Zionism and Anti-Zionism with Miriam Osman

Transcript

Zionism and Anti-Zionism with Miriam Osman

Emmaia Gelman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking Zionism. I’m Emmaia Gelman, your host and director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. For this episode, I’m joined by Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement to talk about Zionism and anti-Zionism as crucial terms to unpack. Of course, this whole series is about looking more carefully at Zionism than we usually do, but specifically, the terms Zionism and anti-Zionism are often tossed around without definition. And they’re used as shorthand for an enormous amount of meaning, history, and politics. So today we’re looking at Zionism from a historical and Palestinian perspective, and we’re looking at how understanding Zionism as a project of various powers, including states and empires, and racist and capitalist political actors, helps define what anti-Zionism, opposing Zionism, has to consist of.

I want to note that [00:01:00] this episode was recorded several weeks ago, but it’s going out now, at a moment when we’ve lost count of how many people have been murdered in Israel’s genocide on Gaza, because the mechanisms for counting were destroyed as Israeli assaults decimated hospitals and infrastructure after 32, 000 killings had already been counted. And many thousands more dead are known to be uncounted under the rubble of the buildings in which they’d been sheltering. Israeli massacres have continued since we lost count, and new mass graves are continually being uncovered as people return to the sites of attacks. 

Also, we’re in a moment when students across the US are occupying their campuses to demand divestment from the weapons manufacturers arming Israel, and to demand that US academic institutions stop targeting their students and faculty, often Palestinian, Jewish, and people of color, who oppose genocide. This is an incredible explosion of resistance, sparked most immediately by Columbia University’s suspensions and evictions of students, and then its use of the New York City Police Department to arrest [00:02:00] more than a hundred students sitting in. 

That repression by Columbia’s administrators was itself a failed effort to appease the Congressional Inquisition by the House Committee on Workforce and Education, which has used allegations of antisemitism on campuses, which are pushed forward by Zionist institutions as a pretext for demanding that universities end anti-racist policies and crack down on anti-racist scholarship and harass and fire faculty.

In other words, the congressional committee, with the collaboration of Columbia administrators, has been trying to transfer power over the university upward and to the right, and it sparked a mass student uprising and resistance. Palestinian Youth Movement has been incredibly important in the political education and mobilization of students and also of faculty who are rallying in ever growing numbers to support the student uprising.

Miriam Osman is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, which is a grassroots transnational independent organization of Palestinian and Arab youth who are committed to and fighting for the liberation of their [00:03:00] homeland from Zionism and imperialism. So this conversation feels timely and important, and it’s also our privilege. 

Thank you so much for being here, Miriam.

Miriam Osman: Thank you so much for having me.

Emmaia Gelman: So for this conversation, you’ve pointed us to two texts that PYM is engaging with and it’s organizing conversations are actually three. One is Fayez Sayegh’s book from 1965, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. One is Faris Glubb book from 1978, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany. And one is an amazing review article from 2023, which I can’t recommend enough. It’s Louis Allday and Samar al-Saleh’s piece in Liberated Texts, which is about Glubb’s book and about his life. That article is called “Zionism as a Fascist Ideology and Movement.” So we’re going to link all of those in the show notes and listeners, if you only have time for one, “Zionism as a Fascist Ideology and Movement” is just a great read, so beautifully written and full of detail. 

So Miriam in PYM, the Palestinian Youth Movement, political education is a big part of your work, right? [00:04:00] And you’re using these readings in the context of political education work. So let’s start right there. What do you want people to understand about Zionism and anti-Zionism?

Miriam Osman: One of the big things that we’re trying to get people to think about is actually understanding the real history of Zionism and what it means. Because what we’ve seen in the movement, or in the repression against the movement, is this total obscuring of what Zionism and anti-Zionism actually are. We see anti-Zionism being conflated with antisemitism, and then we also see a total watering down of what Zionism actually is. Zionism is a movement and ideology, a settler colonial movement and ideology, that was born in Europe in the 1800s that came into being through colonization and through a relationship with European powers and European British imperialism. So really trying to get to the heart of [00:05:00] what Zionism actually means so that when we’re tasked with confronting Zionism, we understand what it is that fighting against. And of course we see today playing out all the various ways that the Zionist state operates in order to further its aims of establishing a Jewish state, basically on the ruins and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Emmaia Gelman: So the prevailing story that we usually hear about Zionism and about Israel as a state is that they arise from essentially Jewish longing for a homeland and from Jewish identity. And as you point out, that’s a watering down that takes settler colonialism and ideology and other crucial pieces of history completely out of the picture.

