‘The affirmation of democracy is the denial of apartheid’: Saree Makdisi’s Tolerance is a Wasteland shows how Israel built and sustained itself on contradictions

‘Tolerance is a Wasteland’ looks at how denial helps and maintains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel

Denial through disappearance is a main theme in Saree Makdisi’s Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (University of California Press, 2024) with the book making a strong argument that Israeli colonialism’s “affirmation of the one site is directly related to the denial and repression of the other.”

This denial in turn allows Israel the space to manipulate land, memory and achievements. Makdisi’s book focuses on four examples that are discussed in depth: sustainability, democracy, diversity, and tolerance.

If Israel can maintain these concepts, what then, about colonialism is destructive? Makdisi’s incisive explanations show the opposite. The destruction goes hand in hand with the image Israel projects of itself as sustainable, democratic, diverse and tolerant.

Of course, Israel’s denial and affirmation are carried out within the Zionist concept of a “Jewish and democratic state” – the propaganda that is affirmed without questioning the erasure behind it.

The slogan provides the necessary veneer for Israel to erase Palestinians and Palestine while branding itself through exclusivity. The latter would translate to ethnic cleansing, colonialism and apartheid, were it not for the ‘democratic’ image Israel curated and promoted of itself.

“Israel’s forests, which destroyed the Palestinian ecology through the importation of eucalyptus and pine trees, hide the Palestinian towns and villages that existed before the 1948 Nakba”

To sustain its deception, Makdisi — a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA — explains how Israel has carried out parallel actions that not only obliterated Palestine but created more colonialism.

However, this colonialism is obliterated by surface-level visibility – both metaphorically and literally.

Afforestation is one of the means through which Israel promotes its sustainability, using the decades-old slogan in the Zionist narrative of making the desert bloom.

Israel’s forests, which destroyed the Palestinian ecology through the importation of eucalyptus and pine trees, hide the Palestinian towns and villages that existed before the 1948 Nakba.

Thus, while supposedly making the desert bloom, Israel was reinforcing its ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. “The idea was that the erasure of the landscape would erase with it the political rights and claims based on belonging,” Makdisi succinctly explains.

On the surface, therefore Israel remains associated with the positive values of afforestation, which also yields positive results in asserting and protecting “the permanence of the colonial settlement.”

However, afforestation also hides Israel’s destruction of indigenous plants, the destruction of olive trees and Palestinians’ sustainable agriculture. The forests reflect to the West what it looks for – Europeanisation, or colonisation under the guise of abundance.

Similarly, the assertion of Jewish and democratic, which US politicians take upon themselves to promote when they defend Israel as a democracy, contains several contradictions.

One, as Makdisi notes, is Israel’s insistence on its right to exist – which implies a defenceless nation when it is a nuclear power.

“The affirmation of democracy is the denial of apartheid,” Makdisi writes. This takes place at several levels in international politics, particularly the covering up of apartheid at the UN.

“Israel branding itself as accepting removes attention from the fact that Palestinians are not allowed the same freedom of movement by Israel”

Diversity is another strategy which Israel employed to promote itself as an accepting entity concerning gay rights. “The mobilisation of queer rights within the Zionist project is intended to reinforce and extend it,” Makdisi explains.

Yet, this propaganda, which is particularly visible with events held in Israel such as the Eurovision, is also an extension of disappearing Palestinians.

Israel branding itself as accepting, for example, removes attention from the fact that Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank are not allowed the same freedom of movement by Israel.

Reflecting on the book’s introduction, Makdisi discusses the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem which Palestinians objected to due to its construction obliterating the Mamila cemetery.

After suspension, Israel’s High Court approved the project in 2008. Not only does the museum encroach upon the cemetery in the name of tolerance, but the Israeli High Court also enforced a separation which is a direct reflection of the Apartheid Wall.

“The High Court suggested, however, that the project engineers construct an underground – horizontal – separation barrier between the foundation of the museum building and the remaining bodies below, thereby separating the living Jews in the structure above from the dead Arabs in the ground beneath their feet,” he writes.

Tolerance, therefore, takes on the process of hiding Palestinians from sight.

There is much to be gleaned from Makdisi’s writing on how Israel built and sustained itself on contradictions. What the book makes clear, and the conclusion asserts as well, is that “without US support, Israel would be unable to sustain the traumatic violence it imposes on the Palestinians, and quite possibly it would be unable to sustain itself as an enterprise at all.”

The so-called shared values, which Israel and US politicians refer to consistently, are a reflection of the denial and affirmation that Makdisi discusses in his book.

The power of propaganda in colonialism keeps Israel afloat and Palestinians obliterated. The violations are clearly visible and well documented, but Israel has constructed a denial that thrives upon the denial of Palestinians, which its allies have readily embraced.

https://www.newarab.com/features/tolerance-wasteland-palestine-and-culture-denial