Race, Religion, and the Question of Palestine

Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard, Anthropology) and Lana Tatour (University of New South Wales, Sydney).

This project aims to explore the relationship between race and religion in the context of Israel- Palestine. We will hold a two-day workshop during which we will discuss papers that explore the nexus of race and religion—as discourse, as political structure, and as a site of subjectivation—in Zionist ideology, the Israeli state, and the Question of Palestine. Through a range of topics and from different disciplinary perspectives, papers will address the historical genealogies and contemporary linkages among race, religion, and settler colonialism and examine how race politics in Israel-Palestine is inextricably tied to the question of religious difference, citizenship status, and political and civil rights.

By putting race and religion into a single analytic frame, the workshop is designed to expand the existing conversation on the different practices and projects of racialization that govern Palestinians (citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and refugees), the “Other” Jews (e.g., Mizrachim and Ethiopian), and African refugees and asylum seekers. The workshop will bring together Palestinian, Israeli and international scholars and cover topics such as the role of international law in constructing racial subjects along ethnic and religious lines, the racialization of Israel’s citizenship laws, race formation in Palestine, the racialization of territory, the gendered politics of race and religion, antisemitism and antiracism, intra-Jewish racialization, and Black-Palestinian solidarity.