What’s Critical Zionism Studies?

Transcript

What’s Critical Zionism Studies?

Yulia Gilich: [00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking Zionism. My name is Yulia Gilich, and joining me is my co host, Emmaia Gelman. 

Emmaia Gelman: Hi, Yulia. For this first episode, we have three guests and we’re excited to launch the podcast in conversation with Rabab Abdulhadi, Lara Kiswani, and Dylan Rodriguez. Welcome to all three of you. It is so good to have you here.

Rabab Abdulhadi: Great to be here.

Dylan Rodriguez: Thank you for inviting me. 

Lara Kiswani: Thank you for having us. 

Yulia Gilich: This is the first episode of our podcast that we collectively produce at the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. And with this introduction to the podcast and the Institute itself, we want to discuss what the Critical Study of Zionism offers us. But before we can answer that question, we need to lay some groundwork. We’re going to start by asking you, Rabab, What is Critical Zionism Studies?

Rabab Abdulhadi: [00:01:00] It is a field of study that accomplishes several things at the same time. One, it rejects conventional definitions of Zionism within North American and Western academic and political circles that normalize Zionism as Jewish liberation movement.

And instead, by when we critically study Zionism, we see it as a movement that shares and intersects many attributes of other supremacist movements, such as white supremacy and Hindutva, for example. And I think it’s really important to understand that we’re not only talking about some ideas that are floating in people’s minds, but about real materialist ideology that consciously sought and developed alliances with capitalist and colonial European and U. S. based powers based on mutual interests. We can learn about other movements and strategies that are not only about liberation in general, but also that seek to eliminate [00:02:00] racism and the deadly phenomenon of antisemitism.

It seems to me that critical study of Zionism opens up the space to learn about the rich archive and the practice of Palestinian anti colonial liberation movement that has long studied Zionism and has proposed strategies for a future of justice and peace for all people, as today’s movement shows us. 

Emmaia Gelman: As you say, ICSZ was formed precisely to support this kind of inquiry, research on Zionism from outside the boundaries of Jewish and Israel studies. And you wrote about that in an article last August with another ICSZ collective member, Heike Schotten, in Mondoweiss. And, Rabab, in that piece, you pointed to the need to look at Zionism, quote, as a political, ideological, racial, and gendered knowledge project whose consequences include but aren’t limited to the colonization of Palestine.

So, what other areas of study are you particularly interested in using to understand [00:03:00] Zionism?

Rabab Abdulhadi: Definitely, we need to think about white supremacy, study of white supremacy. I think we really need to study the evangelical, Christianity and fundamentalism, and Christian Zionism in particular.

But I do think, in general, we really need to think about all the various ways in which there are ideologies, movements, and materialist representations of them that are not just in people’s heads. So we’re talking about everything from sexism to homophobia to capitalism to exploitation. I mean, Everything, all of these issues, I think, come together because they do connect and intersect with Zionism and they, and they do in materialist ways, historically and contemporarily.

Emmaia Gelman: Right. It knits together a wide set of people looking in lots of ways at how power works. That’s what the critical lens means, even though it’s already been willfully misinterpreted as meaning… just being mean to Zionists, which it is not. 

What’s been really incredible about launching the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism with all of you and having these [00:04:00] conversations about what critical Zionism studies is and what kind of insights it can give us is that actually. So many people are already doing it. Naming the research and discussion that’s been underway for a long time. 

So Lara, let’s start with you. What is the work that you’re doing that you would consider already to be critical Zionism studies? 

Lara Kiswani: Well, as we say in organizing spaces, the folks closest to the issue are closest to the solution. And in this case, I would say, In the realm of movement building, organizing, and activism as it relates to Palestine.

Palestinians and Arabs and people from our community have historically become experts on Zionism by necessity. We’ve had to understand how it works in order to work to undo it. And that has also extended far beyond just Palestinians and the Palestinian movement. As we know, with any exclusionary xenophobic or racist ideology, they are [00:05:00] used by and mobilized by states and by political movements all over the world in order to facilitate domination and exploitation of land and of people. And they’re also used to pit people against one another who have common interests. And we’ve seen that time and time again in progressive movements in the way in which Zionism has attempted or Zionist institutions have attempted to co-opt progressive movements.

