Palestine Solidarity Research Articles

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ISRAELI PRODUCT BOYCOTT ACTION: BETWEEN FATWAS AND THE URGENCY OF COMPLIANCE

Israel's massacre of civilians in Gaza has angered the global community. This has led to boycott movements in various countries as a form of Palestinian solidarity using market forces. This paper discusses a descriptive analysis of the boycott of Israeli products. The study of boycotting Israeli products uses several literature sources such as research articles, fatwas, and national and international news pages. The results of this paper show the impact of the boycott made various companies affiliated with Israel suffer losses. In addition, boycotts have an impact on layoffs. While the greatest abominations and destruction have occurred throughout human history. The Indonesian Ulema Council has issued a fatwa in support of this boycott, which must be obeyed by local Muslims due to the fatwa's high position and Allah's word calling for obedience to the leader. This paper can be useful for scholars of Islamic economics to add insight

Activists’ Role in the Creation of Möllevången as a Space for Superdiversity

This texts revisit some of the observations that I made in my dissertation, focusing specifically on the relation between superdiversity and the reality of political activism today. After a period of declining activity, the Palestinian solidarity movement that emerged in the fall of 2023 has had a major impact, both politically and physically, on Malmö’s activist scene. The movement illustrates how conditions of superdiversity, within a city and within a protest movement, can facilitate unity and solidarity as well as generate challenges, tension, and conflict.

When rhythm becomes resistance: transcreating songs in Arabic

Music is said to be the art of thinking in sound, a site where tones can be translated into aesthetic resistance. It has the power to invigorate national identities and cultural heritage as well as the potential to create nuanced contrapuntal spaces to protest against structures of oppression. Transcreating songs has the ability to assert or negotiate power dynamics and reinterpret political discourse. Although a fertile ground for analysis, song translation, in relation to activism and creativity in particular, is a relatively nascent field with scant research which, looking at the Arab landscape, is even scantier. The present essay contributes to closing the gap by probing into active engagement with music and its testimonial qualities to national identity and political struggle. Martin and White’s appraisal theory is employed to display how transcreated songs are imbued with political and religious overtones to accommodate specific motivations or agendas. As a case study, we analyse ten Spacetoon songs which a group of Yemeni artists transcreated into Arabic to signal their Palestinian solidarity amid Arab normalizations. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to shed light on how re-versioned songs – also called pseudo-translation and text replacement – transcend linguistic borders and elevate the status of the original to create positive change and advocate resistance. The research concludes that Medley Palestine (the term the artists use) is an evaluative statement about the Israeli occupation on the one hand, and an attempt to instil Islamic values and recover Arab gallantry on the other.

Struggles of vehicle residents in Squamish: Challenging the capitalist and colonial institution of housing

In this conversation, Thomasina Pidgeon discusses her decision to live in a vehicle in Squamish, north of Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada. This was a choice originally driven by the lack of affordable housing, but she continued with it after falling in love with life on the road. Her story sheds light on the broader issues of housing, gentrification, and societal attitudes toward non-sedentary life choices. For Thomasina, living in a vehicle offered a sense of freedom for her and her daughter, despite occasional problems, as well as a deep connection with nature that conventional housing couldn’t provide. However, as Squamish has grown more gentrified, particularly after the 2010 Olympics, the town has increasingly cracked down on vehicle residents, categorising them as unhoused and treating them as a problem. These restrictive regulations, according to Thomasina, are part of a larger system that prioritizes property values and profits over human needs, echoing colonial practices that forced nomadic communities to settle for the benefit of those in power. Her story calls for a shift in how we think about housing, urging us to go beyond housing as a capitalist and colonial institution, and towards a deeper understanding of the systemic issues that lead to the so-called housing crisis. Despite facing stress and anxiety due to these crackdowns, Thomasina continues to advocate for the rights of vehicle residents with the organization Vehicle Residents of Squamish, and to connect different struggles from Palestinian solidarity work to struggles against an LNG terminal.

Echoes of Solidarity in the Gaza Protests

Abstract This article provides an overview of the historical development of Palestine solidarity globally since the 1960s and compares the historical evidence to today’s protest movement since the 7 October 2023 Gaza War. Through a reading of a recent collection of testimonies by activists worldwide, the article reflects on the historical coherence of the movement from the formation of the Palestinian liberation movements in the 1960s, the emergence of global solidarity groups in the 1970s and the fragmentation of the Palestinian political landscape since then. The article asks what this decades-long development of solidarity registers and strategies has meant for the Gaza protests since 2023. What is the significance of the structure and scope of early Palestine solidarity for the mobilization we are witnessing today? Which echoes can we observe from the earlier periods of protests, and how are memories and histories of the development of the movement reactivated today?

