Joseph Massad is an Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is a Palestinian born in Jordan in 1963. In 1998, Massad earned a doctorate at Columbia University where he studied under Edward Said. His most recent book Desiring Arabs (2007), which some consider an extension of Said’s Orientalism, received wide critical acclaim from scholars whose work concerns Arabic culture and history, as well as those whose field is sexual theory.
In 2004 Massad was at the center of a group of Columbia faculty that was accused by mostly Jewish students of what they considered unfair treatment because of the students’ pro-Israel views. Many viewed the campaign against the professors as an attempt, supported by Israel lobby groups, to inhibit political speech critical of Israel. In the end, Massad and the others were exonerated by a university committee.
Despite his own experience of accusations from pro-Israel groups, Massad was one of a group of leftists who were highly critical of the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt claim that the powerful Israel lobby is able to force the U.S. to adopt a foreign policy which is against its own interests. Massad opined that that lobby simply supports an imperialist U.S. foreign policy which naturally favors Israel.
Above is a lecture he presented at Austin Community College on October 23, 2013. In it Massad details the history of Zionism, which he sees as a racist, colonial-settler movement that has always intended to subdue the indigenous Palestinian population, despite its public pronouncements that Israel desires peace. He argues that in the early 1970s, the United States joined Israel’s war against the Palestinians by initiating talks which led to the Camp David peace treaty and to Egypt’s complete capitulation to Israeli demands of its acceptance of Palestinian defeat.
Massad also accuses the Palestinian Liberation Organization of abandoning the liberation struggle decades ago and acting as collaborators in the Israeli colonial project. He dismisses the two-state solution as a ruse to promote Zionist expansion and control. Massad mocks the reframing of the liberation struggle as a “conflict,” which he insists shows an acceptance of Israeli claims that we are talking about a disagreement rather than the suppression of political and human rights. Despite the perfidy of its leadership who has surrendered, Massad says that the Palestinian people have never given up their struggle for justice.
Massad’s vision is not one that many want to hear. Some probably would say it ignores all positive currents and hopes; that it is too cynical. But given the worsening situation on the ground, the mockery that is passing for negotiations, and the continual expansion of the Israeli settlements, maybe this pessimistic view can teach us something important. A victim’s righteous anger may be difficult to encounter, but especially when it comes from someone as brilliant as Joseph Massad, we ignore it at our own peril.
Massad covered very similar theme in a recent two-part essay for Al Jazeera here and here.
Thanks Ira.
This reminds me of something Hannan Hever wrote about the myth of peace-seeking Zionism. Hever argues that the colonialist consequence of the decision to
pursue the goals of Jewish nationalism specifically in Palestine – against the will of land’s native population – necessarily entailed violence, and that the Zionist movement (and especially Zionist literature) actively sought to deny or downplay this inevitable violence (apparent from the very outset of Zionist settlement – as described, for example, by Ahad Ha’am).
I believe that the “hand always extended in peace” mythology that has become so much a part of the Israeli and Zionist self-image (as well as an effective propaganda tool) springs directly from this tradition – the same tradition that enables oppressors to really see themselves as victims, and not only present themselves as such (Hever and Ahad Ha’am have a few things to say about that as well).
Just watch “Columbia unbecoming” to know what a fraud this guy is.
The problem with attitudes like that of Massad that they not only perpetuate the suffering of the people he claims he wants to help but that the disproportionate obsession of a big Arab world with a tiny Israel has distracted it from real problems it had and contributed to the downfall of entire Arab countries and societies. The question therefore is: just how much more in very real terms the Palestinians and the Arab world at large still have to pay just to make Massad feel that his case (as seen from the safe US) is being advanced? How lower Arabs still need to go in order to satisfy that?
“Despite his own experience of accusations from pro-Israel groups, Massad was one of a group of leftists who were highly critical of the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt claim that the powerful Israel lobby is able to force the U.S. to adopt a foreign policy which is against its own interests.”
Perhaps that should read “Because of…”… I may be sniping unfairly, I don’t know the man. That sentence does grate on me though.