INTRODUCTION
1. Many thanks to Bill Mullen for seeing the worth of these conversations so sharply in his preliminary review of our manuscript.
2. For a summary of the George Floyd case, see “How George Floyd Died, and What Happened Next,” New York Times, July 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html. On the removal of Colston’s statute, see Tristan Cork, “How the City Failed to Remove Edward Colston’s Statue for Years,” Bristol Post, January 5, 2022, https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/how-city-failed-remove-edward-4211771.
3. As readers will note, our book adopts an alphabetical order—rather than chronological—to create a more democratic, fluid, and collective structure. Our gratitude again goes to Bill Mullen for his encouragement.
4. All transcripts have been edited for length and clarity.
5. This section also owes much to Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, which concludes with “A Killjoy Survival Kit,” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 235–50. So, too, it takes inspiration from Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill’s “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 8–34.
6. Edward Said, “Permission to Narrate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 13, no. 3 (1984): 27–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536688; Rana Barakat, “Writing/Righting Palestine Studies: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Sovereignty and Resisting the Ghost(s) of History,” Settler Colonial Studies 8, no. 3 (2018): 349–63, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2017.1300048.
7. From Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 44.
8. An explanation of the term can be found in ILAN PAPPÉ, “Everyday Evil in Palestine: The View from Lucifer’s Hill,” Janus Unbound, Journal of Critical Studies 1, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 70–82.
9. See, for example, the work collected in Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha, eds., An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (London: Zed Books, 2018).
10. See Sabri Jiryis and Salah Qallab, “The Palestine Research Center,” Journal of Palestine Studies 14, no. 4 (Summer 1985): 185–87.
11. This portion of Davis’s comments took place during the question and answer period of the conversation, which has been omitted from the transcript in this book.
12. The work of Indigenous scholars like Dian Million (2009), Sherene Razack (2007), and Audra Simpson (2007) alerts us to the history of silencing and erasure while insisting on the value of feeling to our political realities and futures.
13. See, for example, Katherine Natanel’s “Affect, Excess and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel,” Settler Colonial Studies 13, no. 3 (2023): 325–48.
14. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011), 2–3.
15. See Driven by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press 2007).
16. “What We Do,” Counter Terrorism Policing, https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/what-we-do/prevent/.
17. “Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion,” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-holocaust-denial-and-distortion.
18. This quotation also comes from the question and answer portion of our conversation with Angela Davis.
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: LIBERATION AND THE LEFT
1. For more on the 2021 uprising, see Akram Salhab and Dahoud al-Ghoul, “Jerusalem Youth at the Forefront of 2021’s Unity Intifada,” Middle East Report Online, November 10, 2021, https://merip.org/2021/11/jerusalem-youth-at-the-forefront-of-2021s-unity-intifada/.
2. See Yumna Patel, “What’s Happening in the Naqab? Israel Uproots Palestinians to Plant Trees,” Mondoweiss, January 14, 2022, https://mondoweiss.net/2022/01/whats-happening-in-the-naqab-israel-uproots-palestinians-to-plant-trees/.
ANGELA Y. DAVIS: TOWARD TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENTS FOR JUSTICE
1. “What Is the PIC? What Is Abolition?” Critical Resistance, https://criticalresistance.org/mission-vision/not-so-common-language/.
2. See Angela Y. Davis and Cassandra Shaylor, “Race, Gender and the Prison Industrial Complex in California and Beyond,” Meridians 2, no. 1 (2001): 1–25.
3. In The Shock Doctrine (2008), Klein proposes “disaster capitalism” as the social and economic strategy that uses crises, whether driven by humans or nature, to advance radical privatization.
4. For recent statistics on private prisons in the United States, see work by the Sentencing Project: https://www.sentencingproject.org/. This includes Kristen M. Budd and Niki Monazzam, “Private Prisons in the United States,” Sentencing Project, June 15, 2023, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/.
NADINE EL-ENANY: ON COLONIAL VIOLENCE AND ANTICOLONIAL RESISTANCE
1. Between May 10 and May 21, 2021, the Israeli military attacked Gaza with airstrikes and shelling, killing over 250 people and injuring more than two thousand. See “Gaza: Apparent War Crimes during May Fighting,” Human Rights Watch, July 27, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/27/gaza-apparent-war-crimes-during-may-fighting. Violence also escalated in Jerusalem and across the West Bank during this time, including house evictions, settler attacks, repression of protest, and restriction of access to holy sites.
2. In 2018, the Windrush scandal brought to public attention how legislation and law enforcement targeted a generation of Commonwealth citizens in the UK, depriving them of health care and threatening hundreds with deportation. These practices aligned with the “hostile environment” policies that aimed to deter immigration. See Amelia Gentleman, “Windrush Scandal Caused by ‘30 Years of Racist Immigration Laws’ – Report,” Guardian, May 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/29/windrush-scandal-caused-by-30-years-of-racist-immigration-laws-report.
