The Parallel Erasures: Arab, European, and Zionist Historiographies as Instruments of Dispossession

Mahmoud Andrade Ibrahim

The Architecture of Erasure

The historical erasure of African civilizational power and the contemporary erasure of Palestinian presence share more than superficial similarity. They are manifestations of the same fundamental operation: the construction of a hegemonic narrative that transforms the indigenous, the sovereign, and the rooted into the absent, the primitive, and the ephemeral. Both erasures serve a common function. They legitimate domination by rendering the dominated invisible, and they transform conquest into a civilizing mission rather than what it always was: dispossession backed by violence.

The mechanisms are remarkably consistent across time and space. First, the indigenous population is discursively dehumanized or rendered primitive. Second, their historical achievements are either minimized, attributed to outsiders, or simply erased from the record. Third, the colonizing power presents itself as the bearer of civilization, progress, and divine mandate. Fourth, the land itself is renamed, reimagined, and reclassified as empty or waiting to be redeemed. The parallel between the erasure of African power in Arab and European historiography and the erasure of Palestine in Zionist historiography is not coincidental. It is structural.

The Mechanics of African Erasure in Arab Historiography

The Arab historiographical tradition, particularly in its medieval and early modern manifestations, systematically minimized the African contribution to the civilizational complex of the Red Sea and Mediterranean worlds. The Axumite Empire, which had ruled parts of southern Arabia for decades, which had sent its armies to the gates of Mecca, and which had provided sanctuary to the first Muslims, was progressively reduced in Arab memory to a footnote. It became a convenient refuge rather than a sovereign power.

The process was subtle but relentless. The Negus, who in the Prophet's time was the heir to a dynasty that had colonized Arabia, was transformed in later tradition into a minor chieftain whose protection was a gracious favor rather than a geopolitical necessity. The Year of the Elephant, which should have served as permanent testimony to African military supremacy, was spiritualized into a purely miraculous event. This removed African agency from the narrative entirely. If the destruction of Abraha's army was purely divine intervention, then the human reality of African power could be safely forgotten.

This erasure served a specific purpose. As Islam expanded and the Arabian Peninsula became the center of a new empire, it became ideologically inconvenient to remember that the Prophet's first instinct had been to seek refuge under African sovereignty. It became inconvenient to remember that the Muslims had been supplicants, not missionaries. It became inconvenient to remember that the relationship between Arabia and Africa had been one of vulnerability and protection, not of cultural superiority and tutelage.

The Arab slave trade, which would eventually transport millions of Africans across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean, required a particular ideological foundation. It required the construction of Africa as a source of slaves rather than a source of sovereignty. It required the transformation of African kings into slave traders and African peoples into merchandise. And it required the systematic erasure of the memory that Africa had once been the protector of Islam's founders.

Bernard Lewis, in his study of race and slavery in the Middle East, documents how "the institution of slavery, and the slave trade that fed it, were accepted as part of the natural order" in the Islamic world, and how this acceptance required a racial ideology that placed Africans in a position of permanent inferiority. This ideology could not coexist with the memory of the Negus's throne. Therefore, the memory had to be erased.

The Mechanics of African Erasure in European Historiography

European historiography, emerging from the crucible of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism, performed an even more radical erasure. Where Arab historiography minimized African power, European historiography denied it entirely. Africa became "the Dark Continent," a place without history, without civilization, without agency. Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, infamously declared that Africa "is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit."

This was not mere ignorance. It was deliberate dispossession. As Gomez demonstrates, the construction of Africa as historically empty served the project of colonial conquest. If Africa had no history, then Europeans were not destroying civilizations. They were bringing civilization. If Africa had no sovereignty, then Europeans were not conquering kingdoms. They were discovering empty lands. If Africa had no achievements, then Europeans were not stealing. They were creating.

The erasure was comprehensive. The Axumite Empire, which had once challenged Rome and dominated the Red Sea, was reduced to a curiosity. The Nubian kingdoms, which had ruled the Nile for centuries, were relegated to the margins of Egyptology. The Carthaginian civilization, which had produced Hannibal and nearly destroyed Rome, was transformed into a footnote to Greek and Roman history. The great empires of West Africa, Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, were dismissed as primitive kingdoms in the European imagination until archaeological evidence forced a partial reckoning.

This erasure had a specific function in the Atlantic world. The enslavement of Africans required the construction of Africans as subhuman. The colonization of Africa required the construction of Africans as incapable of self-governance. The extraction of Africa's resources required the construction of Africa as a continent without owners. European historiography provided the ideological scaffolding for all of these projects.

The Palestinian Parallel: Erasure as Dispossession

The Zionist erasure of Palestinian history follows precisely the same pattern. The land that would become Israel was not empty. It was inhabited by a people with a continuous presence stretching back millennia. The villages that would be destroyed had names, histories, and communities. The olive groves that would be uprooted had been tended for generations. The cities that would be renamed had been centers of Arab civilization for centuries.

But the Zionist narrative required that Palestine be empty, or, in the famous formulation, "a land without a people for a people without a land." This was not a description of reality. It was a prescription for dispossession. If Palestine had no people, then the Zionists were not displacing anyone. If Palestine was not a nation, then the Palestinians were not a people. If Palestine had no history, then the Zionists were not destroying. They were creating.

The mechanisms are identical to those used against Africa. First, the dehumanization of the indigenous: Palestinians are described as "Arabs" rather than a distinct national people, as "terrorists" rather than a population resisting colonization, as "demographic threats" rather than human beings with rights. Second, the erasure of historical achievement: the great cities of Palestine, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, and Gaza, were centers of commerce, culture, and learning, but this history is systematically erased from Israeli curricula and public memory. Third, the construction of the colonizer as civilizer: Zionism presented itself as "making the desert bloom," as "redeeming the land," as bringing "light unto the nations," language that echoes the European colonial mission in Africa.

