Unsettling Colonialism in Our Times – serie

This meticulously curated edited volume presents an assemblage of insightful, critical, and contemporary perspectives on how Israeli domination has been sustained and reproduced in new forms and means using various mechanisms and techniques of control, coloniality, and settler colonialism. Based on original empirical fieldwork, the contributors to this book adopt interdisciplinary and decolonial approaches in their examination of the intricate functions and structures of domination that permeate Palestinian life by illuminating the power dynamics at play and revealing the mechanisms that sustain the settler-colonial regime. This book identifies sites of colonial control and domination exerted on Palestine by Israel, and demonstrates how these sites of control are also sites of Palestinian resistance. The first section explores the political sites of control by focusing on governmentality, institutions, and technologies and mechanisms of control including how Israel manages access to health, life and death. The second section examines the economic mechanisms of exploitation, dispossession, and de-development including banking, taxation and the relationships between finance capital, aid and military occupation. The third section turns attention to environmental sites of control, focusing on land, indigeneity, space and racial capitalism. Finally, section four scrutinizes the intellectual sites of control, highlighting how norms, narratives, and knowledge production perpetuate domination.

This meticulously curated edited volume presents an assemblage of insightful, critical, and contemporary perspectives on how Israeli domination has been sustained and reproduced in new forms and means using various mechanisms and techniques of control, coloniality, and settler colonialism. Based on original empirical fieldwork, the contributors to this book adopt interdisciplinary and decolonial approaches in their examination of the intricate functions and structures of domination that permeate Palestinian life by illuminating the power dynamics at play and revealing the mechanisms that sustain the settler-colonial regime. This book identifies sites of colonial control and domination exerted on Palestine by Israel, and demonstrates how these sites of control are also sites of Palestinian resistance. The first section explores the political sites of control by focusing on governmentality, institutions, and technologies and mechanisms of control including how Israel manages access to health, life and death. The second section examines the economic mechanisms of exploitation, dispossession, and de-development including banking, taxation and the relationships between finance capital, aid and military occupation. The third section turns attention to environmental sites of control, focusing on land, indigeneity, space and racial capitalism. Finally, section four scrutinizes the intellectual sites of control, highlighting how norms, narratives, and knowledge production perpetuate domination.

Israel and Palestine were worlds apart during the pandemic that claimed over five million lives globally. While Palestinians were forced to adopt crude survival measures and endure economic privations, Israel was praised as a vaccination world leader. This book demonstrates how Israel utilized the pandemic to tighten surveillance and control over Palestine and the Palestinians. Drawing on theories of settler colonialism and the concept of ‘necropolitics’, the book is a vital testament to the reality of the Israeli settler colonial project today. The author uses case studies and interviews with Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, Hebron, Kufr Aqab and the Jalazoon refugee camp to understand the lived experiences of Palestinians. The newest colonial policies are discussed including how Israel activated a counter-terrorism database that could track citizens and ensure they adhered to lockdown regulations. It also shows how Israel destroyed Palestinian infrastructure essential for water, sanitation and hygiene, leaving Palestinians unable to fight the virus. The book shows that, for Palestinians, the pandemic was simply the latest in a long line of national catastrophes in a context where settler colonialism prevails.

Israel and Palestine were worlds apart during the pandemic that claimed over five million lives globally. While Palestinians were forced to adopt crude survival measures and endure economic privations, Israel was praised as a vaccination world leader. This book demonstrates how Israel utilized the pandemic to tighten surveillance and control over Palestine and the Palestinians. Drawing on theories of settler colonialism and the concept of ‘necropolitics’, the book is a vital testament to the reality of the Israeli settler colonial project today. The author uses case studies and interviews with Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, Hebron, Kufr Aqab and the Jalazoon refugee camp to understand the lived experiences of Palestinians. The newest colonial policies are discussed including how Israel activated a counter-terrorism database that could track citizens and ensure they adhered to lockdown regulations. It also shows how Israel destroyed Palestinian infrastructure essential for water, sanitation and hygiene, leaving Palestinians unable to fight the virus. The book shows that, for Palestinians, the pandemic was simply the latest in a long line of national catastrophes in a context where settler colonialism prevails.

