Dr. Hatem Bazian: Palestine…it is something colonial

Join Dr. Hatem Bazian for a lecture and discussion on his latest book Palestine…it is something colonial, moderated by Professor Stephen Small, UC Berkeley Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies.

In 1902, Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the Minister of Colonies for Great Britain: “You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews ... How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.” The occupation of Palestine was the last settler-colonial project the British empire commissioned, and this colonial project is still unfolding more than one hundred years later.

In centering Palestine’s modern history around settler-colonial discourses, Hatem Bazian offers a theoretical basis for understanding Palestine while avoiding the pitfalls of the internationally supported "peace process" that, on the one hand, affirms settler-colonial rights and, on the other hand, problematizes the colonialized and dispenses with the ramifications of the colonial project.

Dr. Hatem Bazian is co-founder of Zaytuna College, and he also serves on the faculty and the Board of Trustees at the College. He is a senior lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Bazian founded the Center for the Study of Documentation of Islamophobia at UC Berkeley in 2009, and he launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal through a collaborative effort with a number of academic institutions in 2012. He is also on the board of several organizations, including the Islamic Scholarship Fund and Muslim Americans for Palestine, for which he is the founding president.