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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:36]
Hatem Bazian
Foreign.
- [01:40]
Radio Reorient Host
Listeners, and welcome back to another episode of Radio Reorient. In this episode we are going to be joined by Ismail Patel and Hatem Bazian to take a long view of pro Palestinian resistance.
- [01:51]
Amina Essat Das
Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where his work engages with questions of Islamophobia, history and coloniality. He is the Editor in Chief of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and President of the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association. He has been active in the struggle for Palestinian liberation since at least the 1990s when he founded the first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley.
- [02:24]
Chella Ward
Ismail Patel is the founder of the Friends of Al Aqsa, a UK based NGO which organizes politically for the liberation of Palestine. The Friends of Al AQSA work with MPs, grassroots organizers and educators to advocate for political change and organize events including the Palestine Expo.
- [02:44]
Claudia Radovan
We had a hugely wide ranging conversation with two speakers who combine academic and intellectual work with protest and other forms of resistance. So let's listen in.
- [02:55]
Chella Ward
Thank you so much, Hakim and Ismail for joining us today. We're really looking forward to talking to you about your various work in relation to Palestine, protest movements and other aspects relating to the kind of activisms involved in Palestine education. So to begin with, we wondered if you could tell us a bit about how you both got involved with activism around Palestine and whether that's changed since October 7th last year.
- [03:29]
Hatem Bazian
Well, if I may begin, I think I started organizing for Palestine based on DNA. Being Palestinian. So you're born into the Palestine struggle from the get go. Originally, my family is from the city of Nablus. My father and my mother is from the city of Jerusalem. And as such, the cause of Palestine from the earliest days, you breathe, you think you relate to everything relative to Palestine. But if I may remember, like my distinctive encounter with an Israeli soldier was actually crossing the bridge between Jordan and Palestine. And I remember in the security process, I think I was five or six years old, not sure exactly the date, but I was accompanying my mother and they had to strip her all to her underwear while I'm standing next to her in this room and having a metal detector going through to search her at that point. And then also taking all of the luggage, shoes, everything away for searching. And then you wait in this room and then they come with a whole bucket of shoes and they throw it on the ground and you have to scramble to see if you could actually put two of the pairs that you had from possibly a hundred that they throw on the ground before you move to the next room, where they go through every piece of your garment and they throw it at you, you collect it, and then at the end they give you your back, your suitcase back in order to put your luggage. So that my distinctive memory of my encounter with at least Israeli soldiers and security, and this is prior to me coming to the United States. And from the first day I landed, almost 1982, I have been organizing for Palestine, speaking, trying to get some understanding of the consequences of the ongoing settler colonialism, Palestine dehumanization, and the continued unrestrained support that the United States extend to Israel, both militarily, financially, as well as giving total diplomatic cover on the international arena.
- [06:21]
Ismail Patel
For me, I think I come from a different angle. I visited Palestine accidentally in 1995. In a way, it was the shock both of seeing what was happening on the ground and witnessing what I immediately recognize as apartheid system, since I come from Africa, Malawi in particular, and had visited South Africa prior to that. But more than that, I think what moved me most are two factors. One was not being aware of the occupation, not being aware of the injustices against the Palestinian and the apartheid system. Despite having studied at a British university, thinking of myself as well, read Being abreast with the news. And that really took me aback that here I was thinking to myself that I knew everything about this place. But, you know, I was not even at the tip of the iceberg, as they say. So that was the first thing. And the second factor for me was actually visiting Al Aqsa Sanctuary itself. I wasn't aware of Al Aqsana at all when I visited it in 95, and people told me of its importance after I had arrived there, some of the Palestinians. And that really took me aback. So both, I suppose, in one way exposed my ignorance and second, seeing the reality on the ground. And those factors really moved me. So as soon as I returned back to England, I discussed what I had witnessed. And almost everybody in my circle I spoke to were also moved. And at first they obviously felt that, you know, maybe I was exaggerating. But then I felt, you know, it was necessary to inform more and more people. At that stage, I was not a public speaker. So I invited a few people who knew more about the issue and had the first conference at Leicester University in 1997, and thereafter. I think we had around 300 people at the first conference we had. And from then we established the organization Friends of Halaxa, registered it and moved on from there.
- [08:30]
Chella Ward
Fantastic. Thank you so much.
- [08:32]
Claudia Radovan
I wonder whether you could tell us a little bit about the role of protest in the activism that you both do. We're very lucky to have this conversation because we're able to have a conversation on both sides of the Atlantic. Right? This is a transatlantic conversation about the nature of pro Palestinian activism. And obviously within this kind of most recent wave of genocide against the Palestinians, that's to say, since October 7, the protest is probably the most, I suppose, famous bit of pro Palestinian activism. It's the bit that many people, even if they're not involved with the movement, are aware of or have become aware of in the last almost a year. So I wondered whether you could tell us kind of what capacities you're involved in organizing protests and organizing demonstrations, and how you think that protests might be different in the US compared with in the uk? Are there kind of different contexts? Are there different groups that organize? How does that kind of shift what that kind of demonstration means? Hatan, do you want to start?
