ISSHT

Name: Hiba FALEH.

MA2: Intercultural Studies.
Research Proposal.
Topic: Neo-Orientalism and the New Barbarism thesis: Aspects of symbolic violence in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Table of contents:
1.
2.
3.
4.

I.
The theoretical background of the issue discussed.
Neo-Orientalism.
New barbarism thesis.
Middle Eastern studies.
Media studies.
II.
The ways in which false representations sustain the continuity of neoorientalism:
1. Othering the Arab World.
2. Stagnation and backwardness of Palestinians.
3. The terrorist stigma allocated to Palestinians by the

III.

IV.

occupying power.
4. Trouble in mental configurations of Palestinians.
The production of the new barbarism thesis:
1. Primitivism versus civilization.
2. Order versus disorder.
3. Tribal violence versus modernity and civil cultural evolution.
The portrayal of the Middle East in general and Palestine in particular
by the west through power, scholarship and imagination:
1. Binarism between the superior western values and the inferior
Arab culture.
2. The imaginary of the Arab mind by the Israeli writer Raphael
Patai.
3. The imaginary of the temperament and character of Arabs by
the writer Dr. Sania Hamady.
Abstract:

It is widely held view that a great attention has focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as
the worlds most intractable conflict with the ongoing occupation of Palestine reaching 119
years.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians that
began in the mid twentieth century and that get so much media coverage than other violent
conflicts. Thus, the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the media is a topic of
considerable debate. It is a process in which Palestinians have long been negatively portrayed
and stereotyped in a way to serve the hidden agendas of media conglomerates.
Palestinians are presented either as likely to cause damage or danger or as operating in a
time of intense difficulty or danger. This misrepresentation of Palestinians is closely linked
to the notion of neo-orientalism, a twenty-first phenomenon which, while indebted to classical
Orientalism, it focuses on othering the Arab world, with the exclusion of some geographic
parts such as India and Turkey from the classical map of Orientalism.
Although neo-orientalism represents a shift in the selection of its subject and locale, it
nonetheless reproduces certain repetitions of and conceptual continuities with its precursor. In
this respect, neo-orientalist imaginaries contributed to legitimize continuous colonial
economic and political projects as can be witnessed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Neo-Orientalism is closely associated with the new barbarism thesis, a concept which
carries a negative connotation of unrefined and savage. It focuses on the way of explaining
the violence of peripheralised people in conflict. It is a form of symbolic violence and this is
quite obvious in the dynamics included in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Introduction:

Neo-Orientalism is a phenomenon that represents a continuity from Orientalist to neoOrientalist thought, whereby Middle Eastern society is seen as either too weak and must be
guided or too strong and must be feared and controlled.
Similarly to classical Orientalism, part of neo-orientalism involves seeing Arab culture as
exotic, uncivilized, representing a widespread socialization of which westerners are seen as
inherently superior in comparison. This means that violent conflicts such as the IsraeliPalestinian conflict are cognized through homologous metaphors of order versus disorder and
civilization versus barbarism which becomes fatefully ingrained into the consciousness of
ordinary western people.
Hence, racist imagery, terrorist and Arab mind labels serve as powerful images of a noncivilized other. This shed the light on the core of the new barbarism thesis as the latter
legitimizes a continuous colonial economic and political project.

Thesis:
In the same way that Orientalism once served the policies of colonial powers, the new
barbarism thesis serves the political interests of those who are aware of the need to produce
images of a conflict as one between civilization and barbarism. A conflict such as the Israeli
Palestinian conflict is thus a symbolic war in which Palestinians are victims of symbolic
violence in two ways: the first is the terrorist stigma, with which the occupying power has
labeled Palestinian resistance organizations, if not the whole Palestinian population. The
second way is the one which focuses on the proclivity of Arabs to blaming others for their
own shortcomings and failure and since the west is the most readily available scapegoat, it

must take most of the blame with which goes inevitably most of the hate. This way of
explaining the violence of peripheralised people can be observed in the dynamics of symbolic
violence involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Research Questions:
1. How is the new barbarism thesis produced?
2. How the west viewed the Middle East, Arabs and Islam through
power, scholarship and imagination?
3. Does the Orient need a cultural adjustment program?
4. Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict get so much media
coverage than other violent conflicts?
5. Does the strategic position in the Middle East really offer much
of an explanation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Literature review:
Many critics ensure that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a topic of considerable debate. Thus,
it needs detailed and enthusiastic readings to find out the essence of its viability. This leads us
to think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its representation in the Media received a wide
attention.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the topic of several books and research initiatives. There is a
vast amount of written material that relates either explicitly or implicitly to the issue. It is a
truly interdisciplinary topic, drawing interest from several different scopes.
This review focuses on presenting diverse opinions on the issue discussed. Often,
representatives from these diverse fields are coming together and working collaboratively to
analyze extremely complex situations.

