 event this this evening. I've been told there are some 250 which is great. Now we'll see how many will turn up and not forget the the event. So I will start anyhow introducing our our speaker and during that time I hope that the room will will have been filled. I'm very glad to to to welcome some Deep Sen who is talking to us from Denmark from Copenhagen. That's where you are based right now. Yeah, yeah very very nice to have you here some deep with us actually we tried to do it last year but we had to postpone it so it's it's good that that we finally have you with us and that would be to to essentially to speak about your book that I'm holding here to the camera decolonizing Palestine hammers between the anti-colonial and the post-colonial and as the title indicates that's a book of reflections about the the the the connection between these two relations to to colonialism that the anti and the post and how they intertwine and how actually it's an ongoing struggle and the the the case that some deep is considering to discuss this is that of Hamas in Gaza and this book is based on field work a lot of of visit strips made to the to the strip as it's called a visit strip and therefore there is an ethno or anthropological research here work of anthropology behind it which led to to to this this this book some deep I should I mean you've probably read the the announcement but let me repeat for if you have forgotten he is associate professor in international development at at development studies that is like my own department here at so as at the roscaldi university in danmark and and well he is the author of that the book we mentioned but also the co-editor of globalizing collateral language from 9 11 to endless wars which is a book that came out more recently that after that book after the the colonizing palestine that was last last year actually and before that some deep also co-authored a book called entitled the the palestinian authority in the west bank so some deep as a long familiarity with the with the the the the issue of palestine and the palestinian struggle and therefore his presence here in the series of for the center for of palestine studies at so as is very very natural and actually you are even an associate member of of of the the center for palestine studies so some deep it's absolutely great to to welcome you and thank you for having given us some of your time for for for this event I want also before before giving you the floor to to to tell a story that for those who don't know it and to tell it in the form of a very strong protest it is that you have been a deep platformed last year at the University of Glasgow where you were supposed to give a talk like the one you will be giving us now and for some misuse of as usual of of categories such as anti-semitism and the rest the university cancelled your event and that was the that led to a big row and a lot of of protest and this is absolutely intolerable this kind of evolution that has been happening over recent years using very fake very false accusations of of anti-semitism or suspicions I should say anti-semitism in order to prevent discussion on issues such as the very actual oppression of the palestinian people so without further ado please some deep I mean we would be welcoming you with a round of applause had we not been on zoom so we'll listen to you your presentation for as long as you need 30 40 minutes as you said and then after that we will be addressing the questions by the audience in the Q&A device that is linked at the bottom of the screen so please some deep welcome on board thank you so much Gilbert and yeah thank you for this very kind introduction and the kind invitation it actually means a lot to be able to present this work in XOAS and in the presence of Gilbert actually because I think we met 2014 or 2015 you'd organize the workshop at XOAS and that was my first visit there and and some of the early work was presented there as well so it's good to you know come full circle and present this at XOAS again so I'll try to share my power a little bit about the talk a little bit about the journey the journey of the book which is essentially you know my PhD started in 2011 and where my quest was to really understand the you know to really unsettle the way we talk about an organization like XOAS there are certain themes that I want to go through which is normalizing Daza, globalizing Hamas and what I call what I term in my book as the long moment of liberation since these themes would sort of become more clear as we move forward you know Gilbert mentioned my experience at the University of Glasgow where I was supposed to was supposed to deliver this book talk and you know questions about academic freedom and the norms and what you can talk about with regards to Palestine you know comes about whenever these sorts of controversies pop up but this sort of theme of you know limits on what how we can study Palestine was already evident to me back in 2011 when I was starting my PhD where I went into this PhD program in a very let's say traditional orthodox political Heinz department in Denmark where where I was interested in Hamas but also Palestine but also broader questions of liberation like what it means to be you know what it means to be liberated as fluffy as you know an expression like that like that sounds so I was interested in the life cycles of liberation struggles but what I came across or what like what I what I happened about were the disciplinary norms the politics and the limits on how we were able to how we are allowed to study Palestine you know I was interested in notions of you know postcolonialism settler colonialism liberation anti-colonial arms struggle you know I used an expression sononian perspective but you know very early in the program as I was trying to do this research I was told you know these were themes of topics that weren't necessarily part of mainstream political science and therefore I was discouraged from exploring this I was told that you know Gilbert mentioned that I did fieldwork in Gaza in the West Bank in Jerusalem in Tel Aviv in some of these places but you know I was told very early that you know I shouldn't do fieldwork that's not what we're meant to do as political scientists you know using expression like sononian perspective talking about all talking about anti-colonial resistance all of that was seen as too emotional essentially what I was told to do is get rid of the context in which an organization like Hamas operates and be more scientific in my approach and I like to show the picture of the title of you know the first paper I wrote as part of my PhD you know the prelude to I'm sorry the prelude to civil military complex right how using civil military relations which is something we usually use for the state and see how that applies to an organization like Hamas Hamas and Hezbollah that has both a civil faction but a civilian faction and also a military military operation of course once you arrive in Palestine you see the power of the context and also for you know students or scholars also shows us the importance of incorporating the context when we talk about what is our theoretical approach our methodological approach and what we care about empirically when I arrived in Palestine in 2013 specifically to Gaza I took a six-hour journey from Cairo to the Rafa border between Egypt and Gaza when you arrive there this is back in 2013 you see this you know an Egyptian tank that is facing incoming traffic now there are soldiers everywhere there's a you know your passport is taken away at this gate and you're basically in sort of this desert landscape without any ID with basically at the mercy of Egyptian authorities to decide whether you can actually enter the passport control terminal once you're there you see something like this that would be on the left on the screen that's the passport department where travelers mostly Palestinians mostly Gazans are basically huddled around the passport control terminal there are two there are two speakers only one that's operational where someone yells out your name and once you go there if you're approved to enter Gaza a passport is thrown at you if you're not and if you're unlucky and they want to do extra checks they took you to a back room and I wasn't unfortunate enough to go to the back room but many young Palestinians were one Palestinian doctor traveling home said you know look here it's you know we're being treated like cat cat right so if there was any doubt that you were entering what's an all-called the sector of the colonized that disappears once you arrive at the Rafa border crossing between Egypt and between Egypt and Gaza it is in in many ways person if personifies the sector of the column yet once you start entering the Palestinian terminal you know things change you know materially aesthetically you have this sign that says welcome to Palestine you you know you go into a passport a passport control terminal which at the time was recently built with Qatari funding and it looked like any past passport control terminal that you know that you wouldn't enter in any international airports at the passport control terminal they ask why you're here how long is your visit who are you you know where are you staying who who has invited you as a as a brown man traveling in you know in the west these are questions that I am very familiar with and things that I that I asked you know asked of me so it's interesting because you know while aesthetically again you know and the experience of the Egyptian terminal very much confirmed the fact that you were entering the sector of the colonized then and I have no doubt that you know Gaza is still all you know under siege and occupied and colonized yet aesthetically when you enter the Palestinian terminal it looks very much like you were entering the the era of the post-colonial state right of a normal liberated state and I know this is aesthetic and it's not real but nonetheless this is sort of this this between the anti-colonial and the post-colonial is something that I kept going back and forth mine and that was that sort of defined my experience of Gaza in general you in the book I write about entering a a bazaar in in in Gaza city that reminded me very much of the you know open bazaar that I grew up in around in India yet you also saw pictures of martyrs and destroyed buildings of buildings that were destroyed during ritual military onslaughts on Israeli military onslaughts of Gaza once I entered Gaza I had to extend my residence permit and I had to get this residence permit from from a specific for a Palestinian authority division and we knew that entry into Gaza and exit out of Gaza was very much depended on Israeli authorities and Egyptian authorities and Palestinians not have sovereignty in that matter yet we went through that ritual even meeting Hamas officials I was under the impression I'm meeting these revolutionaries I didn't really think about you know what I was wearing yet one of my gatekeepers said well you can't go in dressed like that you need to have a suit so I ended up going suit shopping in Gaza to show up to meet Hamas officials who equally were dressed up as representatives of the state yet in our conversations of course they were using the language of an anti-colonial struggle the language of liberation and this was interesting because at that time you know 2013 you know 13 14 15 the puzzle was very much about what Hamas is going to do choosing between its military operations it's Muqa'uma or becoming a largely governing entity and international observers were convinced that Hamas has to do one or the other yet in my time in Gaza Palestinians in general's gardens in general and Hamas particular seem to be more at ease not completely at ease but more at ease with these two roles so performing like a state that doesn't exist yet still engaging in an anti-colonial struggle an anti-colonial arms struggle so I shifted the puzzle from you know how and to what extent Hamas is able to balance these two roles of the military and the civil and started looking more at what does it mean for the post-colonial and the anti-colonial to live within the context of a liberation liberation struggle so something that looks like you know the era of colonial rule and something that looks like the era after the flight of the colonel how are they able to live alongside each other what does it that mean for the trajectory of decolonization and what does it mean for you know how we define what it means to be liberated or unused right so as I explore this question in the book I of course begin by you know contextualizing the settler colonial settler colonialism as the you know settler colonial and as the broader context in which this brand of politics is happening in doing so you know you know I begin with the sort of the basic premise of what settler colonial is and does and what I argue is that it's driven by this dream of indigenous non-existence right this idea that the settler is settling on on virgin land right so then I go into this discussion about Israel and the insistent elimination of Palestine Palestinians and Palestinian this elimination of any material evidence of Palestinian existence that would of course contradict this idea of virgin territory happens in many ways right and and folks that are here obviously are very knowledgeable about this right so culture you know appropriation of cultural artifacts food I in the book I even talk about Conan O'Brien being confronted by that the American talk show being confronted by Palestinian activists in Bethlehem because he he called I forget which Palestinian dish for the Palestinian dish Israeli and you could clearly see Conan O'Brien in this sort of interaction I think the whole thing is online so if you want to see you can you can check it out Conan O'Brien it's clearly flabbergasted that among all the things that are happening in Palestine why would Palestine Palestinians Palestinian activists or Palestine solidarity activists care about food but of course Palestinians know because that's another evidence of Palestinian existence that is wiped away I also do fieldwork in in Jerusalem where I look at Israeli museums Israeli museums celebrating what is really called the war of independence and I look at the ways in which Palestinians are mentioned or not mentioned right in most cases of course there is no mention of the word Palestine or Palestinians but in a place like the Palmaq museum Palestinians are referred into in sort of in two occasions one when they're referred to as marauding Arab gangs and in the other instance which was sort of a sort of a movie a recreation of a historical event or a conversation where one character asks another so what do we do with these refugees without mentioning who they are and the other one says well do what you want you know do what you think is best so of course the existence of Palestinians as Palestinians is