But these works, which are historical, place the analysis of Zionism pretty squarely in the domain of global imperialism. What they describe is a moment in which European powers are panicked about the decolonization of Africa and the dismantling of empire, and are looking to reestablish control over global [00:06:00] territories by other means. So we see, for example, the British army clearing the path for Europeans, Jewish Europeans, to settle Palestine and the upper classes of Britain and Austria and other parts of Europe coming behind to support. It’s also a response to the European left at that time, right? An effort by those same upper class funders to try to literally export the European Jewish left to Palestine or wherever they’re going to be able to settle. What are the narratives you’re interested in trying to center? 

Miriam Osman: One of these myths is that, you know, Zionism presents itself as the only solution to European antisemitism, that the creation of a Jewish state was the only way to keep Jews safe, which is a myth that is dispelled in these works and that we have to really understand the history of.

And then the other is this idea that, this kind of liberal Zionist idea that, you know, there’s nothing wrong with the Zionism per se, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of a Jewish state, but, you know, along the way, [00:07:00] Zionism turned kind of ugly. You know, you see like the Nakba, oh, that was so bad. I wish we didn’t have to do it that way. Or 1967, yeah, we were attacked, what do we, what were we to do? And that’s really these myths that I think that are being dispelled at the heart of these texts because what we understand from Sayegh and from Glubb is that, you know, contrary to this Zionist myth, Zionism was an inherently colonial ideology from the very start that went hand in hand with British imperialism. So this idea that it was, you know, somehow this sweet idea that turned sour along the way is just completely false. 

So that’s a little bit, I think, about the importance of what narratives that these texts continue to fight against, right? Like these narratives are still prevalent today. And these texts from decades ago are addressing these arguments directly. Zionist Colonialism in Palestine by Fayez Sayegh was written at a time when there wasn’t as much of an understanding [00:08:00] of what was happening in Palestine on a broad level is what we have today.

Sayegh was a Syrian-Palestinian academic and diplomat, and he helped establish the PLO’s Palestine Research Center in Beirut, where this text was published. It was the first monograph published through the Palestine Research Center. And, you know, this was included a group of, you know, Palestinian intellectual and cultural revolutionary figures like Ghassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish, who are all working through this center and contributing to the work.

It comes out really in an attempt to study the origins and character of the Zionist movement at a time when it wasn’t so broadly understood. It really gets to the heart at this idea that I was talking about earlier, this kind of liberal Zionist myth about Zionism. The end of that text talks about the Palestinian response to Zionism and centers ongoing resistance and the development of a national liberation project over [00:09:00] time. So really coming to understand Zionism also through anti-Zionism and the Palestinian struggle, I think it’s critical that we read authors who are engaged in knowledge production in service of the struggle.

Emmaia Gelman: The article that introduces us to Faris Glubb is in Liberated Texts, which is a project to reconnect us with writing, especially anti-colonial writing, among other kinds of writing, that has been suppressed. This work that Louis Allday and Samar al-Saleh are writing about, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, is about just that, that Zionist organizers worked directly with Nazi leadership to fund, equip, and establish the Israeli state. That’s history that absolutely needs to shape our understanding of Zionism.

Miriam Osman: Faris Glubb is a really, really interesting, he has a fascinating history. He’s a really interesting character. He was actually the son of a British military officer who was a commander in what was called Transjordan at the time. And Faris Glubb was born in Palestine, he was raised in [00:10:00] Jordan, he learned Arabic from a very young age. And he actually, Faris was kind of his, like, given Arabic name; I think his English name was Godfrey or something like that, I’ll have to fact check that. 

But, you know, he from a really young age starts to to see the brutality of Zionist colonization in Palestine. He was a young boy during the Nakba and he witnessed firsthand the impact of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He returns to England and he ends up being kind of an advocate in an anti-imperialist group and is supporting the independence of British colonies. So he really takes a big turn from his father’s kind of legacy. 

And then when he’s in Jordan, he’s teaching at a school in the Palestinian refugee camp. He’s getting more and more connected to the Palestinian revolutionary movement. And then when the Palestinian resistance, you know, has to leave Jordan for Beirut, he goes with them and he basically becomes also involved in [00:11:00] the PLO’s Palestine Research Center. Happily, he also was a fighter. He was a journalist. He basically gave all of his, whatever skill set he had, to the Palestinian struggle. And then it’s through the Palestine Research Center again, where he publishes this book Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany.

