Tolerance is a Wasteland
Saree Makdisi | Maher Mughrabi
For some people, the image of Israel, as a shining example of liberal democratic ideals, may have been smashed by the Netanyahu Government’s response to a new round of violence unleashed by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Yet, for Palestinians, the positive image projected by Israel has always been a ‘convenient myth’ that has allowed the dominant powers within the international community to turn a blind eye to their plight. Professor Saree Makdisi argues that Europe and America, in particular, are complicit in a historic wrong. They have tolerated the intolerable – a state of affairs in which the effects of violent dispossession and discrimination on the Palestinian people have been the norm – a constant rather than a rare exception. He asks how this act of self-deception, on the part of the West, can have occurred – and what might be possible, for both Palestinians and Israelis, if the cherished myth became a reality.
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Saree Makdisi
Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His most recent books include Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial, Reading William Blake and Making England Western. He is also a frequent contributor to The Nation, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Maher Mughrabi
Maher Mughrabi is an editor and senior writer at The Age. He was Features Editor of The Age from 2017 to 2023 and, from 2014 to 2017, Foreign Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, during which time those papers’ foreign reporting won four Walkley Awards, including one for coverage of an Israeli offensive in Gaza. He has worked in newspapers for 29 years, including stints at The Independent, The Scotsman and the Khaleej Times. He has lectured at Melbourne and Monash universities on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its representation in media.