Statement: Over 250 Anthropologists Join Call for a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Statement: Over 250 Anthropologists Join Call for a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Statement: Over 250 Anthropologists Join Call for a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release and statement announcing the endorsement by over 250 anthropoligists of the movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions were issued on 1 October 2014 by the below-identifed group of anthropologists. Since it was first published on Jadaliiya, the number of signatories of the statement has exceed 700 anthropologists.]

For Immediate Release
October 1, 2014

Over 250 Anthropologists Join the Call for a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

More than 250 anthropologists have signed a statement endorsing the burgeoning movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions in protest of Israel’s systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people. These violations, in which many Israeli educational institutions are complicit, include  denying Palestinians their right to education and academic freedom.

The full statement and signatory list are at http://anthroboycott.wordpress.com

As scholars who specialize in how power, oppression, and structural violence affect social life, and as witnesses to the State of Israel’s multiple and egregious violations of international law that constitute an assault on Palestinian culture and society, they pledge to abide by their discipline’s stated commitment to “the promotion and protection of the right of people and people’s everywhere to the full realization of their humanity.”

These anthropologists have determined that the policies, actions, and programs of Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Territories in multiple ways. In calling for this institutional boycott, they pledge not to collaborate on projects and events hosted or funded by Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or attend conferences or other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel. They remain open to collaboration with individual scholars based in the Israeli academy.

The signatories of the statement call on their anthropologist colleagues to join them, along with thousands of members of a growing number of US academic associations (including the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association), in answering the call from Palestinian civil society as well as from a number of Israeli anthropologists, to cease legitimizing Israeli academic institutions and thereby condoning their role in the continued suppression of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.

Anthropologists interested in signing this statement should visit: http://anthroboycott.wordpress.com, or email their name and affiliation to: anthroboycott@gmail.com

Media Inquiries:

Nadia Abu El Haj                     
nadiaabuelhaj@gmail.com      
Tel. 212 854 7628

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
kauanui@hotmail.com                        
Tel. 860 638 1264

Lisa Rofel
lrofel@ucsc.edu



The Statement

We, the undersigned anthropologists, are circulating this petition to voice our opposition to the ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, including the Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and to boycott Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in these violations.

The recent military assault on the Gaza Strip by Israel is only the latest reminder that the world’s governments and mainstream media do not hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. As a community of scholars who study problems of power, oppression, and cultural hegemony, we have a moral responsibility to speak out and demand accountability from Israel and our own governments. Acting in solidarity with Palestinian civil society continues a disciplinary tradition of support for anticolonial and human rights struggles, itself an important departure from anthropology’s historical complicity with colonialism. As laid out in the American Anthropological Association (AAA)’s 1999 Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights, “Anthropology as a profession is committed to the promotion and protection of the right of people and peoples everywhere to the full realization of their humanity…When any culture or society denies or permits the denial of such opportunity to any of its own members or others, the AAA has an ethical responsibility to protest and oppose such deprivation.”

Israel has maintained an illegal siege on the Gaza Strip for seven years, severely restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the territory.  Palestinians are also being dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods throughout the West Bank, where Israel’s separation barrier curtails Palestinian freedom of movement and education.  These and other ongoing violations will continue unless people around the world act where their governments have failed.

As employees in institutions of higher learning, we have a particular responsibility to oppose Israel’s widespread and systematic violations of the right to higher education of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. In recent months, Israeli forces have raided Al Quds University in Jerusalem, the Arab American University in Jenin, and Birzeit University near Ramallah. In this summer’s assault, Israeli aerial bombardment destroyed much of the Islamic University of Gaza. More generally, the Israeli state discriminates against Palestinian students in Israeli universities and it isolates Palestinian academia by, among other tactics, preventing foreign academics from visiting Palestinian institutions in Gaza and the West Bank. We are also alarmed by the long history of confiscations of Palestinian archives and the destruction of libraries and research centers.

Israeli academic institutions are complicit with the occupation and oppression of Palestinians. Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University, Haifa University, Technion, and Ben Gurion University have publicly declared their unconditional support for the Israeli military.  Furthermore, there are intimate connections between Israeli academic institutions and the military, security, and political establishments in Israel. To take but one example: Tel Aviv University is directly implicated, through its Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in developing the Dahiya Doctrine, adopted by the Israeli military in its assaults on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza this summer. The Dahiya Doctrine advocates the extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure and “intense suffering” among the civilian population as an “effective” means to subdue any resistance.