- [09:42]
Hatem Bazian
Just to give us a little bit of background. I've been active on a number of fronts, including the anti apartheid movement here in the US and American Solidarity, the Coalition on Homelessness, Mobilization for Jobs, Peace and Justice, and in particular also anti racist organizing in the United States what we need to at least come to grasp with. Rather than think of the current protest movement as a spark, we need to think of it as a cumulative process. And this accumulative process of organizing for Palestine, I would say you could date it to pre Cold War, maybe the first Intifada uprising and all the way up to the George Floyd protests, which actually opened up ideas, thinking and contemplating horizons that were not being discussed in terms of the idea of decolonization, the idea of reclaiming the public space, renaming the public space, taking down statue. And in this I would say Israel and Zionism have always been on the wrong side of history from its inception all the way up to the current period. As far as the current protest movement in the United States, one is the United States is a M.A. it says 50 countries in one country. It's a huge country by itself. And as such there is both a local and national. If we can compare, let's say between the US and the uk you are able to have, let's say, a protest every two weeks in London because people can take the train to arrive and participate from the different cities. I think it's 84 miles from one side of the country to the other to arrive in the United States. It's a very difficult undertaking to be able to actually get a national march in let's say, Washington D.C. so those will be far in between. I think we have a total maybe of three. Just to give you a sense, for me to fly from San Francisco to D.C. it's a six hour flight and for me to go and then a three hour change of time zone. So literally it's a nine hour commitment that that shifts. So that's one. But simultaneously what we could think, because it's a large country, you have a large number of localized coalitions that develop as a result of the historical specificity and also the dynamics. So whether it's West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, the South. So you have focal points of organizing and that is very, very important and significant. The third aspect relative to organizing, I think the key role that played by the universities. The United States has a robust university structure. I don't know the actual exact number, but it's over 2000 colleges and universities just in our area. In the San Francisco Bay area, we have 67 colleges and universities. And each of these universities often have a history and a legacy of political organizing. I'm speaking with Berkeley, speaking with Brown University, Rutgers, nyu, even to speak about maybe Yale, Duke and so on, or Kent State. So that actually makes the University as a central focal point for organizing. And I think that demonstrated itself both because there was already an organizing relative to the anti racist campaign, the Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd, even before that in 2021 when the attack on Al Aqsa mosque, there was massive response. So that made the canvas the focal point. And then lastly, because of the campus history and legacy being connected to cultural wars, that also made the campus as a focal point for organizing as well. Because at least on the right wing, the conservative not to absolve the liberal forces of the Democratic Party just the same what you call, they just act differently, but they still have the same type of vigor in trying to suppress speech that is critical. So that also brought the campus into center stage because it fell into these cultural walls.
- [14:45]
Ismail Patel
So yeah, I'm very similar to you, Hatim on this, that we work right across the spectrum and Palestine is one of the issues where we've sort of bring the communities together to demonstrate. But for us, I think in summary, we should say that protests are to inspire each other. You know, the challenge the Zionist extremist narrative. Protests are also to give hope to the oppressed, the Palestinians. And more than above all those three, I think protests are to bring about a change. And here I think we need to expand on one thing that people are saying in Britain in particular, and I'm sure it's similar to America that we've been protesting for over a year, yet the genocide continues. What does the protest achieve? And I think to just elaborate on that, it's the idea of bringing about change. Change, of course, is not only about ending the genocide, which is our primary objective, but there are many other things and several other things that we can think about at this moment. That it's, you know, it's about affirming the values of human rights, equality and justice. It inspires each other. Bringing. Seeing hundreds of thousands of people together at a protest affirms that what you're standing for, you're not alone. You know, a group of people, you are the majority in most of the time. Yeah. And that enforces solidarity for the cause of Palestine. It also exposes politicians to say that, you know, those who are violating international law and human rights violation and supporting the genocide, it exposes them. And protest allows us to do that. And in doing that, exposing the politicians, it also brings about a division within the political structure. And you empower those who want to stand by you because they can see hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, they feel empowered and they feel the courage then to Speak up. And we have been able to do all that. And of course, it allows us to keep the issue alive. I mean, we have noticed now after a year, the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about what's happening in Gaza. It's putting it aside. But by us coming out on the streets protesting week in and week out, it allows us to make sure that the issue is alive. And of course, as I mentioned, it challenges the pro Israeli narrative that people across the city, across the country, excuse me, who are now standing up and challenging the pro Israeli narrative. But above and beyond all that, I think it's us giving the hope to the oppressed Palestinians. You know, we have not been able to send aid to them, we have not been able to talk to them. But when they see us across capital cities around the globe, when they see that people are standing up for them, it allows them to stand their ground. It allows them to stay there and say, you know what, we can continue. There are people who are helping us. And finally, I think protest also provides a platform for further activism. Now, what I mean by that is it allows for the BDS movement to flourish. It allows for campaigning, lobbying. So you have protests. You know, it's a multifactorial issue, if you like, that brings about multifactorial factors into play. And I think protests are very significant. And what we also have, the protest also allows us to bring about a wider groups into the issue and buy them. And then we see ourselves as the majority. And hopefully through that, we can bring about that change that we are looking for.
