Live with ASI: Episode 2.12 Digest — June 2022

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Jun 10, 2022

Live with ASI: Episode 2.12 Digest — June 2022

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Live with ASI is a monthly broadcast program that showcases recently published content from the Arab Studies Institute’s various branches. This content includes articles, reviews, pedagogical resources, podcasts, and more. Also featured in the broadcast are brand new interviews and discussions with authors and contributors.

This month, LWA co-hosts MK Smith and Bassam Haddad discussed the 6th annual Political Economy Summer Institute, the recent Lebanese Parliamentary elections, an upcoming Pedagogy JadMag, two new episodes of Connections podcast, a new project on Navigating Anti-Authoritarianism and Anti-Imperialism, Israel’s killing of Shireen Abu Aqleh, and New Texts Out Now.

This episode featured engaging interviews with Sami Atallah, Lisa Wedeen, Mouin Rabbani, Rabi’a Salman, Nama’a Qudah, and Noura Erakat. 

PESI 2022


The Political Economy Project recently concluded the 6th annual Political Economy Summer Institute. This multidisciplinary summer institute is intended to address the needs of doctoral students and scholars researching the Middle East who may not have received formal instruction in critical political economy at their own institutions.

The goal of the summer institute is to help foster critical political economy approaches to the study of the region by bringing together select faculty leaders and student participants for four days of intensive discussion of key texts in critical political economy. In addition to the faculty-led sessions on topics such as state formation, imperialism, and labor, students presented and received feedback on their current research projects. 

PESI is an important step towards creating a community of scholars working within the tradition of critical political economy, on issues of historical and contemporary relevance to the Middle East. 

Lebanon’s Parliamentary Elections


On May 15, Lebanon held its first Parliamentary Elections since the 2019 national uprising. Sami Attallah wrote a piece for Jadaliyya’s Lebanon Page analyzing the significance of the election, where established political parties frantically spilled money into their campaigns while anti-establishment groups struggled to form viable political alliances. 

Attallah also discussed the ramifications of the election’s results, as opposition groups performed surprisingly well, pushing out many incumbents from power and gaining 13 seats. 

Sami Atallah speaks about the intra-elite rivalries that paved for the opposition’s surprising victories in the elections, as well as the new think tank in Beirut, the Policy Initiative. 
 

Pedagogy


Despite a delay in production due to the COVID pandemic, the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative is excited to announce the second issue of the Pedagogy JadMag, with a variety of articles, interviews, and roundtable discussions on topics ranging from teaching migration to questions of precarity in academia.

This issue will feature a centerpiece article by Ahlam Muhtaseb on teaching Palestine through film, as well as two special resource collections from MESPI: the Essential Readings on the Left series, and the Peer-Reviewed Articles Review Bouquets on Race and the Middle East.

You can order this issue at TadweenPublishing.com, or at the link below.

Navigating Anti-Authoritarianism and Anti-Imperialism


A very special project that has been in the works for a long time at ASI kicked off this week! The Navigating Anti-Authoritarianism and Anti-Imperialism project will host a number of workshops, panels, and conversations regarding the critical nuances at play when dealing with anti-authoritarian movements within the context of imperialism.

The project seeks to address questions on the efficacy of current definitions, conceptual trade-offs, analytical thresholds, and so much more. 

Jadaliyya Co-Editor Lisa Wedeen discusses the importance of exploring the nuances of anti-imperialism and anti-authoritarianism, and why this project is a necessary one for knowledge production on the region.
 

Connections Podcast


Jadaliyya Co-Editor and podcast-extraordinaire Mouin Rabbani was busy last month, publishing two new episodes of Connections. 

If you aren’t already familiar, the Connections Podcast combines journalism, analysis, and scholarship to offer timely and informative interviews on current events and broader policy questions, as well as themes relevant to knowledge production.

In “The Libya Intervention Revisited,” Mouin interviewed former head of the UN mission in Libya, Ian Martin, regarding the 2011 military intervention, and examined the role of the UN, the policies adopted by NATO and regional states, and the various Libyan parties and their lasting impact on the crisis in Libya. 

Mouin also spoke with war correspondent Nabih Bulos regarding the war in Ukraine, where they looked at various dimensions of the conflict and its global impact.

Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani shares insights from his recent Connections Podcast episodes, and teases upcoming interviews.
 

“On This Day”: Assafeer Newspaper


Jadaliyya’s Arabic Page Editors marked the 40th anniversary of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon by collaborating with the Assafeer newspaper, which was the only newspaper to refuse Israel’s order to cease publication upon its invasion. 

The team will continue to publish “On This Day” commemorative historical posts every month. 

Rabi’a Salman from the Lebanese newspaper Assafeer talks about this collaborative post and the significance of Assafeer during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
 

Killing of Shireen Abu Aqleh


We were all heartbroken to hear about the killing of the iconic Palestinian journalist by Israeli forces during a raid on Jenin in the West Bank last month. 

It’s difficult to overstate how significant Shireen was to Arabs and Palestinians around the world, and how much this loss has affected so many people. Nama’a Qudah penned an article for Jadaliyya’s Arabic section reflecting on Shireen’s death.

Also last month, Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat went on CBS News to discuss the prospects for a “fair” investigation into Shireen Abu Aqleh’s killing, and addressed whether or not Israel is capable of investigating itself. 

New Texts Out Now


“The Egyptian Labor Corps: Race, Space, and Place in the First World War” by Kyle J. Anderson joins the increasing effort to talk about race and the afterlives of slavery in the region The book brings critical race theory into conversation with Egyptian history in an attempt to elucidate the lived experiences of rural Egyptians during the war, and illustrates parallels between African American and Egyptian history.

Our second NEWTON is the Routledge Handbook of China-Middle East Relations, edited by Jonathan Fulton. The volume is an attempt to counter politicized analysis and punditry about China relations in the Middle East, and presents rigorous and balanced analyses based on empirical data, with the hope that it would inform the work of researchers and policymakers.
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

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