/debilitation and injury sustained by Palestinian lives
Cait McKinney (Assistant Professor, School of Communication, SFU) as moderator
This toolkit is specifically for scholars whose work engages with the public realm and/or takes on public forms. It is also for public intellectuals who take up the role of the scholar-activist, or whose work is informed by theories and modes of changemaking. It builds from and expands upon the discussions and resources shared by scholars in the roundtable and engages with the following core questions. In the face of a genocide:
What is the role of the public intellectual?
How does the public scholar engage in responsible, ethical, and productive knowledge mobilization activities?
What kinds of publicly-engaged activities can most meaningfully contribute to acts of witnessing?
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