- [18:13]
Claudia Radovan
I think that's so important. And I've definitely had that experience of kind of standing in a protest and suddenly realizing how big this movement is going very quickly from being something that seemed like a sort of minority cause and very quickly became something that enormous numbers of people perhaps were involved in all along, but were suddenly very visibly involved in. And that for me, was certainly very powerful. You've both raised there in different ways, some of the different kinds of solidarities with pro Palestinian activism. You talked a little bit about anti racism. You talked a bit about student movements. I wonder if we can just kind of pull at that thread a little bit further. My kind of entry into the pro Palestine movement was around opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And that obviously was nowhere near the beginning of the movement. But I was young when that happened. And so for me, that was the kind of first moment where I suddenly was going to demonstrations in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And this was around sort of early 2000s. And we're suddenly hearing about Palestine. You know, there was famously, wasn't there, that big banner at the. I think it was the London demonstration that read don't attack Iraq. Freedom for Palestine. So, you know, those are two causes that have very often kind of satisfied very, very closely together. And we've seen a number of other solidarities become much more visible, some of which have been surprising to certain people. For instance, the solidarities between kind of queer activisms and pro Palestinian movements. I wonder whether, do you want to say anything more about the different kinds of solidarities that are built in protest? I'm sort of wondering as I'm listening to you speak, whether actually building those solidarities might be part of the point of a protest movement. But I wonder what you think of.
- [20:00]
Ismail Patel
That for us in Britain. Definitely we have created a wider circle of concern and we have built that coalition. But before I expand on that, I think it's very important for us to understand several things. One is the Iraq war and the damn protest against that were primarily conducted in order to bring about a change to the local level. What I mean by that is we were appealing to our governments whether we are in Britain, in America, we are asking our government not to attack and we are asking them not to continue this with Palestine slightly different, we have at least three factors at play. One is we are asking our government not to support Israel or not to sell arms to Israel. Second is we are asking the international instruments to be more emboldened and carry out their duties. So we are asking ICC icj, the united Persons, to implement those policies. And thirdly, of course, we are asking the Palestinians or we're requesting the Palestinians, that they're not alone, they're not standing alone, we are standing with them. So we can see that there's slight differences. But going back to the issue of creating solidarity internally from different organizations and conjoining the issue of the war in Iraq with the occupation of Palestine, I think a lot of people will converge on the consensus that what was happening in Iraq is part and parcel of a colonialist project, that the American and the British were not simply attacking Iraq for the war on terror, but there was a greater political goal of trying to control that region, if you like the post colonial reorientation of the global order. And this is where Israel fits in, that Israel also is fulfilling that purpose for the West. And you can see these two conjoining. And that's why these two issues, that Iraq war and Palestine were seen as one and the same.
- [21:56]
Hatem Bazian
Yeah, I would follow on this by saying that the Iraq War, which we were Talking about the first Desert Storm, not the second one is 2003. This comes at the juncture of the end of the Cold War and the search for a new enemy to articulate internal cohesion in the West. It was not surprising that the Samuel Huntington framing the clash of civilization comes at that point which identifies both the Muslim world and China as the preeminent threats to face Western civilization. And more importantly, his writing calls for strengthening internal Western society because he see them to be weak, maybe all are addicted to Starbucks and so on. So it was a rally for this cultural awareness which feeds into this rising tide of the right wing that actually often points sometimes in jealousy to the Muslim cultural societies and so on, speaking about the cohesion of their families, strengths of their faith and so on. But also articulated as a threat to Western society. This had made it possible to the maintaining of the military industrial complex, interventionist policies and centers Israel as a state that fits within the broader Western imperial colonial discourses. I know there is often a debate whether the tail wags the dog or the dog is actually causing the tail to wag. I think the focus is that it's a dog, what part of it is irrelevant. And also with this we begin to think of the Arab and Muslim world as opposed colonial state entities. All have accepted their client relations states to the west, privatization, neoliberal economics, normalization with Israel and so on. So in thinking about coalition, I would say that what Iraq initial Iraq war mobilization it's actually showed there is a massive turnout both in the uk, Europe, the United States. We had two superpowers, people superpowered at the time and the military industrial complex political elite superpower. At the end of the day, the military industrial complex, the neocons, the clear break the Netanyahu Douglas P. And so on won the day and in essence almost run amok of the global. I would say consensus among the people in the streets and the regular person that this is not actually what policy we should be pursuing. And I do think that this notion of post fact era begins with the lying fabrication cooked up intelligence or unintelligence manipulation by political elite. Vice President Dick Cheney setting up the America these the Iraqi congress feeding at $70 million from CIA operations to cook up intelligence that then gets to be presented as intelligence of weapons of mass destruction gets to be presented at the UN. And I think you take it from that point more and more people began to be engaged because the problems we face domestically are outcome of wrong headed continued attempt to maintain a colonial worldview and policy in a post colonial world that is ready and wants to enter in a decolonization period. And I think we do go back to South Africa because South Africa was the last settler colony in Africa. And Palestine and you could add Kashmir and a couple of other places are still experiencing colonization in the post colonial era that is attempting to enter decolonization. And I think that's where we need to speak about because in the UK people are talking about health care while simultaneously sending massive weaponry to Israel, completely cutting taxes for the rich while taxing people all the way up to taking their kidney as a payback for whatever policies they may have. Complete collapse of education system. Public housing is no longer actually housing. It's actually, it's almost an enigma to speak of public housing these days. The drug, pharmaceutical companies have flooded our markets with drugs and addictions and then they point the fingers on Latin America and Mexico as the problem while they made billions and billions of dollars. So it's very important as we begin to engage in Palestine is actually to constantly make a broader coalition to critique policies domestically and transnationally. Because going back again to Malcolm, you cannot actually delink the national from the transnational, whether in the US or any other places.
