*JOIN US ON ZOOM ON MONDAY DECEMBER 2 AT 11AM ET / 6PM PALESTINE*
This event is a conversation between Journal of Palestine Studies Editor Sherene Seikaly and Holocaust and Genocide Studies Scholar Raz Segal. It is centered on Dr. Segal's recently published article in JPS, "Settler Antisemitism, Israeli Mass Violence, and the Crisis of Holocaust and Genocide Studies," in which he explores the depiction of Israel as a nation-state like any other as a mechanism of disavowing Israeli settler colonialism. It is a depiction that also brings into focus the antisemitic marginalization and violence against Jews in nation-states.
In this framework, the article shows that since modern antisemitism emerged at the intersection of the nation-state system and European imperialism and colonialism, Israel as a settler nation-state also functions according to the logic of what the Dr. Segal terms "settler antisemitism." While the racialization of Jews in the frame of White supremacy in other settler-colonial states could include Jews as immigrant settlers but never more, White supremacy in Israel has manifested itself as Jewish supremacy, which defined the project of creating a White Jewish settler society.
The article concludes with a discussion of the crisis in Holocaust and genocide studies that this situation has exposed, especially during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. If some Holocaust scholars engaged in the disavowal of Israeli settler colonialism before October 7, they now moved to the justification of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The breakdown of Israel’s long-standing impunity in the international legal system is likely the reason that the Holocaust scholars who tried to justify Israel’s attack on Gaza early on have now gone silent. But their support of Jewish supremacy and Israel’s violations of international law, including genocide, will not be forgotten. By lending their voices to stand with an extremely violent state instead of the people it targets, they have betrayed the goal of struggling against mass violence and promoting “open and non-discriminatory societies,” as formulated by the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.
Dr. Raz Segal is an Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University. Dr. Segal has held a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and he was a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (2023). His publications include Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2016). He is at work on a book on the distortion, weaponization, and mobilization of Holocaust history in the reproduction of white supremacy and state violence, including a focus on Israel’s assault on Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba to the current genocidal assault on Gaza. In addition to scholarly publications, he has published op-eds, book reviews, and larger articles on genocide, state violence, and memory politics in Hebrew, English, and German in The Guardian, LA Times, The Nation, Jewish Currents, +972 Magazine, Time Magazine, Forward, and Berliner Zeitung, and he has appeared on Counter Points, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, Democracy Now! and ABC News.
Sherene Seikaly is a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2024-25) and Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores economy, territory, the home, and the body. Her forthcoming book, From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine tells a global history of capital, slavery, and dispossession. She is the Editor of Journal of Palestine Studies, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UCSB, co-editor of the Stanford Studies Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures Series, and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
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The Genocide on Gaza: Meanings, Dimensions, and Implications for Israel
–BirzeitOnlineArabic