3. These decades saw a concerted attempt by the UK state and its police force to violently quash the Black Power movement. This included the arrest and trial of Black youths and activists in the 1970s, such as the Mangrove Nine, and the Bristol and Brixton riots of the 1980s. See Paul Gilroy, “The Myth of Black Criminality,” Social Register 19 (1982): 47–56.
4. Following the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, campaigners in Oxford called for the removal of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes’s statue at Oriel College. While Oriel’s governing body indicated that the statue would be removed in 2020, they later claimed that “regulatory and financial challenges” prevented this from happening. See Michael Race, “Cecil Rhodes Statue Will Not Be Removed by Oxford College,” BBC, May 20, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-57175057.
5. Passed in 2022, this bill introduced new powers for the police, restricted protest, and criminalized transient ways of life. The Kill the Bill movement galvanized widespread protests across the UK in response. See Megan Specia, “What Are the ‘Kill the Bill’ Protests in Britain All About?” New York Times, March 23, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/world/europe/kill-the-bill-protests-uk.html.
6. Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, “Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: The Report,” 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6062ddb1d3bf7f5ce1060aa4/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf.
7. For 2023 guidance, see Home Office, “Prevent Duty Guidance: England and Wales (2023),” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-duty-guidance.
8. Home Office, “Counter-Terrorism and Security Act,” 2015, https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/counter-terrorism-and-security-bill. The Prevent duty falls under Section 29 of this act.
9. Hélène Cixous in Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press [1975] 1986), 72.
10. Paul Beaumont, “ICC Opens Investigation into War Crimes in Palestinian Territories,” Guardian, March 3, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/mar/03/icc-open-formal-investigation-war-crimes-palestine.
PAUL GILROY: HISTORIES FOR THE FUTURE
1. This agreement was signed between Britain and France on April 11, 1713, as part of the treaties (the Peace of Utrecht) that ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Its significance here rests partly in the principle of the balance of power, which prevented the union of monarchies as crucial to the preservation of peace. In later practice, the treaty became a basis for framing concrete legal rights and obligations.
2. Adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American States on May 2, 1948, in Bogota, Colombia, the declaration outlines individual human rights in social, economic, and cultural spheres, as well as equality under the law. It advocates for the protection and promotion of fundamental rights, though it is not legally binding.
3. This declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, setting out fundamental human rights to be universally protected.
4. Published in 1689, Locke’s Second Treatise provides the basis for liberalism as a political philosophy.
5. See Driven by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007).
ELIAS KHOURY: TIMES OF STRUGGLE AND CULTURAL LIBERATION
1. See “Remembering Basil al-Araj and Continuing His Legacy of Struggle,” Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, March 6, 2021, https://samidoun.net/2021/03/remembering-basil-al-araj-and-continuing-his-legacy-of-struggle.
GABOR MATÉ: ON TRAUMA AND (THE LIMITS OF) COMPASSION
1. Tantura, directed by Alon Schwartz (2022).
NADERA SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN: ON LIFE AND DEATH IN PALESTINE
1. Said in Arabic during the conversation.
2. Said in Arabic during the conversation.
3. Said in Arabic during the conversation.
GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK: COLONIALITY, SUBALTERNITY, AND REVOLUTION IN OUR TIME
1. Focusing on prehistories of globalization, this multi-institution project involves China, India, the United States, five European countries, and the Senegambia region of Africa.
2. From Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Terror: A Speech after 9-11,” boundary 2 31, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 81–111.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: ON CRISIS AND DISOBEDIENCE
1. This dialogue was edited for presentation in this volume. “A Conversation with Yanis Faroufakis and ILAN PAPPÉ,” May 12, 2021, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6kAmxkww-s.
2. In May 2021, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized and defended police action to violently suppress Palestinian protests and limit access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. These events took place in the midst of Netanyahu’s ongoing trial for corruption and a challenge to his power by the “change bloc.” See “Jerusalem Protests: Netanyahu Defends Israeli Action after Clashes with Palestinians,” BBC, May 9, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57049126, and Akiva Eldar, “How the Violence Plays into Netanyahu’s Hands,” Al Jazeera, May 16, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/16/how-the-violence-plays-into-netanyahus-hands.
AFTERWORD
1. Aaron Boxerman, “What We Know about the Death Toll in Israel from the Hamas-Led Attacks,” New York Times, November 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/world/middleeast/israeldeath-toll-hamas-attack.html.
2. “Gaza: UN Experts Call on International Community to Prevent Genocide against the Palestinians,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, press release, November 16, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent-genocide-against.
3. United Nations Population Fund, “UNFPA Palestine Situation Report #8 – 22 May 2024,” https://www.unfpa.org/resources/unfpa-palestine-situation-report-8-22-may-2024.