On the Hijacking of “Palestine Today”: The Drive for “Normalization” on Quora
Several days ago both Rima Najjar and I were banned from Quora, where we were co-administering two “Spaces” devoted to Palestine-related topics. “Spaces” are innovative sites Quora is experimenting with. This is the story of how the first Space devoted to Palestine came to be given permission to exist and how it was hijacked by Zionist trolls.
This issue became apparent when Najjar and I were just beginning to explore the concept of a space devoted to the Palestinian perspective, a concept sorely lacking on Quora. We shared our idea with a young Palestinian American, who ended up administering the space with peer who described herself as a Palestinian American high school student, but what made her unique was her decidedly Zionist views. The plot thickens as Najjar and I are pushed to the side, the original moderator moves to the sidelines, only to replaced by a decidedly Zionist administrator convinced that “normalization,” though she does not use that word, will solve the “conflict,” perhaps, she believes, right there on her main space on Quora, “Unity is Strength,” or something like that title.
In the few days before I was banned, I monitored what was happening on “Palestine Today,” the space in dispute that ended up colonized by Zionists who are pushing neutral dialogue as a way to move forward.
In essence, normalization promotes a kind of Alice Through the Looking Glass Approach, in which events related to colonial oppression, which is abnormal, are made to look normal, a kind of whitewashing of Israel’s crimes so that no one on the space gets angry, except of course the Palestinians who can see through the technique, but by now they are banned.
In the last days before our ban I copied a conversation that I think encapsulates everything that is wrong with this approach. In an attempt to recruit the “best writers” on Quora to this space, the new administrator asks who on this site are “Expats,” meaning here who is a Palestinian living in the States. The very word is telling. Describing political refugees who were forcibly evicted from their homes in 1948, during Al-Nakba, the catastrophe, as “expats” rather than as Palestinians in exile connotes figures like Ernest Hemingway, who voluntarily left for greener pastures in Paris in the 20s, but knowing he could return at any time. “Expats” totally erases the original event, the Nakba, that for the most part has defined Palestinian identity up to today. It erases the fact that Palestinians in exile do not have the right of return, a denial that has led to the Great Return March each Friday in Gaza, during which protestors call attention to the fact that some of their former villages are within walking distance, but they are separated from them by a steel fence manned by Israeli snipers, who each Friday manages to murder a few unarmed protestors.
All of this is erased in the wording “Expats,” and with that so are Palestinians’ justifiable emotions also wiped away so that no one leaves with hurt feelings, or any feelings at all, really. Only one person challenged this portrayal, but he was pretty much ignored.
In an article in 972 Magazine, normalization is described as
“colonization of the mind,” whereby the oppressed subject comes to believe that the oppressor’s reality is the only “normal” reality that must be subscribed to, and that the oppression is a fact of life that must be coped with. Those who engage in normalization either ignore this oppression, or accept it as the status quo that can be lived with. In an attempt to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights, Israel attempts to re-brand [1] itself, or present itself as normal — even “enlightened” — through an intricate array of relations and activities encompassing hi-tech, cultural, legal, LGBT and other realms.
Dialogue in all of these instances on Quora, whether on Palestine Today, which by now I assume is thoroughly occupied, or on Unity, which rests on the principle that we are all Quoran Nationals so we can put our heads together to solve the problem in a polite, non-confrontational way, which never entails resistance to oppression. It is dialogue for the sake of dialogue, after which everyone leaves feeling good. This strategy as used on Quora by “liberal” Zionists has no intention of ending oppression, but rather privileging co-existence rather than resistance, and it will always be “reconciliation” without justice.
Finally, what is so insidious about this occupation of a Quoran space is that it ignores the defining moment of the Nakba followed by establishment of a settler-colonial regime that continues the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Palestinians of the land. When Najjar wrote about Zionism, using credible scholars and activists as her sources, she was told that since she had written pejoratively about Zionism, then to call out writers who are Zionists for their one-sides portrayal of Palestinians would be to call these writers racists, which in fact they are but she cannot call attention to that without breaking BNBR, be nice at all times, especially when writing while Palestinian.
