March 6 to May 1, 2024
Solidarity reading group, Spring 2024
Join Solidarity for a 5-part reading and discussion group (held every two weeks) with the goal of better understanding Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza, and the different politics and strategies that make up the socialist wing of the mass movement to stop it.
All sessions will take place online, by Zoom. Register below — this link is for any and all sessions.
This reading group will ask two questions: why has Israel’s settler colonial project erupted in full scale war on Gaza? And why has Hamas become the Palestinian leadership that is fighting this colonial extermination project?
If we are able to better understand these two historical problems, then we will be better able to offer revolutionary socialist support for the Palestinian national struggle, and also to analyze our relationship to other tendencies in the mass movement against Israel’s genocidal war.
The first class is about the foundations of the present crisis, by studying the formation and containment of Gaza in its current form – particularly after Hamas’s election victory in 2008. The second class is about Hamas itself – its class base, its politics, and its role within the political economy of Palestine. The third class will focus on the strategies and tactics adopted by Hamas, which stem from this class root: the possibilities and limits of armed struggle. The fourth, about the international dimension of Israeli apartheid, with emphasis on the role of the US. And the fifth and final class will pivot to apply our analysis of today’s struggle against Israeli genocide to the statements and critiques most common in the US socialist left.
For each class there is a main reading, supplementary readings, and a video or podcast for participants who are not able to take on the reading that week. The main reading is the main recommendation, but you’re welcome to take on whatever appeals to you most.
Participants are welcome to attend the whole series, or whichever individual sessions you’re able.
The links are for downloads of the full book, so make sure you note the assigned chapters.
Week 1 – The making of the Gaza prison camp
(Wednesday March 6, 8pm) COMPLETED, JOIN US ON MARCH 20, 8pm
Main reading
- Rashid Khalidi, “The Fifth Declaration of War: 1987-1995,” and “The Sixth Declaration of War, 2000-2017,” (chapters 5-6), in The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020)
Supplementary readings
- Tareq Baconi, “The Rise of Islamic Palestinian Nationalism,” chapter 1 in Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018)
- Mouin Rabbani, “The Making of a Palestinian Islamist Leader: An Interview with Khalid Mishal: PART I,” and “PART II,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 37-38, No. 3-4 (Spring 2008).
- Helena Cobban, “Breakout: Hamas and the end of the two state solution,” Boston Review, May 1 2008.
- Toufic Haddad, “Palestinian Resistance and the War in Gaza: An Interview with Toufic Haddad,” New Politics, Winter 2024.
A/V
- “Israel’s war on the Palestinians w/ Amjad Iraqi“, Politics Theory Other, November 8 2023.
Week 2 – The rise of Hamas: class problems in a national resistance movement
(Wednesday March 20, 8pm)
Main reading
- Sara Roy, “A brief history of Hamas and the Islamic movement in Palestine,” chapter 2 in Hamas and Civil Society: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton University Press, 2011).
Supplementary readings
- Joseph Daher, “Sectarianism and the Lebanese Political Economy: Hezbollah’s Origins,” and “Hezbollah and the Lebanese Labor Movement,” chapters 1 and 5 in Hezbollah and the Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God (Pluto Press, 2016)
- Minna Cowper-Coles, “Economy and Gender,” chapter 3 in Gender and Political Support: Women and Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Routledge, 2023)
- Penny Johnson & Eileen Kuttab, JOHNSON and KUTTAB – Gender and the Second Intifada-2001_ART “Where Have All the Women (and Men) Gone?: Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada,” Feminist Review, Vol 69 No 1.
A/V
- “Hamas with Tareq Baconi,” The Dig podcast with Daniel Denvir, October 27 2023.
Week 3 – Problems of violence in anti-colonial struggle
(Wednesday April 3, 8pm)
Main reading
- Franz Fanon, “Concerning Violence,” from Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 2004)
Supplementary readings
- Somdeep Sen, “Anticolonial Violence and the Palestinian Struggle to Exist,” in Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial (Cornell University Press, 2020)
- Tareq Baconi, “The Politics of Resistance,” chapter 3 in Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018)
- Franz Fanon, “Why We Use Violence: Address to the Accra Positive Action Conference, April 1960,” and “Letter to Ali Shariati,” chapters 22 and 24 in Alienation and Freedom (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
A/V
- (Film) “Concerning Violence” (90 minutes, 2014, Göran Olsson, Sweden)
Week 4 – Who’s responsible for genocide in Gaza? International contexts
( Wednesday April 17, 8pm)
Main reading
- Frida Berrigan, “Made in the U.S.A.: American Military Aid to Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring 2009), pp. 6-21.
Supplementary readings
- Toufic Haddad, “The Guesstimate: Structural Determinants of Palestinian Political Economy: International Aid Contributions,” chapter 6 in Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory (IB Taurus, 2016)
- David Finkel, “A Joint Israeli-U.S. Genocide,” Against the Current, number 228, February 2024.
- Joel Beinin, “The Political Context of the Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Joel Beinin,” New Politics, Winter 2024.
A/V
- Richard Seymour interview, “Global Palestine Politics, part 1,” The Dig with Daniel Denvir, November 15 2023.
- Richard Seymour interview, “Global Palestine Politics, part 2,” The Dig with Daniel Denvir, November 20 2023.
Week 5 – Problems of socialist strategy: understanding and interpreting currents in the Gaza solidarity movement
(Wednesday May 1, 8pm)
Main reading
Debate in Tempest
- Jonah ben Avraham, “Support Palestinians when they fight, Not just when they die,” Tempest Magazine, November 5, 2023.
- Dan LaBotz and Stephen R. Shalom, “A response to Jonah ben Avraham’s “Support Palestinians when they fight…”,” Tempest magazine, November 24, 2023.
- Sean Larson, “Against colonial narcissism: A response to Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom,” Tempest Magazine, December 20, 2023.
- Dan LaBotz and Stephen R. Shalom, “Once More on Hamas: A Reply to Sean Larson,” Tempest magazine, January 12, 2024.
Supplementary readings
US socialist positions on the Palestinian movement
- Ben Becker, “Building a real left: Not one that condemns resistance and is without Palestinians,” Liberation News, Party for Socialism and Liberation, December 18 2023.
- Leon Pinsky, “Stop the War on Gaza!” Socialist Alternative, November 5, 2023.
- David Camfield and Charlie Post, “What would it take to win in Palestine?” Tempest Magazine, January 2, 2024.
- David Finkel, “Catastrophe in Palestine and Israel: Apartheid on the Road to Genocide,” Against the Current Magazine, Solidarity US, December 2023.