Emmaia Gelman: One of the things that’s striking about both Sayegh and Glubb is that they’re making this argument about Zionism being a project of imperial powers in a way that completely resists the two narratives that we’re more likely to hear today. One, that Zionism is a return rather than a conquest, and two, that Zionism is the project of a people rather than a project of imperial forces.

And both are also really helpful in showing that when we say imperial forces, we don’t have to just mean like officials of the state. It also means people within a society who are interested in preserving elite power or hoarding resources, dominating others. In the case of Zionism, we’re talking about a European upper class that shares goals with a racial racist [00:12:00] nationalist movement, Jewish and not Jewish upper class, that’s interested in suppressing or even getting rid of the strong Jewish working class left and that’s interested in expanding European colonialism to Palestine. 

And neither of these writers is working from hindsight. They’re historically much closer to the origins of the Zionist project. They’re writing about what they’ve seen in real time. But now these writings are not widely circulating, and other more ahistorical narratives have largely displaced them. Want to say that Glubb’s position as a product of British imperialism makes his writing about it even more useful: not only is he writing from that time, but he’s writing from inside the belly of the beast. And Sayegh, similarly, is writing from inside the belly of the beast, from the vantage point of the experience of colonization, watching these things be enacted in real time.

And these histories, the idea that Zionism is being advanced because of its interest to imperial powers actually is like, it’s hard to break through the noise to have that conversation right now. Although, of course, it’s important to acknowledge that the tidal wave of resistance and protest [00:13:00] around the genocide in Gaza is making it more legible. But what’s the significance for you of reading these historical pieces now? I also want to come to how much does their analysis still hold? But let’s start with what’s the significance of them?

Miriam Osman: I think you’re right in saying that we don’t see this type of analysis coming out anymore. But I want to push back a little, because I think we don’t see it coming out anymore in the academy and in these kinds of institutional settings because of the massive kind of repression and Zionist propaganda machine that has been functioning and has totally liquidated the ability of scholars to carry out this work in an institution. But where we do see this analysis emerging is in the movement space and through organizations. So it’s not that it’s not happening, but then again, neither was this, right? This was published by the PLO. But I think it teaches us a lot about the kind of necessary [00:14:00] academic work that needs to be taken up.

And, you know, they had a grasp, an analysis of their recent conditions, right? Like, Sayegh was writing about, you know, what, like 40 years earlier, right? It’s not that far removed from where they are. And a lot of the things he talks about are still, you know, unfortunately we see the truth in them, right? One of the things he talks about is like compared to other European settler projects where the Indigenous population is exploited as cheap labor or tolerated to a certain extent, we see in the Zionist project, there’s, the territorial kind of goals of Zionism and the kind of founding mythologies of Zionism make it so that Palestinians cannot remain on their land, right?

So I think there’s a quote, he says that compared to other European colonial projects of the era, Zionism was “essentially incompatible with the continued existence of the native population in the coveted country.” So, [00:15:00] you know, we see how this plays out now, right? Like we’re seeing what’s happening in Gaza. We see how his analysis of the kind of political territorial motivations of Zionism really was quite correct. And, you know, we’ve been talking here about the imperialist analysis that both of these authors have made. And again, I think it’s a product of the kind of struggle that they were in and the kinds of questions that they were thinking about.

But it’s an analysis that I think, still holds water and we have to resuscitate today because what Sayegh starts to talk about, you know, he’s describing the history of Zionism and the kind of interactions with the British empire, right? So we have up until the First World War, there’s, it’s kind of like, a pretty flailing effort, the Zionist project’s not really getting anywhere. There’s not that much support. And then we see, you know, during World War I, the British now have an additional interest in Palestine. They want to secure their interest over the Suez canal. They understand that, you [00:16:00] know, there’s the impending collapse of the Ottoman empire and they find a willing ally in the Zionist movement and the Zionist movement finds a ally in the British empire.

But we need to understand, of course, that the British were not doing this, you know, altruistically. They were also doing this from a place of antisemitism, right? There’s a quote about it that basically saying it’s like for the British, it was like a quote unquote, convenient way of dealing with the problem of British Jews or Jews in Europe, and then for the Zionists, you know, they now have an imperial ally.

