The Palestinian Struggle is a Decolonial Pedagogical Project

What are Palestinians teaching the world? Why should we understand the Palestinian struggle as one of the most important decolonial pedagogical projects in recent times? What do I mean by decolonial and pedagogical? Why should we understand the pedagogical in decolonial terms and the decolonial in pedagogical terms? In this short essay, I explore these questions to point to the various ways Palestine’s decolonial anti-Zionist struggle has unmasked modernity’s underside of coloniality.

The Palestinian struggle is teaching the world about another humanity, a humanity that modern/colonial discourse has been historically negated and portrayed as inferior, barbaric, savage, and subhuman. Since October 7th, we have seen with our own eyes what is seemingly abstract—the materiality of discourse, which could also be understood in decolonial terms as the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, entails the ways dehumanizing racial discourse turns into systematic bombing of schools, universities, hospitals, Mosques, and refugee camps.

The coloniality of racial discourses can be traced before 1492 with the expulsion and forced conversion of Muslims and Jews through the racialized notion of “purity of blood," which was then reconfigured into a caste system in the so-called Americas. Non-European others have, for far too long, been on the receiving end of racial discourses, but it is only until 1492 that they become global in scope. It is only until 1492 when the modern/colonial world system is instituted, gradually displacing other centers and positioning “Europe” as the new center. I mention the longue durée of coloniality to make more visible the intimate connection between knowledge and power, that is, how power depends on dominant knowledge and how dominant knowledge serves to justify colonial power. It would thus be difficult to understand October 7th without first understanding 1948, and before that 1917, and before that the emergence of the Zionist movement in the 1880s, and before that the centuries that had already sedimented into a dominant Eurocentric subjectivity (ontology) and way of knowing (epistemology) that undoubtedly created the conditions for Zionism to emerge, particularly informed by notions of progress, development, terra nullius, displacement, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and colonization.

For those who still had faith in Europe’s cherished institutions, such as democracy, education, and freedom of expression, the Palestinian struggle and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, as well as its colonial presence in the West Bank (which has led to hundreds of killings and arrests), has unmasked how modernity has been experienced by the colonized. The Global Souths of the world, including those in the geographic Global North, have stood firmly in solidarity with Palestine because there are intergenerational colonial wounds that truly never heal. These colonial wounds open when yet another colonized people face systematic destruction. These colonial wounds remind us that what was done to us in the past and what modern nation-states continue to do to our communities are being done to Palestinians at an unprecedented industrial scale for the world to see in real time. Bombs made in the USA have enabled this destruction, which at the same time has taught the world about the intimate connection between geographies—linkages that were not always as visible as they are today. It is not surprising that more and more people have realized that the Palestinian struggle is linked to other struggles, that police brutality, surveillance at the border, and carcerality are deeply entangled with Israel’s technologies of colonial violence “battle-tested” on Palestinians.

It is for this reason that the Palestinian struggle can be considered a decolonial pedagogical project. Millions of people have taken to the streets to chant to the world that “In the thousands, in the millions, we are all Palestinians.” The “we” refers to those who have historically been on the receiving end of colonial domination and racial classification. The “we” also includes those who adopt radical positions and are willing to sacrifice everything for the Palestinian struggle: this includes anti-Zionist Jews and hopefully what could be considered “recovering liberals” who no longer submit to the false promises of liberal democracies. Instead, they are willing to learn about alternative forms of governance and a collective way of belonging that disrupt the possessive individualism that, for far too long, dominated their engagement in and with the world.

The Palestinian struggle has made it possible to see why anti-Zionism is a decolonial project. Since Zionism is predicated on Indigenous displacement, dispossession, and genocide (and femicide, epistemicide, ecocide, memoricide, and politicide), as well as racial classification or coloniality, dismantling it undoubtedly contributes to the creation of a decolonial world. As Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani express, “the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement.” Anti-Zionism, however, is not simply a discursive project that resists and unsettles Zionism’s colonial-racial epistemological and ontological foundations. It requires organizing. As Shomali and Kilani make clear: “The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought.”

