The kind of political stuttering Ocasio-Cortez voiced in the PBS interview is a problem Palestinian allies themselves must address in making sure our representatives are confidently versed in other ways to answer these questions. How might an aspiring leader articulate, debate, and voice positions critical of Israel?

I am interested, as Edward Said was in his famous work, in recognizing a systemic way of representing the Arab world that makes Arab artists objects of desire and the places they call home exotic spaces of experimentation.

The discourse of resistance is a way of pointing to how politics are invoked as an arbiter of value in and for cultural production. Paying attention to a discourse of resistance in representation of cultural production is different from analyzing the political strategies of agents themselves. 

On April 14, 2013, Columbia University in New York hosted an event entitled “Art as Resistance.” It was advertised as a panel discussion between two actors from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine and a professor of theatre at the University of Connecticut.