Doodad recently made a comment in a Daily Kos I-P diary to the effect of, "There are quite a few who advocate the Palestinians as infants meme; unable to act as adults, look after themselves; make cogent decisions."
Needless to say, he took something of a beating for this comment for a number of reasons that I do not wish to go into at this moment. However, one of the responses was as follows:
really? who? name one. besides yourself. i have never heard this meme. are you a meme maker? i even googled this and w/the exception of the neocon propaganda creep clifford may i couldn't find it.
When I saw that response, I arched an eye-brow. The person who made it is a regular in dKos I-P and I would surely have thought that the idea of "infantilizing the Palestinians" would be a notion not unfamiliar to anyone who regularly participates. The truth of the matter, of course, is that Doodad was pointing to something that is often done within dKos I-P, if not within left-liberal I-P discussions, more generally.
Anytime we discuss the Palestinian people, or their leadership, in such a manner that we excuse any and all behavior as not their responsibility, we infantilize them... we treat them as children who cannot really be thought responsible for their own actions. For example, if we blame the rise of Hamas entirely on Israel, we infantilize the Palestinians. If we explain away things like suicide bombings as the responsibility of Israel because of the occupation, we infantilize the Palestinians. If we suggest that the civil conflict between Fatah and Hamas is really Israel's fault, we infantilize the Palestinians.
We rob them of agency.
It also, of course, has the effect of laying all blame for everything I-P at the feet of the Israelis. When we infantilize the Palestinian people by explaining away all behavior as ultimately Israel's fault it, obviously, also has the effect of unjustly laying all blame for everything I-P at the feet of the Jews of Israel.
That the reponder could find virtually no evidence of this "meme" in the intertubes only means that she could not have tried very hard to do so. Googling "infantilizing Palestinians" brings up 3,900 results. Just glancing at the results of the first page we see:
The infantilization of the Palestinians (as well as the rest of the Muslim world) can no longer be allowed to continue.
And:
After all, what's more progressive than infantilizing Palestinians?
And:
Carter's portrait demonizes Israelis and, not coincidentally, it infantilizes Palestinians...
And:
Instead of infantilizing Palestinians by reinforcing their unrealizable fantasies and their hope that Israel will somehow vanish in a puff of smoke, ...
And on and on and on... 3,900 results.
The point is, of course, that explaining away Palestinian behavior, while lambasting Israel for that very behavior does no one any favors, nor does it ever help us get toward anything resembling truth in I-P relations and history. The Palestinian people are not merely passive victims buffeted about by history, but actors within history along with everyone else. Their leadership are not children, but adults and as adults they are responsible for their decisions.
And that is what Doodad was talking about.
Posted by Karmafish
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Did you do a search on Daily Kos to see if and how many times it was used as an accusation against an Israel supporter?
ReplyDelete-DKW
I'm not entirely certain that I understand your question.
ReplyDeleteHow many times pro-I people were accused of using infantilizing language about the Palestinian people?
Is that what you mean?
There are a number of apparent racist memes about Palestinians that I have never heard of (for example the one about the child brides). This is another one. Here we have the strange situation where a Pro-I person is talking about a racist meme and a Pro-P person is denying it exists. Curious if the accusation has been made against a pro-I person on Daily Kos.
ReplyDeleteWell, the reason the Pro-I is arguing it doesn't exist is because it harms their narrative that Palestinians are simply victims;puts the onus on the Palestinians to own their behaviour rather than blame it all on Israel.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not a racist meme but rather an observation about how some people defend Palestinians......in the SAME way Colonialists would justify their actions against the child-like natives who "didn't know any better."
I am curious about something else, as well.
ReplyDeleteWe are being told that a common anti-Arab racist theme is that Arabs tend to abuse their children. I have not heard of that before.
Is there confirming documentation?
I mean, we can point to all sorts of sourcing that lays out the themes of anti-Semitism, so surely there must be sourcing for the idea that Arabs abusing their children is a common anti-Arab racist trope.
I have seen that trope out there BUT it is far from "common."
ReplyDeleteWell, Golda Meir made that comment about "if Arabs loved their children more than they hate us" or whatever it was exactly.
ReplyDeleteDid she invent the theme or was she repeating an well-known anti-Arab theme?
I would think that if it is part and parcel of anti-Arab racist tropes it would be documented as such. I think it can easily be argued that it is racist because it paints Arabs in general with a broad and negative brush, but that's not the same as claiming it's a general theme in anti-Arab racism.
The Meir statement was not about child abuse. The Meir statement was about war and suicide bombs. Her meaning was that if Palestinians cared more about the lives of their children they would not pursue war as much.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that this explanation is not without its own problems, but she was not accusing Palestinians of child abuse.