The results are the same: a people rendered invisible, a history erased, a land renamed. The Nakba of 1948, the destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages, the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians, the erasure of an entire society, is denied, minimized, or justified. The ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, the expansion of settlements, all are presented as security measures rather than what they are: the continuation of dispossession by other means.

The Architecture of Denial: How Hegemonic Narratives Sustain Themselves

Both the African erasure and the Palestinian erasure are sustained by a complex architecture of denial. This architecture has several components:

Academic Production: Universities, research institutions, and scholarly publications produce knowledge that serves hegemonic interests. Orientalist scholarship constructed the "Orient" as passive, feminized, and awaiting European penetration. Zionist scholarship constructs Palestine as historically empty and Palestinians as recent immigrants. The African past is relegated to anthropology rather than history, to "tribal" studies rather than civilizational analysis.

Media Representation: The mainstream media reproduces hegemonic narratives. Africa is represented through images of famine, war, and disease, never through images of achievement, sovereignty, or civilization. Palestine is represented through the lens of "conflict" rather than occupation, "terrorism" rather than resistance, "security" rather than apartheid.

Educational Systems: Schools and universities teach history that reinforces hegemonic narratives. African history is taught, if at all, as a footnote to European history. Palestinian history is absent from Israeli curricula except as a backdrop to Zionist achievement. The message is clear: some peoples have history; others are history's objects.

Political Discourse: Politicians reproduce hegemonic narratives. African leaders are described as corrupt, incompetent, or authoritarian, never as heirs to great civilizations. Palestinian leaders are described as terrorists or obstacles to peace, never as representatives of a dispossessed people. The language of debate is already colonized.

Cultural Production: Films, novels, and art reproduce hegemonic narratives. Africa is a setting for adventure or tragedy, never for sovereignty. Palestine is a "problem" to be solved, never a people to be liberated. The imagination itself is colonized.

The Common Function: Dispossession and Legitimation

The parallel erasures of African and Palestinian history serve a common function: they legitimate dispossession. By erasing African sovereignty, Arab and European historiographies made it possible to enslave Africans, colonize Africa, and extract Africa's resources without moral qualm. By erasing Palestinian presence, Zionist historiography makes it possible to displace Palestinians, occupy their land, and deny their rights without moral qualm.

The mechanism is always the same. First, the indigenous is constructed as absence. Then, the colonizer is constructed as presence. The land is empty; the colonizer fills it. The people have no history; the colonizer brings history. The culture is primitive; the colonizer brings civilization. The sovereignty is illegitimate; the colonizer brings law.

This is what Patrick Wolfe calls "the logic of elimination," the structural imperative of settler colonialism to eliminate the native. Wolfe argues that settler colonialism is not an event but a structure, a "logic of elimination" that operates continuously. The erasure of Palestinian history is not a one-time act. It is an ongoing process, sustained by the daily operations of the Israeli state, the international media, and the global academy.

Similarly, the erasure of African history is not a past event. It is an ongoing process, sustained by the continued marginalization of Africa in global knowledge production, by the continued representation of Africa as a continent of problems rather than achievements, by the continued extraction of Africa's resources and the continued exploitation of Africa's people.

Resistance and Reclamation: The Struggle Against Erasure

But erasure is never complete. The colonized always resist, and the erased always leave traces. The African past can be recovered through archaeology, through oral tradition, through the careful reading of sources that the colonizer overlooked or misread. The Palestinian past can be recovered through the memories of refugees, through the archives that survive, through the testimony of those who lived through the Nakba.

The Black American Radical Tafsir that reads Surah Al-Fil through the lens of African military supremacy is an act of resistance against erasure. It insists that the Qur'anic text carries the memory of African power, even as traditional tafsir has minimized or spiritualized that memory. It insists that the African diaspora has not only the right but the obligation to read the Qur'an through the full weight of African memory.

Similarly, Palestinian historiography, the work of scholars like Walid Khalidi, Nur Masalha, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappé, insists on recovering the Palestinian past from the erasure of Zionist historiography. It documents the villages destroyed, the names erased, the people displaced. It insists that Palestine was not empty, that Palestinians are a people, that their history is real.

The Truth as Liberation

The parallel between the erasure of African history and the erasure of Palestinian history is not merely analytical. It is political. Both erasures serve the same function: to legitimate dispossession by rendering the dispossessed invisible. Both erasures are sustained by the same mechanisms: academic production, media representation, educational systems, political discourse, cultural production. Both erasures are resisted by the same means: memory, testimony, scholarship, and the insistence on truth.

To reclaim African history is to reclaim the sovereignty of the Negus's throne. To reclaim Palestinian history is to reclaim the right of return. Both are acts of resistance against the hegemonic narrative. Both are assertions of the truth that the colonizer cannot allow to be spoken.

The truth is that Africa was not a periphery; it was a superpower. The truth is that Palestine was not empty; it was a homeland. The truth is that both erasures are ongoing, and both must be resisted. The truth is that the colonizer's narrative is not history; it is propaganda. The truth is that the erased always remember, and the memory of the erased is the seed of liberation.

As the African proverb says, "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." The task of the African historian, the Palestinian historian, and all who stand in solidarity with the dispossessed is to become the lions' historians, to write the history that the hunter has tried to erase, to speak the truth that the powerful have tried to silence, to reclaim the sovereignty that the colonizer has tried to destroy.

The throne of the Negus still stands, even if its memory has been buried. The villages of Palestine still exist, even if their names have been erased. The truth will not be buried forever. The lions are learning to write.