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11. COVID-19 in the MENA: Two Years On

Author:
Marc Lynch, Vahid Abedini, Yasmina Abouzzohour, Meliha Benli Altunisik, and Mona Ali
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Early in the pandemic, POMEPS convened an online workshop with a diverse group of scholars working across the MENA region to discuss the initial impacts and to think through possible trajectories. That workshop resulted in POMEPS Studies 39, which included twenty-one essays ranging across the MENA region. Several major themes ran across those essays. We collectively expected regimes to securitize the pandemic, using the excuse of lockdowns to crack down on a protest wave that had reached multiple countries in 2019 and to further entrench authoritarian rule. We expected variation in state capacity to be a critical variable in terms of the ability of states to effectively respond to the pandemic. And several essays anticipated soft power international competition, as great powers used vaccine diplomacy to sway public attitudes their way. Two years on, how did those predictions hold up? In April 2022, POMEPS convened a follow-up workshop with some of the same scholars and a number of new contributors to assess how well those early projections panned out, and to assess the actual impacts of COVID on the region after two years. We are delighted to now publish the results of that workshop and ongoing conversations among a diverse group of scholars of the region.
Topic:
Civil Society, Health, Politics, Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, Economy, Solidarity, Soft Power, Violence, Public Health, Students, COVID-19, Securitization, Gender, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates

12. Iranian Jews in Israel, Protests, and the Palestinians

Author:
Lior Sternfeld
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Roughly 250,000 Israelis are of Iranian descent, and many feel a strong connection to their Iranian identity. Iranian Jews in Israel organized rallies in solidarity with Iranian women following the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s morality police. Israeli support for the Iranian protest movement stands in tension with the Israeli government’s approach to the Palestinians.
Topic:
Social Movement, Solidarity, Protests, and Jewish community
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

13. The Anthropological Rise of Palestine

Author:
Sa'ed Atshan
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article traces the rise of anthropological scholarship on Palestine and/ or Palestinians from 2011 through the present, providing readers with a comprehensive bibliography of anthropological publications related to Palestine over that period. Drawing upon the author’s experience as a scholar of Palestine and a publicly engaged anthropologist, it accounts for the factors fueling the proliferation of this domain of knowledge production and the implications this has for representations of individual and collective Palestinian human conditions. The article argues that contemporary anthropological research and writing provide Palestinians with intellectual tools for discursive enfranchisement. Such anthropological engagement also makes possible global solidarity wherein Palestinians are recognized as epistemic equals, rendering legible the heterogeneity and complexities of Palestinian lived experiences.
Topic:
Research, Solidarity, Anthropology, Ethnography, Academia, Epistemology, and Palestinians
Political Geography:
Middle East and Palestine

14. Palestine—and Empire—Are Central to Arab American/SWANA Studies

Author:
Louise Cainkar
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Taking the small number of ethnographic studies of Palestinian communities in North America as its problematic, this article situates that predicament in the larger context of decades of academic silencing of Arab American and SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) studies, efforts that represent but one component of a larger political project to quash pro-Palestinian activism. Abetted by the absence of a racial category, scholars continue to face substantial hurdles at the institutional level, inhibiting the robust growth of the field and boding poorly for an expansion in community studies. Yet recent scholarship on Palestinians in North America— exemplified by the articles included in this special issue that center the complexities of identities; activism; and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) solidarities—evidences real changes on the ground for Palestinian activism. Those changes, and continued advocacy for institutional change, are necessary to invigorate community studies, a critically important method of scholar-activist praxis because of their power to enhance a community’s access to resources, well-being, organizing capacities, and local-level power and solidarity building.
Topic:
Political Activism, Solidarity, Academia, Identity, Palestine, and BIPOC
Political Geography:
South Asia, Palestine, North Africa, North America, and West Asia

15. Disrupting Settler-Colonial Capitalism: Indigenous Intifadas and Resurgent Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine

Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the resurgence of Indigenous/Palestine solidarity during the Wet’suwet’en land sovereignty struggle in Canada that took place around the same time Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace plan” was released in early 2020. Historicizing this resurgence within a longer period of anti-colonial resistance, the article attends to the distinct historical, political- economic, and juridical formations that undergird settler colonialism in Canada and Israel/Palestine. It contends with the theoretical limits of the settler-colonial framework, pushing back against narratives of settler success, and shows how anti-colonial resistance accelerated economic crises that led both settler states to enter into “negotiations” with the colonized (reconciliation in one case, and peace talks in the other) as a strategy to maintain capitalist settler control over stolen lands. The analysis also sheds light on a praxis of solidarity that has implications for movement building and joint struggle.
Topic:
Political Activism, Solidarity, Conflict, Peace, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous, Reconciliation, and Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Political Geography:
Canada, Israel, and Palestine

16. Delegitimizing Solidarity: Israel Smears Palestine Advocacy as Anti-Semitic

Author:
Ben White
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In response to growing Palestine solidarity activism globally—and particularly in countries that have been traditional allies of Israel—the Israeli government has launched a well-resourced campaign to undermine such efforts. A key element of this campaign consists in equating Palestine advocacy; the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement; and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. The concerted effort to delegitimize solidarity with the Palestinians is taking place even as genuine anti-Semitism is on the rise, thanks to the resurgent white nationalism of the Far Right in Europe and North America—political forces that Israel is harnessing to help shield from scrutiny and accountability its apartheid policies toward Palestinians, both citizens of the state as well as those under military rule. In its efforts to conflate anti-Zionism with anti- Semitism, the Israeli government is assisted by non-state organizations that nonetheless enjoy close ties with the state and its agencies.
Topic:
Sanctions, Solidarity, BDS, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

17. Responding to Precarity: Beddawi Camp in the Era of Covid-19

Author:
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
How are refugees responding to protect themselves and others in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic? How do these responses relate to diverse local, national, and international structures of inequality and marginalization? Drawing on the case of Beddawi camp in North Lebanon, I argue that local responses—such as sharing information via print and social media, raising funds for and preparing iftar baskets during Ramadan, and distributing food and sanitation products to help people practice social distancing—demonstrate how camp residents have worked individually and collectively to find ways to care for Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish, and Lebanese residents alike, thereby transcending a focus on nationality- based identity markers. However, state, municipal, international, and media reports pointing to Syrian refugees as having imported the virus into Beddawi camp place such local modes of solidarity and mutuality at risk. This article thus highlights the importance of considering how refugee-refugee assistance initiatives relate simultaneously to: the politics of the self and the other, politically produced precarity, and multi-scalar systems that undermine the potential for solidarity in times of overlapping precarities.
Topic:
Nationalism, Refugees, Solidarity, Public Health, Humanitarian Crisis, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Kurdistan

18. From the River to the Sea to Every Mountain Top: Solidarity as Worldmaking

Author:
Robin Kelley
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This essay questions a key takeaway from the Ferguson/Gaza convergence that catalyzed the current wave of Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity: the idea that “equivalence,” or a politics of analogy based on racial or national identity, or racialized or colonial experience, is the sole or primary grounds for solidarity. By revisiting three recent spectacular moments involving Black intellectuals advocating for Palestine—Michelle Alexander’s op-ed in the New York Times criticizing Israeli policies, CNN’s firing of Marc Lamont Hill, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s initial decision to deny Angela Davis its highest honor—this paper suggests that their controversial positions must be traced back to the post-1967 moment. The convergence of Black urban rebellions and the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war birthed the first significant wave of Black-Palestinian solidarity; at the same time, solidarities rooted in anti- imperialism and Left internationalism rivaled the “Black-Jewish alliance,” founded on analogy of oppression rather than shared principles of liberation. Third World insurgencies and anti-imperialist movements, not just events in the United States and Palestine, created the conditions for radically reordering political alliances: rather than adopting a politics of analogy or identity, the Black and Palestinian Left embraced a vision of “worldmaking” that was a catalyst for imagining revolution as opposed to plotting coalition.
Topic:
International Affairs, Popular Revolt, anti-capitalism, and Solidarity
Political Geography:
Palestine