Final Call! This Weekend in London: SOAS Palestine Society 9th Annual Conference – Self-critique Two Decades After Oslo – 2013

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo Accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory space.

Check the Conference Programme here: soaspalsoc.org/conference/programme/

 Illustration by Nidal El-Khairy (http://nidalelkhairy.blogspot.be/)

Reminder - SOAS Palestine Society 9th Annual Conference – Self-critique Two Decades After Oslo – 2013

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo Accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory space.

Check the Conference Programme here: soaspalsoc.org/conference/programme/

 Illustration by Nidal El-Khairy (http://nidalelkhairy.blogspot.be/)

SOAS Palestine Society 9th Annual Conference – Self-critique Two Decades After Oslo – 2013

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo Accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory space.

Check the Conference Programme here: soaspalsoc.org/conference/programme/

 Illustration by Nidal El-Khairy (http://nidalelkhairy.blogspot.be/)

Book Launch: You're all invited

My book is out on the streets, and the book launch is next Tuesday - October 25th in SOAS (not the main campus). Anyone in London is invited along where I'll be discussing the book with the audience, and especially with Richard Kuper, the former head of JfJfP. All the info is below

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jews for Justice for Palestinians

SOAS Palestine Society

London Middle East Institute

invite you to the book launch of

Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights

Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel

David Landy in conversation with

Richard Kuper, former Chair of JfJfP

Tuesday, October 25, 7pm

V211, School of Oriental and African Studies

Vernon Square, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW

Diaspora Jews are increasingly likely to criticise Israel and support Palestinian rights. In most Western societies, Jewish organisations have sprung up to oppose Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, facing harsh criticism from fellow Jews for their actions.

Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights is a groundbreaking study of this growing worldwide social movement, examining how it challenges traditional Jewish representations of itself. It looks at why people join this movement; and questions how they relate to the Palestinians and their struggle.

About the Author

David Landy is an Irish-Jewish academic, active in the Palestine solidarity movement. Formerly chair and currently national organiser of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, he is based in Dublin where he lectures sociology in Trinity College Dublin.

www.jfjfp.com / www.soaspalsoc.org / www.lmei.soas.ac.uk

Israel studies at SOAS

I thought I already blogged this. Apparently SOAS has created two posts for a new Israel studies course. A resident zionist at SOAS, Colin Schindler, is a happy bunny. According to The Guardian:

Colin Shindler, professor of Israeli studies at Soas and future chair of the association, says the decision to expand Israel studies is a response to growing demand from students to know more about the political, cultural, social and economic background to events in the Middle East and is an attempt to offer an academic alternative to what he terms "the megaphone war".

Antony Lerman is a little perplexed:

The same emphasis on this development as being purely motivated by a desire to provide information, knowledge and understanding was evident from remarks made by the Director of the Pears Foundation, Charles Keidan:

[He] stresses that the aim is to meet demand for better scholarship in the area rather than to promote a cause.

‘We have been very conscious not to be involved in this as any form of Israel advocacy,’ he says. ‘This is advocacy for Israel studies, not for Israel.’

......despite the gloss put on this development by Shindler and Keidan, all is not what it seems. While interest in the subject among students has no doubt increased and Shindler will strongly, and with some justification, claim that he teaches and researches the subject from as academically objective a position as possible, it’s quite obvious that this move is meant to counter, at least partly, the proliferation of Middle East studies funded by Arab sources at various universities up and down the country. The notion that work done at these institutions is politically biased against Israel is common in some Jewish circles in which I am sure that members of the Pears family mix.

Keidan may well be entirely sincere in saying that the foundation is not involved in this initiative ‘as any form of Israel advocacy’, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Pears itself funds Israel advocacy both directly and indirectly. It’s true that Pears’s involvement in advocacy is rather more enlightened than the path followed by those who more or less base what they do on the belief that Israel can do no wrong. The foundation supports the New Israel Fund, for example, which provides grants to Israeli and Israeli-Arab human rights organizations. And it also began a major initiative to raise awareness in the UK Jewish community of the severely disadvantaged position of Israel’s Arab – or Palestinian, as most now call themselves–citizens. However, a book it produced celebrating Israel’s scientific achievements - Israel in the World - was a classic hasbara (propaganda) exercise, based on the view that the problem facing Israel is simply that the country’s good news stories are not being disseminated sufficiently widely and intensively and that negative developments are exaggerated out of all proportion. (A devastating critique of this approach by the IsraeliHaaretz journalist Gideon Levy was published on 10 April.) Just how much money it devotes to Israel advocacy is impossible to know because, contrary to many other grant making foundations that are registered charities, Pears does not itemise all its individual grants in its annual accounts.

And a letter to The Guardian Education section raises concerns about impartiality:

Harriet Swain's article "Lessons on Israel" (12 April) carries the lead-in: "A new association aims to fulfil growing demand from students for knowledge about the Middle East". If that is the case, why does it promote Israel studies rather than Middle East studies? And if it is neutral with regard to Israel/Palestine, then why is the European Association of Israel Studies not called the European Association of Israel/Palestine since 1948 studies? The backer of the new Soas Israel studies posts, the Pears Foundation, is said to be rooted in Jewish (not Middle Eastern or Palestinian) values; the foundation's attitude towards Zionism is not mentioned. One can only speculate.

Sophie Richmond,

London N8

I don't think we can only speculate.

The Egyptian Revolution and Palestine

SOAS Palestine Society Presents:

The Egyptian Revolution and Palestine:

 A Panel of Youth Organisers from Tahrir Square

With  

Nariman Youssef, Mostafa Henawy

5.30pm Monday 14^th  March 2011

SOAS Main Building, Junior Common Room (JCR), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London, WC1H 0XG

 Nariman Youssef is active in the Egyptian protests and was in Tahrir Square on a regular basis from January 25th until a few days ago. She is a translator and researcher, currently studying for a PhD at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World, University of Manchester.

Mostafa Henaway is an Egyptian-Canadian youth organiser and independent journalist. He travelled to Occupied Palestine at the height of the Second Intifada, becoming active with the International Solidarity Movement in Jenin. He is a member of Tadamon, the Montreal-based solidarity group with Palestine.