Brexit literature’s present absentees: Triangulating Brexit, anti-Semitism, and the Palestinian crisis

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a blind spot in Brexit literary criticism: Britain’s relationship to the Middle East, particularly its historic responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. Although fiction that directly engages both Brexit and the Israeli–Palestinian crisis has not yet appeared, oblique connections can be illuminated. Shared conceptual fields, albeit ones only partially brought into view in contemporary British fiction, emerge from intersecting historical experiences. The article considers a range of recent literary texts, with an emphasis on A Stranger City (2019) by British Jewish author Linda Grant and Fractured Destinies: A Novel (2018) by British Palestinian author Raba’i al-Madhoun. When viewed in a certain light, Brexit motifs of enclosure, displacement, and propinquity limn the Palestinian crisis as well as the spectre of anti-Semitism, revealing Britain’s role in the shaping of the modern Middle East as part of contemporary British literature’s political unconscious.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• Balfour
• Middle East
• anti-Semitism
• displacement
• Palestine/Israel

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The IHRA definition begins: “Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” (https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism?focus=antisemitismandholocaustdenial).

2. This is supported by a poll conducted by Conservative Lord Ashcroft in early 2020 but has not definitively been proven.

3. Attempts to reduce legitimate criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism have historical precedence: Zionist ideologue Eyal Weizmann commented in 1921 that “Zionist ideals may have upset some Arabs and some British anti-Semites”, in Thompson’s view “casually conflating [ ... ] anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism [in] a shameless rhetorical tactic that was to take root” (2019, 123).

4. Corbyn was criticized in the mainstream press as well as prominent Jewish newspapers: Sabbagh (2018) cites examples from The Times of Israel, The Guardian, The New Statesman, and The Independent.

5. British charity Community Security Trust (CST) cites 1805 anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, including a 25 percent rise in violent assaults. Five hundred and five incidents referred to Israel, the Middle East, or Zionism, of which “63 directly compared or equated Israel with the Nazis” (Sherwood 2020, n.p.).

6. Due to lack of clarity about whether Jewishness is defined by religion, ethnicity, or cultural identity, and a tendency towards assimilation, the British Jewish community has “failed to get a place at the table of multiculturalism” despite “lessons its diasporas story might have for a multicultural nation” (Kuhn-Harris and Gidley 2010, 7).

7. Philippe Sands spoke about the need to leverage human rights law against Israel at the 2019 Edward Said London Lecture, “Is Justice Still Possible? Palestine, International Law, and Public Discourse” (Sands, Akram, and Jabareen 2019).

8. Walid Dahman shares biographical characteristics with al-Madhoun and is also the protagonist of his The Lady from Tel Aviv (Al-Madhoun [2009] 2013).

9. Although uncited, the quotation echoes Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti’s ([2009] 2011) memoir I Was Born There, I Was Born Here (Walidtu hunak, walidtu huna).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lindsey Moore

Lindsey Moore is Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Lancaster University, specializing in post-1948 literature of the Arab world (including North Africa) within postcolonial studies. To date, she has focused on configurations of national and transnational community, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. Her second monograph, Narrating Postcolonial Arab Nations: Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, came out with Routledge in November 2017. The book brings together canonical and less familiar Arab novels and memoirs from the last half-century to consider colonial continuities and consequences, literary productions of hospitable nations, and histories that produced 21st-century Arab uprisings. Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World, co-edited with Abir Hamdar, was published by Routledge in 2015. Her first book, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film came out in 2008, also with Routledge.