The Case of Cultural Gaslighting and Cultural Genocide in Palestine

This paper examines the systematic erasure of Palestinian culture and history through the theoretical lens of "cultural gaslighting"—a concept defined as the social and historical mechanisms that produce abusive mental environments in settler-colonial cultures to advance cultural genocide and dispossession. Drawing on Elena Ruiz's framework of cultural gaslighting, Anibal Quijano's analysis of epistemic colonization, and scholarship on racial gaslighting by Davis and Ernst, the author argues that these interconnected tactics work to subjugate Indigenous and marginalized peoples by undermining their credibility as knowers, suppressing non-dominant epistemologies, and normalizing settler-colonial worldviews. The paper identifies four distinct stages of cultural genocide in Palestine: memoricide (the killing of collective memory), renaming of historical sites, cultural appropriation, and the colonizer's "move to innocence." Through analysis of Palestinian experiences—including the erasure of village names, appropriation of cultural symbols like the kufiyah and hummus, and euphemistic language such as "demographic engineering"—the author demonstrates how these tactics reinforce settler-colonial control. The paper concludes with a critical rebuttal of Johannes Becke's theory of "allozionism," arguing that his attempt to exceptionalize and normalize the Zionist project employs bad faith arguments and gaslighting tactics that further delegitimize Palestinian experiences and obscure the reality of settler-colonial violence. Ultimately, this work posits that understanding the relationship between epistemic colonization, racial gaslighting, and cultural genocide is essential for pursuing liberation not only for Palestinians but for all peoples suffering under settler-colonial rule.