Tolerance Is a Wasteland

Tolerance Is a Wasteland exposes the deep contradictions between Israel's public image and the realities Palestinians experience every day. Its argument is searing and troubling––and anyone who cares about Israel-Palestine ignores it at their peril.—Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism Writing here in the name of moral principles, Saree Makdisi shows how a struggle for freedom and justice on the part of Palestinians is overridden and dismissed, turned into a specter of destruction, and urges that the world must come together in its embrace of emancipation. His analyses are keen and persuasive, and he holds out for a future of justice where so many have understandably despaired. This book is a beacon of light, and we can only hope that it shines and shines.—Judith Butler, author of Precarious Life and The Force of Nonviolence How does a country hide ethnic cleansing and apartheid? Cover it in trees, rainbow flags, a settler state masquerading as a multiracial liberal democracy, a museum of 'tolerance,' and deny what's buried underneath or practiced in plain sight. As Makdisi shows in his latest masterpiece, the whitewashing, greenwashing, and pinkwashing of colonial violence taught liberals to stop worrying about Palestinians or international law and love Israel unconditionally. And it worked … until now. By peeling back seven decades of denial, Makdisi reveals a truth that is simply undeniable.—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination In Tolerance Is a Wasteland, Makdisi takes a radical path through the denials of the Zionist state's mass killings—ethnic cleansing embedded in its constitutive racism. By centering the Museum of Tolerance, Makdisi exposes militarized tolerance while engaging the reader with what he frames brilliantly as 'the denial of denial.' This book, a thoughtful examination of moments of occlusion as denial, is a must-read. It eloquently troubles Zionist affirmation of the fetish, opening up the possibility of global ethics and/as counterpolitics.—Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, author of Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding