The West Bank, and the Nature of Resistance w/ Bana & Lara from the Good Shepherd Collective

Speaker 1: You remember Din-Din-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rifle. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on them.

Henry Hakimaki: Hello and welcome to Guerrilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Hakimaki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussain, Historian Director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello Adnan, how are you doing today?

Adnan Hussain: I'm doing really well, Henry. It's great to be with you and I'm looking forward to our conversation with our guests today.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, absolutely. It's nice to see you as well. I know it was only a couple days since we last recorded, but it's always a pleasure getting to sit down with you and have these really interesting and important discussions with you and with the terrific guests that we always have on the show. And today is certainly no exception as we have a couple of guests who we've been following their work for quite some time and finally have the opportunity to speak with. Before I introduce the guests, I want to make sure that I remind the listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually and collectively by following the show on Twitter at gorilla underscore pod. Again, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod. Today for you listeners, we have two representatives of the Good Shepherd Collective. As I said, folks who we've been fond of their work for quite some time. Those of you who follow us on social media will see us sharing their work quite a bit. And those of you who follow the Good Shepherd Collective on social media will see them sharing our work occasionally as well. So this conversation does feel a little bit overdue, but we're really, really happy to have these two representatives here today, Lara and Bana. So welcome. I'm going to just turn it over to the two of you to introduce yourselves to the listeners. And then also after you introduce yourself individually, the two of you together can introduce what the Good Shepherd Collective is and the work that you do. So why don't I turn it to Bana first to introduce yourself?

Bana Abu Zuluf: Thank you so much, Henry and Adnan for inviting us. My name is Bana and I am a PhD researcher in international law at Maynooth University in Ireland. And also, of course, a member of the Good Shepherd Collective. I mainly do analysis for the Good Shepherd Collective. I do research as well. And you can also see me tweeting as well on our Good Shepherd Collective Twitter. I also happen to sort of try to bridge the gap between the Arab speakers and the English speakers. I speak fully fluent in Arabic, so I'm able to basically include the discourse and analysis that's happening in Arabic for our English speaking audience on Twitter.

Lara Kilani: And I'm Laura Killani. I'm a researcher and a Palestinian-American who is a member of Good Shepherd Collective and based here in Beit Sahour in Palestine in the West Bank. And like Banna, I'm part of, you know, contributing to the analysis, writing some of the tweets and providing news updates, sending, you know, some of our news roundups, weekly news roundups and things like that. And maybe to talk a little bit about what the Good Shepherd Collective is and does, we're a collective that started in 2018 sort of out of what we saw as the need for an alternative resource for Palestinian organizing here on the ground in Palestine. So much of the resources, especially international resources, are wrapped up in NGOs, which have a lot of restrictions on what can be done and what can't be done and who can say it and how they can say it. And that's really restrictive on the way people can organize in Palestine and puts a limit on not only whether or not people can speak the truth, but how they can organize to protect their own communities. And we really wanted to create something that could move outside of that space create alternative funding mechanisms for people where they needed them and also provide resources that weren't tied to these kind of large granting organizations, but also these neoliberal colonial, you know, restrictions to kind of entrap people. Some of the things we do, of course, analysis, as we talked about lately, we had we had a A new project where we created a new website and have all of this sort of democratized data that you might not be able to find easily anywhere else or might not be able to find at all. Certainly not all in one place. As Banna said, we also try to provide some translation, not only like literal linguistic and cultural translation, but historical and analytical translation where we see gaps in between Palestinian understanding, Palestinian analysis and Western analysis or just outside analysis. And of course, supporting communities on the ground and providing news to the rest of the world. So that's a bit about us.

Henry Hakimaki: Banna, anything that you want to add in on that?

Bana Abu Zuluf: Yeah, I would just like to add one more thing is I think lately we have been known to provide anti-Zionist analysis. So we have, um, written, um, on anti-Zionism on what that means and also what Zionism as well, uh, means and also how we would like to see anti-Zionist solidarity, um, shape the organizing, um, abroad. Currently, we obviously have, you know, spotlighted Gaza. But lately, because of the decline, and because of the focus on Gaza, people are not aware that lots is happening, obviously, in the West Bank. So we're shedding light on the type of settler colonial expansion, on the type of forced displacement that is happening throughout and also the resistance as well that is happening and spotlighting the pockets of resistance happening throughout the West Bank in Jerusalem as well that is being forgotten in the discussion, even in this discussion about resistance that is happening throughout by the actions of resistance and whatnot.

Adnan Hussain: Well, that's a wonderful outline. We'll definitely want to talk with you both specifically about spotlighting and highlighting what's been happening in the West Bank. I think before we get to that kind of outline. account and real forensic understanding from people who are both on the ground and connected with networks there in your collective, it's worth pointing out and noting that we are very close to the one-year anniversary of the devastating attack upon Gaza and the genocide that's been ongoing there and intensive ongoing for 75 you know years but intensified in this in this last year and just wondering you know what kind of analysis do you have about it you're both active on twitter talking about those situations i'm wondering vana in particular from a international law perspective how do you see You know, coming upon a year of gross, obvious violations of scores and scores of laws internationally. And the fact that at certain phases during this genocide, it appeared that international law might be a venue at least for mobilizing collective action. resistance. How do you see that now? It's been a while since the ICJ had its initial issuing of provisional measures that renewed them again in May. And right now it seems very quiet on that front. So maybe that's the first dimension of the Gaza situation that's worth talking about. And then And, you know, Laura, we'll come to you for, you know, perspectives from within, you know, Palestinian communities observing what's happening there in Gaza and your analysis. But let's start with that international law component.

Bana Abu Zuluf: Thank you, Adnan. That's actually a very good and there's a very important question here. We do see that there are different dimensions of the genocide and its impact on Palestinians and the movement worldwide. And we see those different elements interacting with each other, sometimes contradicting each other. We have obviously the movement element, which is the organizing element we have. the academic element in terms of the encampments, in terms of what's been happening in universities and at universities. And we see also the resistance element to arms resistance. And also like we have witnessed the rise of the sort of legal element as we speak of, right? So if you were to speak about this legal element and the sort of maybe I would maybe cynically say the sort of mythical hope that it's bringing is we've seen obviously the ICJ case. We've seen the ICC arrests warrant. We've even seen an ICJ opinion on the illegality of occupation. We've seen also thousands of statements by international lawyers on the genocide, calling it a genocide and whatnot. However, what we have also seen is that none of that, unfortunately, had caused the genocide to end, right? So international law, in a way, while it did, after years and years of international advocacy by Palestinians, by international lawyers, to open a case to the ICC, for the UN to implement more coercive measures, for countries to implement sanctions and whatnot, None of that was answered to, but it seems there is more acceleration on that front because there is no denial that the genocide is happening. There's also no denial that the international community or what is so-called the international community is part and parcel of that genocide, right? And it's complicit in that genocide. And they are very much aware of that. and the implication of that are very great. So we at the Good Shepherd Collective, we've always been very critical of the international law lens and the legal lens. because we know that international law historically obviously has been a colonial tool. So it has entanglements with colonialism, right? And it will always be unenforceable if the most powerful countries and states do not want to enforce it. So it is again, it is again, teethless, right? So it does not have that sort of enforceable power. And fortunately for us Palestinians who are bearing the brunt of genocide, colonialism, settler colonialism to be very particular, the settler colonial analysis is very absent, very much absent from international law. So yes, they might be able to attend to at some point years and years after the genocide has already happened to basically lay claim to the fact, yes, maybe there has been a genocide. But what's the point of that failed procedural element of international law and very cynical element of international law, if we may say, to be given maybe some form of sort of element, to say to Gazans under the rubble, to say to Gazans that are experiencing genocide, that yes, we recognise that you have experienced it, But maybe we didn't have the time and the resources enough as a court to put an end to that or to claim or to fight for that to end or to try to find ways to put a stop and halt to it. Right. And for us Palestinians, I think. It's come to us the realisation that Zionism is a settler-colonial genocidal project that cannot be ended, cannot be halted by the tools of international law. It will not and cannot be. And these are the claims of the international lawyers that recently settler-colonialism has been sort of addressed for the first time by the UN Special Rapporteur, right? The UN Special Rapporteur has recently been focusing on settler colonialism. We think, as the Good Shepherd Collective, that it's too late for now. to mention settler colonialism. We've been talking as Palestinians about settler colonialism and about us experiencing the genocide of settler colonialism since the Nakba. And however, none of that has been seriously addressed until now, until in fact, nihilism has eaten away at the core of this organizing, at the core of this. And to be honest, Palestinians right now do not feel like an international law offers anything to them because the goal is liberation. The goal is decolonization and the goal is de-Zionification of Palestine, right? So we must end Zionism and we must expel Zionism from Palestine. That is the goal because there is no coexistence with that genocidal entity, right? However, what international law wants us to do is to somehow put only an end to that, to that which is contrary to international humanitarian law, without understanding that the existence of Zionism on our land, on Palestine, is contrary to all laws. morality to take. Maybe the simplest of it all, the fact that it is, in fact, we have to say it, it is a zero-sum game, is that if Zionism lives, as Stephen Solaita says, if Zionism lives, Palestinians die. That's how it needs to be said. So international law will never admit to that. International law will always see the colonizer and the colonized in the same lens. And thus we are very critical of it. And we hope that those who are focusing on the legal element can maybe put their focus a little bit more on the other elements of the movement. Mainly really what's really happening right now which is the resistance element, which is the direct repercussion of the genocide, the real threat to the Zionist entity, which is the armed resistance.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, I have a follow up on that and we'll make sure to get Laura in as well. So you're talking about international law, and many of the things that you're saying are things that I would have brought up in my follow-up had you not mentioned them yourself. So, you know, well done on bringing up so many of the things that I was planning on talking about. But I do want to reiterate a couple of things before I put forth one more. So as you mentioned, international law itself is written by the colonizers. International law is not written by the colonized. And when dealing with international law, there is this perception by people who are unaffected by international law rulings that a ruling under international law is somehow going to magically make... justice. It's going to rectify whatever problem there is. And so we had a lot of people looking at the news that the ICJ was having this ruling that they were going to open an inquiry into the act of genocide. And people said, okay, here, job done. The ICJ is doing something about it and then have completely tuned out and stopped looking at any sort of the legal questions regarding this, not to mention the moral questions, but just focusing on the legal questions. They also don't focus on the fact that by doing so, they're closing off any sort of way of supporting alternative means of achieving the goals of justice. So as you're mentioning, these people are looking only at this legalistic route and then closing off the possibility of any, let's just be frank about it, armed resistance as a tool of throwing off the shackles of colonialism, standing up against the occupiers. And now this brings up one of the points that I was hoping that we could follow up on. And then again, we'll make sure that Larry gets in as well. One of the things... that is also very blatant and obvious to see is that too many people who have a passing interest you know, a passing interest in an ongoing genocide is that they do not, they simply do not understand international law. Again, setting aside the point that we've already talked about that this is international law written by the colonizers, even that law, they don't understand. So when you bring up something that is codified within international law, like the fact that the colonized have the right to armed resistance against the colonizers, Occupied people have the right, codified under international law, the legal right to armed resistance by any means necessary against the occupiers. People are shocked when you bring this up and you say, this is international law written by the colonizers themselves. And we can see that the colonizers are breaking this international law that they had codified. And again, there is no recourse to this. But the fact is that people do not understand even the basics of international law. And so when we have individuals who are staunch Zionists coming out and making all sorts of ridiculous claims regarding international law that are absolutely not true, then These people hear it and accept it wholeheartedly in much the same way that they are shocked when they hear that colonized people have the right to stand up against colonizers. One of the most recent ones that I saw, some Zionist who claims to be a legal scholar, and I say claims to be because, you know, if you're a Zionist and you're trying to stand for international law, are you really a scholar or are you just, you know, a stenographer of your ideological conviction? But that's a separate question. This individual had done an analysis that showed that the pager attack across Lebanon, an unprovoked attack across Lebanon that maimed thousands of people, was justified under international law. This settler colonial entity... was justified in maiming thousands of people at the drop of a hat because they decided to. Now, of course, there is no justification in international law for this, but the fact is that people don't understand international law. And so when they see this, it's like a he said, she said sort of thing. We say that the colonized have the right to stand up against the colonizers. They say that they have the right to detonate pagers across the country. Well, who really knows what the truth is? You know, this is the issue is that not only is the international law written by the colonizers, but even when we have some ability to utilize that international law, people just frankly do not understand it and are able to be fooled into believing ridiculous lies put forth by the oppressors. So that was the point I wanted to make on that. Bana, if you have anything that you want to say on that, and then we'll turn it over to Lara as well.

Bana Abu Zuluf: Yeah, so something that we discuss probably very regularly within the GSC is how Zionism uses this impunity, right? Because obviously we're very well aware that the Zionist entity have complete impunity for international humanitarian law violations and other international law violations. They simply do not care about international law violations. And one of the things that we say is that Zionism itself does not paint itself with moralism. It does not require moralism. It does not require logic, right? Because power does not require logic. You do not need logic or the burden of truthful justification when you have immense power. So that is why when they say things that we would call a cognitive dissonance, basically claims, claims that are absolutely unjustifiable, just contrary to any logic, They do not see any problem with them because they're so used to not having the burden of justification. They can just say simply whatever they want to say, right? They can do whatever they want to do. That's why their genocidal violence is accompanied with open boasting, open justifications, open you know, celebrations. That's what Zionism is. It brought us to perhaps the logic of illogic. I don't know if you can say that, but you just... It doesn't rely on any of that. The oppressed have always obviously needed the tools of logic. We needed the burden of proof. We need to always have international law justifications. We need to always say that yes, our resistance and resistance is carried and confirmed as a right for us under international law. The Zionists do not have to worry about that. So it does make sense, you know, for us to maybe sit back and look, why do we constantly have to sort of arm ourselves with the weapons of justification, with the weapons of, you know, what do we call the politics of appeal, respectability politics, whatever you want to call it. So to justify that, our necessary aim of living. Just we need to live, right? Palestinians just want to live, right? And so we come up with all these justifications for why we should not be killed, why we should be able to resist, why we should not be genocided. Yet none of those requirements are made of Zionists. None of these requirements of justification, of burden of truth are made of Zionists. So it is not, and I would mention, we always say it's not a double standard. It's not that there is a double standard applied to each side. It's just the colonialist imperialist standard, right? It's applied by the colonizers, by the imperialists that they hold objective truth And we we are simply, you know, what do you call it, toys or what do you call them, dolls? Sorry, subjects of their necropolitics is what I wanted to say. So we're subjects of simply their necropolitical games of who gets to live, who gets to die, who gets to be human, who gets to not be human. They want to turn us into what we call the Orwellian unperson, right? We are the unperson. The Palestinians and the oppressed are the un-persons, right? We are not even worthy of being a person. So that's why it doesn't really matter what international law really says about the oppressed or the oppressor, or if even it has a demarcation of that. Even if there is a demarcation, even if it clearly states that out, it doesn't really matter because international law is simply... not of use for Zionists. They don't care. They do not abide by it. It does not constitute their moral high ground.

Adnan Hussain: Very interesting discussion. Yeah, well, if you want to talk about the international law component, but I wanted to ask you, Lara, about your kind of thoughts coming close to the one-year anniversary of the genocide in Gaza and just what other components and dimensions besides international law you would want to remind us about, you know, here, you know, as a result of, you know, almost one year of activism, of resistance against this genocide. So please.

Lara Kilani: Yeah, thank you so much. First of all, such good questions. And listening to Banna, like nobody ever has to say, then we'll let Laura speak, because listening to Banna, it's like, I don't need to talk.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Lara Kilani: she's like channeling my soul but I do just want to add a couple things so the whole burden isn't on her and I think it like Adding and moving on as well to your question, Adnan, I mean, so for years, one of the things that GSC has been talking about is the role of settler organizations. And like, we should be clear, all Israelis are settlers. It's all settler colonialism. It's all Palestine, right? But when we're talking about settler organizations, a lot of times the ones, not always, a lot of the times the ones we're talking about are actively engaged in settlement processes in the West Bank. but also in the Galilee and in the Nakab. So not to say they're just involved in one place. Anyway, one of the things we've been trying to raise the alarm on is the way that these organizations and the people who represent them have been coming even more into power. We know Zionism is by its nature violent and colonial and genocidal, as Banna laid out. But what these people have really been doing is... So moving from the previous trend that Israel had of really like rejecting the idea of international law altogether, what they're doing is trying to claim international law, or at least this is sort of the trend maybe we can say before Gaza. So I just wanted to bring up the example of the – there was this Levi Commission. What's the exact title? Levi Commission report on the status, the legal status of building in Judea and Samaria from 2012. It was – co-authored or authored in some part by Bezalel Smotrich, who is a lawyer, one of the founders of Regevim, and today holds a minister position in the Israeli government. For sure, people will know his name if they know anything about the Israeli government or settlement in the West Bank today. And what they argue in this piece is they're trying to make a legal case for the settlement building in Judea and Samaria. I'm using air quotes here. And what they say is... that because the Geneva Convention and basically the whole body of humanitarian law came after World War II and the Holocaust, that these restrictions of transferring civilians do not apply to Israel. That they cannot apply to Israel because Israel, at least this is part of their argument, that Jewish people were the victims of the Holocaust and this kind of thing. This sort of gives us a sense of how these people aren't just spurning international law, but actually trying to reclaim this law, which anyone who studied international law in any capacity, especially humanitarian law, we know that it was created for the sake of extending or at least, okay, the authors are the colonizers, but the stated objectives are to extend protections as far as possible. For civilians and the people who protect them. Right. And so these people are really trying to use the law very cynically to turn it on its head and benefit themselves explicitly, which I think is something new. And this is important because we, like I said, now today, you'll know Smotrich's name. In 2012, nobody knew Smotrich's name, right, except his funders at Regifim. And these organizations have really moved into more of a state of prominence. And especially in the last year, you know, to talk a little bit about The situation in the West Bank, I'll just pull up the statistics I have written here. Since October 7th, at least 15 villages have been entirely ethnically cleansed in the West Bank. Entirely. So people have not returned due to settler violence and military violence and the destruction of their homes and the any infrastructure that they had there. This is at least 261 Palestinian households, more than 1,500 people, more than half of these, or I guess half of these are children, 758 children. And this is just in the West Bank, right? And this is a very dangerous thing that happens when these kinds of arguments that Banna has already described come into prominence not only within the settler colony where they were already accepted quietly and being enacted quietly, but really come in more aggressively, very openly supported by the state. And Palestinians end up not only in the international realm, but everywhere, like in the street, right? On TV, arguing that we don't deserve to be killed. So I wanted to bring those things up, but also I think I was writing notes as Bana was speaking. There's so many interesting things here, but one of the people I wanted to shout out who Bana and I were reading before this interview is the excellent Mary Turfa. I think that's how you say her name, right, Turfa? Who's written excellent pieces in the last months, but one of the ones she was writing about that I was just reading is really about how the state of Israel and its forces and Western media in turn have started to use this like medical language of, oh, I can't think of precision and accuracy and these terms really taking, you know, language that's supposed to be inherently good, medical, surgical, you know, and turning them into something completely different in order to sell their weapons and sell their genocide. So I think terms are important. And I think one of the things, as we've seen this genocide escalate in Gaza and the violence and the colonialism happening in the rest of Palestine, in the West Bank, what Jesse has tried to do and what I think folks in Palestine are also doing and folks outside of Palestine. is set our terms very clearly. And I think we, like Ben and I, can both talk about this for a long time if it's a subject of interest, but... I think, as Banna mentioned, like something that's so incredibly important to our collective is talking about what Zionism is and talking about what anti-Zionism is. Because as these terms have come more into popularity, especially in the last year where folks are now, as you both mentioned, learning about what genocide is, learning about what Palestine is, seeing it on their screens and being horrified. And people want to help, right? They want to do the right thing and they want to understand. And people are discussing this, but there are also prominent folks who, well-intentioned or not, are publishing their own analysis. A lot of like non-Palestinians who also aren't informed by Palestinian analysis or Palestinian experience or even call like the experience of being colonized or oppressed. and putting out their own terms. And in this way, there's a different like capture of terminology that's happening where folks say, well, this is what Zionism is, or this is what anti-Zionism is. And they set the limits of the conversation of what we can expect, of what we're entitled to, of what we deserve, of who gets to be at the table in the future. And I think that has been really important in the last year to sort of open up these conversations about what are these things really. And who gets to say what they are, you know? And in that way, Banna mentioned about like respectability politics. And I think that's something that Palestinians just don't have the luxury of, especially these days. And we see that in Janine, right, with the armed resistance. And we see that when we talk, because we also can't give up our right to narrate our own experience or experience. Our own futures that we desire. And so folks who follow DSC on Twitter might know us for our controversial, you know, comments or our, you know, our attempts to kind of elucidate or draw boundaries or explain what how we see things. And I think that's really important because. We can't just let go of meaning. We can't just let go of terms, right? As these things are happening around us that are very much life and death, we have to explain what things mean to each other and draw these boundaries amongst ourselves or at least discuss them.

Adnan Hussain: Absolutely. It's invaluable work, and the Good Shepherd Collective does a wonderful job, both on your website, but also in these kind of more episodic interventions on particular points in reframing the discussions. Very useful is why we retweet it so often, because... Part of what's happening is an information war. This campaign of resistance is taking place on the ground in Gaza through military means. There's activism attempting to shape the political landscape. you know, will or undermine support for the genocide in other parts of the world where there's great complicity. And there's simply the task of political education and the propaganda, you know, that has to be countered because Zionism, one of the things, You were mentioning, I mean, Bana mentioned that like really what this year, if it wasn't clear to people, what has become clear over the course of the year, waiting, thinking maybe, you know, these liberal colonial, you know, kind of legal instruments will somehow be a vector for, you know, a solution or, you know, all it does is it just is sort of recognizing the problem, but doing very little research. And it is shown that unchecked, unopposed Zionism when, you know, is quite willing to engage in the most barbaric and horrific, you know, mass slaughter. So there's no illusions now. You know, these are the implications and consequences of. of Zionism. And one of the other things that it does is it also really tries to invert the truth and make you not believe the evidence of your senses that there is horrific slaughter and try and normalize that. So the normalizing of the most barbaric possible things is part of what it's attempting to achieve in order to continue to act with impunity, to be unfettered by political constraint. And so it's so important to reframe and to oppose even at the discursive level. And that's something that, you know, the Good Shepherd Collective is doing. But I wanted to turn to another kind of component of this, although, you know, if you have other things you want to talk about on that, I'm happy to do so. But I did want to turn to You know, what's been happening in, you know, here basically a year on is that instead of this monstrous, barbaric violence being constrained, it is expanding. It is intensifying and it's moving, you know, to other geographies. I mean, from the very outset, of course, there were, you know, a kind of tactical kind of contest taking place in the north. Hezbollah's intervention in solidarity to put some kind of restraints to absorb some of the resources of the Israeli war machine by opening up a front in the north, even if it was contained and constrained, and they were following what seems to be Just like international law, an illusory kind of idea that there ultimately would be any check on the violence. It ended up causing, you might say, a contraction of 1948 Palestine that was under control because so many people in the north had to evacuate. But now we are seeing an attempt to really assert the concept of a greater Israel that is at the heart of Zionist geographic imagination and political imagination. It seems that the assassination of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah just days ago was something that Israel had to, it felt it had to accomplish because he refused to negotiate a separate ceasefire without connecting that struggle to the struggle in Gaza. And so I'm wondering, from the Palestinian perspective, how do you see that interconnection and the way in which The theater of extreme violent warfare has now expanded to the north. What does that do to the situation on the ground? And what would you characterize as the Palestinian perspective on this? We've heard so many other perspectives. course of geopolitically and the region and so on. But what would you say is like sort of the Palestinian kind of response to these developments that we've been witnessing in the last week or two?

Bana Abu Zuluf: Yeah, this is a very, very important question, perhaps like very also difficult to answer because It carries a lot of weight. And I mean, we're witnessing, um, this happening at the moment as we're speaking, like a lot of this, uh, you know, open front, um, especially in the North and the ground invasion. And, and, you know, we don't, we will not know much information as the, uh, as the coverage is, it's very low, but we know that there is a ground invasion. There's much happening. Um, on the front and there's an escalation, a serious escalation. Uh, um, and also as, as we've seen with, uh, Netanyahu's visit to the, uh, to the UN, we seen the sort of mapping of, of the good and evil, right? The, the good countries, the ones are who work well with the Zionist entity, who love each other and, you know, like hugging each other, you know, all of these, uh, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan. Again, a very big question mark at Jordan there. I mean, we know Egypt was directly involved in the genocide in Gaza by preventing Gazans from accessing or from basically... getting out through the Rafah, and also for the opening of Rafah border for humanitarian assistance. But I mean, Jordan, obviously, in public, the monarchy presents itself as supportive of Palestinians and whatnot. And and pressuring the Zionist entity and whatnot to stop the genocide. But we know, and Palestinians know, we're not ignorant of the fact that the Jordanian monarchy has assisted directly the Zionist entity, whether by intercepting a drone by Iraqis and Iranians as well that were sent to the Zionist entity or whether by directly supporting the trade routes. When there was, and there still is, the Houthis blockade, the very rightful and heroic blockade that the Yemeni Houthis are implementing, right? So in a way, we've seen all of these dynamics. We've seen also how settler colonialism, the Zionist settler colonialism has also been a target of the resistance, right? We're not seeing only the genocidal element. We're not seeing resistance, though that the goal of the ending of genocide can be accelerated so we can reach that end. We're also seeing how in the north, the settler colonial process has been halted, right? Because why do we call it process? Because Zionism relies on bringing new settlers. It doesn't just rely on keeping the settlers where they are. It relies on the continuous process of inviting and incentivizing more settlers to come in and settle in Palestine. If they cannot provide the safety, the so-called safety, the Zionist entity promises them to have, if they cannot get that, then the settler colonial project is dismantled. So in a way, the fact that the settlements in the north are emptied is very much not just an accidental aspect of the resistance by Hezbollah, for example, it is a direct and very much strategic target of the war. It's that we're not just putting, we're not just sending, you know, drones and sending rockets and missiles. It's not just a sort of like uncalculated effort. It's a calculated effort because the North, especially the North settlements, are sort of, have always been given this sort of promise of safety, this promise of, you know, Maybe not even just safety, but a promise of even expanding further. Because the Greater Israel, as you said, idea, it's not just symbolic. It's not something that is just put into papers. They want to create this. They want to make it into reality. And that's why, obviously, Zionism doesn't paint itself with borders. Because borders means, you know, defining where the settler colony ends. And they don't have that. They have a clear idea of where they want that to end. And that demarcation or the borders are way further than the current borders are. So the way the settler colonialism and Zionist settler colonialism sees itself, it sees itself as ever continuing, right? But the resistance when what it did, and even in pockets in Jenin and Nablus. And I tell you what, the reason why the settlements, it's so difficult for settlement outputs to be created in Jenin and Nablus is because of the resistance there. Because the safety element prevents the settlement and settler organizations and all of that to sell the idea of safety. That, oh, look at this land. They can't just justify that. Of course, you know, it is it is obviously, you know, much more difficult nowadays for the continuation of that little colonial project because there are many fronts like we have the Houthi Yemeni front, we have the northern front. Syria as well had a front as well. At some point, Iraq as well have. And we have the resistance forces in Gaza, right? They are also, you know, close to the front. In the West Bank, however... We have a specific dynamic there, one by which the Palestinian Authority acts as a very visible collaborator in containing resistance and thwarting resistance in the West Bank. Around two days ago, if I'm not wrong, or this week or so, it was the news of the assassination of Abd al-Hakim Shaheen, who is a resistance fighter in Nablus, right? Yes. And the story really, the reason why it's interesting is because he was in fact first targeted by the Palestinian Authority. They went up to him and they asked him to hand himself in for arrest. And that means he's handing himself in for torture and he is basically asked to give up arms. That's not by the Zionist entity, by the Palestinian Authority, as they do with their promise of the security coordination with the Zionists, right? So it's a very humiliating part of the... of the coordination and very, in fact, indignifying. And for us at this stage, while we're experiencing genocide, to see so clearly how the Palestinian Authority collaborates with the Zionist entity is quite an underrated way of complete dehumanisation. We have seen this heroic resistance fighter even saying that he was targeted by video. And hours later, the Zionist entity says, come in and they clash with him of course he fights until the end and he is martyred right so the idea is that there are dynamics in the West Bank for resistance that do not exist for other pockets of resistance and other fronts of resistance so So it may not have as much of an effect on settler colonialism as other fronts have. But nonetheless, without the resistance in the West Bank, without those pockets in Hebron, Jenin, Tobas, and Nablus, without those, the settlement project would have just annihilated the West Bank completely. They have tried to completely eradicate the resistance as they have invaded Jenin, invaded Nablus, and called them complete military don'ts. They have, for the first time in years, through rockets. We have not seen that in the West Bank. And I must say that it was always because there's this idea that when you throw rockets in the West Bank, there are usually very much settlements around. So you wouldn't want to really... you know, use air force on an area that has settlements, right? Because every area, if you look actually 360 degrees, you'll see a settlement in Palestine. You cannot go on a high end, on a mountain, and not see a settlement around you. And that's how you know settler colonialism exists. is very much infested in the West Bank, right? As is, of course, for the rest of Palestine, but it's so much so that it is the case in the West Bank as it tries to bisect the West Bank, to create it, to make it so difficult for Palestinians to live and make it suffocating so that we ourselves, you know, want to basically leave and want to, you know, leave it, basically, to the settlers. Of course, that is not the case, and that will never be the case. But at the end, really, what this says, really, about this genocidal component of Zionism, right, the Gaza and what's happening in Gaza, is that for... Years and years, what we have seen is that this genocidal component has only been a means to the settler colonial end. And for the resistance front to not only pressure the Zionist entity to stop its genocide, but to also threaten the settler colonial element means that we are seeing, or now, Slowly, at least, if we're not being too hopeful, the end of Zionism. Because Zionism cannot survive without settler colonialism. And as long as we see it, we see how... In fact, no matter what others may have said, whether people believe in movements and nonviolent resistance, the only threat, real threat that has been proven to be a real threat has been those forms of resistance. And we're seeing it accelerated at the moment. Because, and in fact, despite the defeatism in the movement abroad, right? The movement has unfortunately died down a little bit. We have much to say about this, me and Lara, and perhaps I'll leave some of it, this movement element for Lara to speak on, because she's spoken on this before. But this element, this defeatism element has been quite, in fact, demoralizing for Palestinians, because we're seeing all of these, you know, so-called solidarity activists in the ceasefire movement, as you call it, suddenly feel like, okay, we can no longer do anything. We've done everything that we can do. We have gone on protests. We have, you know, called our, you know, representatives and what other, you know, we've done encampments, we've done actions and direct actions and whatnot and we have not been able to do anything about it only for them to realize that truly what they need to do now is in fact rally behind the resistance and forget all of the defeatism because right now an important component that we need to save is the component the radical basically component of this movement Not the liberal component that wants to see only an end to genocide in a ceasefire, but a component that wants to see the end of Zionism completely.

Henry Hakimaki: I have a small follow-up on one of the things that you said, a small reflection. You know, you mentioned that Zionism is a process. Colonialism, settler colonialism is a process. And that's absolutely the case. And we have to analyze it as such. And one of the things specifically that you said, which I think... is being laid to bear very clearly is that in order for these processes to carry on, in order for settler colonialism to carry on, in order for Zionism to carry on, there is a need, a necessity for continued settlers, new settlers at all times. Now, historically... they would call to people, Zionists abroad, to come home. And I'm using quotes here, listeners, air quotes. You can't see them, but come home to this place that you've never been before and settle this area. That was historically what has been the case. But as you mentioned, as a result of the current situation, there's not going to be that many people who are coming in from you know, Brooklyn or Poland right now that are going to settle this area at the current moment. And they're quite aware of this. I had just seen yesterday, we're recording this on October 2nd, when the missiles were coming in from Iran, Aviva Klompas, who is an official spokesperson for the Israeli government at the United Nations, has 300,000 followers on social media. tweeted, for every missile fired by Iran, we're going to make 100 Jewish babies. That is the greatest revenge. Now, first of all, we have to reflect on the conflation between Jewish and Zionist here because 100 Jewish babies, okay, great, have 100 Jewish babies. That's wonderful. However, there is a very clear and obvious and intentional conflation of Jewish with Zionist because what she is talking about is not Jewish people having babies. She is talking about new settlers. That is why that would be revenge. For each missile fired, there would be 100 new settlers killed. She is fully aware, as is the Israeli government, that right now people are not going to be coming in to settle from abroad. So how are you going to sustain your settler colonial project? You know, at the current moment, what it looks like is this mass childbirth is essentially your way of trying to repopulate your settler core. Now, I just think that it's worth dwelling on that for a moment, that we have these processes going on in terms of processes of settler colonialism. processes of Zionism, but then we also have these rhetorical processes by people like this spokesperson. Again, she was a speechwriter for the government of Israel who knows how to craft narrative, who knows how to craft rhetoric, who is continuing with this well-trod path of conflating Jewish with Zionist. Because they know that if you claim that, well, you know, this is a terrible thing. Well, they would call you anti-Semitic because there's this conflation going on. But again, it's very clear that they're not talking about just Jewish people. They're talking about Jewish settlers in order to sustain the settler colonial project. Now, Lara, I'm going to be transitioning to you. In the last year, there's been a lot of focus on Gaza. Rightly so. However, as we mentioned before we started recording. In the last year, a lot of people who aren't maybe as politically engaged and historically engaged as we are weren't fully aware of the historical context that led up to October 7th. And then in the mean – in the next year, the year leading up to now – Thank you very much. So, Laura, I'm wondering if we can turn to you at this moment to give us a brief rundown of what the situation in the West Bank was like leading up to October 7th. Just briefly, because, you know, that's a huge history and something that we've talked about.

Lara Kilani: It's like a long time back to have to remember, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, yeah, no. So, I mean, we have talked about the West Bank in the past. And listeners, we have many episodes that you can turn back to. But just briefly, you know, what was that historical precedent a year ago? And then what has happened in the last year? And I know that there has been a lot of things that you're going to have to recall now. So I apologize for the scope of this question. But, Laura, take it away.

Lara Kilani: Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe I'll just... There's so much to remember, but I think in terms of understanding the historical situation, what people need to know, Also, there are some things I want to add to what you said before, so maybe I can fit them in as well. The situation in the West Bank has been bad before October 7th. Now, unlike Gaza, the West Bank is not under a siege, right? Under a 17-year siege where there's much more limited resources, much more limited mobility. You know, people have a bit more mobility. A bit more access of permits, for example, to move into the rest of Palestine in and out. Before October 7th, many more, I believe hundreds of thousands, I could pull up the statistics. Palestinians had work permits and were working inside of 1948 lands, what people would call Israel. um where you know you can make a lot more money than if you're working in the west bank but of course for folks who don't know so the west bank is split into different areas according to the oslo accords area a where the palestinian authority is supposed to have complete authority and we'll come back to that area b where it's shared in area c which is the vast majority of the west bank where it's completely under israeli military control and And this is the rural areas of the West Bank where the settlements and the outposts exist. And so and where most of the state land grabs happen and things like that. So if you see a picture of a settlement, just know it's Area C. And this is where a lot of the Israeli state violence, you know, the border police, the military come and beat people up and so on. Not all of it. So before October 7th, there was a lot bad going on because there's sort of this acceleration of settlement building of legal efforts. We mentioned Regavim earlier in the podcast, and Regavim is one of like. Many settler organizations, including the JNF and its subsidiary here, if you don't know what the JNF is, the Jewish National Fund and its subsidiary here, Himanuta, which is the one that buys the land in the West Bank. among others, who had turned to this, you know, lawfare-style campaigns to try to strip the most vulnerable Palestinian communities of their land and resources. So if folks can remember all the way back to, like, 2017, 2018, there was the case of Khan al-Ahmad, which was very famous, or other folks might remember Susya, in South Hebron, both targeted by the organization Regevim, which was using the court system to try to force these very vulnerable, very rural, very tiny communities off of their lands. And so this was really a lot of what was going on before October 7th, really a difficult situation. And I should say also now that I'm, you know, recalling 2023 before October 7th was the deadliest year for Palestinians until right until before October 7th. Now for killings by settlers, killings by, you know, Israeli state forces. So it was already like very much an escalating situation just talking about the West Bank. Now, since October 7th, almost immediately, there was a massive spike in state violence, in settler violence. Settlers are very emboldened. I mean, they're already emboldened, but more emboldened. and have been since then, and also the cases that started before October 2023. When we talk about lawfare and we talk about the JNF and the things that they were doing, there's one particular case I wanted to talk about that started, I think, 12 years ago or 20 years ago, actually. That's another similar case that has really ticked up in the last months. So since October 7th, there have been hundreds of arrests of Palestinians throughout the West Bank, regular, you know, invasions of communities, especially in the north, on almost a nightly basis at different points in Tulkerem, in Nablus, in Jenin, in Qalqilya. I'm missing any. It feels like I'm missing in Bethlehem, but really much stronger in the north and particularly targeting these refugee camps. So I think folks at home might like folks who aren't already familiar with Palestine. might not know that Palestinians who were displaced from their land in 1948, like my family, or in 1960, some of them still live in refugee camps, right? 70% of Gaza, before the genocide war started, were refugees already from either 48, I guess, from 48, right? And so this is really important in understanding the context in Gaza, right? When we're thinking about people, families that have already been displaced 10 times in the last year, their families, many of them, the majority of them, who were already displaced from 70 years ago, right? People have been sharing stories online saying things like, my grandmother was born in a tent and died in a tent. And I think for those of us who have grandparents or parents who were born in a tent, it's very devastating, right? It's something very tangible. that we know from the stories that we heard. So to hear that it's happening to someone, you know, only kilometers away is devastating and it's very real. So that's something important for folks to know. But also within Jerusalem, within the West Bank, there are refugee camps. Within Bethlehem, there are several refugee camps. And in Tulkerem, in Jenin, in Tabas, in Nablus, there are also refugee camps, right? So when the Israeli forces are invading these cities, they're not just invading the cities. Most of the time they're going in and targeting communities in these refugee camps who are often the most impoverished or some of the most impoverished in the area. have organized resistance, who are protecting and defending their communities, who are used to these regular invasions and assaults, and arresting people. There are, I think, more people arrested and being held in Israeli jails at this point. I mean, numbers we don't even know right now, right? Because it's so many, and because so many people have been disappeared from Gaza as well. So we don't even have the complete numbers. And then as Banna mentioned, there's alongside the Israeli invasions into these spaces and the subsequent resistance, there has been an uptick as well in PA involvement. And so sometimes that looks like arrests. Sometimes that looks like raids. It definitely looks like coordination. Right. Right. So it's important to understand also, Ben already talked about it beautifully, but the way that the PA forces play a really important and material role in sustaining colonization, not just as like this abstract concept as like, oh, in the future, they'll be the head of state, but in a very real context where people are defending their families from daily incursions. And I should say not just daily like incursions, They're driving through the refugee camp. No, they're, you know, bulldozing the streets. They're cutting the water lines. They're invading the mosque and, you know, destroying parts of it, you know, really tearing up infrastructure that is much needed in these communities that are also overcrowded. But I just wanted to say, like, if I can, one thing, Henry, about what you brought up, because maybe a few things about what you brought up. It's okay. You were talking about, you know, this... element of settler colonialism, Abana brought it up actually, and you commented on it, that it's important to be having more settlers all the time. And I think there are different elements about that that we should talk about, right? There's what you brought up. There is this, I think we can all see it, right? Folks who are very familiar with like birth and demographic policies connected to the state of Israel and folks who are just jumping in now. There's a very bizarre obsession with births, with sexuality, with rape, with demographics, with policing Palestinians demographics and bodies and ability to eat, you know, ability to have children and take care of those children and make sure that they live. Yeah. Yeah, we can all witness. It's very much uncovered in a new way. But I think that the way that colonization has played out in the West Bank, that it's really sped up, you know, not only with this, with the forced ethnic cleansing of, like I mentioned, like 15 villages, at least 15 villages. These are what we know of. In the last year and more than 1,500 Palestinians, but in the construction of new settlements, because the way that they bring settlers is not only right, of course, you know, not only through birth or through, I don't know. But but also by bringing people in who are economically, you know, who are more economically motivated. Right. If you go to, I don't know, like a real estate website, you can see that those. The cost of living in some of these settlements, and I'm not talking about like shabby little outposts on a hilltop that's just been stolen. I'm talking about like settlements that are guarded, that are, you know, really built up, nice houses with pools, with gyms, with schools and, you know, yeshivas and everything. The cost of living in those is astronomically less. than living in Jerusalem, for example. And so there's also this economic element that even while Israelis are fighting to colonize and carry out genocide in Gaza, to subdue resistance in the West Bank, to subdue and destroy as much as they can in Lebanon and elsewhere, that people who are paying attention, settlers here, are also using the opportunity to colonize the West Bank as much as they can. And they're letting each other know that they're doing that. And Betzel El Smotrich has played an important role in that, but it's the whole state that's doing it, right? But I just wanted to add another thing as well, which is that I think I read. So in another piece by Mary Turfa, who I mentioned before, she talks about, you know, this this issue of settlers in the north and that a quarter of the settlers in one of the settlements right in the north, right next to Lebanon, in a in a community that used to be shared between Palestine and Lebanon, actually. that a quarter of them said they wouldn't return because the state couldn't guarantee their protection, right? And so there's this question of how do you guarantee protection in a situation of settler colonialism? Now, we know what Banna said, there's no real border, there's an interest in colonizing further, and all of these things. But There's another piece as well by Matza. I'm not sure exactly the name of the author, but we can share it after if it's helpful, where this writer was talking about this philosophy, which I also won't name properly Einzig Zionism or like final victory Zionism, where the logic might seem irrational to those people outside who wonder, why would you open more fronts? Why would you attack more people who you can't beat? And what this author was arguing is that in the situation of a fascist and colonial state like this, that the possibility of victory is better than a slow death, right? That the possibility of total victory is better than a slow death. And I think in this situation where we see that there is no future that is secure for the settlers without this total victory, which to be clear, I do not believe will happen. That there's no continuity for the settler colony. Right. And so we published a piece, I don't know, a week or two ago, maybe about how Israel's real strength isn't, you know, it's precision or its military capabilities or that it has this excellent intellect or information gathering or anything like that. Israel's main strength is its complete, unmitigated, eliminatory violence that it uses against anyone that stands in the way of its colonial project. And it's doing that in Lebanon now, and it's been doing it in Gaza even before October 7th, and it's been doing it in the West Bank, and it's been doing it elsewhere. But when we see what's happening in Lebanon, I think we can see it with new eyes, right, that this doesn't just happen against Palestinians. This happens to anyone who gets in the way. And this is the true strength that Israel has, that Hezbollah, that Nasrallah, that Hamas, none of them have because they, as we can see, as a practice, do not target civilians or civilian infrastructure, whereas Israel does that as a matter of policy. Sorry, I know that was quite long.

Henry Hakimaki: That's fine. I have one very small comment. It's going to sound like a flippant comment, but I can assure you that I'm being very, very sincere when I say this, even though I'm sure some people will not take it as such. You know, when you're talking about birth rates and, you know, this obsession with birth rates and the obsession with the birth rates of the other and how this is part of the settler colonial project. You know, listeners who are based in the U.S. might want to reflect on that for a little bit because that is very much part of the obsession of the United States. It's almost as if, wow, the United States is a settler colonial project and the settler colonial project carries on to this day and that this is something that is baked into settler colonial projects, into their very DNA. You know, we have to consider the United States is still a settler colonial project. The struggle against the settler colonial project continues. And as long as they acknowledge the fact that they are a settler colony, this is something that they have to grapple with. just in the same way that the Zionist entity has to grapple with the same thing. They have to think about their birth rates versus the birth rates of the quote-unquote other. That is a feature of settler colonies. So listeners, if you're based in the United States or Canada or any of those settler colonies, you might want to reflect on that for a little bit. Adnan, I'm going to turn it to you for the next question.

Adnan Hussain: Yeah, I just wanted to, in getting a little bit of the flavor of the on-the-ground conditions for resistance, particularly in the West Bank, but also thinking about... the situation from a regional perspective too, both you, Bana and Lara, mentioned the difficulties, the double difficulties of dealing not only with the Zionist occupation and settler-colonial issues, violence and expropriation, but of the complicating factor of having a second kind of concern and conflict in attempting to defend Palestinian land and Palestinian people from the Palestinian Authority itself. And maybe it's worth talking a little bit more about the complexities of that when you're witnessing, for a year, incredible genocide taking place in Gaza, increased violence in the West Bank, now attacks even on Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon, and to have You know, the organized force that is armed and equipped and supported and financed by the West and and so on, undermining activities. to protect Palestine, to protect the land, to protect its people. That just seems like a very complicated and difficult situation. And it's paralleled by the fact that there are so many Arab Zionist regimes that are also collaborating have normalized with Israel are allies of US empire and are pursuing its geopolitical and economic interests and strategies in the region. And so this is a very kind of difficult and complicated fight. And I'm just wondering from the perspective of Palestinians struggling for their freedom What is happening vis-a-vis, you know, the PA? I mean, when I was a... I'm sorry I'm going so long on this, but it's something I've thought about a lot because when I visited Palestine for the first time in the West Bank and, you know, I went to a number of places, Hebron and Ramallah and Nablus and so on, it was already 2005, 2006, I think. And for years already, I had been thinking... the Oslo process is actually more inimical to the freedom of Palestine and that what should be done in the so-called peace process is declare the end of the PA and not have this subcontracting of the occupation and undermining the legitimacy and the directness of the struggle for liberation. And when I said this, and this is in the early period where there was frustration, but there was still some... Feeling that, oh, you know, it's been a benefit to have these opportunities for some kind of funding, for some government employment, for, you know, some autonomy and so on. But these, you know, ultimately. you know, by now, surely, I mean, nobody other than those who are in the direct employ or, you know, relatives with family working, you know, can possibly see the PA as anything other than another internal enemy to the liberation of Palestine. And so I'm wondering, how do people deal with that? How do you deal with struggle with that you know, on the ground, what are the forces of resistance that are taking shape in, you know, opposing both the PA and the Israeli occupation? Can they be done together? How are people thinking of that? I'm just very kind of interested in, you know, with that sort of a problem. You know, in Algeria, okay, there were a few liberal kind of organizations, but quickly they got, you know, pushed aside and it was the FLN fighting against the French to remove the occupier, the colonizer. And it wasn't clouded by this kind of a situation. This has been going on for decades now. with the entrenchment of the PA in Palestinian society. So I'm just wondering your thoughts about that. Both of you mentioned it, but I'm really curious with how you struggle with this, what are people doing about it? And is resistance building to the PA? And how can it possibly have any legitimacy with anyone at this point?

Bana Abu Zuluf: An extremely, extremely difficult question to answer because it really excavates... a deep sort of guilt that people in the West Bank experience towards the Palestinians in Gaza experiencing genocide, right? One of the first questions that were sort of hailed by Palestinians in Gaza were why are Palestinians in the West Bank not doing anything about the genocide, right? One of the things that I personally have been asked was, well, if the West Bank, you know, Palestinians obviously in the West Bank live far away from Gaza, but not too far away, why are they not protesting? Why are they not resisting genocide? And it was always an answer that was difficult to, it was also, sorry, a question that was difficult to answer because, yeah, why were Palestinians not doing that? And I think, in a way, the answer, either way, whether it was going to be a justification or whether it was going to be sort of an apology for why Palestinians do not resist. Either way, it was not going to be a proper answer, right? And this has to do with basically the sort of Oslo paradigm and what it had put for Palestinians from the signing of the Oslo until today. And so what the PA has done for us is that it had painted Palestine in the lens of one goal, which is the goal of statehood, right? And the statehood on 1967 border, and that would be basically the two-state solution for them, right? So... In a way, they made concessions on what Palestine is when they signed or what Palestine can be or how we can imagine Palestine in the Oslo Accords, right? And so during that process, we had a process of this so-called state building. We've had the process where Salam Fayyad, for example, created the strategy, sort of financial economic strategy of Fayyadism, which meant to introduce a vast amount of sort of economic projects and dualization of Palestinian society, sort of a strong civil society, good governance, whatever you want to call it. to enable sort of the building of the state. So it was always about building a state, right? But all of these measures, right, including measures of dialogue projects, right, the funding of billions of dollars and from many countries and from many institutions and donors and funders, to sort of normalize the existence of the Zionist entity. All of these measures have served as counterinsurgency, right? Ever since the OTSA paradigm and ever since the signing of the security coordination in writing in the White River Memorandum, it was very important that anything the PA does, anything that they want to do, has only one limit, to prevent Palestinians from reaching a radical imagination of liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. They want to imprison Palestine in a two-state solution framework. Palestine besides the Zionist state, right? That is how they imagined it. That's how they wanted us to imagine Palestine. So in a way, the PA became sort of a representative of the ruling class. It no longer represented Palestinians and their wishes. It no longer wanted to defend Palestine and Palestinians, resist on behalf of Palestinians, and it signed itself as a comprador and a collaborator with the Zionist entity. So because of that, The Zionists had sort of a friend, right, that lived among Palestinians. Every family in Palestine has a member or a couple of members that work in the PA, right? So it's very ingrained into the Palestinian community and controls the intelligence of controlled every aspect of Palestinian life, can decide whether you, for example, as a Palestinian, you are able to get a really good job or not, you know, whether you're blacklisted or not, whether you are arrested or not, whether you are able to travel or not. It controls every aspect of your life, right? So All of these measures, again, they were meant to contain resistance to the Zionist entity. So in a way, it was sort of a normal outcome that the resistance in the pockets were going to be fought against. by the PA. PA was going to be, in fact, more so of, you know, have more so violent rejection of colonialism, sorry, of resistance than the... So it was necessary that the PA and resistance forces have become sort of oppositional, sort of polar opposites, right? And now, in a way, if you were looking at it, the PAs no longer protected the Palestinians. They started to protect the settlers, right? An easy example. A settler enters a Palestinian city by accident. They're suddenly taken by the PA forces and delivered in safety to the settlement or to Israeli forces in coordination. On the other hand, you see an invasion of a Palestinian city in broad daylight. They call in, they come in and the Zionist forces, they call in to the PA forces. They say, look, we are going to invade this area. We want you to leave the area so that we can ensure the fulfillment of our military or whatnot objective, right? Completely. Like we see images, we've seen those images of the car of the PA forces leaving areas, knowing that when they left, there was going to be an invasion. It is an easy way, by the way, for resistance fighters to know whether there is an invasion or not. It's that prominent, right? That prominent. it becomes so normalized, sort of collaboration, normalization of the Zionist entity. And so that's why when we see our allies or so-called solidarity activists normalizing the Palestinian Authority, we just ask them, what you're normalizing is Zionism. with the Palestinian faith. That's what it is. And you, again, we see this more prominent in the West than it is in Palestine, this sort of, what do you call it, identity reductionism. But they're Palestinians, so we can't really fight against the PA. We cannot really say bad things about the PA. We cannot alienate the PA because they still are Palestinians. And we're not in the position to... oppose the PA, but we tell them as Palestinians, do so. In fact, please save us from PA as you would save us, as you want, as you should want to also save us from Zionism, right? From the genocidal entity of Zionism. You should also want to save us from its collaborator, the Palestinian Authority. So this is how we feel about it. We feel that the normalization of the PA is also the normalization of Zionism.

Henry Hakimaki: Lara, anything that you want to add?

Lara Kilani: I think Vanna did an excellent job, but maybe I'll just say, I think... There are also the elements that are even less formal, right? That the PA, I was trying to find the statistics while Banna was speaking, but I wasn't able to find them. But the PA is a major employer in the West Bank as well, right? So even beyond the formal elements that Banna mentioned of, you know, they control your access to mobility, they control if you get an ID, they control all of these things, right? It's also that everyone knows someone who's employed by the PA. Right. And so if you speak out or act out against them and not even to the extent that that is something you're known for or you'll be arrested for or killed for. There are always, you know, there's always the potential for repercussions on your family members or people who are related to you who are connected in some official way to the PA. So I think that's an important element for folks to understand is like, Banna really, like explained it really well, but this embeddedness, you know, that it's not that there is like a co-optation that is like it's like an entrapped population that's being co-opted, right? But I also wanted to give this example that I think is really important because it's also been difficult to see the ways that folks in Palestine negotiate or don't negotiate, you know, resistance to the PA. And of course, I understand it. But, you know, it's difficult sometimes to see it. But I was just looking up the exact date of this incident. And there was a march in Ramallah. No, in Jenin, I'm sorry. In Jenin on October 18th, 2023. So this is 11 days after October 7th and the start of the genocide. There was a march in Jenin in solidarity with Gaza and against... Actually, this might have even been in response to the al-Ahli bombing. But there was a march anyway in solidarity with Gaza and the PA shot off live fire and it killed a young Palestinian girl, a 12-year-old girl, Razan Nasrallah. And so I think there's also these very physical, painful, you know, present ways that people see very early, like even in this case, right, very early on, not even two weeks into the genocide, a young girl is killed for marching with her family and protesting against what we already knew was going to be a genocide and was already starting to take the shape of a genocide. Right. So, yeah, I mean, the violence is very real and it's very tangible, even from, you know, the Palestinian Authority, which I think people don't always imagine. Maybe people imagine us being like bumbling or useless or like part of a compadre class, but don't always see that there's also this very real element of violence as well.

Henry Hakimaki: I'm going to push back on you, Laura, on one thing you said specifically. Don't worry. It's in a friendly way. You know, you said less than two weeks after the start of the genocide. This is where I'm going to push back. Settler colonialism is genocide. It's this phase of the genocide.

Lara Kilani: It's a good pushback.

Henry Hakimaki: Yes, I know that you are absolutely aware of it, but I'm very aware of the way that this is phrased and the way that this is then portrayed in more broad consciousness, popular consciousness, is that this genocide came from nowhere. This genocide came as a result of October 7th. I have a huge problem with that portrayal. And I'm not saying with your portrayal of it, Lara, but with this portrayal of it coming from nowhere. And so I always make sure, at least when it strikes me, that we are portraying this genocide as coming from October 7th. I always want to phrase it as this phase of the genocide because settler colonialism inherently... is a genocidal project. Not just in Palestine. The United States is a genocidal project. Canada is a genocidal project. Australia is a genocidal project. Settler colonialism is a genocidal project from its inception. And so this genocidal project began with the settlement of occupied Palestine. But, you know, October 7th, 2023 was a new phase, a much more blatant and obvious and visible phase of the genocide that had been ongoing.

Lara Kilani: No, I totally agree, Henry. And I just want to say that was a very good pushback. And that was a bad misspeak on my part, but I appreciate it because you're completely right. And I would be remiss if it was, you know, we would all maybe be remiss if it was left that way. So I really appreciate it because you're right.

Henry Hakimaki: It's all good. I see my co-host Adnan is having to leave. Adnan, it was great having you here for this conversation. And we will have you back for the next episode very soon. But we'll carry on for one or two more questions. So yes, like I said, it was friendly because one of the things that I've been studying quite a bit lately is narrative and rhetoric. And so it's something that has been very useful for me in that I'm hyper aware of not only the rhetoric that is being utilized by our enemies, talking about these 100 Jewish babies rather than 100 Zionist babies. Like, again, there is a rhetorical move there. And that's something that is obvious when you think about it. But, you know, actually studying this independently has made me even more acutely aware of these sorts of things. But also it makes me more acutely aware of the way that we're phrasing and framing our arguments and our analysis. Because without this proper framing... Thank you very much. or the ability to go through the amount of material historically and analytically as we're able to. So what we're trying to do is provide a resource much in the same way that the Good Shepherd Collective does. And so, yeah, that was my kind of point on that is that being aware of the framing is always super, super important for us in order to ensure that our message is not being lost and or being obfuscated in some way that it would be able to be twisted by our enemies, you know, Zionists, settler colonialists. So I want to turn towards something of a closing question. You know, we may have some things that branch off of this, but we can think of it as a closing question, which is when we're talking about resistance, right? Obviously, the greatest resistance and the primary resistance is by Palestinians themselves. But as we see, we have resistance taking other forms as well. We have resistance taking forms in terms of regional allies of the Palestinian people who are showing a tremendous bravery in their resistance. And then we also have individuals around the world who are standing up and showing resistance in the ways that are possible for them. Now, many ways in which we see resistance being displayed are not necessarily the most useful. And so that's where this question comes in, which is, What does resistance look like? What should resistance look like? Not just in the context of the Palestinian people, who, again, their resistance is the primary driving factor and should be, and not necessarily in terms of the regional allies. I'd love it. I know we have some listeners in Iran, for example. I have some reach out to me, and that's wonderful. But I also am aware that this being an English-speaking podcast, is going to be primarily listened to by people in, well, let's just be honest about it, countries that are not showing solidarity with the Palestinian people and are instead currently and historically arming and aiding the genocide of the Palestinian people. So what does resistance look like and what should resistance look like in these various contexts, particularly in the case of our listeners who perhaps would like to hear the perspectives of of Palestinians that in terms of what their resistance should be taking the form of?

Lara Kilani: Such a good question, Henry. And yeah, I think I'll just say, like, before I get into that a bit, I think The point about being really clear about what we mean, when things started, what terms mean, right? We don't all need to be able to necessarily define settler colonialism in an academic way or define genocide in an academic way to be able to see it and know it, right? Because we can see injustice and know it. We can see starving children and know it's bad.

Henry Hakimaki: Sorry, can I make a very flippant comment? It's like porn.

Lara Kilani: Yes, we do need to be able to define it academically.

Henry Hakimaki: No, no, no, no, no. It's like porn. You know, there's that famous quotation. I believe it was from the United States Supreme Court where they asked the Supreme Court justice what he meant by porn. And he says, I cannot define it, but I know it when I see it. This is exactly what we're talking about. You can know what settler colonialism is without being able to write an academic paper on settler colonialism, much in the same way that if you see porn, you can know what it is without being able to write a dissertation on it, you know?

Lara Kilani: Right. No, exactly. But I think that this clarity is really important. And it goes back to sort of what we were talking about in the beginning, right? That we... That this is part of what we want to do, that this is part of what you're doing here, which I think is really important. And I will pray like we'll talk about that when we're actually ending because we are all big fans of this podcast and really appreciate it. But this is also part of what our work is, right, that. A lot of times, and I think I alluded to it earlier, we get into these conversations because we publish pieces, we try to give our analysis that way, but we're in this era of social media and people are also making their name and their popularity and their celebrity online, right? So this is where a lot of the conversations are happening. And a lot of times we do get into these discussions that I think it can sound like to people outside or people who aren't reading everything or aren't, you know, really paying attention. I'll get into the actual answer to the question, but I think The I think the start was really important, too, because part of what people need to do, like really and not just outsiders, like also Palestinians in the diaspora and myself and other people as well, you know, really need to do is think about these things, read about these things if they can and be thoughtful. Right. And take correction. Take action. um input when it's given because i think you know that's one of the things that we also try to push is is allowing correction allowing evolution allowing um critique and responding to it thoughtfully and that's really an important element that i think we're seeing especially in a lot of younger folks who are you know organizing in really important ways But that we don't see a lot with these, you know, it's not all older folks, but a lot of folks who are making money, are making careers, being, you know, in these different roles. So I just wanted to mention that. But about the sort of resistance element outside of Palestine, I mean, I think talking to viewers in the U.S., which is our base as well, or Canada or Europe, there has been so much that's been done in the last year that I think is really new or at least new. like has brought in new energy, brought in new developments. Right. So there has been, as we mentioned, like this new conversation about Zionism where we're no longer just talking about Netanyahu or settlers in the West Bank. And that's really important. Right. That seems to be coming more out in the open and should continue. But but something that's been really cool to see as well is like folks taking on more personal responsibility and personal risks in these ways. I mean, you asked what should folks be working towards? And I think really simply resistance from the outside has to be connected to something material. It has to be because for too long it's been dominated by these NGOs who are funded by, you know, large donors. It's all connected to lobbying and international law has to fall within the Oslo framework, has to be about, you know, calling your representatives. And what has calling our representatives done for about for Palestine for the last year? Nothing. Exactly. So, you know, this is really important for folks to realize. But a lot of these people have been moving outside of that, right? We saw that with the encampments, which was very much about material, not just about taking up the space, but about demanding that universities around the world divest. And that is really important, right? Even if I heard people saying things like, well, that's not going to end the genocide. Well, that is a really important element of pressure that people can do, that people can take responsibility for, right? In their own community, that their money is going towards. That is incredibly important. And that's not the only thing. I've had friends in the U.S., you know, and around the world who have been involved in blocking the boats, you know, trying to keep the weapons from going. There's, I read about this today, there's a There's a strike right now by some union of dock workers in the U.S. That's striking.

