If there’s anything I love more than irony, it’s self-induced deluded irony, completely smothered in bitterly delicious Hasbara icing. Is Russell Sitrit-Leibovich for real? Like, for real real? He’s talking about Palestinian love for revisionism of Jewish history while completely forgetting the Israeli intellectual tradition of revisionism, not only of Israeli and Jewish history, but also of Palestinian history? Or even… Palestinian existence? What about the complete whitewashing of history he’s provided in 650 words?
Additionally, what’s up with The McGill Daily now publishing straight up Hasbara propaganda? I’m a strong advocate of hearing all 76 sides of the story and its mother, but if there’s one thing that doesn’t belong in an independent journalistic publication, it’s state propaganda.
There’s a lot I can say to Sitrit-Leibovich, but I’m going to leave it to my man Ghassan Kanafani, who wrote in his short story “Returning to Haifa”: “When are you going to stop considering that the weakness and mistakes of others are endorsed over to the account of your own prerogatives? These old catchwords are worn out, these mathematical equations are full of cheating. First you say that our mistakes justify your mistakes, then you say that one wrong doesn’t absolve another. You use the first logic to justify your presence here and the second to avoid the punishment your presence here deserves… I am decreeing that in the final analysis you’re a human being… You must come to understand things as they should be understood. I know that one day you’ll realize these things and that you’ll realize that the greatest crime any human being can commit, whoever he [sic] may be, is to believe for one moment that the weakness and mistakes of others give him [sic] the right to exist at their expense and justify his [sic] own mistakes and crimes.”
Sana Saeed
M.A. II Islamic Studies
DPS Board of Directors