As anthropologists, we feel compelled to join academics around the world who support the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli academic institutions. This call is part of a long-standing appeal by Palestinian civil society organizations for the comprehensive implementation of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel, and is supported by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE).

In responding to the Palestinian call, we seek to practice what the AAA calls an “engaged anthropology” that is “committed to supporting social change efforts that arise from the interaction between community goals and anthropological research.” Anthropological research has illuminated the destructive effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian society. And the Palestinian community has called for an academic boycott of Israel as a necessary step to ensuring Palestinian rights, including the right to education.

In accordance with these stated principles in support of rights and justice, anthropologists both independently and through the AAA have taken strong stances on a number of issues: apartheid in South Africa, Namibia, and Burundi; violence against civilians in the former Yugoslavia and Pakistan; violence against indigenous and minority populations in Chile, Brazil, and Bulgaria; the use of torture; the Pinochet coup in Chile; and the misuse of anthropological knowledge in the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System. As an organization, the AAA has also participated in boycotts on several occasions: of the Fulbright-Chile program in 1975; of the State of Illinois in 1999; of the Hilton hotel chain in 2004; of Coca-Cola in 2006; and of the State of Arizona in 2010.

Boycotting Israeli academic institutions is very much in concert with these previous actions. Our decision now to sign on as individuals to the academic boycott represents a concrete and consequential assertion of our commitment as anthropologists to the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Following in the footsteps of the growing number of US academic associations that have endorsed boycott resolutions, we call on our anthropologist colleagues to boycott Israeli academic institutions.  Given that decades of interaction, cooperation and collaboration with Israeli institutions have not produced mutual understanding or stopped the military occupation and its violations, we believe that this boycott is the only non-violent form of pressure that could persuade Israelis to call for – and act for – meaningful change that could lead to a just peace.  Palestinians must be free to attend universities, in Palestine and internationally, in security. They must have a flourishing, inclusive, well-rounded educational experience. They must be free to meet and learn from scholars from all over the world.

We pledge not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel. We call for doing so until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law, and respect the full rights of Palestinians by calling on Israel to:

  1. End its siege of Gaza, its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967, and dismantle the settlements and the walls;
  2. Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the stateless Negev Bedouins to full equality; and
  3. Respect, protect, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.


Sincerely,

The Undersigned
[list updated October 1, 2014]

