Sundays, January 5, 12, 26 and Feb 2, 2025, 3:00 - 4:30 PM
The Israeli war on Gaza – widely considered genocide – did not begin on October 7, 2023. This series will look at the background of Zionism and colonialism that laid the foundation for ongoing wars and today's violence in the Middle East. Palestinian dispossession, we will see, began more than a century ago.
Jan 5: CONQUEST AND COLONIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST DURING THE 20TH CENTURY: The roots of the contemporary Middle East go back to the First World War and its aftermath; the birth of Zionism as a political movement.
Jan 12: MANDATES AND REPRESSION IN PALESTINE AND BEYOND: The failure of the British colonial attempt to shape Palestine in conformance with the Balfour Declaration; Palestinian resistance and the first proposals for partition; Zionist terror; British, French colonialism in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Jan 26: ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE AND “NAKBA”: The UN proposed partition of Palestine, Israeli declaration of independence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from 1947 to the present; Arab and Palestinian resistance.
Feb 2: LOOKING IN THE MIRROR: How the U.S. has shaped the contemporary Middle East from before the Cold War to the present. Indigenous nationalism and its opponents. Addressing the domestic colonial and imperial background to US support for Israel and its destabilizing interference in the region. Massachusetts Peace Action.