‘Solidarity of Action:’ Is Africa Reclaiming Its Historic Role as the Center of Palestinian Solidarity?

Solidarity against the colonial regime is one of the keys to overcoming the oppressor. This is why the 20th century, which is seen as the century of decolonization, experienced many demonstrations of solidarity from Africa to America. Palestine’s long resistance against the Israeli colonial project should be considered as another decolonization movement. Unfortunately, many Arab regimes have not shown solidarity with Palestine in recent years. While the Arab states have hesitated to show full solidarity, it is the African continent that has stepped in, internationalizing the debate regarding genocide. This is, indeed, not limited to Africa. South American states also show their support for Palestine and have halted their relations with Israel. How do we make sense of this solidarity, from Namibia to South Africa and from Nicaragua to Cuba? This commentary analyzes the evolution of Global South solidarity with Palestine since the foundation of Israel, with a more focused focus on the African continent. It demonstrates that as decolonial nations, African states have once again shown their solidarity with Palestine, even though there have been some hesitant times due to realpolitik and the U.S. role in protecting Israel’s status.

Palestine is the Vanguard for Our Liberation: Insights from the Students’ Intifada at Columbia University

This essay, written by members and friends of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—the Palestine solidarity group founded at Columbia in November 2023—brings forth an analysis of our movement. We begin by describing the steps that led to CUAD’s formation, and then its historical continuity with Columbia’s legacy of student activism. We discuss our approach to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the research that informs our demands, and two of our methods for accomplishing them: an encampment and building occupation. By contextualizing ourselves in Columbia’s student protest history, we hope to explain the lessons we have learned about the content and form of struggle. By explaining our demands, we hope to focus attention to our points of unity, often overlooked or misunderstood, even by our supporters. Finally, by describing our own experience of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and Hind’s Hall occupation, we hope to situate the protests for which most readers know us in our own political, strategic, and practical framework. We analyze our movement through the principal lens of anti-imperialism, while situating ourselves in the context of the US imperialist core, from which we remain auxiliary to the liberation movement in Palestine.

Global Palestine Solidarity and the Jewish Question

Abstract From its emergence in the late 1960s, global Palestine solidarity has had to defend itself from charges of antisemitism. Activists have responded with different strategies, ranging from rejection to admission and self-critique. Such strategies were often the result of deliberation with Palestinian revolutionaries. In this way, differently situated problem-spaces of ‘the Jewish Question’ – that of settler colonialism in Palestine and that of post-Holocaust politics in Europe – became entangled. Resulting inter-sectional alliances with, for example, Jewish voices and groups have often afforded the best protection from allegations of antisemitism. Despite these efforts, recent legislation criminalising Palestine solidarity shows that Israel’s well-funded campaigns to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism have been partially successful. This article looks for answers to today’s impasse in 50 years of solidarity on the Left and corresponding efforts to criminalise support for the Palestinian cause. Drawing on the archives of solidarity movements in Denmark and other European countries, it traces the current aggressive pushback to its roots in the early 1970s, when Palestine solidarity movements learned important lessons about how to balance their critique of Israel with public sensitivities around the Jewish question, and how to reckon with race and religious identity.

‘Axis of Evil’ and the Academic Repression of Palestine Solidarity

In general, Palestine solidarity activism—irrespective of how and where it happens—faces censorship and repression, whereby solidarity with Palestine as a (national) cause is stigmatized and considered toxic to any mainstream discussion of the politics of Palestine/Israel. Academia tends to follow this norm of stigmatization and toxification of Palestine solidarity and any recognition of the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for liberation is viewed as a violation of the norms of scientific (i.e. objective) knowledge production. More recently, the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism has played a critical role in censuring and censoring individual scholars and scholarship deemed too supportive of the Palestinian struggle. In this article, however, I view this manner of repression as embedded in a political project that extends far beyond the working definition. Specifically, I argue that the academic repression of Palestine solidarity draws on the lasting discursive legacies of the Global War on Terror that sought to bifurcate the world into ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Drawing on my personal experiences of repression where my work has been charged as being antisemitic, sympathetic to terrorism/terrorists and defending fundamentalism, I argue that lumping Palestinian solidarity with all things evil, abnormal, disruptive, negative, and inappropriate represents a continuation of the Global War on Terror as the Palestinian cause is toxified as nothing more than an extension of the ‘Axis of Evil.’