  1. Nahla Abdo, Carleton University
  2. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Columbia University
  3. Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
  4. Fida Adely, Georgetown University
  5. Asad Ahmed, Harvard University
  6. Ananthakrishnan Aiyer, University of Michigan-Flint
  7. Nadje Al-Ali, School of Oriental & African Studies
  8. Diana Allan, Cornell University
  9. Lori Allen, School of Oriental & African Studies
  10.   Mark Anderson, UC Santa Cruz
  11.   Walter Armbrust, Oxford University
  12.   Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center
  13.   Barbara Aswad, Wayne State University
  14.   Mariam Banahi, Johns Hopkins University
  15.   Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin
  16.   Joshua Bell
  17.   Hugo Benavides, Fordham University
  18.   Victoria Bernal, UC Irvine
  19.   Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine
  20.   John Borneman, Princeton University
  21.   Philippe Bourgois, University of Pennsylvania
  22.   Glenn Bowman, University of Kent
  23.   Karen Brodkin, UCLA
  24.   Kevin Caffrey, Harvard University
  25.   Steven Caton, Harvard University
  26.   Jessica Cattelino, UCLA
  27.   Sharad Chari, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)
  28.   Dawn Chatty, Oxford University
  29.   Nancy N. Chen, UC Santa Cruz
  30.   David Chicoine, Louisiana State University
  31.   Julie Chu, University of Chicago
  32.   Francis Cody, University of Toronto
  33.   Karen Coelho, Madras Institute of Development Studies
  34.   Jean Comaroff, Harvard University
  35.   John Comaroff, Harvard University
  36.   Nicholas Copeland, Virginia Tech
  37.   Jane Cowan, Sussex University
  38.   Rochelle Davis, Georgetown University
  39.   Anouk de Koning, Radboud University Nijmegen
  40.   Marisol de la Cadena, UC Davis
  41.   Erin Debenport, University of New Mexico
  42.   Lara Deeb, Scripps College
  43.   Michael Dietler, University of Chicago
  44.   Chris Dole, Amherst College
  45.   Donald L. Donham, UC Davis
  46.   Narges Erami, Yale University
  47.   Arturo Escobar, UNC Chapel Hill
  48.   Elizabeth Faier, Wayne State University
  49.   Randa Farah, University of Western Ontario
  50.   James C. Faris, University of Connecticut
  51.   Tessa Farmer, Whittier College
  52.   Ilana Feldman, George Washington University
  53.   Mayanthi Fernando, UC Santa Cruz
  54.   Les Field, University of New Mexico
  55.   Rowan Flad, Harvard University
  56.   Andrew Gardner, University of Puget Sound
  57.   Hildred Geertz, Princeton
  58.   Farha Ghannam, Swarthmore
  59.   Lesley Gill, Vanderbilt University
  60.   Gaston Gordillo, University of British Columbia
  61.   Sarah R. Graff, Arizona State University
  62.   Linda Green, University of Arizona
  63.   Steven Gregory, Columbia University
  64.   Nina Gren, Lund University
  65.   Zareena Grewal, Yale University
  66.   Akhil Gupta, UCLA
  67.   Sherine Hafez, UC Riverside
  68.   Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne
  69.   Sondra Hale, UCLA
  70.   Sherine Hamdy, Brown University
  71.   Rema Hammami, Bir Zeit University
  72.   Abdellah Hammoudi, Princeton University
  73.   Clara Han, Johns Hopkins University
  74.   Richard Handler, University of Virginia
  75.   Jamil Hanifi, Michigan State University
  76.   Deborah Heath, Lewis and Clark
  77.   Mary Hegland, Santa Clara University
  78.   Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  79.   Sarah Hill, Western Michigan University
  80.   Charles Hirschkind, UC Berkeley
  81.   Engseng Ho, Duke University
  82.   Katherine Hoffman, Northwestern University
  83.   Matthew Hull, University of Michigan
  84.   Farhana Ibrahim, IIT Delhi
  85.   Amrita Ibrahim
  86.   Islah Jad, Bir Zeit University
  87.   Barbara Rose Johnston, Center for Political Ecology
  88.   Carla Jones, University of Colorado at Boulder
  89.   Suad Joseph, UC Davis
  90.   Ann M. Kakaliouras, Whittier College
  91.   Vinay Kamat, University of British Columbia
  92.   Rhoda Kanaaneh, Columbia University
  93.   Sohini Kar, London School of Economics
  94.   Kēhaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
  95.   Tobias Kelly, Edinburgh University
  96.   Lamya Khalidi, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
  97.   Naveeda Khan, Johns Hopkins University
  98.   Eleana Kim, UC Irvine
  99. Laurie King, Georgetown University
  100. Philip L. Kohl, Wellesley College
  101. Dorinne Kondo, University of Southern California
  102. Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  103. Corinne Kratz, Emory University
  104. Petra Kuppinger, Monmouth College
  105. Chris Kuzawa, Northwestern University
  106. Roger Lancaster, George Mason University
  107. Barbara Larson, University of New Hampshire
  108. Richard Borshay Lee, University of Toronto
  109. Winnie Lem, Trent University
  110. Robert Leopold
  111. Krista Lewis, University of Arkansas
  112. Tania Li, University of Toronto
  113. Anders Linde-Laursen, Eastern Michigan University
  114. Ralph Litzinger, Duke University
  115. Margaret Lock, McGill University
  116. Jeffrey C. Long, University of New Mexico
  117. Catherine Lutz, Brown University
  118. Sarah Lyon, University of Kentucky
  119. Peter Magee, Bryn Mawr
  120. Pardis Mahdavi, Pomona College
  121. Saba Mahmood, UC Berkeley
  122. Lilith Mahmud, UC Irvine
  123. Sunaina Maira, UC Davis
  124. Martin F. Manalansan IV, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  125. Paul Manning, Trent University
  126. Setrag Manoukian, McGill University