- [27:48]
Chella Ward
Thank you for that. It's really interesting to hear the interconnectedness of all these things.
- [27:56]
Marshall Po
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- [28:27]
Ismail Patel
Now.
- [28:28]
Marshall Po
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- [29:03]
Chella Ward
Wondering if we could hear a bit from you both about what you think the role of education, of academia plays in generally with activism around Palestine. Particularly since October 7, we've seen what many are referring to as scholarcide, among other titles, the complete destruction of universities in Palestine and perhaps a little bit about how can academics around the world respond to this sort of wanton attack on education.
- [29:40]
Ismail Patel
If I may start. We just have to remind ourselves, you know, there was something like 87,000 students, university students in Gaza and they had 12 universities all destroyed. All the students are now displaced. They do not have a place to go and learn beyond and above that we've had 10,000 students killed, over 500 teachers killed and over 100 professors. Now these are human statistics. So what we have taking place here is the destruction of the whole educational system in Gaza. And of course what educational system provides is cultural production, the socio economic needs of a nation and in fact the nation building. So it's not about simply getting a degree, but these are the people who are the backbone of what makes a society strong and provides a future for that society. And that has been wiped down. So you can see that this has been targeted and systematic killing of the students, the lecturers and the targeting of the university. And this is not deliberate because what, by doing that, what Israel's doing is sort of feeding into the genocide of creating a new society that will be totally dependent on charity. It's completely reduced the Palestinians in Gaza to beggars, unfortunately to use that term. And that's very sad. So we have to be very conscious of this, that this hasn't been accidental, the destructions of universities, but it has been very systematic. And that means that universities across the world have a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that they support the people in Gaza. They come out and break their ties with Israel in particularly in research, particularly having across university interactions, inviting lecturers, funding and so forth. Because to continue with Israeli universities while the genocide is taking place and having it targeted systematically, the university structures in Gaza I think is complicit to the genocide itself. So universities have a pivotal role to play and the destructions of university itself, we have to really look at that and amplify that and educate the masses about why Israel is doing that. As you mentioned, scholasticite is not accidental, it has a purpose and it feeds into the genocidal mentality of Israel. And I think that is very, very important.
- [32:18]
Hatem Bazian
Yeah, adding to what said I think for us in the Western university we have possibly believed and drank the Kool Aid that says that the university is a center of enlightenment, center of exploring or ideas that we have a role to transform society. And maybe every once in a while on graduation and early commencement, these speeches and especially the logos that are put up there by the university can what you call, get the unadmitted to think in these larger terms. The university system increasingly, not to discount possible long distance paths, increasingly is part of the reproduction of the system. We graduate replacement parts for the economy, military, industrial complex, corporate structure and so on. And each university possibly has a few of us that are called hot potatoes, which gets the university to say, you see, we are keeping this person that is just like gets us so much in trouble and keeps us busy because they are quote, radical and so on. But for the most part the university is wedded, connected at the hip to every element of the power system. So it is not coincidental that almost every place where US and European states have intervened, the university was lock, stock and barrel in supporting and providing the context for what it is. It is also we need to say that from across all of the academic, professional institutions, all these, you know, bodies of academic association, I could count only five that have put out somewhat of a legitimate statement on condemnation of what is taking place in terms of genocide in Gaza. More importantly, I would actually we have to step back a little bit further and to say the whole war on terror, the university was so much wedded into the application to grants, creating what you call the. I don't want to call it science, it's an insult to science. The pseudoscience behind radicalization, counter radicalization theories of power and influence, rationalization of the expansion of US and European intervention. Now notice that not a single Western diplomat have faced ICC or icj. Not for Gaza. Again that is just too much like you need Jesus to come back for anything to happen in that. So I'm not just going to set that aside, but we're talking about no one have faced anything for the genocide in Iraq, an invasion of a country counter to international law and the UN Charter, the destruction visited on Libya, Syria has been completely turned into an arena for all NATO, us, France, Russia and so on. No one. The destruction that has been visited on Somalia and the whole Africa, on Afghanistan, on Yemen and you name it. And for the most part the university either has been totally silent, which I will accept it again. You know, you could go up to the hills and just meditate for the meaning of life while Other lives are being snubbed. I would accept silence. That's actually a good standard for the reproduction. But for the most part, they actually been cheerleading. They've been actually suppressing our voices, suppressing the critique and facilitating the intellectual rationalization for what is taking place. I always say, again, there's an invasion that takes place and then there is the professional scholars that legitimize and make people aspire for being participant in this invasion and this intervention. And we could see how the university system as a whole have responded. Suppression, changing regulations overnight, bringing police, riot police, cracking people's bones, assault on students and organizers, firing faculty, arresting students. Actually, just two days ago, Harvard students going into the library dressed in a Palestinian scarf and sitting in the library to study. They sent a security to take all their names and students because this been transformed into a form of a threat. But simultaneously, on the other side of the campus, if you actually are researching death machines, you're celebrated. And you might actually get the frontline seat to watch whether it's a football game or a soccer game. And you actually go and celebrate because you are building the society. And our own university gets about $800 million a year annually from the Department of Defense. So that's what we need to critique also this liberal assumption about the role of the university, the role of the intellectuals. And I would say lastly, many of these were what you call peddling books and materials on decolonization. I think they have actually taken possibly a vacation in Mars with Elon Musk, because Mars needs to be decolonized before you could actually speak about decolonization in any place of meanings and substance. And this is again parts of the critique that we have to do almost on a regular basis.
