Palestinian Silence in the Israeli University Classroom

Many English Literature Departments in Israel celebrate the diversity that characterizes their classrooms. It might even seem that this social and academic space, which brings Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli students together to study and discuss literatures in English, can serve as a “Third Space,” enhancing the formation of multifaceted fluid identities and highlighting their liminality. As a graduate student whose MA thesis centered on novels that defy the myth of the monolithic nation-state and reveal its contested and liminal nature, I am an advocate of this beautiful diversity. However, my experience as an Israeli-Palestinian student in three different English Departments in Israel suggests that the divide between Palestinian and Jewish students in Israeli classrooms and on Israeli campuses persists even in the seemingly inclusive English classroom. From the best of intentions, students and professors in Israeli universities avoid debates of a national, ideological, and political nature for fear of disrupting the classroom’s ostensible harmonious atmosphere. In this paper, I will draw on the experiences of Palestinian-Israeli students to investigate the resistance to narrate our national narrative of the Nakba and the reluctance to relate and recognize past and current Palestinian collective afflictions. I will discuss the implications of maintaining a suppressed Palestinian identity in the Israeli classroom. I will also refer to a personal experience in which I “push the borders,” testing the degree to which a classroom of Palestinian and Israeli students can tolerate a transnational discourse.









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