The last two years have been chock full of commemorations, from World War I to the Russian Revolution and many in between. With each of these commemorations, scholars and observers attempt to put history in conversation with the global darkness of our times. Today we commemorate the 1967 Six Day War. On 5 June 1967, Israel tripled its territory, occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. The Israeli army had put a decisive end to the power and ambition of both pan-Arabism and the armies that were meant to fight on its behalf. The defeat was rapid and deep. The consequences would be just as deep and continue to constitute of the present.
A group of Jadaliyya editors has come together here to think, not about the war itself but about its historical, territorial, temporal, epistemological, and affective legacies and registers.
Lisa Hajjar and Noura Erakat provide a thorough grounding of the significance of 1967 in the realm of law. They delineate the realities of the iron cage and the horizon of strategy. Omar Dahi reflects on 1967 as the death of one strand of internationalism and possibility. Muriam Haleh Davis reads Algeria and Palestine together as historical myth, lived reality, and tortured present. Maya Mikdashi reflects on 1967 as a theoretical wormhole to think about Michigan and Palestine and the capacious power of settler colonialism that unites them. Ziad Abu-Rish issues a call to dispense with the 1967 War as an analytical crutch in order to interrogate otherwise overlooked questions of its broad-ranging and ongoing legacies. Anthony Alessandrini sheds piercing light on the silence on Palestine and its various temporalities in the field of postcolonial studies; he connects this silence to current attempts to contain criticism of Israeli settler colonialism. Nadya Sbaiti offers a sensory tour through the ubiquitous erasures of the legacies of 1967 in today’s Lebanon. Adel Iskandar ponders 1967 as the death of an anti-imperialist broadcasting project, Sawt al-‘Arab, and its demise into the individuated Arab media of the present. Hesham Sallam gives tribute to the idea of defeat in Egypt’s brutalized present. He characterizes the present as an ongoing naksa, a setback that has molded into permanent defeat. Bassam Haddad traces the misunderstandings of revolution that resulted in Arab authoritarianism’s resilient power, and Syria’s present calamity. Mouin Rabbani concludes the roundtable with a survey of historical trajectories and contemporary imperatives to end the occupation. Together these pieces offer reflections on law, Third Worldism, history, temporality, knowledge, epistemology, and the conditions of the now.
Participants:
Lisa Hajjar
Noura Erakat
Omar Dahi
Muriam Haleh
Maya Mikdashi
Ziad Abu-Rish
Anthony Alessandrini
Nadya Sbaiti
Adel Iskandar
Hesham Sallam
Bassam Haddad
Mouin Rabbani
