Simon Sebag Montefiore unloads on the Israel-Gaza war and "the decolonization narrative"- while staying remarkably vague on who and what he's talking about

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore warns in an article (that prints out to be 13 1/2 pages) about what he takes to be a dangerous ideology: “decolonization.”¹ According to him, this poisonous way of thinking has lead to such phenomena as this:

[S]ince October 7, Western academics, students, artists, and activists have denied, excused, or even celebrated the murders by a terrorist sect that proclaims an anti-Jewish genocidal program. Some of this is happening out in the open, some behind the masks of humanitarianism and justice, and some in code, most famously “from the river to the sea,” a chilling phrase that implicitly endorses the killing or deportation of the 9 million Israelis.

This sounds pretty dang bad! So who are some of these "academics, students, artists, and activists"? I list those who he identifies here:

• Decolonization ideology

• The decolonization narrative

• The decolonizing narrative

• Educated people

• "Hamas apologists and atrocity-deniers" who make "robotic denunciations of “settler-colonialism'”

• The ideology of decolonization

• Leftist analysts

• Leftist intellectuals

• Leftists

• Malign deniers

• The “new identity analysis”

• People who accuse Jews of stuff

• People who shout in the street

• A legion of people who “emerged” and “who downplayed the slaughter” by Hamas on October 7

• Once-respectable intellectuals

• Others [this sounds like an especially sinister group!]

• The “settler-colonist” narrative

• Some protesters

• Students at Harvard and the University of Virginia

• Students “who run through California schools shouting ’Free Palestine’.”

• University teachers

• Westerners “eager to expose the crimes of Euro-American imperialism”

• The “whiteness” trope

So, of course, he calls out some of these dastardly types so we can know who to avoid! The specific villains he defines include … Whoopi Goldberg. And two British actors, Tilda Swinton and Steve Coogan. That’s it.

He does link to a website called Artists for Palestine UK² of which he disapproves. It includes a short letter that expresses concern for civilians in Palestine facing a severe shortage due to Israel’s siege against Gaza that includes cutoffs of water, fuel, and electricity, which endangers the lives of all civilians in Gaza, and that in my understanding is a violation of international humanitarian law.³ As of this writing, the letter condemns “every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them.”

But if you are looking for some explanation of what may be wrong about the theories of Edward Said⁴ on “Orientalism” or Achille Mbembe⁵ on Postcolonial Studies, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

I know The Atlantic leans conservative. But this is pretty tacky. They run what for their website is a long article that rants about a ideology that the author thinks makes people into anti-Semites who cheer brutal murder of civilians by Hamas. In fact, he says that this body of thought he claims to be criticizing is not just “toxic” and “inhumane” but that it “justifies otherwise rational people to excuse the dismemberment of babies.”

Yet nowhere in the long article do you see anyone identified who actually elaborates and advocates this doctrine. Or even a brief explanation what the doctrine is. But he does tell us they are “leftists” and that some of them protest and some are in schools or universities in Massachusetts, Virginia, and California.

Actually, what he presents is just preaching to a conservative choir with what to them is a gratifying trashing of protesters who may be to the left of the conservative
American podcaster Joe Rogan, people who read books, and others regarded by the Trumpista right as menaces to their version of Western civilization.

But to narrow down anyone who might advocate the things he’s talking about, well, it’s pretty hard to do it from anything he puts in his article. There are no articles or books one could examine to see if he’s reading them accurately, no protests specifically identified that could be checked in news reports, not even a clear definition of what he’s talking about.

Postcolonial studies is a perfectly respectable branch of history that looks at the experience of societies that emerged from being colonized. Which includes, well, large parts of the world including the US and most everywhere else in North and South America. It’s notable that he doesn’t use the phrase “postcolonial studies,” but uses descriptors like “decolonization ideology.”

Didn’t, you know, the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence in 1776 elaborate a “decolonization ideology”? Did the signers have to insist that Thomas Jefferson remove all references approving “the dismemberment of babies”? Because it sure doesn’t appear in the final text or in any known draft of it!

What Montefiore doesn’t mention is that postcolonial studies has become an issue in connection with BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement, a loosely defined group of those who advocate such measures to be applied to Israel over their continued holding of the occupied territories they still hold from the Six-Day War of 1967. There have been some public discussions of this that surfaced important and substantive issues. Readers of Montefiore’s piece won’t find them discussed there.