And all of this is really to benefit the elite, right? And so Zionist ideology historically has been used. It’s used to justify the colonial project in Palestine. But that colonial project doesn’t just create great harm and violence against Palestinians. It contributes to instability in our entire Swana, Southwest Asia, North Africa region.

But also as Rabab noted, Zionists have allied themselves historically with other right wing and authoritarian movements across the world. So for us to be able to do the necessary work of cross movement building, the [00:06:00] necessary work as across the global South, the third world, um, liberation struggles to be able to build together.

We have to better position ourselves to understand the workings of our adversaries. And in this context in particular, how Zionism as an ideology is used and how it’s mobilized. And so all those at the receiving end of Zionism have become experts on that topic by necessity, right? And so I think we’ve been doing that work.

We’ve had to learn the hard way how Zionist institutions function in this country in the belly of the beast. What is the relationship between the state of Israel, Zionist ideology, and other fascist ideologies and racist ideologies, including right wing authoritarianism, especially during the Trump era, for instance?

We have to study and understand this because we were living it, right? And we have to make those connections. But historically, whether we’re talking about apartheid, South African apartheid, Israel, whether you’re talking about the role of Israel in Central America, whether you’re talking about the [00:07:00] ongoing relationship between Israel and the military industrial complex, this is all done in, in part by the mobilization of Zionist ideology. So that study is happening because we can’t shift the conditions of our people and the realities of our people without understanding how our adversaries function, what are the systems we’re trying to undo, and in particular as it relates to global militarism, as it relates to, you know, right wing authoritarianism, Zionism is at the heart of that. You have to understand Zionism if you consider yourself an anti-racist today. If you consider yourself somebody who’s fighting against any system of oppression and by virtue of doing that work, you’re either going to learn about Zionism the hard way, because the same people that are fighting for basic things like health care for all are also being targeted by Zionist institutions, right?

So whether you intend to understand the workings of apartheid and settler colonialism in the state of Israel and Zionism or not, if you are doing the good work, the necessary work to build a different world, you’re going to have to understand it, which is [00:08:00] why this Institute and why this work is so critical in this moment.

Yulia Gilich: Lara, I really appreciate that you articulate the struggle and movement building and organizing as sites of knowledge production, as intellectual work. And I wonder if you could speak to the relationship between professionalized intellectual spaces like academia to the movement for Palestinian liberation.

Lara Kiswani: I think all of us here would agree that movements are producers of knowledge, right? And At the same time, when social movements on the left assert something like Zionism is racism, it carries less weight. Then when you have scholars who say that. So there has to be a relationship there where we are also seeing ourselves in a partnership with scholars with movement scholars who are in service of what’s happening in movements across the world, but also offering us tools, [00:09:00] resources, references that can actually embolden the calls to end aid to Israel.

And, you know, in many cases, the way in which our movement, the Palestinian Left, articulates Zionism and understands the Palestinian freedom struggle as the freedom of all people. That didn’t come from the halls of classrooms and universities, right? That came from Leftists on the ground doing the hard work to engage in those struggles and produce that type of solidarity and sensibility about third worldism.

And similarly today, when we talk about ending aid to Israel, we understand ourselves as emboldening calls to defund police. We understand ending aid to Israel’s emboldening calls to abolish prisons, right, to defeat fascism. We understand the Palestinian struggle as an anti fascist struggle. And so the ways academics are able to formulate some of these theories and concepts, it’s because of the way in which the movement engages in struggle with one another across actually the entire [00:10:00] world.

I do think that there is a critical role for scholars in this moment to produce knowledge that can be used by movements because there is a scarcity out there. Not many people wanted to touch this issue and actually produce knowledge that spoke to what Zionism is, the harms of Zionism, the intersectionality of Zionism with other right wing ideologies.

And without having, you know, information, articles, books, not that there isn’t any, we obviously don’t want to discredit all that’s been done, but this ongoing Zionist hegemony that we’re seeing flourishing across the world and now finally unraveling a bit here in the United States necessitates scholarly work that people can also use in partnership with movements.

Dylan Rodriguez: I want to say that something Lara said really stood out, which is the notion that what collective study does is it helps us understand the workings of our adversaries. I really appreciate that point and I think it’s important to take that to heart [00:11:00] because, you know, one of the things that we need to understand is that Zionism over time has turned into a global form of counterinsurgency, in addition to being an ongoing project of colonization, occupation, and now elimination.