not you know there in these museums but in the book I also talk about the biological elimination of Palestinians and where we talk about where I talk about the past of course the Mecca which was sort of the physical elimination of Palestine and Palestinian communities and Palestinians but I also talk about more recent biological elimination of Palestine you see this in the end of 2015 when I was in I was in Jerusalem where a wide sister's cousin who engaged in one of these knife attacks next to Mahdi Yahuda the western part of Jerusalem and if you see the CCTV camera footage you'll see that at that time a lot of citizens were very much armed it was during what was called the knife in the father and the mayor of Jerusalem it encouraged Jerusalemites to carry weapons and you can see that while even though they have fallen on the ground they're continuously shot at right almost as a way of eliminating any rebellious you know any rebellious evidence of Palestinian existence that that that these two young in these two teenagers and body you also saw this the book I talk about the lynching of Hafkan Zadkoum who was an Eritrean asylum seeker who was at a bus stop in Beersheva the bus terminal and there was you know a rumor going around about a Palestinian attacker being on the roof on the loose and first Hafkan was was was shot at and then he was kept in its place with a chair and on top of him wild bystanders took turns kicking him and beating and this is all caught on camera again again this was the any sort of indication or any sort of suspicion of any evidence of rebellious Palestinian that was being insistently eliminated in that point sorry if it's a bit grim but you know it is a grim affair that we're talking about so with this context of elimination of settler colonial elimination in place I moved on to theorize and discuss discuss Hamas's arm struggle as well as it's sort of the rituals of state class with regards to Hamas's arm struggle I brought in a you know a detailed phenomenon perspective that looked at violence's ability to unmix that is destroy and also mix and in anticolonial struggles violence is often described as this destructive force that is able to unmix the colonial the materiality of colonial rule right of course I recognize in the books that you know the material resources available to Palestinians are overshadowed by the military might of the state of Israel so of course militarily an organization like Hamas cannot unmix the the Israeli settler colonial rule but looking at a case like the Hamas attack on the whole I talk about the its minimal ability to unmix which is that it you know of course it may not be able to wholesale unmix the settler colonial rule but it minimally demonstrates or evokes the persistence of the Palestinian struggle and makes the colonial endeavor a difficult one to maintain with this sort of unmaking ability I ask can violence also be something that makes that can be a creative force and this may be difficult to talk about seeing as in any military engagement with with Israel often it's Palestinians that suffered the most material and human loss but in my through my interviews what I show that even through the hurt the pain the injury the death Palestinian my Palestinian interlocutors were able to write the signature of Palestine or reiterate Palestinian existence through those experiences so whether it was a bodily injury or a trauma of the past you know my interlocutors would say that you know this this bruise reminds me that Palestine exists reminds me that I am still Palestinian right or if we look at sort of you know Palestinian martyrs and the way you know and if you look at say the scene of a funeral procession you know when an individual dies it's the death of the individual but in that procession their body is wrapped with their body is wrapped with the palace Palestinian flag where the death that's suffering transcends from being an individual suffering to being a collective suffering and of course in that collective you know Fanon talks about this chain this chain that connects the colonized people together you know in that that suffering that the mourning of that suffering you know Palestinians as a community as as a national people come together then of course there is the the strange aspect of of post-colonial statecraft that an organization like Hamas engages I'm not going to say state but all the rituals and bureaucracies are there to keep up this you know performances of stateness right of course there is we have to contextualize this right and in the book I contextualize this through the Oslo Codes and the arrival of the Oslo Codes that brought post-coloniality into Palestine officially the Oslo Codes established the Palestinian Authority this sort of self-governing entity that was meant to be the precursor of the Palestinian state right for the future post-colonial Palestinian state of course we know that it was never meant to achieve that right what it did was or what it by introducing post-coloniality by introducing these rituals and institutions and bureaucracies what it wanted to do is change the subjective identity of the Palestinian the colonized Palestinian where the idea was to keep Palestinian Revolutionary factions busy with engaging in these rituals of statecraft wearing the suit you know being a bureaucrat and doing that and left time fighting Israel so change the subject of the liberation faction but in doing so also undermine the Palestinian cause and we did that by incentivizing these rituals providing resources recognizing you as the you know legitimate representative of the Palestinian people you have if you engage in these if you agree to engage in statecraft and left fighting then you get access to the state of course you also get access to the you know the the the the instruments of public violence yeah which is very valuable because then that allows you to suppress your opposition of course there's also this incentive built in right if you engage in the anti-colonial struggle what you're going to feel is the violence of this state-like entity right and we saw that last summer right where the Palestinian the the kind of violence the Palestinian authority was using against against Palestinian activists indeed in the West Bank so then returning to Hamas you know how does this post-colonial governance live in a settler colonial condition especially in how does Hamas deal with as of course you know this puzzle so to speak began in 2006 the Palestinian Legislative Council elections where you know contrary to the expectations of international observers Hamas won and the idea was what would Hamas choose to do and instead of choosing either governance or you know sticking to its role as a as a armed faction it chose to do both right and so how does it chose to do both both acts like a armed anti-colonial faction yet also engage in these rituals of statecraft and you see these rituals of statecraft in many ways and I mentioned them another classic one where the rituals of you know you just the sign that you see no guns allowed was evident in it was present in all you know you know buildings in in the Gaza Strip and you know in the book I sort of relate this to sort of classical state-building processes right and you know you from a trillion perspective what did the state do you know it you know it took away guns from everyone that's exactly what Hamas did it took away guns from everyone so that it had monopoly over violence um so the