Covid-19 has introduced hundreds of new items into the common global lexicon. A few of them are neologisms; most of them are words and phrases that were previously not widely in circulation but got a boost as we all became experts in sociology and epidemiology.
An example from the latter category is “endemic” — something that we have come to see as a desirable state, because it seems to signal the end of The Pandemic. The virus will be all around us but manageable, nonthreatening, a minor annoyance.
We should, however, be wary of celebrating other things as endemic. Gun violence is endemic in the US and, as Trevor Noah recently reminded his viewers, the result is that most Americans respond to mass shootings with a shrug of the shoulders: it’s sad, but what can be done? That’s just how it is.
Affirming that a phenomenon is endemic, in this sense, means giving up — simply accepting the status quo. Corruption is endemic in SA. Class allegiance is endemic in the UK. Toxic masculinity is endemic in boys’ schools. Gangsterism and drugs are endemic on the Cape Flats. Homophobia is endemic in Christian churches.
How long will it be before war is perceived as an endemic condition in Ukraine? It is already understood to be a part of day-to-day life in certain regions. The received wisdom is that there will never be peace in the Middle East (more properly referred to as Western Asia). More specifically, there is the problem of Israel and Palestine: ’twas always thus, and always thus will be.
Well, in fact, it was not always thus. Before 1948, things were a little different in the Holy Land. In May of that year, the modern state of Israel was declared in the midst of what became known as the Arab-Israeli War. In Arabic this period in history is referred to as Al-Nakba — the catastrophe — for between 1947 and 1949 almost 1-million Palestinians were forced from their homes.
This past week, both the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand held events to reflect on contested versions of the Nakba and the establishment of Israel, asking: what prospects are there for change — for peace and justice in a place of endemic warfare and injustice?
The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser) framed the conversation in more general terms: “Critical thought, human rights and freedom in the Middle East”. The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) hinged its symposium on “Visual culture and the ‘permission to narrate’” around Mirror Image, a short film by Israeli documentarian and activist Danielle Schwartz.
In just under 11 minutes, Schwartz manages to convey many of the sticking points that seem to result in the intransigence of her compatriots when it comes to the rights and freedoms of Palestinians. The film starts and ends with peaceful scenes and sounds — birdsong in a sunny, quiet garden. Yet this domestic bliss is at odds with the violence at the heart of her story.
Mirror Image is, superficially, merely a recording of a conversation between the filmmaker and her grandparents as they try to agree on the wording of a piece of text she has written. It pertains to a family heirloom of sorts: a mirror, passed down to Schwartz’s grandfather by his father, and highly cherished since. The trouble is that it came into the family possession either after being stolen or being bought from Palestinians who were chased from their village.
Navigating a generational conflict, Schwartz and her grandparents find themselves lost in semantics. So much hinges on the words they choose. Was the mirror “taken” or was it “plundered”? And did it come from an “Arab” or a “Palestinian” village?
The representatives of the older generation are reluctant to admit to any complicity in the Nakba or the continued oppression of Palestinians. Schwartz, representing a younger generation impatient with her elders — much as she loves and appreciates them — pushes them to accept that the mirror is evidence of an historical wrong that has not been put right.
But why do you even want to talk about it? they wonder. What’s done cannot be undone. It’s endemic.
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