Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine, Panel 3

The East is a Podcast

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.