The Struggle for Palestinian Rights is Incompatible with Any Form of Racism or Bigotry: A Statement by Palestinians

[Crop of image of Palestinian flag, held by a protester in Ramallah. Image by Tony Kane.] [Crop of image of Palestinian flag, held by a protester in Ramallah. Image by Tony Kane.]

The Struggle for Palestinian Rights is Incompatible with Any Form of Racism or Bigotry: A Statement by Palestinians

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was originally published on 12 October 2012 in Electronic Intifada.]

We the undersigned, as Palestinians living in historic Palestine and the diaspora, in the spirit of past statements, and in light of recent controversies, write to reaffirm a key principle of our movement for freedom, justice, and equality: The struggle for our inalienable rights is one opposed to all forms of racism and bigotry, including, but not limited to, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Zionism, and other forms of bigotry directed at anyone, and in particular people of color and indigenous peoples everywhere.

We oppose the cynical and baseless use of the term anti-Semitism as a tool for stifling criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism, as this assumes simply because someone is Jewish, they support Zionism or the colonial and apartheid policies of the state of Israel - a false generalization.

Our struggle is anchored in universal human rights and international law in opposition to military occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, something people of conscience of all ethnicities, races, and religions can support.

Finally, we call on people around the world to join us in a morally consistent stance that opposes racism and bigotry in all forms. An ethical struggle for justice and equal rights in any context entails zero tolerance for racial discrimination and racism anywhere.

Signed (in order of signature):

  1. Abir Kopty
  2. Danya Mustafa
  3. Nadia Hijab
  4. Shirien Damra
  5. Omar Barghouti
  6. Noura Erakat
  7. Remi Kanazi
  8. Andrew Kadi
  9. Dina Omar
  10. Sandra Tamari
  11. Maath Musleh
  12. Suleiman Hodali
  13. Dana Saifan
  14. Jess Ghannam
  15. Sami Kishawi
  16. Dalia Almarina
  17. Haidar Eid
  18. Samee Sulaiman
  19. Lubna Hammad
  20. Issa Mikel
  21. Dina Zbidat
  22. Esmat Elhalaby
  23. Linah Alsaafin
  24. Ramzi Jaber
  25. Randa May Wahbe
  26. Hilda Massoud
  27. Falastine Dwikat
  28. Jamil Sbitan
  29. Beesan Ramadan
  30. Alaa Milbes
  31. Tanya Keilani
  32. Adam Akkad
  33. Budour Hassan
  34. Ahmad Nimer
  35. Fajr Harb
  36. Susan Abulhawa
  37. Amira Dasouqi
  38. Lubna Alzaroo
  39. Samah Sabawi
  40. Ismail Khalidi
  41. Annemarie Jacir
  42. George E. Bisharat
  43. Sara Jawhari
  44. Amin Abbas
  45. Ali Abunimah
  46. Camillia Shoufani
  47. Dena Qaddumi
  48. Ramzi Kanazi
  49. Alaa Yousef
  50. Najwa Doughman
  51. Amal Atieh Jubran
  52. Mahdi Sabbagh
  53. Rania Jubran
  54. Amar Husain
  55. Omar H. Rahman
  56. Yazeed Ibrahim
  57. Zachariah Barghouti
  58. Nadine Darwish
  59. Rinad Abdulla
  60. Sana Ibrahim
  61. Rana Libdeh
  62. Huwaida Arraf
  63. Basil Farraj
  64. Riham Barghouti
  65. Jalal Abukhater
  66. Grace Said
  67. Wafai Dias
  68. Huda Asfour
  69. Musa Al-Hindi
  70. Halla Shoaibi
  71. Nada Elia
  72. Shafeka Hashash
  73. Linda Sarsour
  74. Nour Joudah
  75. Fadi Quran
  76. Rafeef Ziadah
  77. Muhammad Jabali
  78. Haneen Maikey
  79. Diana Alzeer
  80. Mouin Rabbani
  81. Zaid Shuaibi
  82. Sari Harb
  83. Suzy Salamy
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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