Actually, the production of neo-orientalist and new barbarism imaginaries dominated the
writings of the early Israeli social science establishment. In this respect, the Israeli cultural
anthropologist Raphael Patai wrote his well-known book The Arab Mind which was first
published in 1973, and later revised in 1983. A 2007 reprint was further updated with new
demographic information about the Arab world.
Mainly, Patai shed the light on the stagnation and backwardness of Arabs, claiming that the
problem is rooted in mental configurations of Arabs as the title of his book suggests. He
argues that Arabs have a sense of marginality which never allows an Arab to detach himself
from his traditional culture.
Patai blames the Arabs for their laziness, claiming that the Arabs have the proclivity to
blaming others for their own shortcomings, laziness and failure. Since the west is the most
readily available scapegoat, it must take most of the blame with that goes inevitably most of
the rage.
Alroy, building on Patai, claims that Palestinian resistance against Israel is based on basic
personality traits peculiar to Arab peoples. This refers to the idea that the Arabs are a
fiercely vengeful people. Thus, Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular are intensely
portrayed as people who do not have the civic ethos necessary for political communities. It
is at this juncture that the mechanisms of symbolic violence involved in the conflict are
obvious.
Following the paths of Patai and his collaborators, Sania Hamady inspects Arab habits,
instincts, social and political attitudes, philosophies and mental mechanisms.
In her Temperament and Character of the Arabs, Hamady makes the point that while one
cannot categorize all Arabs as having the same characteristics, beliefs and value systems, it is
nevertheless possible to determine through statistical analysis some basic core characteristics

which may be found in the majority of a population. In this respect, Hamady indicates that
such graces are insincere. Indeed, she reports that ostentation, flattery, dissimilation, even
lying or worse are considered quite respectable by the Arabs, provided they achieve a desired
objective and they dont get caught. She goes on, among a people who admire guile and
despise the meek. She notes that Arab politeness is a calculated diplomacy of
blandishment and adulation which, if thwarted, explodes easily into rage. Hence, Hamady
tends to lay the blame for the Arabs public behavior patterns, for their private torpor on their
religious, philosophical and political concepts. And this is the case with Palestinians,
according to her.
Having said this, Palestinians are presented as people who have little chance to develop their
potentialities and define their position in society and political battle. They hold little belief in
progress and change. Thus, their backwardness, savagery, terrorism labels are used in a
strategic planning by the occupying powers to justify their political attitudes and calculations
which is, and will continue to be unrelated to current realities. In this respect, violence in a
conflict such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes the product of backward cultures. It is
at this juncture that we can notice how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict undergoes a profound
transformation which has resulted in severe disruptions and retrogressions.
In this context, Martin Levi Van Creveld, an Israeli military historian and theorist has written
an audacious searching examination of the nature of war and its own radical transformation.
Of particular significance in this area is his 1991 book The Transformation of War, in which
Van Creveld describes violent confrontations which confirm a new model of warfare in which
tribal, ethnic and religious factions do battle without high-tech weapons or state supported
armies and resources. The book also examines the changing character of war, claiming that
wars have not disappeared but they are not what they used to be. Their aims, characteristics,
conduct, scope and consequences have changed in a variety of ways. Thus, conflicts are no

longer by means of weapons. A whole war can be instead conducted by means of words,
language, discourse and imagination. And this is notably observed in the dynamics and
mechanisms involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than any other violent conflicts.
To sum up, the purpose of this literature review is to examine and assess critically the main
alternative explanations for the dualism of change and continuity in warfare and explore new
hypotheses, emphasizing notably the links between the transformations of domestic,
transnational and international politics. The review will further discuss these approaches by
looking at the logics and characteristics of a specific armed conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

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