about criticism and politics

In The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine, Lori Allen describes a Palestinian society within which an ideology of sincerity - the coherence between one’s words and actions - holds high priority, and does so “within a nationalist value system that idealises social ties and social welfare over individualistic motives” (Allen, 173).

It is from this culture that Palestinian human rights organisations rose to prominence following the foundation of Al Haq in 1979. But “as time went on, human rights activity was transformed from a means of seeking justice and accountability into an idiom for public relations spin and a language for justifying state-making” (Allen, 64) and a means of earning money from foreign donors. In parallel, visions of the state shifted from the state-as-national-agent, to the impersonal state, to the state-as-oppressor (Allen, 14).

These trends gave rise to a deep cynicism in Palestinian society - now deeply distrustful of both state-building rhetoric and human rights rhetoric. Yet this cynicism is critical not because society has abandoned morality, but rather because it remains fundamentally moral. With Palestinian cynicism housing both critique and hope for a return to a moral reality, society can now only be mobilised by actions - and is de-mobilised by words.

And it is because of this hopeful cynicism, and national value placed on sincerity, that Hamas has risen to prominence - at once being seen as authentically reviving the discourse of human rights, and also using its participation in the human rights world of UN reporting as a means to develop its credibility as the address of government in a disputed field.

Subtle and academic, this book is nonetheless a highly valuable guide to helping understand forces and developments in the country. ( )