Reject Zionist Rhetoric at PAMLA

My name is Noor Harmoush, and I am an English graduate student at California State University, San Bernardino. 

Like many other graduate students in the field of Humanities Studies, I am always seeking opportunities to connect and grow with fellow scholars. The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) is a non-profit organization in the humanities that hosts annual conferences where scholars can present and discuss their academic research. The conference is highly esteemed, attracting students, researchers, and professors from all over California and its surrounding states who participate as both learners and teachers.

The 2025 conference is scheduled for mid-November, and the call for papers ends on May 15. I was looking forward to submitting a paper to the conference; however, I have decided to boycott it instead.

One of the panels this year is titled "A Duel Between Memories: Israel and Palestine." The title made me feel uneasy, and after reading the panel's objectives, I was disappointed to learn that PAMLA is soliciting papers that normalize Zionism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 

I have written a letter outlining my concerns about the panel and urging the presiding officers and the executive director of PAMLA to reconsider hosting "A Duel Between Memories."

If you agree with my letter, please append your name and your university to let PAMLA know that Zionism has no place in the 2025 conference. 

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Hello,

I am an English graduate student at California State University, San Bernardino. I am writing this letter to outline my concerns with the panel titled "A Duel Between Memories: Israel and Palestine" for the 2025 PAMLA Conference. I believe the objective of this panel diverts attention from the current genocide in Gaza, and reinforces harmful, hegemonic, Zionist discourse regarding the relationship between the state of
Palestine and the Israeli regime. I am respectfully urging the residing officers of this panel, along with the executive director of PAMLA, to either: a) remove this panel from the 2025 conference, or b) reframe the panel's objective to explore counternarratives to Zionist media and rhetoric, including perspectives from both Palestinian and Israeli voices.

First, and foremost, we are living in a historic moment where a genocide is being livestreamed to us daily on our mobile devices. According to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, a United Nations Special Committee, and many other human rights organizations, Israel's aggression in the Gaza Strip meets the legal definition of genocide. At the time that I am writing this letter, the children of Gaza are literally starving to death. We are all witnesses to the depravity of the Israeli regime as, each day, we watch the ways in which the Israeli Occupation Forces murder defenseless civilians, systematically target journalists, destroy infrastructures necessary for human life, and prevent any humanitarian aid from entering the region. There is no room for denial or alternative narratives.

I am genuinely confused why, 18 months into a genocide, PAMLA would call for papers that explore the "differing memories" of occupiers, and the indigenous population they are actively seeking to eradicate. Terms like "duel" and "conflict" mischaracterize Israel's settler-colonial function in the state of Palestine. These terms imply equality of aggression and power between both parties, blurring the lines between the oppressor and the oppressed. In my view, an invitation for alternative memories in this moment dilutes the reality of the current genocide.

Moreover, it is incredibly ironic that this type of rhetoric is being utilized for a conference whose theme is focused on challenging colonial frameworks and epistemologies. The list of potential topics, while merely suggestions, encourages comparisons of asymmetry:

1. Exploring portrayals of the "other" in school textbooks alludes to narrative being ingrained in young people, when in reality, Palestinians and Israelis experience otherness through a state-sanctioned apartheid system. Moreover, the Israeli Occupation Forces are committing scholasticide in Gaza, and regularly destroy Palestinian schools in the West Bank, inhibiting Palestinian children from receiving continuous and quality education.

2. Evaluating representations of Palestinians "within Israeli films" perpetuates dominant Israeli discourse regarding Israeli statehood and Palestinian inferiority. The suggested films do not offer a critique of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but rather showcase the Israeli military narrative as well as stereotypes about Palestinians, contributing to harmful portrayals of Palestinian people and their struggle for sovereignty.

3. Suggesting an analysis of the "differing memories" of Mahmoud Darwish, a victim of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion, and Moshe Shamir, an Israeli Zionist who benefited from that expulsion, is an attempt to undermine the reality of systematic Palestinian dispossession.

4. Encouraging an analysis of "Israeli criticism of the Palestinian narrative" in the 2024 documentary No Other Land contributes to divisive rhetoric that actively works to discredit Palestinian experiences and justify the ongoing occupation of their lands. The documentary provides a firsthand account of Palestinian displacement, showcasing the apartheid system in the West Bank and the 70-year-old Israeli campaign of home demolition and land theft. The entire point of the film is to counter the mainstream narrative that depicts Palestinian people as the aggressors who are incapable of maintaining peace.

I am concerned that this session calls for papers that will seek to normalize Zionist rhetoric – and by extension, Zionist memory. Suggesting that there is "a duel between memories" in and of itself subverts the aggressive nature of the Israeli colonial project, as well as the disproportionate power it has historically maintained in popularizing the narrative of its "memory," particularly in the United States and other Western countries. The Israeli regime has been enacting a project of erasure, both very literally by annihilating the Palestinian population and dispossessing them of their ancestral lands, and rhetorically by erasing their history, culture, and voices from mainstream discourse. Israeli memory is the colonial memory of indigenous Palestine, and hosting a panel that explores this paradigm is in direct opposition to PAMLA's commitment to resist ethnic and national injustice.

We, as researchers and scholars, have a duty to interrogate hegemonic discourse that enacts harm, both materially and rhetorically. In this moment, we are responsible for speaking against Israeli propaganda and directing all our efforts to elevating the Palestinian liberation narrative. We cannot afford to entertain discussions that reduce genocide, occupation, and dispossession to a mere "conflict" that conflates the occupier and the occupied.

Thank you,
Noor Harmoush