Recording of the webinar is available on our YouTube channel.
Panelists:
Rabab Abdulhadi (SF State)
Dylan Rodríguez (UC Riverside)
Christine Hong (UC Santa Cruz)
Moderated by Emmaia Gelman (ICSZ)
This panel looks at Zionist threats, hate mail, and public smears as essential material for understanding Zionism: how it embodies race/gender/violence logics, deploys split public and private narratives, uses astroturfing, and wields carceral force — deportation, imprisonment — against its challengers.
Zionist smears constantly target those who speak out against US/Israeli violence. They often use vile personal attacks and threats including unfettered racist, anti-immigrant, misogynistic, and anti-queer invocations of violence. This practice is universally known among antiracist activists and on campuses, but often hidden from public discourse — even when smears become excuses to deport and criminalize people.
This conversation among scholars of race and empire calls for studying Zionist smears as windows into Zionism — and as an apparently informal, deniable form of power shoring up fascist regimes.