Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

Denial is a key to the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel, as it negates the Palestinian presence in and claim to Palestine, reframing destruction and repression into affirmations of liberal virtues. Saree Makdisi's book explores these acts of affirmation and denial in a range of venues, such as the haunted landscape of forests, the theater of pinkwashing, and the Museum of Tolerance.

Format: Hardback
Length: 244 pages
Publication date: 05 April 2022
Publisher: University of California Press

The question that this book aims to answer might seem simple: how can a violent project of dispossession and discrimination be imagined, felt, and profoundly believed in as though it were the exact opposite – an embodiment of sustainability, multicultural tolerance, and democratic idealism? Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by the most liberal sectors of European and American society as a manifestation of the progressive values of tolerance, plurality, inclusivity, and democracy, and hence a project that can be passionately defended for its lofty ideals.

Tolerance Is a Wasteland argues that the key to this miraculous act of political alchemy is a very specific form of denial. Here, the Palestinian presence in, and claim to, Palestine is not simply refused or covered up, but negated in such a way that the act of denial is itself denied. The effects of destruction and repression are reframed, inverted into affirmations of liberal virtues that can be passionately championed.

In Tolerance Is a Wasteland, Saree Makdisi explores many such acts of affirmation and denial in a range of venues: from the haunted landscape of thickly planted forests covering the ruins of Palestinian villages forcibly depopulated in 1948; to the theater of pinkwashing as Israel presents itself to the world as a gay-friendly haven of cultural inclusion; to the so-called Museum of Tolerance being built on top of the ruins of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, which was methodically desecrated in order to clear the space for this monument to human dignity.

Tolerance Is a Wasteland reveals the system of emotional investments and curated perceptions that maintain the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel. By examining the ways in which Israel is presented to the world as a model of tolerance and democracy, Makdisi challenges the notion that these values are universal and inherent to human nature. Instead, she argues, they are products of a particular historical and political context, and they are sustained by a range of emotional and ideological investments.

Makdisi's book is a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which denial sustains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the complex and often contradictory ways in which Israel is perceived and understood in the global community.

Weight: 486g
Dimension: 160 x 236 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780520346253