Repression, Removing Fear, and the Struggle to End the Zionist Project

Abstract: I want to use this talk to discuss the current moment, to grapple with my own, but also I know many others’ emotional states of despair and paralysis. The Israeli state has ramped up its genocide again, murdering thousands of Palestinians in the last two months, implementing collective starvation, and announcing its plans to colonise and ethnicially cleanse Gaza. At the same time, the structures of power in the West are mobilising to ensure any dissent is crushed and people shy away from talking about and acting to prevent genocide – from kidnapping students and researchers, trying anti-genocide activists for terrorism, and stripping people of their jobs and degrees. I want to think about how we can and should confront this moment. We have an ethical obligation to not back down, to push the boundaries and keep speaking and acting to end genocide and the settler colonial zionist project. I want to consider how we might go about that, specifically thinking about how we might remove our fear.

Bio: Harry Pettit is an Assistant Professor in Economic Geography at Radboud University Nijmegen. He researches new forms of extraction, resistance, and survival that are emerging within late-capitalist systems, with a focus on Egypt and Lebanon. He is author of The Labor of Hope: Meritocracy and Precarity in Egypt, Stanford University Press, 2024.