question okay once again state-like conduct liberation context how does this live together and I and I and I bring in the respect two perspectives right of course the perspective of Hamas which when asked why do you engage in these rituals of statecraft representing a state that doesn't exist and for them they said well what we are trying to do is bring in the anti-colonial perspective within an institution that is a colonial construct um and we are here while the previous governing entity specifically talking about ah it's it's rival while the previous governing entity worked to undermine the liberation struggle we are here to protect um and that often meant that you know Hamas sought to have leadership over all liberation activities all protest activities right which is why the great march of return was a was a was a real challenge to Hamas's sort of assorting of course this narrative that Hamas is saying of introducing um you know the anti-colonial perspective in a colonial construct is something you hear about from liberation struggles across the world the SLN you know introduced claim to introduce the uh you know the anti-colonial perspective in the colonial state if you look at most post-colonial states they use you know institutions and laws and means of say public violence right so the baton charge that you see in the UK you know was adopted in the Indian police practice and we just call it a lati charge right um of course there's the other perspective how do colonized uh gazing gazing living under siege experience this ritual of statecraft and of course oftentimes as I write in the book it's through violence it's through uh brutal oppression of of Hamas authorities Hamas police force who um tried to suppress any sort of um you know criticism or critique of their of their of their rule of the Gaza strip and which of course once again is not uncommon for liberation factions to oppress other liberation factions um but through the hurt and the violence and often in a tragic sense Palestinians also talked about the tragedy of Palestinian governments right and while the you know while they were hurt and they were depressed by this form of governance they once again called it a Palestinian form of governance right um you know um and in a tragic sense introducing the signature of Palestine here again this while the colonizer says that Palestine does not exist so then the question is so what I've shown this brand of postcolonial governance and I introduce you know and I show the the the similarities between the conduct of Hamas's you know of the Hamas government if we want to call it that and that of postcolonial states we see that you know we saw the relevance this existence of postcolonial governance in a settler colonial condition and of course you have the anti-colonial struggle as well so what how what does it mean to have the anti-colonial and the postcolonial living within a liberation context and I sort of stepped back and I showed that in the book that this sort of ritual of postcoloniality during the era of the anti-colonial struggle is not uncommon um a lot of the book you know relates to the Indian independent struggle being from India um you know that's some of the historical background that I that I was attracted to and I showed that um you know I bring up this instance of a dorm room at a university at a college a dorm room being used as sort of you know uh you know as a as a state-like entity as a deliberated state where where um uh active is engaged in you know state-like behavior both as a way you know but you know also you know either as part of the liberation struggle but also as a way of keeping the national community together and through those rituals keeping up the sense of the national being this was happening during the anti-colonial struggle I also show that you know in liberated states in postcolonial states doesn't mean that people don't talk about liberation whether we're talking about in southern Africa where remnants of you know in terms of land ownership continued colonial land ownership continued in the era of the postcolonial state so to speak or you know misuse of the anti-colonial struggle in in in a place like India um which is being used to this narrative is being used to um to oppress and suppress religious minority communities um it's very common to see the anti-colonial also continue on in the era of the postcolonial state so what does it mean that the anti-colonial and the postcolonial to be on both sides of this moment of liberation right this live this this this moment where we usually celebrate as independently it's supposed to divide the anti and the post right the colonial and the postcolonial so what does it mean that the anti-colonial and postcolonial appear on both sides of this moment and I conclude then that liberation then is not about this moment liberation is this long process that begins long before the flight of the colonizer but continues long after um it is often uh contradictory if often takes a circuitous path but liberation is often a perpetual process that has less to do with you know the colonized people of colonized formerly colonized people uh inability to settle on who they are uh it has more to do with the treachery of colonial rule that works to especially in a settler colonial context works to um entirely erase the colonized people sense of self and you continue to struggle long after the flight of the colonizer because of that exact fact because that there has been a historical process of what it means of of of erasure of any memory of what it means to be indigenous right of to be uh of people not affected by the by the processes of of colonization oops i'm trying to so in in arguing these things what am i trying to achieve in the book one thing that i wanted wanted to do with the book is to normalize gaza now gaza in the narrative you know with with uh with the closure of gaza with the seizure of gaza we are um research has become very difficult and gaza is often treated as this exceptional place an exceptionally contemptible place right where people can have a normal conversation about Palestine even you know self people who would self describe themselves as liberals in Israel would recognize um and you know what the the the the tragedy and the treachery of what's happening in Jerusalem what's happening with the settlement settlement movement in the in the west bank yet when you know when it comes to gaza they would say bat hama right donna neville has this fantastic article in sikhoon called bat hama where it's placed outside any normal discussions of what's happening in Palestine but through the book i want to normalize that right i want to normalize gaza that's why i started by connecting hamas gaza with the sect colonial context because if you look at the history of gaza it actually is a microcosm of the entirety of the Palestinian experience because very quickly after the nakba it was demographically transformed where gaza became a place where the majority of the population were refugees who um carried with them the memory and identity of people having suffered this process of elimination right if you look at say the classical works of people like farah roy who have then showed that you know um gaza effect you know was not just affected demographically but also socioeconomically and so it's not surprising that gaza is a place where you have you know where where um iconic Palestinian revolutionary figures have been trained um gaza