- [38:40]
Ismail Patel
Let me just expand on that with you hate him point.
- [38:42]
Hatem Bazian
Sure.
- [38:43]
Ismail Patel
What you say is absolutely, totally agreeing with everything you've mentioned. But I think we need to make a differentiation here between universities in the colonized regions, the occupied regions, and particularly in Gaza. And this purpose they serve vis a vis the purpose the universities are serving in the west, which you.
- [38:59]
Hatem Bazian
Oh, no, absolutely I agree with you, Tola. I was speaking about the west portion.
- [39:03]
Ismail Patel
You eloquently sort of narrated. So I totally agree with that. But I think we need to emphasize that, you know, when you have as people who are occupied, their educational structures are trying to use scholars to emancipate and to liberate themselves from the occupation. And I think that is part of, if you like, the decolonization mindset, in which we hope that the new structure that emerges the free self governing state, that those universities would be different rather than parody what we have in the West. So I think we just need to emphasize that.
- [39:44]
Claudia Radovan
I'm so struck by that distinction that you've just drawn there between the kind of intellectually free university under occupation and the intellectually occupied university that would claim to be free in the West. I think that's so important and it makes me think about the fact that what we're really dealing with here is a kind of war on decolonial hope. Also, because what you're saying, Ismail, I think about universities in Palestine is that they show us that a different university is actually possible, that it's possible for a university to do more than just produce the intelligence to create war machines to go and occupy further areas around the world and genocide more and more people. But the idea of that different university is so threatening to the colonial project that it needs to be. Claudia used the word scholasticide. It needs to be kind of scholasticized out of existence by those who don't want a free world. So it shows us kind of both the possibilities of the university and also the immense disappointment of the university. And one of the huge disappointments for me about universities, although I can't say that it was a surprise, is the way that universities in the west have shown themselves to be so obsessed with this kind of liberal value of the apolitical, you know, as if there's been, I think, this kind of weird, to use the term that you used, Hatam, kind of post truth maneuvering around the idea of politics where it's made to seem like it's apolitical to do your research in support of genocide, but it's political, you know, and therefore not allowed within the liberal university for you to do that research in support of the people who are being genocided. So I wanted to ask you a little bit more about politics and perhaps politics on a, on a kind of smaller level. You've already, I think, Hatan, you mentioned the relationship between the national and the transnational. But one of the characteristics of, of this kind of most recent wave of organizing for the liberation of Palestine has been that it's taken place both in the UK and in the US in this time of immense political change. Right. We've had the election in the UK and the one that's coming up in the US and we've already, I think, talked around a little bit the fact that the two parties in both cases in the election are not so different on Palestine as they might seem. But I wonder whether, do you want to say a little bit more about the kind of political situation under which this organizing is taking place and the way that that sort of shapes how we organize resistance.
