Academic Feminists Ponder "Whiteness and Palestine."
Conformity Run Amuck.
Women's Studies today--what can I say except: What I'm about to write belongs in the category of "You Can't Make This Stuff Up."
A Women's Studies list, (no, I'm not a member but I still have a handful of colleagues), has just shared a request for proposals for a volume titled "Whiteness and Palestine." An Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Janet Gray, teaches at the College of New Jersey and lectures and writes about race, ethnicity, intersectionality--and now "Palestine." Gray obtained her Ph.D from Princeton and wants to "center Palestinians, the Palestine Freedom Movement, and Palestine's past and present in a critical whiteness study." Her goal is to "map strategies for building pro-Palestinian rights coalitions." She calls this an act of "scholarship." And, alas, so it is.
Her potential chapters do not surprise but they do offend. Here are some:
"White supremacy and the roots of Zionism;" "White supremacy, Zionism, and the first Nakba; "Settler colonialism as a project of whiteness;" "Racial/ethnoracial apartheid in Palestine;" "White supremacy and Zionist state violence against Palestinians;" "Genocide against Palestinians as a white supremacist project;" and "Whiteness and US collaboration in Israeli state genocide against Palestinians."
Frankly, I'm amazed that she is not calling for an intersectional analysis of Oppressed, Palestinian Sex Workers who are POC.
Of course, what's a white girl to do in the academic world? And from her photo, Gray appears to be Caucasian. (Maybe she feels she's a black transgender Samurai warrior who's time-traveled to New Jersey. Ya nevah know.) Therefore, in our times, as a white-looking feminist in academe, one must either declare that one is queer, bi, or trans--or if a she remains a she, that, despite such an extraodinary failing, the defective professor is nevertheless an ardent but scholarly advocate of Palestine.
As for Palestine before 10/7: Please note: Not a word about forced veiling, honor killing, polygamy, child marriage, sex slavery, infidel hatred, censorship, the torture/murder of dissidents and gays, terrorism, terror tunnels, Hamas's propaganda. Palestine after 10/7, there's no mention of that date, or of Iran's proxy Hamas's use of its own civilians as human shields, their sadistic barbarism, etc.
Maybe this is a parody? A bad joke? Or is it merely a ploy for the funding and academic advancement of the truly mediocre?
In his book 1917 Barry White the Israeli scholar identifies huge swathes of 'Palestinians' with Arabic names denoting family birth origins in countries far removed from Palestine. What about a paper: 'Family origins and Palestinian identity'? Few takers because that study would ruthlessly expose the Arab invader scenario.
"In contemporary media language, the land of Israel is often mistakenly referred to as 'Palestine.' Let me point out that it is totally contrary to Biblical truth to call it Palestine. Palestine means the land of the Philistines. That term was never used until the Romans had conquered and destroyed the second temple. Then they used the name Palestine to assert that the Jews no longer had any claim to this region. It was a deliberately chosen anti-Semitic word. Biblically, the land of Israel was called the land of Canaan before it was taken by Joshua. But in the New Testament, do you know what this nation was called? The land of Israel. "Why Israel? God's Heart for a People, His Plan for a Nation," Derek Prince (Genesis 17:7-8, Psalm 105:7-11, Jeremiah 30:3)