'To See In The Dark' by Nicholas Mirzoeff

 

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University and a theorist and practitioner of visual culture. In To See In the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7, he introduces himself by saying, ‘I’m Jewish and I’m anti-Zionist… To be an anti-Zionist Jew requires overcoming the combined efforts of the state of Israel, Zionism, and white supremacy to make this identity impossible. For the US magazine The Tablet, anti-Zionists like me are “un-Jews.”’

Mirzoeff explains the metaphor of ‘seeing in the dark’ as seeing outside the space dominated by the white-supremacist settler-colonial way of seeing. The IDF’s ‘white sight’ has defined all of Gaza as a kill box, whereas ‘To see in the dark is to see outside the kill box… Seeing in the dark is the practice of solidarity, the means by which to see how colonialism is practiced.’

Palestinians play an indispensable leading role in the visual activism that makes the genocide visible to the rest of the world, risking and all-too-often losing their lives to capture scenes of horror and cruelty but also the love and care with which survivors are searched for, rescued and treated by humanitarian and medical staff. For those who identify spontaneously with an anti-colonial struggle, these images immediately establish an emotional link with the victims. For colonisers and their descendants, especially Jews, identification is not so easy. Mirzoeff notes that ‘The intensity with which some Jews have identified with Israel is also part of their claim to be on the dominant side of racial hierarchy.’ Mirzoeff repudiated that impulse, his grandmother did not. On the boat to Palestine around 1923 she was a refugee, but by the time she stepped off she had metamorphosed into a settler, becoming a fighter in the Haganah, the Jewish militia that became the core of the IDF.  

Anti-Zionist Jews have the unique ability to dismantle Zionism from the inside and to say things that non-Jews cannot say without being suspected of antisemitism. Mirzoeff can say that the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism is itself antisemitic; attack as ‘patently anti-Jewish’ the view that without Israeli state sovereignty Jews are necessarily weak; identify the feeling of being physically unsafe among Jewish New Yorkers and students after 7 October as emanating from their identification with the settler-colonial violence of the Israeli state; point out that the UN conclusion that sexual violence probably occurred during the 7 October attack was reached without any evidence; and say that Palestinian Jews and non-Jews lived together peacefully before Zionism and could do so after Zionism ends. Josh Dubnau agrees: ‘There were Jews thousands of years before Zionism and there will be Jews when Zionism is in the dustbin of history.’ Masha Gessen compares the genocide in Gaza to the Nazi liquidation of East European ghettos, and Gabor Maté compares it with Auschwitz. They all make an essential contribution to the struggle for a free Palestine.

(This review was part of the Palestine Book Forum published by Postmodern Culture on 5 September 2025 and available at https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/968576)  

Two Conceptions of Jewish Identity

Critics of religion who regard it as illusory and harmful, from Marx and his associates and followers to militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, assume implicitly that religions are monolithic. However, studies of major religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism show that they are anything but monolithic, with multiple internal divisions, and adherents who take opposite positions on every moral issue. Take, for example, Buddhism in Sri Lanka, where ‘Sinhala Buddhists’ linked to the state have engaged in the persecution and mass murder of opponents and people from minority communities, while other Buddhists have opposed them on the grounds that their religion stands for the equality of all human beings and prohibits killing. In such circumstances, it makes no sense to refer to ‘Buddhists’ – much less followers of all religions – as a homogeneous category.  

A striking characteristic of the aftermath of the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 is the sharp divide in the way Jews reacted to it. On one side, political and military officials of the state of Israel carried out a genocidal attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza,[1] while the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and illegal settlers incarcerated, killed and displaced Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem at an accelerated pace.[2] On the other side, Jews have played a pivotal role in campaigning for a ceasefire in Gaza,[3] recognition of the Israeli military campaign there as genocide,[4] and a long-term solution that safeguards the human and democratic rights of Palestinians in the whole of historic Palestine.[5] The latter group has faced criticism and condemnation from Jewish supporters of the state of Israel.[6]

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism: A Very Welcome Initiative

On 25 March 2021, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) was presented by a group of over 200 eminent Jewish scholars of antisemitism studies and related fields, some of whom had been engaged in discussion since June 2020. They defined antisemitism as follows: ‘Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish),’ and made it clear that ‘while antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender discrimination’ (Jerusalemdeclaration.org 2021).

The authors explain that the declaration is based on universal human rights principles, and is a response to two circumstances. One is the alarming resurgence of antisemitism by groups mobilising hatred and violence in politics, society and on the internet, which make it imperative to have a usable, concise and historically-informed core definition of antisemitism with a set of guidelines; and the other is the definition adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016, which they regard as unclear in key respects, widely open to different interpretations, and weakening the fight against antisemitism by causing confusion and generating controversy. They express particular concern that some of the ‘examples’ of antisemitism included in the IHRA exclude legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel and Palestine. Thus, their aim is two-fold: ‘(1) to strengthen the fight against antisemitism by clarifying what it is and how it is manifested, (2) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine’ (Jerusalemdeclaration.org 2021).