Nothing About Us Without Us: The Token Palestinian And Authentic Narrative | Ramzy Baroud

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Ramzy Baroud -- World News Trust

Oct. 8, 2014

I recall, with particular awkwardness, my first talk at a socialist student gathering at the University of Washington in Seattle nearly two decades ago. When I tried to offer an authentic view of the situation in Palestine from the viewpoint of a refugee, my hosts were hardly impressed.

However, the head of the student group knew how to move the crowd. He spoke of Palestinian and Israeli proletariat classes, which, according to him were ultimately fighting against the same enemy, the neoliberal capitalist elites shamelessly subduing the working classes in both Palestine and Israel. But what the audience loved the most was his sweeping statements about the working classes of Algeria, Congo and South America that were somehow all magically tied back to Palestine.

Inconvenient Narrative

My comments that the Histadrut (General Organisation of Workers in the Land of Israel) was actually a racially-constructed trade-union enterprise -- didn’t go well with the crowd. Since its establishment in 1920, the Histadrut advocated Jewish labour rights and did its utmost to exclude their supposed Arab comrades. A powerful institution, it eventually grew to become the hub of Labour Zionism, responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, labourers and all, and the establishment of Israel over the ruins of Palestine.

I was never asked to speak to that particular socialist group again, though with time I began realising that the issue was far more complex. It has little to do with socialism and labour rights, and much to do with my own Palestine-centred narrative. With time I realised that as a Palestinian, regardless of the kind of platform of expression that was available, I could only fit into a fixed space with perfectly prearranged dimensions.

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