But then of course, you know, being a good scholar, Sayegh points out that it’s not just an easy relationship, right? And we see the kind of back and forth between the Zionist movement and the British empire. But then all of this is to say that these dynamics that Sayegh is analyzing, they don’t just go away after 1948.

And actually now what we see after World War II and up till this point [00:17:00] really is the emergence of a new willing ally, a new imperialist force that kind of takes over, which of course is the United States. And I think we can’t really understand Zionism today without understanding the role of the United States in upholding Zionism. So really having this type of analysis that they have of looking at the kind of broader interests and geopolitical interests that are happening is something that we need to have today as well.

Emmaia Gelman: I do want to come back to this question of the United States because I actually think that’s a big part of the discussion of how this historical analysis gets us to the present. But let’s talk first about the collaboration between Zionist organizations and Nazis. To go back further in history, to set the context, Sayegh takes us from the early days of Herzl’s Zionism, when it’s sort of ad-hoc, not a coherent political movement yet, Jewish donors are supporting the acquisition of land in Palestine with the cooperation of the British government. [00:18:00] But it becomes clear that that’s not really an adequate or effective strategy for Zionism. And so very quickly they develop a more centralized, institutionalized infrastructure to undertake colonizing efforts. That includes the emergence of the Jewish National Fund, which still exists, and the Colonization Commission, the Palestine land development company. So there’s very quickly a sort of central apparatus, which is important to understand, I think, because we’re taught that Zionism is just an aspiration and it’s just everybody, a grassroots movement. But moving into the history of Nazi Germany, Glubb explains very concretely about the ways that Zionist officials, meaning officials from these organizations, make deals with Nazis to trade the destruction of Jews in Europe for permission to move capital and people, especially including Zionist leaders, to Palestine.

Sayegh looks at the same history and makes clear that this cooperation is underwritten by a shared racial nationalist ideology. It’s not just a matter of convenience. As he points out, the Zionist concept of a final solution [00:19:00] to the Arab problem in Palestine and the Nazi idea of a final solution to the Jewish problem in Germany consisted essentially of the same basic ingredient – the elimination of the unwanted human element in question. And that elimination is never actually complete. So it’s always underway. To be a Zionist settler is to move toward and strive for territorial expansion. 

But now, if you talk about parallels between Nazis and Zionist organizations in the present, much less actual connections, you get your ass handed to you, right? How has the history and this documentation that’s provided by Glubb and Sayegh and others like them been lost? What do we need to do to recuperate it? Like what’s the work of anti-Zionism here?

Miriam Osman: Yeah, I mean, I think this is exactly why this this review is so important and this text is so important. Because just like you said, you get your ass handed to you, you actually, you know, you can’t talk about these things without being doxxed or canceled. But what this text does really is it gives us, like you said, [00:20:00] concrete historical evidence.

It also helps us actually understand getting back to this idea of understanding the history of Zionism. One of his main arguments, right, is, he talks about the philosophical common ground between Zionism and antisemitism, right? And in that Sayegh quote that you quoted there, he’s showing us the similarities between the two projects.

And what we need to be able to do today is to really agitate against this idea that this is an untouchable subject. Because what this text and Sayegh’s text show us is how Zionism actually unfolded historically and over time and the effects that it had on Palestine and the Palestinian people. So if we can approach Zionism and anti-Zionism from a grounded material understanding, it’s not going to stop us from getting our ass handed to us by certain people, but [00:21:00] especially in the movement and on the left, it’s still difficult to talk about these things. Because the propaganda machine that’s been at work has gone so far into making anything along the lines of the title of Glubb’s text, right, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, it’s like a completely taboo subject. So, you know, being able to talk about this and kind of break that taboo and actually understand this history is really critical. And for Glubb, one of the things that he shows us is there are the similarities philosophically between Zionism and what Zionism, in its own mythology, is purportedly working against right, which is antisemitism and in particular, as it manifested in Nazi Germany. 

You know, both that version of antisemitism, of European antisemitism, and Zionism have actually the same premise, which is that Jewish people are are unassimilable and that they are their own exclusive racial grouping. [00:22:00] This is a Nazi idea, right? And we see it parroted in Zionist works. And actually, we see like Herzl actively and happily collaborating with antisemites and saying that it’s antisemites who are going to be able to help us. And what that’s doing at the same time and what has happened now, which is also, I think, one of the really important arguments in Glubb’s book, is that we’ve lost the history of Jewish resistance to antisemitism and to Nazism. We’ve lost that history completely. It’s completely written out and Glubb talks about this in his work. 

