This essay was my contribution to the panel Global and Transnational Approaches to Race and Racism at the Inaugural British Journal of Sociology Conference, 15-16 April 2024 at the London School of Economics. I am grateful to Ghada Majadli and … Continue reading “Social Theory after* Gaza? Witnessing the Transnational Circuits of Race-Making”
Submissions to Palestine Now are on a brief hiatus as we work on the review and publication of the large number of essays already submitted. Submissions will re-open on January 2, 2025, with a review and publication process of a … Continue reading “New Submissions Guidelines”
This text is adapted from the opening plenary of the 2023 conference of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. Counterinsurgency: Beyond Weaponized Definitions The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s spreading institutionalized definition of antisemitism is not merely weaponized, it … Continue reading ““Antisemitism” as Asymmetric Warfare: The Casualties of a Definition”
The so-called global Left, especially within the settlercolonial US-Canadian scene, is discombobulated. “End the Occupation” and “From the River to the Sea,” like Tahrir Square’s 2011 Orientalized so-called Arab Spring chant “Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice,” have turned into prophetic … Continue reading “It Is a Racial-Religious War: Organizing and a 1492 Transnational Movement Framing”
Dear world, This letter is a reclamation. It is a prayer to the universe. It is a plea for you to bear witness. Often, writing demands to be lyrical, poetic, and beautiful. Even when we write about our struggles, there … Continue reading “Gridlocks of Death, Oceans of Life”
On Monday, April 29, thirteen undergraduate students and one professor occupied Clio Hall on the campus of Princeton University in an attempt to force the administration to meet their demands for a revision of university relations with the state of … Continue reading “Pedagogy Against Genocide”
I belong to the question of the victim. –Mahmoud Darwish What follows is a thread of perfunctory reflections on a course I offered in January 2024 titled Decolonizing the Study of Palestine. A course is a complex, emergent human (and … Continue reading “Pedagogy and Epistemics of Witness: Teaching Palestine in a Time of Genocide”
فَلَمْ تَقْتُلُوهُمْ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ قَتَلَهُمْ ۚ وَمَا رَمَيْتَ إِذْ رَمَيْتَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَمَىٰ ۚ وَلِيُبْلِىَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ مِنْهُ بَلَآءً حَسَنًا ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌۭ And you do not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them. And you … Continue reading “On Responsibility: Critique and Colonization After October 7th”
Will Eizlini, an American artist of French Jewish descent, tells me that he has been crying every day. When not crying, he is making a series of paintings interpreting the massacres in Gaza—crimson landscapes of sea, sky, dunes, with piles … Continue reading “The Burden of Witnessing”
In December 2003, Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, announced in a televised speech Israel’s plans to “disengage” from its control of Gaza through the complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and the removal of Israeli settlements from Gaza after … Continue reading “Trapped Between Spaces: Gaza’s Existential Struggle”
our decomposing bodies our flesh mixed with dirt our blood flour whatabout semantics pontificate our children at a podium reporters with a plea concerns statements letters Gaza City to Deir el Balah to Khan Younis to … Continue reading “untitled (discourse)”
These words are meant to land in your ears as piercing sounds to accompany the wrenching horrors crowding our screens. Do not be fooled by the silence of print. This writing clamors to be screamed. Gaza is not some eerie … Continue reading “This is a scream and I dare you to publish it!”
I haven’t watched the livestream of US Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli consulate in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2024, but many of us are familiar with reports and transcripts telling of a police officer, … Continue reading “To Extinguish: On Aaron Bushnell and the Casualties of Nonviolence”
Not a single day goes by now in North America or Europe without an academic being disciplined or fired outright for expressing views critical of Israel. In mid-March 2024, when the University of California Regents meet at UCLA, they will … Continue reading “Genocide and Campus Bans on Speech Critical of Israel: Then and Now”
If there is a direct historical antecedent to the attacks of October 7 and everything that has happened since, it is Israel’s sixteen-year blockade, which devastated Gaza and harmed a generation of Palestinians. I lived in Gaza City for six … Continue reading “Memories of Gaza”