  127. Joe Masco, University of Chicago
  128. Kathryn Mathers, Northwestern University
  129. Lorand Matory, Duke University
  130. William Mazzarella, University of Chicago
  131. Carlota McAllister, York University
  132. David McMurray, Oregon State University
  133. Anne Meneley, Trent University
  134. Kalyani Menon, DePaul University
  135. Sofian Merabet, UT Austin
  136. Brinkley Messick, Columbia University
  137. Laurence Michalak, UC Berkeley
  138. Flagg Miller, UC Davis
  139. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, School of Oriental & African Studies
  140. Amira Mittermaier, University of Toronto
  141. Lamia Moghnieh, University of Michigan
  142. Annelies Moors, University of Amsterdam
  143. Viranjini Munasinghe, Cornell University
  144. Martha Mundy, London School of Economics
  145. Donna Murdock, University of the South
  146. Nadine Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago
  147. Diane M. Nelson, Duke University
  148. Jan Nespor, Ohio State University
  149. Fari Nzinga, New Orleans Museum of Art
  150. Michelle Obeid, Manchester University
  151. Marcia Ochoa, UC Santa Cruz
  152. Aihwa Ong, UC Berkeley 
  153. Sherry Ortner, UCLA
  154. Arzoo Osanloo, University of Washington
  155. Esra Özyürek, London School of Economics
  156. Mark Padilla, Florida International University
  157. Stefania Pandolfo, UC Berkeley
  158. Ayşe Parla, Sabancı University
  159. Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  160. Michael G. Peletz, Emory University
  161. Michael Perez, University of Washington
  162. Julie Peteet, University of Louisville
  163. Mark Peterson, Miami University, Ohio
  164. Deborah Poole, Johns Hopkins University
  165. Elliot Prasse-Freeman, Yale University
  166. David H. Price, Saint Martin’s University
  167. Nicolas Puig, Institut de recherche pour le développement
  168. James Quesada, San Francisco State University
  169. Lucinda Ramberg, Cornell University
  170. Junaid Rana, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  171. Vyjayanthi V. Rao, New School for Social Research
  172. Anupama Rao, Columbia University
  173. Amal Rassam, CUNY Queens College
  174. Gayatri Reddy, University of Illinois at Chicago
  175. François Richard, University of Chicago
  176. Mubbashir Rizvi, Georgetown University
  177. Lisa Rofel, UC Santa Cruz
  178. Kaifa Roland, University of Colorado
  179. Danilyn Rutherford, UC Santa Cruz
  180. Moain Sadeq, Qatar University
  181. Christa Salamandra, Lehman College CUNY
  182. Ruba Saleh, School of Oriental & African Studies
  183. Elaine Salo, University of Delaware
  184. Aseel Sawalha, Fordham University
  185. Rosemary Sayigh
  186. Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut
  187. Samuli Schielke, Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin)
  188. Daniel Segal, Pitzer College
  189. Noa Shaindlinger, University of Toronto
  190. Sima Shakhsari, Wellesley College
  191. Seteney Shami, Arab Council for the Social Sciences
  192. Shalini Shankar, Northwestern University
  193. Jonathan Shannon, Hunter College
  194. Aradhana Sharma, Wesleyan University
  195. Kim Shively, Kutztown University
  196. David Shorter, UCLA
  197. Gerald Sider, CUNY Graduate Center
  198. Audra Simpson, Columbia University
  199. Susan Slyomovics, UCLA
  200. Llyn Smith, Humboldt State University
  201. Gavin Smith, University of Toronto
  202. Claudio Sopranzetti, Oxford University
  203. Emilio Spadola, Colgate University
  204. Judith Stevenson, CSU Long Beach
  205. Ann Laura Stoler, New School for Social Research
  206. Ian Straughn, Brown University
  207. Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University
  208. Mayssun Succarie, Brown University
  209. Richard Tapper, School of Oriental & African Studies
  210. Mick Taussig, Columbia University
  211. Lucien Taylor, Harvard University
  212. Susan Terrio, Georgetown University
  213. Sitara Thobani, Oxford University
  214. Miriam Ticktin, New School for Social Research
  215. Anna Tsing, UC Santa Cruz
  216. Gina Ulysse, Wesleyan University
  217. Gary Urton, Harvard University
  218. Bregje van Eekelen, Erasmus University
  219. Kamala Visweswaran, UT Austin
  220. Neha Vora, Lafayette College
  221. Christine Walley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  222. Shannon Walsh, City University of Hong Kong
  223. Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University
  224. Harvey Weiss, Yale University
  225. Paige West, Columbia University
  226. Mark Westmoreland, Stockholm University
  227. Livia Wick, American University of Beirut
  228. Jessica Winegar, Northwestern University
  229. Lisa Wynn, Macquarie University
  230. Angela Zito, New York University


In addition, 46 scholars have elected to sign this statement anonymously
.

These include at least:

  • 30 untenured faculty
  • 5 post-doctoral fellows
  • 5 graduate students 


To sign this statment, click here.

You can also join by sending your name and affiliation (for purposes of identification only) to anthroboycott [at] gmail [dot] com.

If you wish to sign anonymously, please write “CONFIDENTIAL” in the subject line of your email.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

    • Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes

      Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes
      Long Form Podcast(Episodes 7, 8, & 9) Upcoming Guests:Mandy TurnerHala RharritHatem Bazian Hosts:Mouin RabbaniBassam Haddad   Watch Here:Youtube.com/JadaliyyaX.com/Jadaliyya There can be

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412