Using Palestine as a case study, Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States shows how recognition politics operate to legitimize long-standing colonial power structures.In existing scholarship, recognition has been seen as an asset coveted by indigenous communities. This book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective. Emile Badarin shows that in colonial contexts, settlers use recognition to legitimize and normalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous people. More than this, settler-colonial states themselves actively pursue recognition, employing it as a means to further the elimination of the indigenous societies they seek to replace. In making the case, the book critically examines the Euromodern categories of race, racism and racial hierarchies and draws new conclusions about the interplay between colonialism, racism and Zionism. Central to this analysis is how anti-Zionism has been strategically equated with anti-Semitism, and effectively used as a tool for the advancement of both settler-colonialism in Palestine and Israel’s recognition on the international stage. The book delves into indigenous normative resistance against colonial recognition politics through the lens of the Palestinian practice of ?umud (steadfastness), extracting its philosophy of liberation as a pathway towards a decolonial future for all in Palestine and beyond.

Using Palestine as a case study, Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States shows how recognition politics operate to legitimize long-standing colonial power structures.In existing scholarship, recognition has been seen as an asset coveted by indigenous communities. This book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective. Emile Badarin shows that in colonial contexts, settlers use recognition to legitimize and normalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous people. More than this, settler-colonial states themselves actively pursue recognition, employing it as a means to further the elimination of the indigenous societies they seek to replace. In making the case, the book critically examines the Euromodern categories of race, racism and racial hierarchies and draws new conclusions about the interplay between colonialism, racism and Zionism. Central to this analysis is how anti-Zionism has been strategically equated with anti-Semitism, and effectively used as a tool for the advancement of both settler-colonialism in Palestine and Israel’s recognition on the international stage. The book delves into indigenous normative resistance against colonial recognition politics through the lens of the Palestinian practice of ?umud (steadfastness), extracting its philosophy of liberation as a pathway towards a decolonial future for all in Palestine and beyond.

The Occupied Palestinian West Bank is central to the Israeli colonial project. It serves as a significant example of occupation. Yet little is understood about how Israeli rule over this area operates. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Israel and Palestine, including interviews with state officials, settlers and military personnel, this book examines the evolution of Israeli rule over the West Bank since 1967. In the book, Youssef Mnaili argues that Israeli governments have increasingly relied on Jewish settlers—approximately 700,000 civilians established in the occupied territories—to perform key security and administrative roles. This reliance allows the state to distance itself from controversial practices such as surveillance and violence. At the same time, however, the book reveals that a paradox emerges: while the Israeli government attempts to regulate the settlers, it inadvertently strengthens their control over the land, rendering the occupation effectively permanent. In highlighting the state's dependence on settlers for military recruitment and ground operations, Youssef Mnaili offers a unique perspective on the shifting power dynamics between the Israeli state and the settlers. He concludes that any resolution to the conflict hinges on addressing the evolving settler-state relationship.

How is the Israel/Palestine question narrated in Western academia? What ideas dominate the key textbooks on the subject and what is presented as 'truth'? This book answers these critical questions.It is widely known that Western support of Israel played a vital role in the realization of Zionist objectives in Palestine. But academic support of Israel in the West has been a neglected issue, with Western academic knowledge being regarded as impartial and objective. This book reveals that this understanding of Western academic knowledge is wrong when it comes to the Israel/Palestine question. Rather, knowledge has been biased, misleading, and dogmatic and Western college students are subscribing to ‘factual histories’ based on theories at best, if not fiction. The book is the first empirical investigation able to document this partial reporting of history. Seyed Hadi Borhani examines the most popular college-level textbooks used to teach the history of the Israel/Palestine in Western universities, combining ‘textbook analysis’ (to determine how the dominant academic texts report the question) and a ‘context analysis’ (to identify who 'manufactures' the dominant knowledge). The book provides a historical map of how the Israel-Palestine conflict is understood in the West. The book can be used as a critique for students and professors to use alongside textbooks and is a vital and much-needed intervention into the state of affairs in Western academia.