What it shows us is that Zionism was never the only solution. There was plenty of other types of resistance that were forged and being carried out by Jews in Europe that their histories have been completely erased. And actually, Glubb points to Zionists actively suppressing and undermining this Jewish [00:23:00] resistance. And in part, you know, this is also a strain of anti-communism, right? It was a way to destroy the communist, anti-Zionist Jewish left in Europe at the time.

Emmaia Gelman: Let’s focus a little more on anti-Zionism and also get back to what you alluded to before, that after the British role in establishing the Zionist state was done, and the British empire on the whole was on the wane, the US is the imperial power that stepped in to facilitate Zionist expansion. What is the US investment in Zionism? And how does anti-Zionism contest US imperialism?

Miriam Osman: So The US interest in Zionism and in the maintenance of the state of Israel can’t be overstated because Israel is the forward operating base for American imperialism. And it is what allows the US to maintain its domination over that entire region. So we have, you know, on the one side we have US interests and [00:24:00] there’s the resources there’s militarily, it’s very strategic. And then on the other, you know, we have the Zionist interests, which are protecting this, you know, ethno-fascist settler colony. And these two interests converge really neatly. 

I think at this point, most people have heard this quote at some point or another of Joe Biden in 1986 calling Israel the best 3 billion investment we made. And there’s, you know, there’s a reason for that. And it evolved historically too. And it’s related to our earlier point that we were talking about, about anti-communism. 

So, you know, today we know the US has, like, over a thousand military bases all over the world, can basically invade any given location on the planet in a matter of hours. And this is in order to have, you know, control over resources and markets and ultimately the immense profit that we see American capitalists reaping from the imperialist world system. And of course, you know, like I just said, the Middle [00:25:00] East is such a strategic location for the US not just, you know, the oil and the resources. 

But what we see as the relationship between the U S and Israel develops is that it develops at a time when the US is in a moment of confrontation with communism. You know, so it’s really starting in the sixties is when Israel starts playing the role that we see it having today as the US is attack-dog basically in the region. So if there’s countries that aren’t falling in line with US policy, then we see Israel stepping in there and there’s a lot of examples of this. 

So if we look at the 1967 war, for example, when the Zionist entity attacks Egypt and Syria, we can understand that from the US perspective. You know, at this moment, the US forces are tied up in Vietnam. We can understand that as a US interest in defeating the socialist governments that were in Egypt and Syria at the time. 

In 81, there’s another example [00:26:00] of this where Israel bombs an Iraqi nuclear power plant with US approval during the Iran and Iraq war. So basically Israel is doing the bidding of the US historically. It’s through this anti-communist agenda, this imperialist agenda, which is why this relationship is so important to the US and why we see them not budging at all, even as Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. 

And this relationship extends beyond the region as well, right? There’s examples now that are, have come to light more recently about, for example, Israel training torturers for the right-wing Pinochet government in Chile. So again and again, we see Israel kind of carrying out the dirty work of the US empire and, and furthering those interests in so far as they align with their own of maintaining their settler colony and further continuing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. And, for the US they’re going to turn a blind eye so long [00:27:00] as their interests are being maintained. So it’s actually really interesting now what we’re seeing with some of the tensions that are coming up in the US-Israel relationship, where the US is concerned that, you know, Netanyahu’s government is pushing things a little too far. They’re concerned about, you know, an outbreak of a regional war and what this escalation would mean.

So again, just, you know, in the same way that Sayegh was analyzing the tensions between the Zionist movement and the British, between the two wars and in the, in the lead up to World War II, we can also see that, you know, while there’s, it’s complete alignment and we’re not, I don’t think we’re going to see changes in us policy towards Israel, but we need to understand as well that there’s different forces at play and interests at play. And the reason that that’s important is because then we can see exactly when those contradictions come up, where we can put the most pressure in the movement and where things might have a potential to fall apart.

Emmaia Gelman: I definitely see that analysis becoming more widely [00:28:00] understood and starting to take hold as a kind of common sense approach to Zionism, even if not as widely yet as it’s needed, there is a broad internationalism connections are being made between struggles in Palestine and Haiti, Sudan, Yemen. What does this analysis of Zionism mean for anti-Zionism?

Miriam Osman: I think it means that anti-Zionism needs to be rooted in and understood through anti-imperialism. You know, we have to have the anti imperialist perspective to actually understand anti-Zionism and what it will take to defeat Zionism. Because it’s not going to happen on just one level alone. You know, I think there’s plenty of attempts to think about this on like a ideological or cultural terrain, right?

