Western intelligentsia stifling Palestinian voices exposes ‘limits of Euro-American liberalism’

The recent cancellation of an award ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli in Germany has sparked a significant inquiry, not only into Western bias concerning the Palestine issue but also into the broader aspect of decolonisation, including the disruption of the US-led status quo.

“Palestinian resistance is not just the story of Palestinians and Palestine, but the story of all those who are dominated, colonised, enslaved, oppressed—who are being crushed like rubble under the weight of the world of empire. This is why the empire fears Palestinian resistance,” Palestinian writer Muhannad Ayyash tells TRT World.

As a pressing question emerges in light of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s postponement of Shibli’s prize ceremony and US news networks taking Muslim anchors off air, many wonder what exactly does the Western world fear?

“It (Palestinian resistance) excites the revolutionary spirit, reinvigorates the revolutionary soul, and points us towards a new world, a better and more just world for all of us. A decolonial world,” says Ayyash, also a Professor of Sociology at Canada’s Mount Royal University and political analyst.

The ceremony was scheduled to be hosted by a well-known liberal space in the literary world– the Frankfurt Book Fair. On October 13, as the award ceremony cancellation drew condemnation from various global literary associations, the book fair organisers cited “the war started by Hamas” as the reason behind their bewildering decision.

Denying space and acknowledgement to Shibli is part of a wider censorship of Palestinian voices, although it directly clashes with the proudly professed “liberal values” of the Western states.

Ayyash highlights that it’s crucial to acknowledge that “Euro-American liberalism has built on the exclusion of colonised and enslaved peoples.”

While many may argue that such exclusion points at the crisis of morality in the West, Ayyash says the idea of inclusivity in the West has always been limited.

“In other words, liberalism in places like Germany, France, the US, Canada, and others is an ideology that only opens up to perspectives from the Global South once it has established the centrality and supremacy of Euro-American perspectives. Whenever voices from the Global South really challenge the centrality of Western Europe - that is, the story that Western Europe tells itself about itself - as is happening right now, those voices are excluded," Ayyash says.

‘Show off my bruises, blood and stains’

For Shibli, the sudden cancellation of her award ceremony wasn’t so surprising. Much of her literary work touches upon the idea of invisibilisation of Palestinian life and narrative.

Shibli writes that the disappearance of the elusive idea of a normal life, everything that once was in Palestine, shaped her consciousness about her homeland.

“I could no longer accept the marginalised, minor life to which we’ve been exiled since 1948 when our existence turned into a ‘problem,’” she writes in the Arab Lit magazine.

Palestinian-American professor, attorney, and activist Noura Erakat voices her frustration and anger at Western media discourse and mentality that systematically prevents Palestinians from offering a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the Palestine issue.

In a post on X, she protests, "They want us to cry about our dead, but not to provide context or discuss responsibility."

Similarly, Palestinian poet, writer, and journalist Mohammed El Kurd describes his experiences with Western media interviews since October 7 and on other occasions.

“You become this brutalised subject that all I’m asked to do is show off my bruises, blood, and stains… And I’m robbed of the opportunity to present any analysis, to frame the situation. I don’t have the expertise in their mind. Despite my life.”

Ayyash comments on the prevailing tendency in Euro-American journalism covering Palestine, remarking, "They are comfortable showing us as helpless victims who are only worthy of Western pity and charity, but never as thinking subjects who can explain the systems of oppression that brutalise us and our vision and aspiration for liberation.”

By categorically rejecting Palestinian voices' critical analysis and intellectualism, this approach reduces them to subjects of mere emotion and portrays them as suffering bodies.

This leads the consumers of Euro-American mainstream media to sympathise with the Palestinians only on the humanitarian level, Ayyash explains.

"The context becomes depoliticised and devoid of any notion of settler colonialism and decolonial liberation. This humanitarian concern is ultimately a form of detachment from the realities of settler colonialism and apartheid.”