Panelists will discuss a variety of locations where religion has been weaponized in the context of Israel/Palestine: African American Christian Zionist tours of the State of Israel, Holocaust memory, trauma, and teshuva, the self-exile of Israelis, and in claims about ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine.
In response to the seminar’s call on the theme of “Remember Amalek,” this paper offers a critical analysis of the ways that religion is used on African American Christian Zionist tours of the State of Israel towards the goal of bringing African American Christians and Black churches into the religious/political project of Christian Zionism. It draws on participant observation and interview data from two trips to Israel and Palestine with groups of Black clergy and lay leaders to show how a range of stakeholders invoke, deploy, and weaponize religion in the service of Christian Zionism. These stakeholders include Jewish and Christians trip coordinators, clergy, denominational leaders, tour guides, and others. More broadly, the paper considers the implications how race and religion overlap for African American Christians who get involved in Israel and Palestine and how the stakes of position-taking on that issue have changed since October 7, 2023.
This presentation explores the intersections of Holocaust memory, trauma, and teshuva—the Jewish concept of return and repair—focusing on the impact of Holocaust memory in the context of Israeli settler-colonialism. Drawing on the works of Marianne Hirsch, Naomi Klein, Abdaljawad Omar, and Maimonides, the presentation examines how Holocaust memory has been weaponized to justify violence against Palestinians, perpetuating cycles of trauma rather than facilitating healing. Hirsch’s concept of postmemory shows how the trauma of the Holocaust is transmitted through generations, distorting collective identity and preventing growth. Klein highlights how re-traumatization traps communities in perpetual victimhood, hindering transformation. Omar’s work on settler-colonialism demonstrates how Palestinian suffering is erasure within global narratives, further entrenching injustice. Teshuva—as a process of self-reflection, return, and repair—offers a framework for Jewish communities to confront the weaponization of Holocaust memory and engage in ethical solidarity with Palestinians, creating space for justice, empathy, and healing.
The state of Israel was purportedly founded to ensure the safety of Jews whose lives had become precarious in Diaspora. Zionism claims that the state’s establishment signals the end of Jewish exile. How, then, do we explain the increasing numbers of Israeli Jews leaving the country? Some of them speak about being abandoned by the state and choose instead a form of self-exile. Jewish emigration rose following recent Israeli elections of a far-right governing coalition and the extreme violence of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath. Their departures mirror the state’s withdrawal of support from historically secular ways of being Jewish and the imaginary of a negotiated peace, in favor of alliances with political factions which envision the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The paper builds on preliminary fieldwork in conversation with the extensive scholarship on exile to consider the limits of nationalist ideology and the precarity of national sovereignty.
This paper examines the rise of contemporary public discourse in the English-speaking world that makes claims about ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. Focusing on online sources, such as newspapers, articles, blogs, materials published by organizations, and social media content, this paper analyzes how authors define indigeneity, the evidence they use to support claims of ‘Jewish indigeneity,’ and whether these claims intersect with other articulations of indigeneity. Ultimately, this paper investigates how the category of indigeneity and the language of universal indigenous rights are appropriated to justify the existence and actions of the settler-colonial nation-state of Israel and deployed to legitimize the possession of Palestine. It analyzes how Zionist ideas of indigeneity reproduce settler ideas about land as possession and function within the framework of the nation-state that fundamentally conflict with critical Indigenous approaches to land as relational, an interconnected web of obligations and responsibilities, in opposition to colonialism and the nation-state.