Confronting Zionism (decolonizing Palestine And Building The World Anew)

Drawing on the history of global anticolonial movements and a rich Palestinian intellectual tradition, two leading legal scholars demonstrate that justice in Palestine cannot be realized without confronting the problem of Zionism

For over one hundred years, Palestinians have struggled for liberation in their homeland. Confronting Zionism takes direct analytical aim at the ideology and institutional structures animating Israel’s brutal rule over Palestinian lives.

With cutting precision and comprehensive evidence, Noura Erakat and John Reynolds argue that Zionism is colonial and racist in essence and practice. Tracing the history of the Zionist project, the establishment of the Israeli settler colonial state and development of its apartheid laws and institutions—plus the damning failure of diplomatic efforts, including the Oslo peace process—this book provides the concepts and tools for understanding the horrors unfolding in Palestine today.

Erakat and Reynolds also provide a clear-eyed assessment of the role of international law, in a world where its relevance is increasingly in question. Taking lessons from ongoing inequalities in South Africa as well as anticolonial and socialist policies across the global south, Confronting Zionism argues that at this crucial historical juncture, decolonization in Palestine predicated on redistribution, reparations and refugee return remains the only just way forward.

"Using South Africa and Tanzania as examples,Erakat and Reynolds propose new models of decolonization, requiring return, reparations, and redistribution of wealth accumulated under Zionism, noting that the presence of settlers is less of a problem than the persistence of a settler colonial mindset. An eye-opening and thought-provoking read." —Booklist, Starred Review

"Of the windfall of books published on Israel this year, Confronting Zionism: Decolonizing Palestine and Building the World Anew may well be the most radical critique yet....Erakat and Reynolds argue that Palestine’s liberation offers a counterpoint view of a new world freed from these plagues. Palestine, they say, is the compass pointing in the direction of a world freed from militarism, war and racism. About as radical as it gets." —Electronic Intifada

"[Confronting Zionism] details how international law, in many ways a weapon of imperial powers, lacks the capacity to indict imperial criminals....What is particularly refreshing [about the book] is the wealth of Palestinian intellectual history that the authors share with us, revealing how Palestinians, not surprisingly, have always understood Zionism as a settler colonial movement and racist ideology that needs to be addressed through decolonial praxis....Ultimately, Confronting Zionism is about the failure of international law and the need to rely on organic intellectuals’ analysis and civil society organising for genuine liberation, rather than the superficial abolition of a system without addressing its ongoing material consequences." —The New Arab

"Noura Erakat and John Reynolds''s Confronting Zionism arrives just as many in the West are waking up to the reality of what Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide have wrought. It is a learned, cutting, and eminently readable text that guides its readers through the immoralities of Zionism and sketches a post-Zionism drawn from the struggles of the Palestinian people and the global struggle at large. This is an essential book for our era."
—Ta-Nehisi Coates

"Erakat and Reynolds present a Palestinian struggle towards freedom and the world freedom dreams can create. They contend with the