An OU Palestine Solidarity Group webinar co-sponsored by Jewish Network for Palestine (JNP)
‘The cycle of violence continues’, we are repeatedly told. This familiar cliché has sanitised Israel’s war against the Palestinians. How did it begin?
Inspired by European settler-colonial projects, the Zionist movement has sought to establish an exclusively Jewish ethno-supremacist state in all of historic Palestine. Its frontier violence had major turning points, especially Israel’s establishment in 1948 and then its post-1967 permanent Occupation. Israel has strengthened its colonial rule over the West Bank through ever-expanding settlements. Since 1993 the Palestine National Authority has protected them by suppressing any anti-colonial resistance and undermining Palestinian civil society. Israel withdrew Jewish settlements from Gaza in 2005, and then imposed a siege in 2007. Since then, Israel has treated Gaza as a free-fire zone. It has inflicted sporadic invasions and aerial massacres, especially in 2008 and 2014.
As the latest stage, Israel’s frontier violence was intensified by the new government elected in 2022. Since October 2023 it has inflicted genocide on Gaza, eventually seeking to depopulate the northern part. It has expelled Palestinians from neighbourhoods in the West Bank. For its expanding frontier violence, official pretexts have featured ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘security concerns’. Israeli military violence has depended on global complicity by various ‘security’ regimes and companies; these encompass ideological and material support, especially through the arms trade.
Questions for this webinar: Why has Israel intensified its frontier violence since 2022?
How has Israel imagined, constructed and justified its ever-expanding frontiers? How has it sought to sanitise genocide? How has it invoked ‘security’?
At the same time, what new opportunities have arisen for Palestinian resistance and the global solidarity movement? Especially in targeting complicit companies and investments in them?
Chair: Dr Les Levidow, OU
Speakers: Dr Wassim Ghantous, Tampere University, Finland
Dr Ivana Bevilacqua, Kings College London (KCL)
Professor Haim Bresheeth, SOAS, University of London
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/351ddef2-084e-4bee-af5b-e8fd20a76b0c@0e2ed455-96af-4100-bed3-a8e5fd981685