is a place where you know in the father's style yeah gaza in some way historically has been a microcosm of these processes right the treatment of gaza by israel is also treated as you know people who would be supportive of the Palestinian cause have been treated as exceptional but i would argue that it's actually normal because gaza being this place where you know um revolution starts where popular uprising starts is the loudest critique of this idea of terror now of this idea of you know israel being built on a land without a people and by and through these revolutionary actions or through through the violence through through through this through the starving of of of in the father they sort of are the loudest critique of that which is why it's not surprising that the settler colonizer feels so much contempt for gaza and gaza in the book i also wanted to globalize him where you know i've i noticed that this idea of global Palestine you know my my bachelor supervisor john Collins wrote this book called global Palestine and we've seen this you know you know wonderful shift of moving away of from the exceptionalism of the study of Palestine as well um and and and placing Palestine alongside global against settler colonialism anti-colonial circles and so forth um obviously because of the way both in public discourse but in scholarly discourse we talk about Hamas and gaza that hasn't happened and what i wanted to do through my work is to ask these sort of broad questions about liberation what it means to be unliberated but then also but in doing that face Palestine and Hamas and gaza alongside the pantheon of anti-colonial struggles and post-colonial struggles and post-colonial you know politics that exist across the world so you'll see that in this book it's almost schizophrenic because i get into this very um you know anthropological as Gilbert mentioned descriptions of my experiences and encounters in Palestine but very quickly i then jump to India or Tanzania or Kenya or Kashmir or Mexico and interestingly the book starts in the border between Gaza and Egypt but ends in Tanzania where i was finishing up the book while um following my wife who was doing fieldwork there but had certain reflections and encounters and you know um self indulgence self-indulgence thoughts about you know what it means to be liberated am i liberated you know how can we liberate it can we ever deliberate and of course you know i end up talking about you know this long moment of liberation and you know the conclusion of course is that liberation is not contingent on the withdrawal of the colonizer as a struggle for liberation continues long after the flight of the colonizer by doing that i think i wanted to also push us to be um a bit more sympathetic in terms of how we talk about liberation struggles i think often time we become very economical right we say did this action lead to liberation no it didn't so it was a worthless action but if we look at the history of liberation struggles in general we'll see that it's a it's a winding path and it's often contradictory and we should we should remember that when we talk about the Palestinian struggle for liberation and here's a picture you know of of Israeli products in in in in Gaza supermarket and you know i leave that here because it does something to you where you know you're in this lifelong struggle against the colonizer yet you're compelled to use you know the colonizer's currency their products their you know even their meat products right and it does something to to you and to you as a people as a colonized people and we should remember that when we talk about you know what is liberation how can we liberate ourselves and you know what is the trajectory of a of a liberation struggle so thank you thank you yeah thank you very much uh some deep very interesting talk and a lot of food for thought although i should say i'm not seeing any questions yet in the q&a so let me then have a chat with you then until uh okay people are are starting but let me make some comments and bring you to to carry on in your explanation what i would like you to to maybe address is the the very meaning of liberation because even if you take the Palestinian context you had the formula in Arabic which was the center of debates liberating land and human being and you had big discussions about that of course the right wing would say human being is to be postponed after liberation of land and if this human being is a woman it's it would be even more postponed you know uh uh uh very vague future and therefore uh when i mean in the way you speak of liberation one gets the impression that you are only meaning liberation in the sense of the territorial land liberation and uh because if you take it in the other in the fuller concept then there might be a contradiction between the post-colonial state and liberation the post-colonial state may and that's actually most of the cases have been of of oppressive post-colonial states that is countries that have been liberated from the colonizer but not from old source of oppression right and so and this brings me to a second dimension of the same comment which is i practically i think you haven't used the term Islam a single time during your whole presentation now this is when you speak about Hamas this is a feat uh it's it's i understand that there it is certainly deliberate in the sense that you don't want to i mean there is too much uh too much insistence on on that dimension of Hamas and like in the but but Hamas that you you mentioned and all that that this religious dimension would be put forward usually but can we just ignore it i mean is it isn't it part of also this post-colonial state the specific post-colonial state uh adding a layer of oppression if you want that is specific to to the uses of of religion by a post-colonial state and in that regard whether about women or or more generally so yeah if you could please and then i see there are a few questions for questions so we'll take them after you you you yeah i think you're you're absolutely right with regards to this question of liberation i think that um well in the book you know i do talk a lot about sort of the material aspects of liberation but you know especially when i engage in the discussions of you know um the creative aspects of violence right that's where i really engage in this discussion of you know you know um liberating the self right and i engage specifically in questions about um you know uh you know what does it mean to be liberated you know the Kenonian perspective on you know attractions to whiteness the you know um the black skin white mass sort of arguments i talk about Palestinians who find themselves um you know talk about their relationship with israeli how they felt good about that yet you know rejected i talk about um Palestinians struggling to um uh uh uh uh to um fellow Palestinians talking about and struggling with the idea that when they have to think about what a liberated state would look like oftentimes what's closest to them is israel and they find that it's it's you know uh you know palestinian plan city rawabi it's a good example which many Palestinians call that as a Palestinian settlement and the designer aesthetics of it very much you know even though it's you know it's um you know the you know as um you know as the design of the places and i've visited the place where they use a lot of the aesthetics of you know the national aesthetics the big flag and palestinian this