Today is my last day of classes (then it just exams) and thus my final History class of the semester, that is, until May.
I haven’t had a history class in about a week as class time was reserved for consultations. Anyway, this class we had to read around four out of the following seven articles:
Both Israel and Palestinian supporters accuse the other side of genocide
Funnily enough, the last two articles were changed from the original assignment. He did this because after 6 MONTHS of Israel’s assault on Gaza he figured it would be appropriate to change some of the articles. Here were the old ones:
Okay so the lecture was basically us going over every article. We started with Srebrenica. What was said in class was that it was a mass killing against Bosnian muslims, specifically the men and boys, committed by Christian Serbians. It happened during the break up of Yugoslavia. This event led to international outrage resulting in NATO getting involved. No, it was not stated what NATO actually did. A student brought up a statement made in the article about how remembering past genocide will not prevent future ones. Thoughts and prayers mean nothing.
Next was Darfur. Not much was said except that there is ethnic prejudice against the Bantu speaking people and 2 million have been displaced. The article also talks about the Principle of Sovereignty. I guess it did get me thinking about when the provincials of sovereignty should be upheld and when it doesn’t matter. Where does it apply?
Rohingya was next and this one had almost no class time dedicated to it as barely anyone is class read the article about it. It was another genocide against a Muslim group and it has a colonial legacy. My professor made it an important note that we can’t blame modern/current crimes on previous colonial powers, which is this case was Britain. We can’t say that if Britain was never involved then this would have never happened in the first place. I don’t think thats what anyone in class as saying, I think they meant that Britain holds part of the blame. Weirdly defensive haha.
So about the Uyghurs… holy shit. So aa student said that there are muslims stuck in concentration/reeducation camps in China and he motive behind this was because of an “incident” involving a few Uyghur terrorists that resulted in China going overboard and over securing all Uyghurs rather than just the few radicals. He said this persecution includes sterilizing Uyghur people. The class, including the professor, talk about how China is doing settler colonialism in Xinjiang because they are displaying the Uyghur minority and replacing them with Han Chinese. The Uyghurs used to be a majority but aren’t anymore. While it hasn’t risen to physical genocide, it s definitely a cultural genocide as Uyghurs aren’t allowed to speak their own language, practice their religion, practice their culture, have beards, etc. My professor said that Uyghurs can’t even text their friends a passage from the Quran or they will get arrested due to the mass surveillance they are suffering under. Apparently Canada had a vote in parliament in whether to call what is happening in Xinjiang a genocide, the liberals hesitated to say yes while the Conservatives overwhelmingly said yes. China then got mad and brought Canada’s residential school problem to the UN. My professor said that the residential schools are very similar to the camps but in Canada’s case it has acknowledged and apologized for the atrocities and is trying to make up for it. Although they probably can’t truly ever make up for it. At least in Canada you can talk about the residential schools but the same cannot be said for China. Okay…
Ukraine time! Of course it’s a Timothy Snyder article… So the Ukrainian girl in my class was kind of heavily relied on during this discussion. She said that Russia is using this narrative of Ukraine and them being sister/brother nations, a single people. She also said that Russia is pushing the story of nationalists in Ukraine being emboldened by the west (the way she said it implied that Russia was lying) and that there are Ukraine separatists that justify its war; she calls all of that rhetoric and does not bring up the atrocities that happened in the Donbas. So thats super cool. My professor then said there is a cult of antiquity (an aspect of genocide we talked about a lot in this class) when it comes to Ukraine as was proven with the Tucker Carlson interview where Putin drones on and on about the past and erases Ukrainian identity. Also Ukraine is very agricultural so there’s that too. He called Putin a 19th century imperialist and that genocidal perpetrators always try to justify themselves by saying they are acting defensively. He then goes on to say that Canadian media is free so we can see what is truly happening in Ukraine (bullshit) but Russians have been propagandized for many years and don’t know anything. Well that sucks for me, I guess I cannot use Russia sources for my paper because they’re all little confused babies. Anyway, he tells us to read the Genocide Handbook Snyder talks about and that he himself read it on the bus, he says there are explicit genocidal language used in it against Ukrainians. I don’t know what handbook he is talking about. When I looked it up just more Snyder stuff came up.
Last was Palestine. This one was… a lot, to say the least. Not in terms of content but with the comments made. So what was said in class was that certain government outlets (not the head himself) in Israel have made calls for extermination of Palestinians and, for some reason, he brings up how the Russian media also makes statements of explicit intent (for genocide?). A student saiid the situation is complex as many are debating if it is or isn’t genocide, some say that not enough damage has been caused to constitute genocide (they’ve had 75 years, there been enough I think). Another student talks about the targeting of aid workers and media personnel, with Israel brushing it off as the “nature of war.” Comments were made (by Israel, not the students) that the Palestinians should have just fought against Hamas instead of electing them but a student said that in desperate times there are desperate measures, if the terrorist group is their only option then they will take it. My professor seems fairly connected to this issue (as he is with Ukraine, for some reason. Russophobia, maybe?) because he has Israeli friends and he personally believes Israel has a right to exist, as does Palestine. He also mentioned that he is very critical of Netanyahu as he empowered Hamas to use them as an excuse to escalate violence. He also said that a majority of Israelis are against Netanyahu and are protesting on mass. He then asks if there is a settler colonial aspect to this conflict: yes, obviously. Students talked about Palestinians being kicked from their homes and concentrated into the smallest spaces ever, real estate events being held to sell Palestinian land, and etc. My professor says this a bit of historical irony as the Jews of Europe were a people with no land and once they got it they did so much with the agriculture (unlike the Nazi view of Jewish people as cosmopolitans) and how they expanded.
But that is where the class ended. He thanked us for being a part of this course and he felt bad about how depressing the content was.
So what do you all think? I know I’m a bit sad and disappointed. I wanted more than what I got but I don’t think I should complain so much.
I think it would have been pretty funny if you pulled out Tiktok videos of mosques in China. Ridiculous fantasies.