Disrupting global disability frameworks: settler-colonialism and the geopolitics of disability in Palestine/Israel

Abstract

In recent years, Israel has seen an increase in disability studies scholarship and disability rights activism. At the same time, critical disability studies scholars have begun calling attention to the role of colonization and neocolonial powers, too often obscured in disability studies work, in disabling oppressed nations. This article brings these critiques in conversation with disability studies scholarship regarding Occupied Palestine to argue that disability is inextricably intertwined with the settler-colonial project of the Israeli state. By highlighting the geopolitical production of disablement, this work suggests that social approaches to disability have largely effaced disability injustice rooted in geopolitical power imbalances.

Keywords:

• Palestine
• Israel
• disability studies
• settler-colonialism
• disability justice
• critical disability studies

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to Professor Dana Olwan and Professor Beth Ferri, who taught the wonderfully engaging graduate courses that animated this research. Additional thanks to Dana for providing such constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript. The author is also grateful for the reviewers’ thoughtful comments on the original submission.

Notes

1. Throughout this article, I use Palestine/Israel when referencing both the Israeli state and the geographic region of Palestine, Israel when referring to the Israeli state, and Palestine when referencing the land itself.

2. While this article specifically focuses on geopolitical disablement in Palestine to avoid overarching generalizations, there are doubtless examples of intentional disablement as a tactic employed by colonizers in other settler states. For the author, as a settler in the United States, the intentional spread of disease among Native Americans by European colonizers most immediately comes to mind. The particularities of disability oppression in other settler-colonial states require further consideration in future work.

3. The term Sabra, elaborated later, refers to Israeli-born Jews and represents a hegemonic identity constructed alongside the creation of the Jewish State (Yael Zerubavel 2002).

4. In considering the politics behind what is omitted from disability studies scholarship regarding Israel, it is worth noting that this study was funded by the Division for Research and Planning of the National Security Institute of Israel.

5. In her book Fantasies of Identification, Ellen Samuels (2014) relates a similar history of distrust toward disabled people. She describes the suspicion surrounding disability fakery, largely born from concerns over who is ‘worthy’ of social welfare and charity during times of particular economic insecurity intrinsic to capitalism.

6. The ongoing valorization of masculinized military violence in the settler-colonial project is exemplified by a Times of Israel article published shortly after Israel’s siege on Gaza over the summer of 2014. The article reports that, ‘inspired by Gaza war,’ roughly half of Israeli women seeking sperm donors were requesting sperm from men who had served in IDF combat units (Winer 2014). The article further relays that the director of the sperm bank ‘suggested that the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip may have given many of the women new insights into what makes a man’ (Winer 2014).