and palestinian that but we know that the the the the builders the architects took inspirations from from um from from israeli settlement so there is this struggle and there's a struggle with regards to israeli products you know we we had long conversations but i put in the book of palestinian struggle gazan my gazan friend struggling with this idea of you know gazan's thinking that israeli products are better even though you know egyptian products are you know more available and there's a classic in all of that there's another aspect of liberation that i also want to mention which sort of i sort of missed out in engaging it more also because of the timing of when i wrote the book is to what extent ideas of liberation are connected to something like the state right and as you mentioned you know there's a reason why the you know hamas is acting the way it does in regards to its governing role because a lot of post-colonial states are incredibly violent and as you know even fennel talks about the national bourgeoisie basically replacing the colonizer and using the colonizer's tools so so i think that that's a conversation you know in the book i end by you know uh much more you know philosophical discussions about violence in the state and you know people talk about you know the state has a monopoly over violence right and how you know state building and war making us anonymous processes are related processes and you know when charles tilly talked about that you know political scientists sociologists ran with it and then started talking in the obvious conclusion our next step was okay how organized and how systematic does this violence need to be for it to contribute to state building rather than questioning why should violence be you know the language of state crap right even you know i'm not a political theorist and i you know i'm not as well as i did a lot of these uh political scientists and political theories but even tilly describes the state as a mafia right so um i think that that's a that's a so i engage in that conversation but i also i missed the point with regards to in the book with regards to liberation being connected to the state and the problems with that right and i think that there's a lot of very fruitful discussions happening in palestine that we've seen especially with regards to the activism we saw last year the activism against the palestinian authority where palestinians are actually showing us a lot of these uh post-colonial you know so-called liberated states showing us that it is not enough to secure the state to ensure your liberation i think liberation is a bigger process uh has to be a bigger process because of how treacherous and intrusive colonialism is with regards to religion um yeah i mean i'm not saying that we can completely ignore that and and you're right it was a it was a it was basically a decision i made that i'm not going to talk about religion and i just sort of moved on here but but um it's also to recognize how limiting conversation on islam and islamism can really be right of course the urge is to often you know Hamas is islamist so we relate all their actions to their religious orientation which i don't think is unimportant the religious aspect but it's also important through my book to record that i want to do is to recognize that well Hamas is conducting many ways it's not different from you know other um factions like Hamas or even in Palestine you know are we forgetting that the Palestinian Authority has been or you know led by Fatah has been incredibly oppressed as well so i wanted to you know indicate that and and that meant making a political decision or a you know a you know decision at the very beginning of the book to say that i know religion is important but i am looking beyond that but i also wanted to recognize the books that you know how porous these um you know religious affiliations can really be i mean i have interviewees who have been members you know through their lifetime have been members of pflp of Fatah of islamic jihad and of Hamas and before they said you know to help with everything right so while you have the organization and the book is also you know it's about the organization of course Hamas is on the title and it's about but it's about Palestine and Palestinian people and how they navigate these different realities of the sector of the colonized so i wanted to allow myself to engage in those sorts of you know you know discussions as well but okay very clear thank you very much i'll be taking a few questions at the time so either you take notes or you keep them in memory but so we take them round after round i start with the so we have Ann Arfan with thanking you for this interesting talk and asking could you could you talk a little about how you are conceptualizing post-coloniality here as the term can be used to denote either partial sovereignty or full liberation from colonialism and how do you see continuities with coloniality in the case of Hamas continuities with coloniality in the case of Hamas and Ann is also asking about the reference for Bat Hamas if you could repeat that so that people know where to find this this article that you mentioned then we have Saadiya Nawaz who is asking do you feel nation branding within the context of Palestine is a worthwhile discussion and she also thank you very much for her your talk which she thoroughly enjoyed and then we have Ronit Lentin hello Ronit who is asking about decolonization Fanon speaks of decolonization as this order can you relate this idea to your argument about the question of liberation as an unending process so let's start with these questions please and then we move to the other questions yeah after the first question there's a problem with the the sound yeah there are kind of parasites or no no now we are we're not hearing you are you hearing me okay say something no yeah you you cut the sound completely are you muted no you're not no the problem we are not hearing some deep akhi thank you your your mic needs adjusting says akhi is this better yeah yeah okay now we hear you yes hello okay i can't hear you though oh like microphone can you hear me now yes i can hear you we can hear you okay perfect sorry about that yeah so with regards to the postcolonial and the postcoloniality of course i see it as sort of this two-part conception so of course there is the timed argument with regards to the era after postcolonial rule but within that i do look at it as this as this idea of and what you say as this sort of partial sovereignty where you find yourself living you know in an era after the official rule of colonial official end of colonial rule and you feel this urge to you know develop the sense of indigeneity or proclaim the sense of indigeneity yet you know your present is very much embossed with the emblem of the era of colonization right so um someone talks about you know postcoloniality as this sort of era of confusion and it is postcolonial is very much about this continuity and that flows into this the case of Hamas right this this colonial continuity because yes you have the metric material remnants of colonial rule but as i mentioned you know before you know colonialism as a process works to erase any memory of indigeneity the book i talk about you know history not being you know open to course correction specifically i engage with this discussion about removing english as a national language or one of the national languages official languages in india and history