So it’s both of those, it’s both sets of those things. It’s not just a colonial genocidal apartheid project, it is also a global counterinsurgency against those who resist the forces and the power and the violence of coloniality. So, When we think about critical study, not only does it have to continue happening for the sake of understanding the workings of our adversaries, but we also need to understand how it is that those sites of study, which include universities, K 12 schools, are, you know, study of corporate media.

Actually, I want to say we have to study independent left and progressive media too and see those limitations. And of course, Lara, I think kind of referenced this, the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a primary site of this counterinsurgency against critics of Zionism in the state of Israel.

And then the other thing I’ll add to this [00:12:00] is, what the, what critical study helps us also understand, it helps expose what I would call liberal pacifism. Which is, you know, the kind of selective objection to violence, and that selective objection usually has to do with the violence of people who are resisting forms of occupation and kind of hegemonic colonial violence.

What liberal pacifism fails to identify is the endemic violence of Zionism. And what I mean by that is that Zionism is itself violent. Prior to its militarization, Zionism itself is violent. In the realm of ideas, in the realm of ideology. 

Rabab Abdulhadi: I think by going through the critical study of Zionism and any critical studies, actually, it lifts the prohibition on academics who always feel that they have to only act academically.

Otherwise they would not be seen as academics and they could only be seen as quote unquote activists, which is in this context, not actually a positive thing. 

Yulia Gilich: I think this is a great segue into the [00:13:00] question I want to pose to Dylan. And we started addressing that question already by naming the military industrial complex, and academia, and the Democratic Party.

Dylan, can you elaborate on how critical Zionism studies actually affect power? And where can this critical intellectual project be effectively applied to affect change? 

Dylan Rodriguez: So let me start this way. On the one hand, The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which I’m very proud to be part of, I’m very proud to be a founding member – on the one hand, ICSZ is, is a modest contribution to a larger totality of struggle. It is primarily a convening of scholars, to some extent, artists, you know, people whose vocation is research, writing, art, and teaching, okay. So it’s a modest contribution. However, on the other hand, these dominant institutions of schooling and knowledge production, for that matter, artistic production, specifically universities are a primary cultural front of empire and colonialism.[00:14:00] 

Let me repeat that, right? The universities are a primary cultural front of empire and colonialism. The other side knows that. That’s why they’ve mobilized such energy and such repression and such a militarization, a carceral militarization policing of university campuses. They take those sites seriously as a cultural front.

Right? They are trying to smash and destroy and preempt and intimidate any form of resistance or challenge to Zionist, not even hegemony, Zionist dominance. Right? Like the presumptive, normalized violence of Zionist dominance. So, this cultural front that we’re talking about, Is especially obvious when we’re talking about Israel and Zionism as a political ideology and as a fantasy that’s institutionalized by universities as if Zionism is synonymous with Judaism and Jewish people.

It’s because these institutions, and to some extent K 12 institutions at this point, right, especially high schools. Because these [00:15:00] institutions form such an important strategic location in the cultural front, any opposition to colonialism, to Zionism, in this moment, genocide, Anahua, anyone who opposes those things are treated as insurgents.

That’s how counterinsurgency works, right? So we’re basically the cultural analog of enemy combatants. And I don’t use that phrase lightly. So among the most important things that the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism is doing is fighting back against the specific form of political repression.

And I’m talking about the repression of fascism. Thought of ideas of analysis and just convening by way of accusation of antisemitism, right? This is one of the things that I hope brings people to this conversation and I hope will provoke them to engage further with some of this critical analysis. Now the definition of antisemitism that seems to have been adopted by almost every North American and global North university administration essentially matches the one created by an organization called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, [00:16:00] the IHRA.

This is the IHRA’s definition, quote, “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non Jewish individuals and or their property toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,” end quote. That could mean just about anything. That definition can capture almost anything it wants to capture. 

What I want to say is that the very postulation of that definition is already a colonial repression in and of itself. It’s a McCarthyite style repression, but it’s also a PSYOP. This is a psychological operation in the sense that, that this definition attempts to intimidate and demoralize people into self policing and refraining from open criticisms of the Israeli state and its ongoing occupation and genocidal violence against Palestinians.

