anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is an anti-imperial political ideology that opposes Jewish nationalism and/or the racist, settler colonial project of Zionism as it has unfolded in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the genocide, disablement, and displacement of Palestinians. As a history of Jewish opposition to Zionism indicates, anti-Zionism must not be conflated with antisemitism.

Source: IJAN

hasbara

Hasbara, translated from Hebrew as “explaining,” is a communication strategy used by the Israeli state to use information to reinforce state narratives and control discourse, specifically around conflict. Critics of hasbara associate it with “state-sponsored propaganda, agitprop, and information warfare.” Hasbara is a coordinated and deliberate distribution of biased information intended to influence public perceptions through media. Since Oct. 2023, hasbara has been a critical strategy taken up by Israel and its enablers to influence public perception and manufacture consent for the ongoing genocide.

Sources: Jewish Voice for Labour; Electronic Intifada

indigeneity

Indigeneity is most basically defined as being descended from the earliest inhabitants of a place. However, it cannot be understood apart from settler colonialism and indigenous sovereignty. Indigeneity focuses on the relationship between indigenous people and places and the political movement toward decolonization. On the other hand, settler claims to indigeneity serve as a crucial tool in many settler colonial projects globally as they attempt the erasure of indigenous communities with ancestral and ongoing relationship to the land and the knowledges, cultures, and traditions that result from that relationship. Indigeneity has become a transnationalist analytical tool in identifying and dismantling settler colonialism.

Sources: Al-Shabaka; Yellowhead Institute; 28 Mag; Mahmoud Darwish; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

normalization

Normalization is the presentation of Israel’s behavior and actions against the Palestinian people as normal and acceptable. This term emerged from the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which stated that the “signatories shall establish among themselves relationships normal to states at peace with one another.” Palestinians and Arabs began using “anti-normalization” to describe the refusal to deal with the Israeli regime as a normal entity. Normalization also situates the oppressor and the oppressed on level ground, allowing for “both sides” of the conflict to be presented without context of power differentials. The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) defines normalization as “dealing with or presenting something that is inherently abnormal, such as oppression and injustice, as if it were normal. Normalization with/of Israel is, then, the idea of making occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime instead of supporting the struggle led by the Indigenous Palestinian people to end the abnormal conditions and structures of oppression. … Countering normalization is a means to resist oppression, its mechanisms and structures.” +972 Magazine describes normalization as “as a ‘colonization of the mind,’ whereby the oppressed subject comes to believe that the oppressor’s reality is the only ‘normal’ reality … and that the oppression is a fact of life that must be coped with.”

Sources: Al-Shabaka; +972 Mag; BDS Movement

settler colonialism

Settler colonialism is the ongoing occupation of indigenous lands, the appropriation of natural resources for the economic benefit of the colonizers, and the displacement, subjugation, and/or elimination of indigenous people from that land. In settler colonialism, the invading forces attempt to become the majority population alongside their decimation of the original residents of the area through warfare, spread of infectious diseases, and other genocidal tactics. This type of colonization applies to nations including (but not limited to) North and South America, the Caribbean islands, New Zealand, Australia, and Israel. Settler colonialism is an ongoing structure, not a past historical event.

Sources: Global Social Theory (Settler Colonialism; ICCG – Ramallah 2015); J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

Zionism

Zionism is a political ideology and a form of Jewish nationalism that operates as settler colonialism. “It is the set of beliefs that drove the founding of the State of Israel in Palestine and continues to drive its expansion today. Zionism serves to justify the colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of Palestinian people through land confiscation, forced exile, and massacres.” 

Source: IJAN