doesn't work like course correction you can't simply sidestep you know this era of colonization and find this indigenous you know this this this era of indigeneity where you weren't you know affected by all these of by colonialism so that's why i talk about liberation being in the era of the postcolonial state being this continuous process because you're continuously trying to come up with this idea of indigeneity when um when um because and when the memory of this era of indigeneity completely escapes you um with regards to your second question i think i've already answered um uh the bat hamas article is by donna neville and i think it came out in yeah 2008 in the in tikkun magazine that's a progressive publication and i double k un yes ti double k u exactly um with regards to idea of nation brandy um that's a very interesting question sadhya um ravin the core who's a colleague here in denmark who wrote about nation branding in india and how this branding the nation has been has been the has been a cover for um uh authoritarian and neoliberal practices in india under under mothi um in the same way i felt the problematic of nation branding and i don't talk about that in the book but very much present in uh in in the sort of um endeavors like rohabi which is the first palestinian planned city where it was all about you know creating the palestinian national brand without really engaging with um the question of liberation i don't know if that makes any sense where you know liberation and you know entails um uh attacking and and and upending and and and um reversing several you know political economic social cultural processes processes that work to disconnect um a national people from their sense of self yet you know branding you know rohabi as a palestinian project that you know only a certain class of palestinians are allowed to enter by the way um you know disconnects um the struggle from those processes and and assumes that these superficial things like a big flag the biggest palestinian flag in palestine or a statue by a palestinian artist or um you know being on a mountain you know facing or being higher than an israeli settlement is all that liberation is about and liberation is much more substantial and engaging in those um you know things um these sort of branding processes forget some some of the more substantial aspects of what decolonization is all about uh with regards to um disorder um Ronan thank you so much for that question and it's nice to electronically meet you um i think that that idea of disorder very much plays into my discussion of Hamas's um sort of arm struggle as a process of unmaking where i where i argue that of course you know materially it's not able to unmake the the settler colonial project as a whole but it is there to um instill this idea of disorder into the settler colonial project not allowing it to settle so to be you know and i and it was very much evident in this operation that uh Hamas did in um i'm i'm blanking on the dates but in the hell ohs which is a um israeli um kibbutz not too far away and i'll post not too far away from gaza where you know a palestinian you know Hamas operatives sort of went you know dug a tunnel went in attacked and you know they filmed the whole thing and they went back of course Hamas celebrated this as a palestinian victory it's not like it it it completely destroyed nahal o's it was a couple of casualties making you know maybe only injuries but what it did was it made nahal o's uh residents feel unsafe told them that this wasn't a place of order of calm of of peace so to speak and you see that in the way you know in the interviews with uh with with with um with residents of of of the community there who talk about you know feeling unsafe and feeling that you know you're not safe here and the family's not safe here and so and so forth so i think that that's where these ideas of of disorder really comes in in terms of unsettling you know the orderedness the systems that are in place that keep the settler colonial project going thank you somebody uh just a note in passing i'm not sure that the palestinian authority can be classified under the category of postcolonial i would rather classify it under neocolonial that's a different discussion uh let's carry on with the the uh other questions we have some 15 minutes so we have ibrahim notin who is asking about the process of transformation that hamas has been going through while functioning between governance and resistance it's something that you have more or less already uh addressed there is uh alison dingle who's asking about who's saying if about the food example that you gave if israel is israelized palestinian food what does this suggest about the long-term future of israeli identity then we have two questions by ismail sayid and he says well thanking you like the others question one design is claimed palestine and palestinian nation is a recent colonial concept and historically didn't exist from before not even the ottoman era so the current palestinians were historically seen as claimed by euro-centric zionists as part of the wider arabs okay so um where's the question here uh in fact if any more than which takes me to question two i haven't seen the question in question one so let's see question two palestinians during plan you and partition were given much larger chunk as claimed by zionist um so transjordan was given away to arabs which included palestinian apps who got their major part of the generous partitions so the palestinian jews sick as i see got a smaller part of the unpartition hence then israeli jews was generous what would you say i don't know if you got exactly what the question is about anyhow it's about the the zionist argument and how do you apply to this then we have jenna al-okar was asking how do you best talk about islam when discussing decolonial decolonializing beyond looking beyond it because you mentioned you said looking beyond it so how do you best talk about it okay and yeah and there's a last question here and i think we will end with this question because you have just enough time to answer these questions it's about the state building process of palestine would it be completed if occupation has ended despite the fragmentation of the palestinian the existence of so many factions among the palestinians so these are the questions and flor is you to answer them and wrap up if you if you wish um yeah so um with regards to the question of governance and governance and resistance yeah i mean yeah the book you know in its entirety is about this sort of long process right so obviously i'm not saying that hamas is the same organization that that it was in you know 1988 or 1992 or 2006 i mean obviously the pressures of the siege and the processes and and the events that have taken place since 2006 have pushed hamas to be a more reactive arm struggle than it is than it has been in the future and you see these sorts of processes taking place with liberation factions across the world but i think that you know what is unique about hamas is it's not unique that it has both these wings right and it's not unique for these the entity and the post and the governance and the and the violence of the governance and the resistance being part of a liberation struggle and that's what i wanted to you know argue through the book what is unique of course what's what hamas helps us with doing is that at this point it is an organization that officially has agreed to do both right