Schedule

The ‘Palestinian Question’ is often presented as complex and perpetually unsolvable. Discussions of the history surrounding the imposition of Israeli statehood upon the land of Palestine - especially in German historiography - often circumvent critical historical junctures or choose to begin their retelling at later moments of conflict. This session argues instead that the dispossession of Palestinians must be situated in the concrete historical origins of colonialism, European warfare and imperialism. In order to understand how the current alleged genocide (South Africa vs Israel case), unlawful occupation and apartheid (according to the ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2024) came about, it is necessary to return to the origins of Zionism in the deprivation and persecution of Jews in late 19th century Europe, and the beginnings of settler colonial land acquisition and disposition during the British Mandate in Palestine. This session sheds light on the structural entanglements and singular interdependencies between colonialism, dispossession, and the Holocaust to facilitate a deeper understanding of today’s catastrophe in Palestine and its silencing.

This section consists of workshops based on different interdisciplinary approaches to reinvigorate academic discourse on research on Palestine.

The question of Palestine is the heightened issue of our time touching upon the moral-political order of the world. Not least since October 2023 and the ongoing genocide in Gaza calls for Palestine liberation and repression of basic constitutional rights have gone hand in hand, especially in Germany. The question of Palestine has been around for two centuries in Europe, first as a settler-colony to expel European Jews, and second as a problem with its indigenous inhabitants. The Question of Palestine as Edward Said formulated in 1979 introduced Palestine as an exception to the international rule of national self-determination. But the question of Palestine shifted and morphed with each new global shift and in fact shifted the world itself. When it re-appeared forcefully on European streets in the early 2000s with the beginning of the Second Intifada when Palestinians and their supporters protested Israeli annexation threats. Although all European countries are aware of Palestinian dispossession and have been home to Palestinian diasporas since the 1960s, a shift could be detected in how the question of Palestine generated an unprecedented security discourse in the post 9/11 environment. This discourse fed on two new phenomena. First, the European Union declared the Holocaust a post-national European heritage and renewed their commitment to memorialization as a form of consolidating a liberal identity after the Cold War. In this process, Holocaust memorialization and the unconditional support for Israel have been often conflated and encouraged, especially in Germany. Second, the war on terror targeted Middle Eastern migrant communities by framing them as Muslim threats. Surveillance, including disciplinary and criminalizing measures targeting speech about Israeli aggressions against Palestinians were subsequently institutionalized as a form of combating ‘Islamic extremism.’ The contributors will speak to specific aspects of these issues from within their research contexts in the current moment.

Epistemic violence, understood as the denial, discrediting or distortion of knowledge and its bearers, is a powerful force in maintaining the current condition of Palestine. This entails the physical and discursive destruction of education systems and cultural archives, together with the use of science to perpetuate subjugation of Palestinians. This session will address the ongoing challenges and possibilities of research on Palestine. It will consider the role of knowledge production on and in Palestine for the historical and current shaping of Palestinian life, as well as examining forms of resistance to dominant epistemic structures.

This plenary session contains perspectives on International Law and the Genocide Trials: The year-long assault on Gaza by the Israeli army and the therein committed war crimes are being investigated before both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. Yet experts on international humanitarian law have been alarmed by the committed violence and disregard of the Israeli government for international law for decades. This section thereby aims to discuss the legal basis and the evidence for accusations of genocide and the legal definitions of apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing. It will further raise the question of German complicity and criminal liability.

The Palestinian question is one in which many different global histories and futures are complexly entangled. It is thus of global concern that the future of Palestine appears increasingly dire. In the face of silence and indifference, this panel will examine the political economy of hope and explore how resistance, both within Palestine and across the diaspora, must evolve to meet this pivotal moment in history. The political economy of hope functions as both an emotional and material resource constructed, distributed, and leveraged within political and economic systems. This panel will delve into how hope is cultivated and contested under conditions of extreme violence, displacement, and apartheid. At the same time, it will ask how Palestinians and their allies reclaim and reimagine hope as a transformative tool—whether through grassroots organizing, cultural preservation, or international solidarity movements.

Reading and writing for Palestine is a means of creating and fostering spaces where alternative narratives can emerge and flourish. Over lunch, participants are invited to discuss organising reading and analysis groups in their respective cities. Part-networking and part-organisational, this session will culminate in a plan for how scholars and students work closely by writing and publishing about Palestine.

While Germany has rightly institutionalized remembrance of the Holocaust and reparations for antisemitism, its colonial legacies and the ongoing impacts of racism remain under examined. Discourse on "imported antisemitism" often displaces the critique of antisemitic ideologies within Germany onto racialized groups, reinforcing existing hierarchies of exclusion. Moreover, accusations of antisemitism are increasingly weaponized against critics of Israeli policies, including Jewish and Israeli voices. This session investigates how antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism operate across temporal and spatial contexts, interrogating their intersections with colonial legacies, the Holocaust, and broader geopolitical frameworks. It also considers how these dynamics are reconstituted within contemporary German public discourse and policy.

This section consists of workshops based on different interdisciplinary approaches to reinvigorate academic discourse on research on Palestine.

Panel organised by the Allianz für Kritische und Solidarische Wissenschaft