Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine, Panel 3
Apr 8, 2024
Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)
PANEL 3
“Seeing Palestine, Not Seeing the Palestinians: Gaza in
the British Pathé Colonial Lens” Shahd Abusalama, Lebanese
American University
My presentation will critically engage with the representation of
the Palestine question in general and Gaza refugees in particular
by British Pathé, which, as a leading media institution of the
British Empire, was also a dedicated advocate of Zionist ambitions
and Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine. While presenting
corresponding reels, I will interrogate Pathé’s discursive
strategies in representing the 1947-48 Nakba (Arabic: catastrophe),
the 1956-7 Israeli occupation of Gaza, and Israel’s subsequent
occupation of Gaza beginning in 1967, exposing its ideological
framing of the Palestinian people as either “terrorists” or
“helpless victims” and the glorification of the newborn state of
Israel. I argue that British Pathé provided a consolidating
hegemonic discourse on Palestine-Israel that prevails to this day
in mainstream Western political, media, and academic discourse to
shield Israel and its allies from responsibility. (25
minutes)
PLENARY PANEL
Art credit:
"Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.