“The American People Know So Little”: The Palestine Arab Refugee Office and the Challenges of Anti-Orientalism in the United States, 1955–1962

Authors

  • Maurice Jr. M. Labelle University of Saskatchewan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24847/55i2018.193

Keywords:

U.S.-Palestine Relations, Decolonization, Anti-Orientalism, Palestinian National Movement, Postcolonialism, Humanitarianism

Abstract

This paper explores the activities of the New York-based Palestine Arab Refugee Office (PARO), the first unofficial Palestinian-led organization that defended Palestinian self-determination in the United States following the establishment of Israel. Based mainly on the private papers of PARO public-relations officer Sami Hadawi, the memoirs and writings of PARO president Dr. Izzat Tannous, as well as rare PARO publications (such as its monthly newsletter), it examines how this small, two-person operation attempted to culturally decolonize U.S. state and society, and thus Palestinians in the process.

Author Biography

Maurice Jr. M. Labelle, University of Saskatchewan

Maurice Jr. M. Labelle is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He is currently working on a manuscript that examines how Lebanon came to identify the United States as an imperial power in the Middle East. He can be reached at: maurice.jr.labelle@usask.ca.

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Published

2018-10-16 — Updated on 2018-10-16

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Maurice Jr. M. Labelle

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The content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.