- [42:28]
Hatem Bazian
Well, I do take the position that what we are witnessing is the total failure of politics and the political order and elite in the Western society. And in this sense the distinction between the two political parties, I think it's almost meaningless. And it's what Gaza did and the genocide it exposed, this notion that there is any distinctions between them. What we have literally is that we have a cluster of corporations that are on the conservative right and a cluster of corporations on the political left. But they are both right of center. And in this sense you could date it back to the transformation, whether you take it from Reagan, Margaret Thatcher period, the setting in a trickle down economics, neoliberalism, privatizations, reducing what you call, what we call the public good, education, healthcare, housing and so on, all that have the shrunk, while simultaneously the state apparatus, the oppressive state apparatus have become massive to the level of removing any notion of the individual having meaning. Like the meaning of today is the meaningless of the individual in a system that is intent on its erasure. And I do think that the election in the UK opened this possibility, especially with the independents who ran on a Gaza platform. I think that Gaza serve as a springboard for a deeper critique that could be both local and transnational. That needs to be done. And I think the success, knowing that the labor party won by 33% which actually shrunk their base of support, but nevertheless it shows that there is cracks that are there. You could see it in terms of the French election, right? It also was Gaza, was there not because Gaza is the most horrific? It is, we could say. But also people have actually seen that there is not much difference if you dig deeper between Macron, what you call soft, anti immigrant, racist, Islamophobic, Islam has a problem type of discourse and problematizing people of color and Mary Le Pen, which is just right open. So the notions and the spectrum has shrunk, which allowed for more of this critique to take place. I think the United States is a unique, what you call a specimen because of the vastness of it and the amount of resources needed to. We're talking about an election that's going to cost $2 billion. This might be the budget of almost 30 different countries in the world that is just spent on election process that goes to really marketing advertisers, big companies and data manufacturing. I think the scope of change in the US is still very Narrow compared to let's say to uk, France and so on. And I do think we have to constantly engage in a deeper critique of the political dynamics and Zionism has to be understood from the alignment of being part and parcel of this discourse that Sikkim layer are wedded. They are participant co producers of this failed political order that we're dealing with and not actually accept. And this is my last point, not except because there is some, some who actually say well it is the Zionists who are running our show. No it is not. The Zionists are instrumentalized within a system that makes them participant in the co production of this post colonial system that is intent on intervention, intent on natural resources, intent on driving all the benefit to the global north whether United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand while instrumentalizing internal conflicts. So we have to do that critique and really be able to walk a fine line in our understanding of the politics and the order of politics that is occurring.
- [47:00]
Ismail Patel
Just to expand on that, Hatim, you talk about the lack of choice in Western democracies in particular Britain and America and France as well. An example you give. I think the other thing the Gaza war has exposed is the hypocrisy of the Western political system and structures and both what that has resulted in is the lack of trust in politicians. The confidence in politicians has dropped and in effect that undermines democracy itself. So that is at the forefront and I think that is what played out at the election time. The reason literally hundreds of thousands of people did not vote for the mainstream parties and that's why we had five independent candidates on top of that, another five that could nearly have won and they lost by a few hundred is because of the lack of trust for the mainstream political party. And I think the mainstream politicians are aware of that and they're trying to roll back, but they still are, if you like, meshed up in this western centric pro Zionist milieu in which they can't extricate themselves. And we have to continue putting that pressure, educating the masses and exposing them for what they are. And in effect if the Labour Party continues in Britain, my view is in the present trajectory I think you can see that the by elections they'll be losing most of them even before the next general election. And I think we have to understand that and I think the general election in Britain has clearly shown that the trust in mainstream politicians, if we can say the mainstream in inverted commerce, if there is such thing, is really eroding away and that is not good for democracy itself and that is A direct impact of Israel and its genocide on Gaza.
- [48:46]
Chella Ward
So as we're regrettably coming to the end of our session and I think we could discuss this endlessly, I think it needs to be discussed a great deal more. Without a doubt, we were hoping we could ask you one final question. If it could be surmised in a sentence, what do you think it would look like to win in this movement, to succeed in this movement?
- [49:14]
Hatem Bazian
I would say both free Palestine and free the societies that we are in so people actually can live a full, meaningful life that they are not indebted from the cradle to the grave.
- [49:27]
Ismail Patel
I think for me it would be bringing justice at the center of our lives, both locally, nationally and internationally.
- [49:35]
Claudia Radovan
Great. Inshallah. I agree with you both. I hope that that's possible as soon as possible. In fact, I wish it had happened 76 years ago. But thank you both ever so much for expressing extraordinarily interesting conversation that was really wide ranging. We've covered a huge amount of ground. We hope that it's been an inspiring one, not just for us, but for listeners as well, if they're not involved in the movement yet, to go and get involved in the movement. You've heard a bit about some of the multiple fronts on which organizing is happening. So as Claudia said, unfortunately we have to finish. We could go on for much, much longer. But let me finish by saying jazakallah. Thank you both enormously for such an interesting conversation. Thank you to all of our listeners for listening and we hope, inshallah, to see you again on another episode of Radio Reorient.
- [50:26]
Hatem Bazian
Thank you.
- [50:27]
Ismail Patel
Thank you for having us.
- [50:28]
Radio Reorient Host
You're listening to Radio Reorient, the decolonial podcast in partnership with the New Books Network. This is Radio Reorient exploring the Islamosphere and navigating the post Western. How should we study the things that we study after the critique of Orientalism? Now let's discuss what we've heard with.
- [50:47]
Hatem Bazian
Chella Ward Huzemiya, Claudia Radovan and Saeed Khan.