Henry Hakimaki: Yeah, it's the International Longshore Union.

Lara Kilani: Okay. I didn't know their name, but what I saw is they're making an exception to make sure that weapons come to Israel to kill Palestinians and Lebanese people.

Henry Hakimaki: It's literally the only exception in that strike, which is hilariously depressing. You know, like it is both hilarious and depressing that, you know, we will not cross this picket line for anything except for bombs to drop on children. That's the one exception we're going to make.

Lara Kilani: No, exactly. And so I think like these are areas people can push. Right. Because people who are in solidarity with Palestine should be in solidarity, should be, you know, working with unions in solidarity with unions in connection with unions and should be telling people this is wrong. This is not class solidarity. This is not helping anyone. This is solidarity with imperialism and colonialism. And this is wrong. And that's something that people can do, right? But I just want to mention as well, because there's also this other element that I think touches on things you brought up around settler colonialism in the rest of the world. And maybe it's like a question I'm raising, but... But I want to talk about it anyway. Like there's been this renunciation movement by folks outside of Palestine as well. Folks who are Israeli citizens who hold Israeli citizenship or held Israeli citizenship, I should say. who are materially divesting from the state. And maybe it's people who haven't lived here in a long time, you know, maybe aren't getting any benefits, maybe never participated in any of the, you know, served in the military at least or anything like that. But it means something. It's a big deal to see. I mean, I'll say as a Palestinian, it means something to see people divesting from the colonial project here. Because as we've written and talked about, It's not just right that that Zionism depends on Palestinian elimination. It's also that Zionism only exists because Israel only exists because Palestinians are every day enduring the violence of dispossession. So every day, even if there's no bombs. no killing, no imprisonment, no withholding of the bodies or, you know, tear gas or anything, settlement. It is still violence by the fact that all of our families who aren't currently in the land that they belong to are denied access. By its existence, Israel is an act of aggression, right? Which you said. All right. But so this is so people engaged in these really material sacrifices are also important. So there are different areas that I think people have started with. But as Banna mentioned, there has kind of been this, I think, a bit of a feeling of defeatism from the outside, you know, on the one hand, like we should admit to ourselves, it's almost a year and the genocide is very much ongoing and expanding. And that's something we should be honest about. And we should also be honest about why, which is that we need to focus more on disrupting material support for colonialism, right? That Folks can't just organize, you know, in in direction, you know, facing the Democratic Party and hoping in the U.S. context and or the Labor Party or any political party hoping that this is going to be the answer because it's not. Folks really need to be organizing and creating opportunities. lasting, revolutionary infrastructure in their own communities based on principles and not just based on talking points with the goal being material impacts on the ground here. And there are examples of that, but I know I've talked a long time, so I'll leave it there.

Henry Hakimaki: No, it's okay. I'm going to turn it over to Banna. But first, the one thing I just also want to add very briefly, and I say briefly, but you listen to the show, so you know when I say briefly, it could be any length of time. I'll try. When we're talking about the Longshore Union strike making an exemption for weapons to be transmitted, The other thing that is kind of hilariously depressing is the fact that these logistics centers, these choke points, to use a term that I got from my friend Manny Ness, who we've recorded with earlier this week, but I think this episode will come out first. He co-edited a book called Choke Points. It's about logistics workers being able to act In unison with one another in order to affect political change and theory behind that and also practice. One of the things that comes to mind, I know for instance, the port of Livorno in Italy. Livorno is a very famous city in Italy for being the hotbed of socialist and communist action within the country. Port City. And when this phase of the genocide in Gaza began, they were the first ones to close down their port to any weapon shipments going out to Israel. I also know that there was another port city in Greece that did the same thing, like, within the same week that the port of Livorno did, but there were various ports that were basically blocking any weapons from going out. Now, keeping in mind that if we're talking about transmitting weaponry that has to go out through some international point of exit, not necessarily port of exit, it can be air, can be sea, But with many of these things, the easiest way to transport them is via sea. And so if you're choking off the ability to transmit weaponry that is complicit in AIDS and abets, genocide, that is the point at which you can affect the most change as just a worker, you know? If you're working at a port... or at an airport that is the area that is transmitting the weaponry to a genocidal settler colony, by closing that down, you are having a material impact that greatly outweighs the ability of most other people to have a material impact if they are not actively in the region where they could do some other form of action.

Lara Kilani: Absolutely.

Henry Hakimaki: In the case of this Longshore Union, they're doing the exact opposite of showing solidarity, the exact opposite of acting as a choke point. They are acting only in defense of their own collective bargaining and not showing anything. Any form of solidarity with the people that are being genocided and have been genocided for decades. It's the absolute opposite of what we see. And so when we think about the ability of these workers at choke points to affect political change. This is the effect that we see in the case of settler colonies is that too often the individuals are only concerned with their imperial mode of living and don't have any consideration or concern for people that are being genocided outside of their own country, outside of their own union. And that is something that I take great umbrage with and something that really frustrates me because of the potential that they could have and the fact that they are not only squandering that opportunity, but actively becoming complicit in the genocide themselves. Like I said, that was supposed to be short, but oh well. Banna, please.

Lara Kilani: No, but it's a great point. It's a great point because it's true. It's showing solidarity not with Not class solidarity or solidarity with, you know, anyone, but the imperialists and the colonists. It's not, yeah, it's disgusting. I'm glad that you knew what I was talking about so you could explain it.

Bana Abu Zuluf: I actually just want to add one thing on what you were saying on this. like trade unions just a big exclamation mark on that because I mean as far as I know like the obvious like the most sort of in your face like elements that are that could be targeted or have actual material effect are not just weapons factories but anything capitalism really so The fact that trade unions have been, in fact, very much so like not devastating, but have also been complicit in a way is problematic. Not only are they like constraining and sort of. eliminating an important aspect of anti-imperialist organizing, which is basically strike action and basically revolutionary potential of workers, they are also not allowing for probably the most effective measure of putting pressure on And that's how it is. If we were to actually look into this, yes, protests, and we talk about this, by the way, at the GSD, yes, protests can be nice, a space where you show in numbers a form of rejection, sort of like what we call a mass movement and whatnot. Yes, that may be good in a way, But at the end of the day, a protest is not really going to put as much sort of pressure that a strike action would do. Imagine a sector-wide strike action. of workers and supported by unions i imagine that i would love to imagine that in fact we know this is the way but you know because of trade union bureaucracy because of how trade unions have sort of become spaces as well of sort of collaboration with the ruling class, as opposed to, you know, as we said, a bargain tool with the ruling class, as opposed to a revolutionary tool against the ruling class. So it's all really interesting because, I mean, we have a specific case in Ireland where there's this law called the Industrial Relations Act, which basically prevents unions from committing or supporting strike action for political reasons, right? So imagine even that there are laws like these that are just in existence, basically, and we're just allowing them to be. And basically, trade unions are preventing such immense power and withholding such immense power of workers. So, again, trade unions in this sense, unfortunately, in the movement, and we have to be honest, they have been, apart from some, because I'm not going to name every trade union because some were actually quite positive, they were in fact, the majority were in fact counter-revolutionary, right? Right. And they acted as counterinsurgents and tools of drooling class. And so we have to call it that this is the tool that has so far yet to be fully used in its full potential that could also assist in the current resistance that is happening on the ground. with a different front. So we have to be clear about that, that there are ways that, you know, there are still ways that we haven't really developed and looked into and advanced further on in the struggle for, you know, in solidarity as well with Palestinians, but also in the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole. Because, again, this is not just about Palestine, right? This is just about the world. Can we live in a world that just... allows genocide to happen like anymore can we really allow this to happen if Israel is able to do to commit this genocidal violence against its enemies so can the US against you know dissidents in the US itself like you know we can I mean, they've done it, obviously, in the past, so you don't come at me, Henry. This is obviously part of death colonialism. I can see you laughing. You can't see Henry laughing, but I can. Just to say that this will, this is basically the promise of imperialism. The promise of imperialism is, or sorry, the promise of tolerance is for imperialism, breeds fascism, it breeds genocide, it breeds immense, eliminatory, sorry, violence, and just, what's the word for it? Omnicide? Maybe the destruction of everything? If we can be honest. So I would just like to also lastly mention that there are so many people that come up to us and tell us that they've been suspended because of their activism, that they've been, you know, and they've been also followed, you know, and harassed as well by Zionist forces. And we must say to these, you know, and show these activists grace and support and, you know, solidarity because they've put themselves and their lives on the line for Palestine. So we do at the GSD always say, you know, if you have, you know, if you've been targeted, come up to us, we'll uplift your campaign for Palestine you know, for more publicity for your issue and how, and we will try our best to support you because, and we've seen also obviously different levels of, you know, community support for those that spin, even, I mean, even a tenured professor was, you know, fired, so we can see how, you know, you know, Zionism and their ruling class is just absolutely fed up of the strength of this movement. So, and, and the ways that we're exposing their hypocrisy, but, but we have to, we have to support these people and we have to also pressure trade unions. And we also have to uplift the positive. And also, as we always like to do, if in the GFC, hope that the negative and show that the negative are, are, are there because so people cannot soften the edges of the negatives and normalize them. Because it's important that clarity remains a clarity. There's no more tolerance and normalization for anything, anything less than, you know, complete, you know, designification, liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. That was so good.