We have to really take anti-imperialism seriously, if we’re going to call ourselves anti-Zionists. And this is actually, I think, what’s happening in the movement right now. And this is the shift that we’re seeing in people’s consciousness [00:29:00] because they’re starting to actually understand what it looks like to say the US has an interest in maintaining the state of Israel. So when people see and understand that, they can see and understand why it is that there can be no anti-Zionism without anti-imperialism. And we have to see anti-Zionism as a core part of our orientation to the world, in the way that we see anti-imperialism in the way that we see anti-capitalism in the way that we see anti-racism.

It’s not an aside. It’s not, oh, well, there’s a conflict happening over there in the Middle East and there’s something called Zionism that we should be standing against. No, anti-Zionism is fundamental to how we need to orient ourselves politically, exactly because it means that we have to be anti-imperialists. And the defeat of Zionism is, you know, one of the major battles against US imperialism. That’s why the [00:30:00] emphasis right now on Palestine is taken up all around the world, right? No matter where we see popular support for Palestine and we see this understanding of anti-Zionism and of the critical importance of this battle, not just for the Palestinian people, but for all people.

Emmaia Gelman: To close us out, I’d like to talk for a minute about the significance of PYM, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and of Palestinian youth leadership on anti-Zionism. To situate this question: at the moment, there’s an incredible revival of the Jewish left and also a recuperation of Jewish histories in Arab homelands far outside of European Zionism. And it’s maybe comforting for people in North America or in Europe who are newly questioning Zionism, maybe we can say white people especially, to be able to point to this surge in Jewish opposition to Israel and Jewish narrations of alternative futures and pasts where Zionism isn’t centered.

But to build an anti-colonial, anti-racist movement, there’s a deep need and a movement-wide intention to focus on Palestinian youth [00:31:00] leadership and analysis. I think it’s fair to say that this is a shift that people have been looking to Jewish anti-Zionism to give permission to challenge Israel for a long time. And now there’s a recognition that centering Jewish anti-Zionism is problematic for the same reasons that Zionism’s centering of Jewishness as a rationale for settler colonialism is also problematic.

PYM has been doing absolutely leading work that makes deep interventions in anti-Zionist movement and recentering Palestinian thinkers and leadership, including republishing Palestinian writing and film, lifting up the work of Sayegh and Glubb and others. So that’s the context for asking, what’s the significance of PYM right now, as there’s this really transnational effort to think about anti-Zionist futures that are deeply anti-imperialist and transformational?

Miriam Osman: The significance of the PYM is, and what it really is offering Arab and Palestinian youth and why it’s changing, I think, the face of the movement is that we understand this struggle, [00:32:00] and we want people to understand this struggle, not as a solidarity struggle and not as, you know, we’re here far away in the diaspora, but no, we want to understand it as our own struggle actually.

We want to politicize and mobilize Palestinian and Arab youth to take up this struggle as their own. So coming from that perspective, right, this is really, I think, where and why we’ve been able to build so much power, because we see ourselves and we see our communities as being unified through our action in service of our people and of our struggle. And this is really a different orientation, I think, to the struggle than what the Palestine movement after Oslo has been able to offer. So it’s not just about, you know, having Palestinian leadership, it’s about that orientation and about really understanding what solidarity means at its core. It’s not that, you know, you support something or you’re supportive of something, but taking up a struggle as your own. And this is really, I think we can [00:33:00] have the most power.

Emmaia Gelman: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Miriam, for this conversation and for the work of PYM, which as we’ve said, stretches across activism, organizing, cultural production, research, historical scholarship, the development of theory, just really an incredible range of work. 

In a forthcoming episode, by the way, we have another conversation on Zionism and anti-Zionism with scholar Ronit Lentin, in which we talk about Zionism as a race-making and racist ideology and anti-Zionism as a confrontation with racism. Thinking through the ways that these two episodes connect, one that focuses on how central Zionism is to imperialism and another about how much Zionism is a project of producing and narrating race, for me, has been really clarifying. And we hope listeners will find that useful as well. You can go to our show notes to read Fayez Sayegh’s 1965 book, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, and also the really lush, readable, detailed review by Louis Allday and Samar al-Saleh of Faris Glubb’s [00:34:00] 1978 book, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany.

The show notes are on our website, criticalzionismstudies.org. Until next time. Solidarity from the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.