On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and other displacements: selected writings

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Notes

1 People of the Book, an Islamic term referring mainly to Christians and Jews and, in some interpretations, Zoroastrians and Sabians.

2 In 1998, the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury convened a conference in Beirut on the Nakba of 1948 that included a panel on Arab-Jewish perspectives. According to Shohat, all the Jewish participants were public critics of Zionism: some, such as Shimon Ballas, lived in Israel, others lived elsewhere or, as in the case of the Moroccan Abraham Serfaty, had never been to Israel at all. However, ‘some Syrian-backed groups in Lebanon opposed the invitations to the point that many of the Arab Jews were either advised not to attend or themselves decided not to go for fear of their safety’. In denying a voice to anti-Zionist Jews, Shohat calls the outcome an ‘ironic victory for Zionism’ (p. 107).