WEIRD

Abstract Based on ethnographic research on Palestinian solidarity activism in and around Jerusalem, this article argues that weirdness is a political feeling. Taking emotion as a form of “wordless knowledge” mediated through the Israeli national narrative, the feeling of weirdness emerges when the expectations of Israelis fail to accord with the practices of military occupation. This is not an intense or overwhelming affect, it does not drive us to fight or flight, or bring us to tears. However, repeated encounters with the failure of their knowledge systems have brought some Israelis to doubt the validity and logic of hegemonic Zionism. Doubt, Hannah Arendt believed, was the outcome of thinking, a human faculty that could condition men against evil-doing. In enabling and augmenting the emergence of doubt, weirdness is a political emotion and one that may play a significant role in the emergence of resistance to the vested interests of oppressive structures in societies everywhere.

Marxism and the Critique of Antisemitism

Abstract Antisemitism is an increasingly prevalent aspect of public life in the West, both as a consequence of the growth of the far right across the board and through its mobilisation against Palestinian liberation and Palestine solidarity activism. While synagogues are targeted and far-right politicians revive ideas of Jewish global power, it is the left, Muslims, and Palestinians that are continuously constructed as the source of the current rise in hatred and violence against Jews. If historically the Marxist tradition engaged actively with the so-called Jewish question, in recent decades the subject has receded from focus. This shift took place as other forms of racism – directed at Muslims, Black populations, or migrants – became the basis for reactionary politics in the West. This article argues that while some of the assumptions that underwrote classical Marxist texts on the issue have been found wanting – perhaps most notably the inevitable (or desirable) character of the trend towards assimilation – they remain important starting points for making sense of our present, both by their method and their political commitment to liberation.

Why protest when it is not working? The complexities of efficacy in the current Palestine solidarity protests

Why protest when it is not working? The complexities of efficacy in the current Palestine solidarity protests

Palestine Solidarity and Zionist Backlash in Australian Universities

Academic solidarity with Palestine in Australia is strongly influenced by multiple factors, in particular the strength of the powerful local Zionist lobby and growing public awareness of Israeli crimes. Repression of the Palestine justice movement has run along internationally familiar lines, involving both the targeting of individuals and a broader ideological ‘war of position.’ In response, the boycott is gaining momentum in Australian universities, as manifested in the formation of new BDS and Palestine solidarity organizations, in efforts within the National Tertiary Education Union, in conferences on the topic of Palestine and BDS and similar academic activities.

Friends of Israel: The Backlash against Palestine Solidarity By HIL AKED

<i>Friends of Israel: The Backlash against Palestine Solidarity</i> By HIL AKED

Constructing and deconstructing the sacred geography of Hebron: Movement and pilgrimage in and around the Tomb of the Patriarchs

The Tomb of the Patriarchs in the divided city of Hebron is a major site of pilgrimage for all three monotheistic religions, a space of contention, and an epicenter of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This article examines the mobility of pilgrims and tourists of various religious traditions within and around the site and their efforts to construct and deconstruct overlapping and often conflicting narratives of sacred space. Thus, Moslem foreign pilgrims from the Middle East and South Asia are motivated by their wish to pray within the site, viewing the political reality of division as an uncomfortable barrier to the experience of sacredness. In contrast, Christians, mostly Protestant tourists, occupy a liminal position expressed and sometimes overcome through the bodily practice of performance of several varieties. Finally, Palestinian solidarity groups attempt to deconstruct Hebron’s sacred geography, by focusing solely on the city’s violent and contested present as a site of immobility and emptiness.

Demilitarize! Durham 2 Palestine: Upending Circuits of State Violence

Between 2016 and 2018, Black, Palestinian and Jewish organizations, under the banner of the Demilitarize! Durham 2 Palestine coalition, led a campaign in Durham, North Carolina, that successfully passed a City Council resolution prohibiting US police exchanges with Israel. Based on direct interviews with the activists who led the campaign, this article sets out to trace the history of the Demilitarize! Effort, detailing its chronological developments with an eye on highlighting how Black–Palestinian solidarity continues to function as an anti-imperial analytic. Particularly, it illuminates how settler colonialism unsettles the demarcation between foreign and domestic frontiers thus entwining military and police force expressed in transnational state violence against racialized communities. In doing so, the article will offer and preserve a movement archive developed by activists in Durham. The Demilitarize! Durham 2 Palestine coalition is built upon a rich legacy of local Palestine solidarity activism and its coalitionary efforts focused on a narrative of racialized state violence that directly connected militarized US law enforcement to trainings in Israel thus illuminating the local manifestations of US empire. This article also seeks to use the movement archive to consider how seemingly formidable circuits of state violence that undergird imperial domination are simultaneously vulnerable to attack and dismantlement.