Related to what has been stated about the pedagogical, I believe anti-Zionism can also be understood as a politico-pedagogical project that entails creating alternative educational spaces within social movements. Social movements are not mere organizations that are naturally formed and maintained. They require the collective production and dissemination of knowledge, which, in a sense, become alternative educational media for those who potentially may form part of the movement.

Since anti-zionism is decolonial, its pedagogical program must continue to engage in contrapuntal attacks against Zionism’s symbolic and material colonial structures. This decolonial pedagogical project must unsettle Zionism’s regimes of truth, which have absolved Israel of atrocities by portraying Palestinians as the subhuman root causes of violence. Through social media and numerous essay publications documenting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestinians have significantly revealed Orientalism’s racial, colonial, and dehumanizing foundations. More than any other academic book or article on the topic, everyday Palestinians’ existential cries have initiated an epistemological and ontological intifada—an uprising seeking to shake off the material and symbolic shackles of colonial domination.

On social media, non-Arabic speakers watch translated, dubbed, and subtitled videos coming out of Gaza, thereby learning from pedagogical material previously not consumed in the same scale. Most importantly, this new media has made it possible to see (and hopefully feel) the pain of Palestinians. A decolonial pedagogy situated in sites of struggles is therefore affective or e-motional, that is, a pedagogy that “moves” us to take action (Sara Ahmed’s work points to the politics of emotions). Videos with Palestinian elders, crying mothers holding their babies, men crying for their families buried under the rubble, orphaned children mourning their parents, and doctors and journalists holding back tears are images that one cannot easily erase but instead uses them to continue fighting for what seems to have no end. It is not surprising that, as more and more people learn from Palestine, terms such as intifada and “From the River to the Sea” are being criminalized as they are being misconstrued as genocidal and anti-Semitic. Certainly this is not a new phenomenon since Zionism has always capitalized on Europe’s antisemitism. It has always appealed to the possibility of redemption for the European Christain world, which historically has been responsible for the greatest atrocities against Jewish people. As Zionism loses the plot or the narrative, Western countries aligned to its settler colonial project seek to punish those who dare to show unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

The congressional hearing that interrogated the university presidents of Harvard, UPENN, and MIT reveals the necessary witch hunt that is unfolding in the United States. The US has depended on an image of a barbaric Arab who’s always already a terrorist or potential terrorist. Thus, when this dominant colonial-racial image of the Other no longer holds in the imagination of the majority or when the hegemony of a discourse loses its ability to coerce or effectively reach consensus, explicit forms of punishment ensue. Students and professors have already lost their jobs for their unwavering support for Palestine. I have received hate emails, voicemails, and threatening letters. Screenshots of my tweets have been sent to Deans and Chairs and have been circulated within my university. Many others are facing similar or worse situations. However unfortunate this is, one thing is certain; the dominant colonial-racial discourse that once had dehumanized Arabs and Muslims is increasingly losing its effectiveness. Once the hegemony of colonial discourses loses its consensus, what is revealed is that the Palestinian struggle and the many protests and organizations linked to it have not only unsettled the legitimacy of Israel’s Zionist settler colonial project but they have also disrupted the coloniality that predates yet epistemologically informs Zionism. We have reached a point of no return.

Anti-Zionist movements must also disrupt Israel’s economic apparatus that is maintained through the exportation of technologies of violence and international trade. The protests that have blocked major highways and ports have shown the world the material dimension of the anti-Zionist movement. The Houthis in Yemen are also contributing to this effort as they block cargo ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis' control of the geopolitically and economically strategic location of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait will hopefully play an important role in putting an end to the genocide.

Initially, I asked several questions about thinking regarding the decolonial implications of pedagogy and the pedagogical implications of decolonial struggles. I have pointed to the sociocultural shift the Palestinian struggle is leading through the creation of alternative pedagogical, discursive, and organizational spaces that have delivered a devastating blow to Zionism and the coloniality of power. To conclude, when empires and colonial powers begin to lose their hegemony over discourses—that is, when the seduction to submit to and benefit from said discourses’s material rewards no longer holds sway in people’s desires—legitimacy crumbles, and so do settler colonial projects. Unlearning thus creates the conditions of possibility to learn otherwise from those who have been denied the dignity to narrate their experiences and to teach us how we can modestly contribute to their decolonial struggles to resist and exist.