officially has said that we're both governing and resistant that allows us to recognize and normalize this nature of the liberation struggles where you know you have this governance and resistance happening at the same time with regards to you know on your food example if israelis israeli is palestinian food what does this suggest about long-term future about israeli identity i mean i mean it serves israeli identity quite well right i mean it works really well to indigenize the settler community and i'll give another example let's go move away from food but look at architecture right look at hebra university and the history of hebra university and you know my next book is all about space and planning and design and architecture in in of of israeli spaces so to speak and a lot of effort was put into if you look at the old campus of hebra university if anyone's been there a lot of effort was put into using palestinian and arab architectural styles and that was you know hebra university was built if i'm not mistaken 30 years before the state of israel it was the precursor to the it was supposed to manifest israel before the state of israel and so by putting these you know um you know architectural you know using these architectural styles what it was meant to do was indigenize you know a settler colonial project right so for the long-term future i mean i'm more concerned about the long-term palestinian future with with with palestinian cultural artifacts being appropriate but for the long-term israeli identities work quite well because it allows you to talk about hummus and falafel and you know israeli food as it's as it being from the ground from that place right and that's sort of the biggest you know um that's part of this struggle palestinian struggle against you know israeli settler colonial food um yeah so with regards to your smile you know um i don't know what your question is but i will say that this sort of you know um idea of palestine and palestinian nation even putting in this in quotes is very much part of the settler colonial zionist narrative right one as i mentioned um with regards to my field work in you know israeli museums where the term palestine never appears um but it's also um in terms of um you know in my more recent work where i look at who have done ethnographic work in israeli settlements and how they talk about palestinian villages and communities and the vicinity you know this idea of you know palestine also pops up there where they say you know when i ask them about their relationship when i ask them about their relationship with you know the nearby palestinian village and they'll say well you know there are some you know palestinians or Arabs or whatever you want call them i mean yeah it's um you know you can call them a village but i don't think it's even a village it's just a group of people right so this idea of you know palestine being palestine and the palestinian nation being a palestinian nation is very much part of that narrative that serves to unsettle the the the anti the palestinian anti-colonial struggle saying that we don't really have a claim to a to palestinian land or palestinian identity or palestinian nationhood or palestinian food because palestine has never existed um finally with regards to looking beyond uh no then you have the question janna you had the question about best talk about islam when discussing decolonization beyond you know beyond looking yeah i mean yeah maybe that was not well put but i think that my whole idea of you know not dismissing islam but or not dismissing religion but not talking about it you know as a thing in and of itself you know it's it's it's primarily in one i recognize that you know scholars have done some great work on this already sarah roy um jaron gunning who've done fantastic work on sort of the religious aspect of it but what they've also shown that the manner in this which really this religious identity of this religious um uh activism um plays out is also contextualized you know is also informed by the settler colonial context and that's the context i really wanted to talk about um uh it's not looking beyond it but it's also looked but it's it's about looking at what else is that play that shapes that islamic organization as we want to call it right and religion is not uncommon to be mobilized in this way in a anti-colonial struggle in india for instance again i go back to india sorry about that but um um you know um part of the chatterjee's book you know he talks about you know the you know he talks about culture right about bengali culture and how and i'm putting it very simply as a much more complex point but he talks about how the outside world being the world that is dominated by the colonized right they have the colonized institutions the police force and the men who go out there to work there they are sullied and and and um you know almost they become impure by these effects of colonize of the colonizers processes of institutions yet the homestead where religion and language are very important where the women dominate that's where the nation is really being built because those you know you know facets of the indigenous identity really keep up their sense of self whether it's language whether it's religion right um with regards to will the will the state building process of palestine complete if occupation um end um i'm not sure if state building processes um i'm not sure if that's i'm not sure if the state building process will end just as the nation building process will not end either because as we've talked about um there are you know much you know beyond the institution with the state there are other processes there are other um aspects of palestinian culture economy society identity that are under attack and that are being you know appropriated under settler colonial rule so i expect that as those processes we will continue to you know somehow solidify the idea what it means to be indigenous um that will have to reflect in the state as well right and a lot of times i think liberation processes have been incomplete because we have argued that once we secure the state well then we are liberated and then we're done and then we see a country like india and the transformation that have happened or the other things that have happening have been happening in india right so i think that what palestinian activists and you know have you know living in palestine have very quickly demonstrated to the world they've shown that liberation is beyond that beyond that sort of state building process and and i believe that that process will continue long you know after the um occupation or settler colonial project ends thank you thank you that was great and absolutely wonderful to have you with us and in the hope that we'll have you in person maybe to well not maybe certainly to present your next book which we're very much looking forward to to reading it it sounds very interesting in the way you described it you'll find a couple more comments at the end but we don't have time to address them but they are not actually questions are just a comment so thank you very much again thank you ackee for organizing and supervising this for the center for palestine studies and the so as middle east institute and thank you all for attending and all those who stayed with us who are some 45 who stayed until the end so thank you and very best wishes to to everyone thank you very much and thank you for coming yeah thank you zilber thank you ackee