“As citizens of democracies, we will be primarily concerned with situations where our own governments…our own political classes, our media classes are complicit. And that is what is going to outrage us long before we get outraged about what is happening in East Timor or Myanmar.”
That’s just one of the many reasons Indian Author Pankaj Mishra has spent so much of the past year advocating against Israel’s war on Gaza, and has now even gone as far as to write a whole book on the subject – The World After Gaza: A History.
The book is of course inspired by Mishra’s London Review essay and lecture, ‘The Shoah After Gaza’ – which drew up controversy last year, after the Barbican backed out of hosting Mishra’s lecture, all before he even gave it.
“I’m not actually quite sure what happened there at the Barbican, but they certainly pulled out at the last moment, fearing that they might also attract the same malicious charge of antisemitism,” Mishra says.
Asked whether he was ever concerned about being accused of antisemitism himself, Mishra said, “We've seen horrific things in the last 15 months. There's so much more to fear at this point than the charge of antisemitism.”
On the topic of censorship, Mishra criticized the way in which last year’s pro-Palestine student protests were suppressed and sabotaged by those in power.
“The way in which mainstream newspapers, mainstream politicians collaborated in demonizing those student protesters and then obviously kind of crushing them... that was one of the most horrific events of the last year, obviously in addition to what was going on in Gaza itself,” Mishra tells Mehdi. “I still think that those student protesters, even though they were crushed and silenced, offered us a modest hope.”
Mishra also went on to draw parallels between the state of Israel and his home country of India, specifically in relation to what India is doing in Kashmir.
“There are sort of these parallels not just between Israel and India, but also various other post-colonial states, including Indonesia for that matter,” Mishra explains. “What we look at is essentially a state – a newly sovereign state – unable to deal with problems of dispossession, the problems that obviously emerged during the creation of these states, and resorting to really naked violence to solve these problems.”
Click here to buy a copy of Mishra’s book, ‘The World After Gaza: A History.’
Watch the full interview with Mishra to hear him discuss the implications of Israel’s impunity, US President Donald Trump’s re-election, and his spats with far-right writers Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson.
Free subscribers can watch the first 6 minutes of the interview. Become a paid subscriber to watch the full 24-minute interview and join the conversation in the comments below!