This definition of antisemitism, among other things, effectively turns all people who are critics of Israel And especially those who are Palestinian, those who express solidarity [00:17:00] with Palestinians or people like all of us who defend the Palestinian liberation struggle. We are all combatants under this cultural front.

Emmaia Gelman: Yes, that is just it. Critical Zionism studies is an intervention, not just in what we know about Zionism, but also in the institutions that shape what we can imagine as possible alternatives. That’s why the Jerusalem Post expressed such horror at the idea that, if the Institute were allowed to flourish, that every university would end up with a department of critical Zionism studies. To which we say, sure, yes. 

But here’s a different question. There’s a genocide underway. which was not underway when we started this project together. It started a few days before our first conference, which was on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. And we did the conference anyway, as you say, trying to unpack these modes of power that are powering genocide.

And in the months that have followed, 28,000 people have been killed. [00:18:00] Today it’s 67 people are injured. Housing is essentially destroyed in all of Gaza, right? The infrastructure, the damage is unfathomable, really unfathomable. And it’s hard to always keep a handle on why we would still do this. Like, why do we need to do critical Zionism studies in a moment of acute existential crisis?

To some extent, it’s about a lack of options, as elected officials just refuse to respond to mass movement for ceasefire, But talking about research on Zionism, has sometimes felt just grotesquely removed from the material reality of the genocide that’s taking place, like at this very minute. Like, what are we doing here? 

Lara Kiswani: I would just say that in this moment, understanding how different racist ideologies are mobilized and connected is an essential part of developing strategies that are going to lead us towards our freedom. So, if In particular, as it relates to the struggle for [00:19:00] Palestinian freedom, stopping this genocide and the ongoing work to end settler colonialism, it is that much more important that we understand how Zionism is playing out, how it’s functioning, how it’s relating to other movements.

It’ll help, you know, it’ll help us as organizers, as community, as activists. As people at the receiving end of it do our work better, right? So it’s like, you know, just as we know that Zionism helps facilitate some of the most violent systems of oppression as has been articulated, and we know that we have to fight it strategically and efficiently, and the way in which antisemitism is being weaponized fundamentally through.

Misunderstandings of Zionism, right? People don’t understand what Zionism is and isn’t. And the way in which antisemitism is being weaponized could have disastrous impacts on all of our work in the coming days if we don’t do the [00:20:00] necessary political education for and interrogation and develop the analysis and knowledge, right, that will allow us to build out a different consciousness about anti-Zionism as a necessary framework for all movements and all social justice movements.

Like we’re at a point now where we can confidently say that Palestine is a key issue for everybody. on the social movement left, right? That’s clear. But is anti-Zionism clear? We’re not there yet, right? And imagine what would be made possible if that work was strengthened. And we’re, that’s just going to have to be incremental.

It’s a protracted struggle. We know that. But that makes this kind of work, this kind of production of knowledge, that much more critical for what’s ahead for us. The struggle will not end with ceasefire, and we know that, but even the ceasefire demand is compromised by the way in which Zionism is being weaponized against our movements.

Rabab Abdulhadi: Yeah, I think in any crisis, and especially with the [00:21:00] genocide that we’re witnessing, people who are not actually in the battle itself always feel helpless. Yes. What are we going to do? No matter what you do, you donate, you support, you go in protest, whatever you do, you always feel that you’re not doing enough.

But I think there are multiple things to consider. One is that there’s always power in movement in terms of organizing and activism. This is one thing that’s really, really important for people to not feel disempowered, to actually be part of collective processes that are resisting and challenging the status quo and saying, whether you’re talking about the government, whether you’re talking about, you know, the people who think that politics happens every four years and whatever, it’s really important to kind of like say no, to contest. It’s important to not accept the status quo because we are in a long protracted struggle. Because yes, today, Palestine signifies the struggle for justice, but the struggle for [00:22:00] justice in and for Palestine is connected to the struggle or the indivisibility of justice for all. It is connected.

So this is a major battle and a major, like, crisis today. And I would say crisis also for the, for the oppressors, not, not just for the people who are fighting that this will also advance other struggles. Also the role of the intellectuals, historically, the intellectuals have played a very important role in movements.

