Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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WALAA ALQAISIYA’S PAPER in Middle East Critique, “Moving Beyond Imperialist Frameworks: The False Equivalence Between Palestine and Xinjiang”, proves a masterclass in a failure of solidarity.
What is most distinctive about the paper is that the author is Palestinian, but rejects comparisons between Palestine and Xinjiang. Alqaisiya takes issue with such comparisons, as most famously ventured by Chinese dissident intellectual Wang Lixiong, who suggested in 2007 that Xinjiang would be treated by China much as the West Bank has been by Israel.
Indeed, Alqaisiya’s attempt to parse out Palestine from Xinjiang operates by the logic of equivalency. In starting from the a priori view that Palestine is inherently different than Xinjiang, Alqaisiya therefore attempts to equate Xinjiang with Israel.
At times, Alqaisiya’s logic is laughable. She writes, “The Israeli settler-colonial project operates through external Zionist settlement sponsored by US-led imperialism to displace Palestinian populations and create a strategic asset for Western imperialism in the Arab region.” As such, “The contrast with China could not be starker: Chinese governance of Xinjiang spans millennia, from the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) through the Tang, Yuan, and Qing, rendering any ‘conquest and settlement’ framing historically untenable.”
And yet, Alqaisiya should clearly be aware that Israel’s contemporary Zionist project, too, is built on claims that purportedly trace back to antiquity. It is such claims that justify the displacement of Palestinians, who are claimed to be invaders, not native to the land.
Uyghur separatism, then, is compared to Zionism, framed as a project meant to fragment Muslim unity. Subsequently, the bulk of Alqaisiya’s arguments takes the form of attempting to point to links between Uyghur separatist groups, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, Taiwanese independence groups, and the shadow of the American empire.
While one has seen a number of attempts by tankies and campists to claim that genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang is a Western fabrication, Alqaisiya goes a step further to claim that Uyghur separatism, indeed, Uyghur identity itself, is an invention of the West.
Predictably, the claim of any suffering experienced by Uyghurs is reduced to Adrian Zenz’s work as though he were the only scholar to ever make any claim about Uyghurs facing ethnic cleansing. Alqaisiya could simply look at Chinese sources, in which Chinese state actors claim that restive Uyghur Muslims are in need of pacification, drawing on US anti-terror discourse.
Astonishingly, Alqaisiya manages to write thirty pages in which there seems to be barely a line devoted to the actual lived experience of Uyghurs. It goes without saying that nowhere in this narrative does Alqaisiya ever think to speak to a Uyghur. Instead, the experiences of Uyghurs are only ever discussed in terms of Western state actors or academics, almost as though Uyghurs do not exist at all, but are some kind of Western hoax intended to defame China.
Most remarkable of all, however, is that Alqaisiya discusses at length Israel’s weaponization of the language of genocide–to claim some particularity of the genocide faced by Jews during the Holocaust–a logic brought up in order to dismiss the ethnic cleansing that Israel has committed against Palestinians for decades. Alqaisiya manages to have a prolonged discussion of this phenomenon without noticing that she, too, is doing the same, in seeking to dismiss genocide against Uyghurs as committed by the Chinese state using the language of particularity.
Genocide for us, but not for you. In this sense, Alqaisiya’s claims sound like an echo of Israel’s own claims about the particularity of genocide, so as to justify the genocide of another group.
If one is to try to understand what Alqaisiya’s claims are motivated by, it is by a campist view of the world, which sees China as the ally of Palestinians and therefore incapable of doing any wrong. Xinjiang, which is associated with the US, has to be, therefore, castigated and denied. No different than those who see Israel or the US as an ally and therefore turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians, this is the same logic, except in the other direction.
Alqaisiya’s argumentation proves a bizarre reflection of the same people who attempt to argue that Palestine is simply a force propped up by China to counter the West, or attempt to frame Palestinians as a godless Islamist horde, to be juxtaposed to civilized Israel, the rightful sovereign of the Holy Land. It proves difficult for those who see the world only through the lens of geopolitics to see others as human, apparently, rather than as abstract extensions of nation-states.