Palestine Past and Future

This paper considers artist Khalil Rabah’s long running, parafictional art project The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (2003–ongoing). Rabah uses exhibition-making strategies and display conventions to satirize the violent worldmaking projects that museums are called upon to uphold. I join visual analysis of Rabah’s artwork with decolonial critiques of the museum and state, specifically Israel. During the decolonial and revolutionary post-World War II context of the mid-twentieth century, many newly sovereign nations opened museums. In the case of the Zionist settler-colonial project, the museum pre-dates the founding of the nation-state, paving the way for future statehood. These museums legitimize the terms of possession so that by the time the nation-state is declared, the argument for its existence was already made. Rabah indexes the historical to envision the future of Palestinian sovereignty and simultaneously interrogates the veracity of the museum as an institution of objective truth.

This paper examines calls to save Palestine that were made over a decade before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This research focuses on the works of Muṣtafa Sadiq al-Rāfiʿī (d. 1937), a renowned figure in the 20th reform movement against colonialism in the Middle East. Although he died in 1937, al-Rāfiʿī warned against the approaching threat which Palestine faced. He called upon citizens of the Arab and Muslim world to claim moral responsibility and to act to halt the impending threat. Born in Egypt to parents of Syrian descent, al-Rāfiʿī is known for his social commentaries that focused on ethical reflections related to the lived realities of his time. This paper explores the articles al-Rāfiʿī published in major newspapers in Egypt and the Levant in the 1930’s, studies the context of his appeal, and analyzes the nature of his moral call for action. 

This paper explores the role that public performance of ritual played in demonstrations of cross-cultural and interfaith solidarity, especially between antizionist Jewish students and Palestinians, during the 2024 student encampment uprising. Through stories taken from the authors' lived experiences and from direct interviews and conversations with student organizers at schools such as Columbia, Northwestern, University of California Los Angeles, and others, this paper argues that public performance of traditionally private ritual was a profoundly essential solidarity tactic to the success of the student movement, and in many cases actually served to deepen student's connections to their cultural and faith traditions at a moment of profound uncertainty. By so doing, the act of the performance of these rituals became not just a spiritual practice, but a compelling and necessary political tool.