Suchergebnisse

In April 2014, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) convened a conference titled "The Settler Colonial Paradigm: Debating Gershon Shafir's Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Its 25th Anniversary." This essay emanates from the conference. I first chart the dialectical emergence of Shafir's thought out of Israeli sociology, and then gauge its impact on the growing presence of the settler-colonial framework in the study of Palestine/Israel. The analysis of Shafir's book shows how a powerful hegemony has produced its disavowal. The examination of Palestine/Israel as a settler-colonial situation past and present underscores the benefit of studying this topic comparatively and as part of a global phenomenon.

In late nineteenth-century Europe, a distinct, secular socio-political type appeared: the conscious pariah. This essay traces the genealogy of the conscious pariah. Starting from Bernard Lazare and then comparing public intellectuals Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, it argues that the latter, too, can be interpreted as a conscious pariah. Whilst differences are not ignored, the essay highlights the shared political and scholarly insights Arendt and Said offer as conscious pariahs. The renewed relevance of the conscious pariah's politics and scholarship, owing to the project of the common state, runs through the essay both implicitly and explicitly. 'The Atlantic City Resolution [October 1944] goes even a step further than the Biltmore Program (1942), in which the Jewish minority had granted minority rights to the Arab majority. This time the Arabs were simply not mentioned in the resolution, which obviously leaves them the choice between voluntary emigration and second-class citizenship.' (Hannah Arendt, 'Zionism Reconsidered', Menorah Journal, 33 (October 1944)) Ari Shavit: 'You sound very Jewish'. Edward Said: 'Of course. I'm the last Jewish intellectual. You don't know anyone else. All your other Jewish intellectuals are now suburban squires. From Amos Oz to all these people here in America. So I'm the last one. The only true follower of Adorno. Let me put it this way: I'm a Jewish-Palestinian. (Edward Said's interview with Ari Shavit, Haaretz, 18 August 2000)

For many years now 9 November, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, has been marked in Germany by public assemblies that have served not only to affirm historical condemnation of the Nazis' murderous policies, but also as an implacable rejection of contemporary forms of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. The targets of racist violence today are most likely to be Muslims or asylum seekers; and-though the structuring social determinants are entirely different from those of the 1930s-the assaults are not negligible. The arson attacks on immigrant hostels in Hoyerswerda and Rostock in the early 90s were cheered on by chanting crowds. Nor are these restricted to the eastern Lander, mosques in the Rhineland were targeted last summer as the trial began of a far-right cell member implicated in the serial killing of Turkish workers. Altogether there were thirty attacks on mosques in Germany last year, nine of them involving arson. The Kristallnacht anniversary marches have served both to commemorate those targeted by the Nazis and to demonstrate solidarity with those exposed to racist aggression today. Adapted from the source document.