Gaza Strip (Source: Wikimedia Commons⁶)

But he obviously has no problem with boycotts over the vaguely-defined ideology he polemicizes against in this article:

Parents and students can move to universities that are not led by equivocators and patrolled by deniers and ghouls [he doesn’t specify which ones those are]; donors can withdraw their generosity en masse [from whom? Whoopie Goldberg?], and that is starting in the United States. Philanthropists can pull the funding of humanitarian foundations led by people who support war crimes against humanity (against victims selected by race) [and those foundations are …???]. Audiences can easily decide not to watch films starring actors who ignore the killing of children; studios do not have to hire them. And in our academies, this poisonous ideology, followed by the malignant and foolish but also by the fashionable and well intentioned, has become a default position. It must forfeit its respectability, its lack of authenticity as history. Its moral nullity has been exposed for all to see.

Except it’s pretty hard “for all to see” when he’s so vague about who and what he’s complaining against.

The most generous thing I can say about this piece is that it seems Montefiore let his polemical impulses get the better of him in this one.

A mini-bibliography on postcolonial concepts

1. Anderson, Warwick (2020): Finding Decolonial Metaphors in Postcolonial Histories. History & Theory 59:3 09/02/2022. <https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12171>

2. Cheyette, Bryan (2018): Postcolonialism and the Study of Anti-Semitism. American Historical Review, Oct. 2018, 1234-1245.

3. Chibber, Vivek (2020): Edward Said’s Orientalism and Its Afterlives. Catalyst 4:3, 8-33.
   Also: Chibber, Vivek (2021): Edward Said’s *Orientalism* and Its Afterlives. Jacobin 12/24/2021. <https://jacobin.com/2021/12/said-orientalism-postcolonial-theory-capitalism-materialism> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

4. Donaldson, Laura E. (1996): Postcolonaism and Biblical Reading: An Introduction. Semeia 75, 1-14. <https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/books_semeiaj.aspx>

5. Greenberg, Udi (2021): The Lost Worlds of Edward Said. New Republic 04/13/2021. <https://newrepublic.com/article/162008/lost-worlds-edward-said-biography-review> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

6. Mälksoo, Maria (2022): The Postcolonial Moment in Russia’s War Against Ukraine. Journal of Genocide Studies 05/11/2022.. <https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2022.2074947> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

7. Mbembe, Achille (2001): On the Postcolony. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

8. Romdhani, Rebecca & Tunca, Daria (2021): Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World. New York: Routledge.

9. Samaddarv, Ranabir (2018): Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age. Kolkata (West Bengal, India): Palgrave Macmillan.

10. Vázquez-Arroyo AY (2018). Critical Theory, colonialism, and the historicity of thought. Constellations 25, 54–70. <https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12348> (Accessed: 2023-29-10). Includes its own bibliography.

11. Young, Robert J.C. (2001): Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Malden MA & Oxford & Carlton (Australia): Blackwell.

1. Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2023): The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False. The Atlantic 10/27/2023. <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/> (Accessed: 28-10-2023).

2. Artists for Palestine UK, n/d. <https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2023/10/17/tilda-swinton-among-2000-artists-calling-for-gaza-ceasefire/> (Accessed: 28-10-2023).

3. Nijs, Maxime (2020): Humanizing siege warfare: Applying the principle of proportionality to sieges. International Review of the Red Cross (IRRC). <https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/reviews-pdf/2021-12/applying-principle-of-proportionality-to-sieges-914.pdf> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

4. Greenberg, Udi (2021): The Lost Worlds of Edward Said. The New Republic 04/13/2021. <https://newrepublic.com/article/162008/lost-worlds-edward-said-biography-review> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

5. Schliess, Gero (2016): Achille Mbembe: 'the future resides in conviviality'. Deutsche Welle 05/25/2016. <https://www.dw.com/en/cameroonian-philosopher-achille-mbembe-the-future-resides-in-conviviality/a-19280292> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).

6. File: Gaza Strip map2.svg. Wikimedia Commons 01/09/2009. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaza_Strip_map2.svg> (Accessed: 2023-29-10).