Organic intellectuals have always been, you know, involved in it. And this is why they’re assassinated. From Ghassan Kanafani to Fred Hampton, that’s why they get assassinated, because they do the thinking. They’re not actually carrying guns and weapons and so on, but their thoughts and their minds and their role in the movement, pushing it forward.

So I think also in the movement, we always need to think, we need to analyze, and we do. The last thing I would say is, expressions of solidarity are so [00:23:00] important for the movement that’s resisting, that is struggling. People want to see that the world is with them. This reaches the people who are fighting and it actually makes them more steadfast and say we’re not alone, the world is with us.

And it’s not just a sentimental issue, it has a materialist value that enables people to understand. So we’re in it for the long run. If we are here. In our academic places, in our intellectual places, in our jobs, on the streets, this is what we should do. So it’s a responsibility that I don’t think we should take lightly.

I think it’s really important. And the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, the ways in which we are producing knowledge to talk about genocide against everybody. that never again for anyone, the indigenous people, during slavery, the Palestinians. I think we have a very important role to play.

And I think the fact that we’re taking it seriously and producing knowledge towards justice is one of the [00:24:00] most important tasks.

Dylan Rodriguez: So when you, when you all ask the question, you know, why do critical study of Zionism in this particular moment? My immediate response is, This is a great moment to stop being an academic. This is a great time to become a scholar and teacher who is directly engaged in some form of collective struggle on the side of Palestinian liberation. In many ways, that is an anti academic position that one can take from, from the inhabitation of a university employment. So the tools of analysis, the realm of political imagination and possibility.

All these things are primary dimensions of what Rabab a second ago just called the protracted Palestinian liberation struggle, right? The Institute for Critical Study of Zionism, this work, and all the other forms of work that are related to it. That’s, you know, collective study and collective struggle.

It helps expose Zionism as sensitive and thin skinned. Which in a sense, it always has been, right? And it compensates for that all the time. Zionism is vulnerable to disruption because it is [00:25:00] constantly revealing its own sensitivities and groups of scholars and analysts and practitioners and teachers and artists.

I think that it is our obligation to utilize our skillset, our toolset, our abilities to sustain that analytical exposure. I think that will be a vital, a humble contribution, but nonetheless a vital contribution to, to that protracted liberation struggle. That’s why we got to do this. 

Emmaia Gelman: Thank you so very much. It’s not just for the research. It’s also for the community. We have been run so ragged by the institutions and donors and pundits who try to shut down these conversations. In fact, I’m really looking forward to the episodes on keywords that explain how some of that shutting down is worked.

In countering those efforts, one thing that’s so clear to me every time we get folks together for conversations like this under the banner of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism is that they’re so generative and there’s so much repair. And the questions about what we can [00:26:00] actually accomplish together are always so richly answered. So I really appreciate all of you thinking together on this and being part of the ICSZ community.

Yulia Gilich: I wanted to add Dylan, you encouraging people to stop being an academic, I think is really prudent in this moment, when a lot of our comrades are forced to stop being employed in academia, they’re being disinvited, fired, targeted. And it feels really special to have this space, this institute, this community, where we don’t need to hide the political stakes of our work to maintain employment, where the inquiry into Zionism, into how power operates, is exactly what we do collectively, where we build from the ground up a space where one does not fear institutional backlash and repression for this kind of work.

In many ways, this is an alternative intellectual space to what we [00:27:00] conventionally call academia. So yeah, stop being an academic rings true to me in more ways than one. 

Dylan Rodriguez: What I’ll also say about the ICSZ, that is important, that also hasn’t come up yet. The ICSZ is an autonomous group, right? The ICSZ is not connected to a university.

This is a self mobilized affinity of people who are gathering independent of any kind of university apparatus. Like, we’re doing this on our own time, out of our own energy. I think that is the form of activity that is necessary and vital, you know, and nourishing that kind of autonomy is critical. And I think it gets back to that, that first question that Rabab was answering about study.

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I think autonomous study is the critical thing. 

Yulia Gilich: We want to thank you all for joining us today and participating in this really critical conversation Lara, Rabab, Dylan, we really hope to continue these conversations together.

And for our listeners, starting next week, we will begin releasing our series on keywords in Critical [00:28:00] Zionism Studies. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to know more about the podcast and the Institute, and to find the transcript of this conversation, check out the episode notes and our website, criticalzionismstudies.org