- [50:51]
Claudia Radovan
That was such a fascinating, wide ranging conversation with two guests who were really drawing on a lifetime of experience of organizing for Palestine that I almost don't know where to start. But I think one place we might want to start is by thinking about where we are in the week that we're recording this. So we're towards the end of September 2025 as we're making this recording and what's just happened this week, week is that the uk, Canada and Australia have said that they will recognize the state of Palestine that's something that. That other places have been threatening to do for some time. Emmanuel Mahon in France, for instance, has been threatening for some time that he will recognize the state of Palestine. And I'm interested in us thinking through these kind of long histories of protest and thinking about how hollow, in a way, some of those recognitions of statehood really are. Right. The first thing I thought in my head when I heard this news about the recognition of statehood was, well, the chant is free Palestine, not recognize Palestine. I mean, I think the idea that. That recognizing Palestine would itself be a liberatory tactic or some kind of tactic of resistance. That idea rests on a very colonial world order where freedom is something. Thing that you get from your colonial masters, you know, or where recognition is something that you want from your colonial masters rather than something that you have an absolute right to. And in fact, you know, have always had an absolute right to. And we could go into, you know, the very long history of different organizations recognizing the Palestinian state. In fact, everybody who is now saying they will recognize it is a late comer, you know, something that has been recognized not just by Palestinians, but by many international bodies for an extreme, extremely long time. So it's also, I think it feels to me like the sort of last gasps of the neocolonial world order, where you've sort of got, you know, the UK and places like the UK jumping up and down to say, okay, magnanimously, we will now recognize this state as if it matters at all what the uk, you know, or France or Canada think about statehood. So I think that this maybe provides us with a sort of interesting weigh into the question of. That was really the question that Ismail and Hatem were asking, which was what makes protest effective? You know, what does protest mean? They were really talking about the importance of thinking of protest as something that isn't just now. That certainly doesn't just begin with October 7th. I mean, both of them were organizing for Palestine many lifetimes before October 7th. But the importance of thinking about it as something with a long history, I mean, in the episode Hatam dates it, you know, to pre Cold War, to the first Intifada. The importance of thinking of protest as something that has been going on now for an extremely long time, and the importance in this moment, too, of asking ourselves, well, what would make that successful? Because I think it is clear that the recognition of statehood, you know, by. By these kind of pretended colonial overlords or those who think they are still colonial overlords probably isn't what liberation looks like. For Palestine. So that asks, I think, the question, well, what might that liberation look like?
- [54:10]
Radio Reorient Host
Well, I think on that question, Chella, that where do we start when we look at protest? There is one's own agency of becoming aware and conscious of protests, but also linking in or connecting to a broader arc of protests. I mean, here we have a conflict that has been going on at least since the mandate period. And certainly there were those who were protesting the British mandate of Palestine going back over 100 years. And so the idea then of when is the on ramp that others can take on that, that process. I find it fascinating that you, you use the word with Macron threatening to recognize Palestine. And I think it's, it's, it's important to recognize that the, that the terminology that, that unfortunately we also have become subjected to using is this idea that the basic freedom of a people and the basic self determination of a people has to be positioned as a threat as opposed to being something that is organically internalized by someone as a process of liberation and as a humanitarian aspect. And lastly, I also find it fascinating that the current, quote, unquote, recognition of Palestine in late September 2025 is occurring by three Anglophone countries, one, of course, which was directly responsible for this malaise because of the British Mandate of Palestine, that is the uk but also Canada and Australia. And so France is coming in as the other major mandatory power of the Middle east, following up on the Anglophone powers again. So it's always interesting to see how many of the lines of division that have historically led to this point seem to be maintaining their structural integrity.
- [56:06]
Chella Ward
I think one of the things that stood out for me about this, thinking about bigger narratives, bigger histories, and looking at the kind of trajectory of genocides past and present, is the kind of the way that it was spoken about, particularly if we look at the uk I listened to part of Keir Starmer's speech when he declared that the UK would recognize Palestine. And the overwhelming focus was on the brutality of October 7th, the hostages, not Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons, but Israeli hostages, how he'd spoken to UK families of hostages, etc. And there seemed to be sort of as little as possible recognition of what has been widely recognized and now very officially and publicly recognized as a genocide. And the emphasis as well being on the surrendering of weapons, the demilitarization, and how we can look to previous incidences where, as we've said, it's particular global authorities, particular Western authorities that get to decide, okay, the world is now thoroughly disgusted at this. We're gonna have to get on board and recognize it for what it is. But if we reflect back on the, you know, the genocide in Bosnia, that focus on demilitarization, then, and the absolutely horrifying consequences of that as a whole population was disarmed and then subsequently massacred and the number of years it took for the recognition of that as a genocide. And then not only that, the prosecutions, which were, you know, for a lot of people, they were minimal. And we see this. This repetition, again, whereby these things were only recognized when essentially the damage has been done. The. The loss of life has already happened. And it begs the question of, you know, what is the purpose of these. These acts of. Of recognition? You know, what. What is the point of them when you've already gone to the point of no return?