Habermas and the mutations of the public sphere

In this article, I argue that concern with the public sphere and the necessary conditions for a genuine democracy can be seen as a central theme of Jurgen Habermas's work that deserves respect and critical scrutiny in the contemporary moment, when throughout the world liberal democracies are in crisis. My study intends to point to the continuing importance of Habermas' problematic of the public sphere and its relevance for debates over democratic politics and social and cultural life in the present age, in an era in which the Occupy Movements, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Trump Resistance Movement, and Ukraine and Palestine Solidarity groups use social media to struggle against multiple forms of oppression. At stake is delineating a concept of the public sphere which facilitates maximum public participation and debate over the key issues of the contemporary era and which consequently promotes the cause of radical democracy and social transformation.

Journeys to and among the Margins: Transnational Religio-Racial Identity on American Christian Palestinian Solidarity Tours

Abstract This article examines the intersection of racial and religious identity among progressive US Christians in the context of transnational travel. We approach our analysis through a comparative ethnographic study of two majority-Black and two majority-white Christian Palestinian solidarity tours, representing mainline, evangelical, and historically Black Protestant progressive theological traditions. We conceptualize majority-white tours as “journeys to the margins” and majority-Black tours as “journeys among the margins,” considering how the racial makeup and theological orientation of trips offer a range of affordances for meaning-making, identity construction, and solidarity-building. Using Judith Weisenfeld’s religio-racial framework, we focus on how participants’ progressive Christian values are embedded in divergent racial schemas. Attending to how the logics of these schemas are reinforced or interrogated in transnational encounters, we extend Weisenfeld’s concept from the nation-state to the transnational as we examine how participants reproduce, revise, and re-envision religio-racial frameworks.

Building Transformation from Below: Activism, Analysis, and Effective Solidarity

Mary Jo Nadeau was the theorist and practitioner of a mode of transformative politics oriented around mobilizing in ways that build power from below. She contributed to building a Palestine Solidarity movement in the Canadian state around the call from Palestinian civil society organizations for a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israeli institutions. Her activist practice modelled a politics of solidarity from below that was strategic, learning-oriented, creative and deeply transformative. Solidarity from below requires a delicate balance between recognizing the leadership of those who are struggling for their own freedom and taking responsibility from one’s own position to work together to undo systems of oppression. This mode of activism is built on an open-ended commitment to learning from others, recognizing that they bring experiences and organizing repertoires that are fundamental to effective transformation. As people mobilize, they develop capacities for collectivity powered by strategic victories, an increasing knowledge base, and the shared experience of playful creativity. This deliberate development of capacities from below is a fundamental feature of the project of social transformation.

A People’s Sea: Palestine and Popular Thalassopolitics in the Mediterranean Sea

This article draws on fieldwork, interviews, and archival research on the maritime campaign of the International Palestine Solidarity Movement to challenge the embargo on Gaza. I make three main arguments: first, in addressing the Mediterranean Sea as a platform for international solidarity, the Ships to Gaza inadvertently contrived a novel and largely understudied instance of popular politics at sea, which I coin ‘popular thalassopolitics’. I theorize this emergence in its own right and not solely within state-centric analyses or as a mere expansion of the terrestrial plane. This article urges us to read the sea through the lens of internationalist solidarity and the popular politics it invokes. Second, the popular thalassopolitics of the Ships charts and navigates an ‘insurgent terrain’, creatively assembling the well-established activist practice of solidarity vis-à-vis a decades-long indigenous struggle in Palestine with an emerging perception of the sea as a common and shared but dissimilar space for action. Thirdly, I argue that this history of the popular thalassopolitics of the Ships allows us to reread the scholarship on refugee rescue boats and civil activism at sea. This reading inadvertently challenges a Eurocentric bias in the emerging politicization of the sea as a humanitarianism space in which western saviors come to the aid of agentless refugees. La mer des peuples : La Palestine et la thalassopolitique populaire en mer Méditerranée