Palestinians Invented Their Own Martyrdom

Sacrifice and struggle constitute two of the most important themes in contemporary Palestinian national identity.

Allegories of struggle and sacrifice under Israeli "occupation" dominate Palestinian cultural output; Palestinian national documents constantly allude to these themes; and Palestinians overwhelming seek these qualities in their political leadership.

Human displacement, exile, military occupation, and especially the struggles and sacrifices undertaken in resistance to these forces inform the narrative upon which contemporary Palestinian society imagines itself.

Palestine as heroic in its victimization, oppressed but unflinching, engaged in an existential cultural struggle against the Zionist colonial enterprise—these themes strike at the heart of Palestinian national mythology.

In Palestine, struggle (i.e. forceful attempts to free oneself) and sacrifice (i.e. giving something up for the benefit of something more important) have been conflated with identity to exemplify a high form of national commitment.

National identity, as with all social constructs, is fluid; it evolves over time, emphasizing or downplaying elements of its (mythological) history. But it cannot be said that national history is entirely fabricated as it is (however minimally) rooted in cultural interpretations of a "factual" past.

 As Gellner reminds us, "nationalism uses the pre-existing, historically inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth, though it uses them very selectively, and it often transforms them radically."

As state institutions sanction elements of national identity, these elements become more permanent and entrenched.

This study rejects nationalism as a primordial phenomenon and proceeds with the view that such identities are "invented" or "imagined". As such, they are fluid forms of identity, which are influenced by the environments in which they occur.

As Kaminer observes, "The occupation was so much the central theme of [Palestinian artists'] work, that [one] doubted whether there could be 'normal' Palestinian art before it ended."

One might argue that all nations conflate and romanticize these two ideas.

 Truth with a capital "T" or Arendt's idea of "factual truth" is clearly not an idea familiar to nationalism, which tends to selectively recreate history in a manner favorable to its self-image. See Hannah Arendt, "Truth and Politics, " The New Yorker, (February 25 1967): 49-88. 5 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 55.
Palestine, of course, poses a unique challenge in this regard as it lacks a formal state. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe the importance and relevance of a variety of national signifiers to Palestinian identity, from the symbolism of the Palestinian peasant (fellah) to the "children of the stones" (atfal al-hijara). These national signifiers certainly draw from the well of the Palestinian cultural experience, but have also taken on national significance far beyond their putative meanings, which serve to reinforce national ideals - the ideals of struggle and sacrifice.

This paper attempts to problematize Palestinian national identity by exploring the ideals of struggle and sacrifice as manifested in the idea of martyrdom. For the purposes of this paper, I adopt Hobsbawm and Ranger's term "invented tradition" to describe the process by which symbolic weight is inscribed upon sets of practices. In their own words:

Eric Hobsbawn defines "invented tradition" to mean a set of practices, formally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.

To the extent that we can conceptualize the contemporary understanding of martyrdom (ishtishhad) as "invented"—that is, to the extent the label of martyr is conferred as a means of romanticizing and normalizing national ideals—it has become a mythical act "that breeds it own secular ethics."

This paper argues that the idea of martyrdom in particular has come to be a metonymy for the Palestinian nation, superseding its superficial religious connotations and posthumously affirming the martyr's national identity in a secular context. The idea of martyrdom is a national signifier, which like other Palestinian cultural symbols before it, conflates national identity with the powerfully evocative ideals of struggle and sacrifice. But whereas national signifiers always transcend their putative meanings, the idea of martyrdom in Palestine has done so in a markedly profound way. In a traditional, patriarchal, predominantly Muslim society, martyrs transcend social boundaries in death otherwise restricted to them in life. As a passive victim of Israeli gunfire or as an active suicide bomber, the martyr achieves a heroic status in death beyond anything reserved for the living. It is at this point, stripped of all social divisions, that the martyr becomes a sacred metonymy for the nation itself.

Of tremendous symbolic importance are the "children of the stones" (atfal al-hijara). The emergence of these children predates the first Intifada, but it was during this time that they reached the mythical status of national signifier. More than that, the phenomenon set in motion an upheaval of traditional distinctions between the young and old in Palestinian society and sparked an internal debate over just how the ideals of struggle and sacrifice should be acted upon. These children belonged to a third generation of Palestinians born and raised in the late 1980's through the 1990's, jil al-intifada, the intifada generation, the generation raised amidst hundreds of checkpoints (operating 24/7) and roadblocks of unpassable piles of construction debris (dirt, concrete bricks, metal gates, etc), raised amdist border closures and military land seizures that turned fertile agrarain land into industrial and military zones, raised admidst peak settler violence. presense across. This was a generation composed of teenagers as much as it was of children (some as young as five-years-old) who confronted armed Israeli soldiers and Israeli tanks openly despite the imbalance of power. Patriotic songs and poems glorifying the "children of the stones" were produced with gusto, diminishing the importance of the other aforementioned symbols of struggle and sacrifice. The youth of the "jil al-intifada" only seemed to underscore its innocence. Palestinians of all political stripes and echelons of society spoke of the "purity" of these stone-wielding ambassadors. Palestinian lawyer Jonathan Kuttab suggested that the atfal al-hijara "possessed a new spirit" and had "shattered the barrier of fear" between Palestinian and Israeli soldiers. This suggests that these children occupied a symbolic rather than practical function during the first Intifada. The objectives were of defiance alone and not serious confrontation, let alone national liberation. The singular act of throwing stones mattered little in any practical sense; like the fallah (Palestinian peasant ) demonstrating sumud (steadfastness) and the feday (the Palestinian fighter) sacrificing himself in battle, the symbolic power of the children of the stones and the potential sacrifice involved superseded its immediate implications. Moreover, because those involved were children, it served as a powerful reminder to Palestinian adults of their own failure to embody the ideals of struggle and sacrifice.

Martyrdom is conferred to sustain national identity. The ideals of struggle and sacrifice permeate the discourse of martyrdom in Palestine. Since the staggering heights of carnage experienced during the second Intifada, martyrdom has saturated Palestinian society at an unprecedented level. The life and individual story of any one martyr is typically subsumed within the deluge of nationalist imagery, which shores up a generalized idea of national sacrifice. Nevertheless, the status of martyrdom in Palestinian society really cannot be overstated. The term very martyr (shahid), lends a sacred nod of legitimacy to the national cause. In a vivid portrait of the national-biological connection (biological: Palestine is the Motherland; sacrifice for the nation as feminine is familiar to many national ideologies, but the theme is especially pertinent to Palestine where it underscores a biological link with the land) the martyr's reward is reunification in death with the land denied to it in life. And this reunification is very much honored by the living. In addition to the ubiquitous semiotics of martyr posters, which line the walls of Palestinian towns, the families of martyrs are accorded special honors and frequently receive financial support from the various Palestinian political factions. Songs and poems are composed in martyrs' honor, streets are named, and memorials are dedicated. Militant cells take their names after martyrs and Palestinians casually introduce themselves in reference to martyred members of their family. Public spaces are transformed into makeshift shrines as poster upon poster outline a visual history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Chronic waves of violence consistently produce fresh martyrs, whose posters soon displace those of older martyrs. The status of martyrdom is conferred regardless of the nature of the specific death; in some cases, Palestinian death is generally considered a legitimate basis for martyrdom even when there is no conventional claim.