Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Activist, Scholar, Teacher, Writer, and Human Rights Attorney Noura Erakat On the Historical, Ideological, and Philosophical Dimensions Of the Palestinian Struggle For Sovereignty and Independence: Lectures and Conversations From 2019-2022
Since
2021, several Israeli and mainstream human rights organizations, have
concluded what Palestinians have long known and insisted upon: Israel is
an apartheid regime. Despite the welcome, and long-awaited, synergy
between them, there remains significant analytical divergence among
these organizations and Palestinian activists and scholars. In
particular, while the reports emphasize that Israel has become an
apartheid regime as a result of its failure to establish a Palestinian
state, Palestinians have pointed to Zionist ideology to insist that
Israel did not become become a discriminatory regime but is defined by
such discrimination. This lecture will explore the implications of this
analytical divergence by examining the juridical framework of apartheid
embodied in the 1973 Convention consecrating it as a crime against
humanity. It will also trace the Palestinian intellectual tradition to
highlight that Zionism is not like apartheid but that the ideologies
constitute intellectual and political bedfellows. Finally, by visiting
the drafting history of UNGA Resolution 3379 (1975) declaring Zionism as
a form of racism and racial discrimination, the lecture will help fill a
glaring lacuna in the recent apartheid reports regarding racial
theories of Zionism.
Noura
Erakat is an associate professor of Africana Studies and in the Program
in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, and non-resident fellow of
the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School. Her research
interests include human rights law, laws of armed conflict, national
security law, as well as critical race theory.
Noura is the author of
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University
Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the Bronze
Medal for the Independent Publishers Book Award in Current
Events/Foreign Affairs. She is co-founding editor of Jadaliyya and
editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. She has
served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the US House
of Representatives, as Legal Advocate for the Badil Resource Center for
Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as national organizer of
the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Her recent scholarship
includes, “Geographies of Intimacy: Contemporary Renewals of
Black-Palestinian Solidarity” (American Quarterly, 2020) and “The
Sovereign Right to Kill: A Critical Appraisal of Israel’s Shoot-To-Kill
Policy” (International Criminal Law Review, 2019).
Noura has also
produced video documentaries, including "Gaza In Context" and "Black
Palestinian Solidarity." She has appeared on CBS News, CNN, Fox News,
and NPR, among others.
Uncle Bobbie's welcomed author-scholar and activist Noura Erakat for a book talk and signing of her anticipated release "Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine."
About the book: Law is politics, and its meaning and application depend on the political intervention of states and people alike. Within the law, change is possible. International law can serve the cause of freedom when it is mobilized in support of a political movement. Presenting the promise and risk of international law, Justice for Some calls for renewed action and attention to the Question of Palestine.
About the author: Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and assistant professor at George Mason University. She has served as legal counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives and as a legal advocate for Palestinian refugee rights at the United Nations. Noura's research interests include human rights and humanitarian, refugee, and national security law. She is a frequent commentator, with recent appearances on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NPR, among others, and her writings have been widely published in the national media and academic journals.
Interviewer and host/producer Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.
He is currently the host of Al Jazeera UpFront,
and the Coffee & Books podcast. An award-winning journalist, Dr.
Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National
Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy
of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Hill is the author or co-author of eight books, including the
award-winning Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of
America’s War on The Vulnerable from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; We
Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest, and Possibility; Except For
Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics; and Schooling Against The
Prison.
Dr. Hill holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from the University of
Pennsylvania. His current research and writing explore the relationships
between race, culture, politics, and education in the United States and
the Middle East.
Dr. Hill is also a Presidential Professor at the City University of New
York Graduate Center, where he teach courses in Anthropology, Urban
Education, and Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to that, he held positions
at Morehouse College, Temple University, and Columbia University.
Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia, Dr. Hill has been a social
justice activist and organizer. He has worked on campaigns to end the
death penalty, abolish prisons, and release numerous political
prisoners. Dr. Hill has also worked in solidarity with human rights
movements around the world. He is the founder and director of The
People’s Education Center in Philadelphia, as well as the owner of Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine
Featuring Noura Erakat, Human Rights Attorney and Associate Professor at Rutgers University, Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice; Fellow in Conflict in Peace at the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative (RCPI), a joint initiative of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School
Mary Ellen O'Connell (Respondent), Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution
Erakat offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law.
"Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine," the new book by Noura Erakat, offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures—from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza—Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests than the Palestinians’. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable. Presenting the promise and risk of international law, Erakat calls for renewed action and attention to the question of Palestine.
Angela Davis & Noura Erakat on Palestinian Solidarity, Gaza & Israel’s Killing of Ahmad Erekat
On Sunday, many Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities boycotted President Biden’s virtual Eid celebration. We play a statement of solidarity from legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis on Sunday for “Eid with Palestine: A Protest of the White House Eid Event.” Davis also co-wrote piece for The Nation with our guest Noura Erakat about how Erakat’s 26-year-old cousin Ahmad Erekat was shot by Israeli occupation forces after his car appeared to have accidentally crashed into a booth at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank while he was on the way to pick up his mother and sister on her wedding day. Erakat says Israel still refuses to release his body to his family. “All Palestinians are deemed a threat for their mere existence,” says Erakat. “What we see happen to Ahmad has been a pattern.”
#DemocracyNow
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"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