Lara Kilani: I don't know if I want to add anything anymore. What a good, like, oh, what a powerful ending. I just wanted to add really quick. And I will make it quick. There have been recent victories in Canada, especially, that are very material victories that we should talk about really quickly because I think it is important that people don't fall into defeatism and see ways, right, that are already happening and that they can plug into in their own communities. So I just wanted to quickly mention that. I just wanted to quickly mention that. So a few years ago, a Palestinian coalition in Palestine, including the Good Shepherd Collective, launched the Defund Racism campaign. And I won't get into it. You can find the website defundracism.org. But basically, part of the point was just reminding people that some of these settler organizations that I've mentioned earlier in the conversation were are having a very powerful material impact, not only on the ground in the sense that they are actively engaged in settlement and legal efforts, but also they are finding their way into more and more powerful positions. We know that Israel is a settler colonial state. It cannot be... I can't think of the proper word, but can't be reformed. But nonetheless, it becomes more dangerous all the time. And so we pointed out, you know, we made a list of some of these organizations that are having a very tangible impact on the ground. And there's actually a case which I won't get into now, but there's an ongoing case just north of Bethlehem in Al-Makrur Valley of a family, Al-Qaysiyah family, whose land, they're a Palestinian Christian family who have been in this battle for 20 years against the JNF and Himanuta, their subsidiary that I mentioned before, that has been suing them, saying they bought their land and basically has effectively sort of forced the family off of their land after multiple, multiple attacks, demolitions of their home. And this isn't a unique story. But just to show what a, you know, powerful role these organizations play. Now, these organizations, many, many of them receive charitable donations through fiscal sponsorship, through other charities that are registered in places like the United States, like Canada, the UK, other countries. And in Canada recently, so the defund racism campaign, I should say, was an effort trying to point folks, you know, in this direction to basically say, you know, you can make this a political issue. You can raise this issue with your attorney general in the U.S. or elsewhere in other countries and strip the funding of these organizations in different ways. And in Canada, there's been quite a bit of success with this. So earlier this year, and this is like even hard for me to believe I had to double check, JNF Canada was stripped of their charitable status, right? That's a really big deal. Think about how much money the JNF brings in every year. I'm not sure if Canada is its biggest donor population, but it's a really big deal. And more recently than that, Ne'eman Canada, which is another sort of organization that funnels money to settler organizations here and the Emunim Fund, have had their status revoked. And in part, this has been explicitly because they are sending money to organizations. One of them is an organization we have listed on that website, El Ad or Ir David, the same name. And the decision has explicitly named these organizations as not being able to receive this money. So I just wanted to point this out because this is one of the successes that is happening that maybe is going under the radar because it doesn't have a lot to do with the current phase of the genocide in Gaza. But very much can have an impact on the ground tomorrow in Palestine, because a lot of these organizations, they're not I mean, JNF aside, they aren't organizations getting billions of dollars a year. You know, maybe it's millions of shekels a year. And they don't have huge staff. But because of the way the state works and because of the fact that this is a settler colonial project, they're able to do a lot with a little. And the less we can make sure that they get, the more we can support Palestinians on the ground. So these are campaigns that people can pick up wherever they are, because I promise you, in most places where your listeners are, there's some charitable money going to a settler organization. And they can look it up They can ask for help from us or other people, you know, if they're interested in doing this and they can make it happen. So I just wanted to name that as one of the possibilities. If you don't know a union or you aren't part of one, you aren't at a university, here's another idea for you.

Henry Hakimaki: Marvelous. So at risk of this episode going on forever because there are many other questions that I had planned for us, but we'll bring you back on in the future. What I want to do is give you each the opportunity to maybe have some brief closing thoughts and let the listeners know where they can find more of your work. So yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Laura, I'll turn it to you first. Make sure that you tell people where they can find the article, Anti-Zionism is Decolonization, because that is an article... I know I buried the lead by not mentioning it at the beginning of this episode, but that's an article I have shared with dozens of people personally, so... When you tell people where they can find more of your work, make sure that at least somebody needs to tell everyone where they can find that article because it really is terrific.

Lara Kilani: Thank you so much. That's so nice. That's so like lovely to hear because I feel like that piece of work, which everyone can find at ebb.com. Bad am I right? It's at ebb.com. It's on our website. You can go to our website and it's linked. And that's where I believe ebbmagazine.com. Okay. At magazine.com. You can look up Laura Killany as well, I think, anti-Zionism as decolonization, or you can find it on our website, goodshepherdcollective.org. But that's so nice of you, Henry, because I really feel like that piece of work was Something that we had been developing over a long time, over our own personal experiences that we had learned things through and other people around us. And I think that's part of what we want to leave people with is It's okay not to know everything, right? That's why we're listening to the podcast. That's why I listen to your podcasts because I love to learn and hear from your guests and see the connections and where there are disconnections. And I think that's really important. But yeah, so folks can. So thank you so much for having us. We love your podcast. Folks can find us at, like I said, Good Shepherd Collective dot org on Twitter. I think it's Shepherds for the number for good. And also we're on Instagram, Good Shepherd Collective. And if you still use Facebook, you can also find us there. But we're not very active, not as active on Facebook. Folks can also email me. And I don't know if you want to give your email, but you can email me at Laura at Good Shepherd Collective dot org if you have any complaints or comments. I think if it's OK, Henry, and you can cut this out if it's not OK, but I'll just also add the Good Shepherd Collective is so this is a difficult time. Right. There are lots of places we can lend our support. But if you've heard what we do and you're interested. The Good Shepherd Collective part of our founding, like I said, was sort of to provide an alternative to these NGOs that have mass amounts of funding but do effectively very little politically. Maybe they provide humanitarian support, but they play into a lot of these really problematic paradigms. So in order to prevent that, Good Shepherd Collective runs almost entirely on... individual donations of five dollars ten dollars a month two dollars a month and that allows us to be independent and also be accountable to the people around us and the people who we support and the people who support us as well right and so I just want to you know say that because it's been difficult in palestine it's been a difficult time and also being honest and trying to remain principled um makes it hard to be invited in all of these spaces where you might have access to different forms of funding right that that lean more liberal zionist or uh something like that. So if that's not okay, feel free to cut it out. But I just wanted to mention that because it's an important part of the way we do our work.

Henry Hakimaki: not only is it okay and I'm not cutting it out, I'm going to highly encourage the listeners to do so. You know, I, I personally have been wanting to, but of course I live in a sanctioned country. So like money going in money going out is very, very tricky these days. Uh, but I absolutely recommend the listeners to contribute if they are able to do so. And the information, not only the article and, um, you know, the Good Shepherd information, but also I'll make sure to have a link in the show notes that'll bring you right to where you can help contribute. So be sure if you have the ability to do so, just check out those show notes and you'll be able to just click one link and it'll bring you right to there. Banna, how can the listeners find you and more of your work? Anything that you would like to direct them to?

Bana Abu Zuluf: Yeah, I'm, I do also publish pieces as well with the Good Shepherd Collective, but I think the most important source that we have with the Good Shepherd Collective at the moment is the website. So I do want to mention again that thegoodshepherdcollective.org has extensive information and data that you would not be able to find at least collated into one. And also we do have analysis of that data as well that anybody basically can avail of. We know that documentation can be very difficult, especially for researchers who are based abroad, who cannot access information if it's also in Arabic or in other languages. So it will make it much easier for them. We also love when researchers contact us as well for information, resources, graphics, and things like that. We're happy to help. But most importantly, I think, on the website is that we have constant pieces of analysis that come up every once in a while. And I think we want to keep that tradition. We do have also one more subject that we would want to talk about in the future, possibly in a webinar curated by us, maybe in a future podcast, if we have the energy to create one. defeatism in the movement so and like what leads to defeatism and all of that but also like how to avoid defeatism in such moments because obviously we don't have the luxury of that and the last thing I would also like to say I'm not paid to say that but do support the guerrilla history podcast Do support them if they have Patreon. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, the word. And they basically have wonderful podcasts, a huge fan, and they're doing really amazing, important, critical work. So do support us, but also support them. And thanks for inviting us.

Henry Hakimaki: a comrade after my own heart. In any case, that webinar on defeatism and combating defeatism sounds very interesting. We have an episode that's on a similar topic a long time ago now, probably two, two and a half years back on revolutionary optimism and combating defeatism and Eco despair specifically was, you know, the underlying root of that conversation. So listeners, I'm calling back. That episode's got to be at least two and a half years old at this point. But do check that out. And I am certainly looking forward to your webinar that you're going to be putting together. And as I mentioned, thank you very much for the shout out for our show. It's greatly appreciated. And as I mentioned throughout this episode and also in our private correspondences, I really appreciate the work that you two and all of the Good Shepherd Collective are doing. Really invaluable material. And I hope that you'll agree to come back on the show in the future. So I know I have to read out Adnan because he is a professor and has professorly things to do and had to leave the call early. But you can find Adnan on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussain. That's H-U-S-A-I-N. You should follow his other podcast, The Majlis, M-A-J-L-I-S. Not the one that's hosted from Radio Free Central Asia, but the one that is from MSGPQU, which is Muslim Society Global Perspectives Project at Queens University. Not the CIA-run one. Don't listen to that one. Listen to Adnan's. It's much better. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck1995. That's H-U-C-K-1-9-9-5. You can... help support Gorilla History, as Banna mentioned that you could at patreon.com forward slash Gorilla History, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A History. And you can keep up to date with everything that we're doing individually and collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod. Should also mention that we do have an Instagram page, which... We do update with the new episodes. I always forget what our handle is on there because I hate social media. I think it's Gorilla underscore history. Gorilla history. It's I think Gorilla underscore history. Tell me to check. Ah, no, the listeners can find it. It's your scavenger hunt for the day. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A, I think underscore history. So, you know, let us know if you follow us there. We do update it. So give us a follow there. That would be greatly appreciated as well. And until next time, listeners, solidarity.