Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative

by Isabella Hammad

Man is not just flesh and blood, says the protagonist, in a flash of insight: man is a cause. What this means is that it is not enough for the bonds of personal and political identity to be passively inherited but that they must be imprinted with intention and will.

To recognize something is, then, to perceive clearly what on some level you have known all along, but that perhaps you did not want to know.

How many Palestinians, asked Omar Barghouti, need to die for one soldier to have their epiphany?

And yet the pressure is again on Palestinians to tell the human story that will educate and enlighten others and so allow for the conversion of the repentant Westerner, who might then descend onto the stage if not as a hero then perhaps as some kind of deus ex machina.