Live with ASI Episode 3.9 Digest — May/June 2023

Live with ASI Episode 3.9 Digest — May/June 2023

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 co-hosts Nadya Sbaiti and Bassam Haddad highlighted several newly released books that are featured in New Texts Out Now series and also offered some Must Read selections which also featured some New Texts, dealing with issues ranging from the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman to the academic boycott for palestine. 

The episode also features interviews with Aaron Jakes, Mouin Rabbani, Sherene Seikaly, Alain Gresh, Birgan Gokmenoglu, Alp Kayserilioglu, and Zoha Khalili.

NEWTON 


Nadya and Bassam highlighted fascinating interviews with several authors, beginning with Alice Wilson’s “Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman”, which presents a historical analysis of the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman. They then recommended Nick Riemer’s “Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine”, Charlotte Karem Albrecht’s “Possible Histories” and “The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire” by Nilay Ozok-Gundogan.

POLITICAL ECONOMY PROJECT



University of Chicago professor Aaron Jakes joined the broadcast to discuss his book “Egypt’s Occupation”, which has recently been awarded the Political Economy Project book prize. 

Aaron Jakes in discussion with Nadya and Bassam.
 

CONNECTIONS



Jadaliyya co-editor and host of the Connections podcast Mouin Rabbani joined the broadcast to discuss the latest installments of Connections, which include episodes that deal with the war in Sudan, and the latest Israeli aggression in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.  

Mouin Rabbani shares insights on recent Connections episodes. 
 

JADALIYYA 



Sherene Seikaly is a Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara as well as a co-editor of Jadaliyya. She joined Live with ASI to discuss an article she published in Jadaliyya last month as part of the Palestine bouquet commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba.

Sherene Seikaly discussing her piece.
 

FLOW



Bassam recorded an interview for the Flow podcast last month with veteran French journalist Alain Gresh, in his home in Paris, covering a range of topics from French policy on Palestine, to the condition of Muslims in France. Alain joined the broadcast to reflect on the conversation. 

Alain Gresh recapping his conversation with Bassam.
 

Turkey Page



Birgan Gokmenoglu then joined LWA to discuss one of the latest installments in the “Remembering Gezi” roundtable being published by Jadaliyya, an interview titled “Revisiting Gezi through a Queer and Feminist Perspective”. Birgan is a Lecturer at Birmingham City University.

Birgan Gokmenoglu addressed the purpose and significance of the interview.
 

Continuing with content from the Turkey Page, LWA was joined by researcher Alp Kayserilioglu. Alp has recently published an article in Jadaliyya called “Weathering the Storm of Edroganism”, about the aftermath of last month’s elections in Turkey. 

Alp Kayserilioglu discussing his article in Jadaliyya.
 

ACADEMIC BOYCOTT PANEL



The final interview of the broadcast featured a pre-recorded segment featuring Zoha Khalili, who is a Staff Attorney with Palestine Legal. Zoha met with Bassam earlier in the week to revisit an academic boycott and BDS panel she participated in at the American Anthropological Association. 

Zoha Khalili discussing the panel.
 

MUST READS



As always Nadya and Bassam wrapped up the broadcast by offering some must reads, both of which were from NEWTON this time around.  

They recommended Cynthia G. Franklin’s book “Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea” which is a comparative study of how life writing can be mobilized to resist as well as to perpetuate hegemonic forms of dehumanization.


They also discussed Melissa Gatter’s book “Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp: A Nine-to-Five Emergency”, which engages theories of time to offer an analysis of power in the Azraq camp.   

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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