- [58:17]
Claudia Radovan
I think you're right, Claudia. I think for me, it's the conditionality of that recognition that feels the most colonial. Right? It's premised on demilitarization. It's premised on this kind of repeated, constant idea that we ought to. Before we can say anything, we ought to condemn Hamas. You know, it's premised on a series of hoops that these European colonial powers, as said, rightly said, are still, you know, still believe themselves to be capable of. Of setting up for the Middle East. And that's also the reason why I use the term threat of Macron. You know, I said he's threatening to. To recognize the state of Palestine. Not, of course, because I myself think of it as a threat, but. But because of the way that he's positioning that as being this kind of extraordinary step that he might take when really, you know, it's not. It's not particularly as extraordinary at all. It's actually very late coming, very belated. But I think, you know, coming back to that idea of conditionality, I think the. The French context is actually a really important one here because at the same time as Macron is threatening to, you know, acknowledge the state of Palestine, he is also disempowering organizations like, for instance, which is the largest pro Palestinian organization in. In France. And so, you know, that. That there is this kind of secularization also of the pro Palestinian movement, where he's sort of saying, look, there's an appropriate way to campaign for the liberation of the Palestinians. And it's very secular. It has to be done within colonial structures. It has to be understood as a struggle, you know, that that happens within, that leaves untouched or undismantled kind of ethno nationalist concepts of identity and belonging. So he's trying I think to take control of something and to other in that process, other forms of resistance, including those forms of resistance that take Muslimness or even Islamism as their organizing concepts. I think we have to be kind of very aware of what that conditionality of recognition is actually kind of holding within it. And the other thing I just kind of want to insist on is what we've all been saying here about coloniality because that's the point that Ismail makes in the episode as well when we asked him about the relationship between organizing against the Iraq war and organizing for the liberation of the Palestinians. Two causes that of course, once you start to think of liberation and struggle as a joined up project, you can't help but see those two causes being absolutely connected. We think of, you know, those, those Iraq war protests against the Iraq war that, that had the slogan don't attack Iraq, Freedom for Palestine. Right. These things have always been very connected. And what he says is that these are actually both projects of, of American imperialism, British and American imperialism. So we ought to see in both cases anti, anti Iraq war organizing and pro Palestinian organizing as kind of fundamentally anti colonial acts of organizing. So that I think is the intellectual thread maybe that runs through those two. Yeah, absolutely.
- [61:25]
Amina Essat Das
I'd agree with you, Chella, in the sense that this move, the recognition is perhaps sort of a virtue signaling going down on paper as having done something, when in fact it's a very token move. And as you quite rightly point out that it's, you know, they're really late to the conversation and if anything it really signals this maintenance of sort of the colonial powers, the colonial order, but also hierarchies. I think it's important to recognize as well that this is just one political tool in a wider discourse, a wider discussion vis a vis Palestine, but broader anti colonialism. And for many, I guess the protests don't stop here. Recognizing Palestine doesn't end the kind of global military industrial complex and the ultimate loss of life that this brings about. So really I think it's part of a broader, a broader struggle. It's perhaps not an enormous win, but it's definitely a move in the right direction, politically speaking.
- [62:27]
Radio Reorient Host
So that was the question that I had then, Amina, is that can people who have been earnestly and indefatigably working within the space of protest, can they claim what has happened in this week with these recognitions of Palestine, can they or should they claim them as a victory, that there is a link to the protests or is it incidental? Because I think it's interesting to then think that we run the danger of saying that if this really is much ado about nothing or if it really doesn't have any value, do we undermine ourselves and our own efforts that are made when people are protesting to bring about change, to raise awareness? So just, just simply to consider.
- [63:11]
Claudia Radovan
Well, one thing that we know about protest is that it's incredibly educational. Right? The, the pro Palestine protests have in my view been, you know, the, the biggest educational achievements at least of my lifetime. Think about the number of people who can now use the term settler colonialism confidently when, you know, 10 years ago that was a term that academics used. It wasn't a term that, that people could use. And we talked about that with Hatem and Ismail as well. We talked about, about on the one hand, the destruction of the entire educational system in, in Gaza. So this genocide being one that is deliberately targeting education, but at the same time the way that protest is functioning as this kind of mass tool of, of political education. And we can see that, I mean, in the, in the episode, Ismail brings up the, the lack of trust in mainstream parties, particularly in the UK that the loss of support for labor, you know, in, in the most recent elections where we saw, saw lots and lots of independent candidates being elected on what was essentially a kind of pro Palestine platform. Right. Many of them didn't have many other policies apart from solidarity with Gaza. So we do see that kind of political change coming about. Whether or not recognition of statehood, you know, should be seen within that exact same light. I'm not sure. My own view is that there is something shifting in terms of how the greater public are making demands of political leaders, even political leaders who they don't feel represent them particularly well. I think that there is something shifting, but, you know, I suppose it remains to be seen how effective those, what feel to me like relatively small gains might be. There are much bigger gains, I think, to be made in the protest movement. We could, I think, go on talking about this for an extremely long time and weighing up all of the various different strategies. Protest is, after all, I think, a question of political strategy and the various different ways of thinking about it. But we don't have the time to do that now. So I think we will very quickly wrap up by saying again, thank you ever so much to Ismail Patel and Hatan Bazian for joining us. Thank you ever so much to our listeners for listening. You have been listening to Radio Reorient. Your hosts for this episode have been Claudia Radovan, Chella Ward Saeed Khan and Amina Essat Das. We hope, inshallah, you'll join us on another episode of Radio Reorient. Assalamu alaikum.
- [65:54]
Hatem Bazian
Sam.