Palestine and the Ends of Theory

Abstract

This article argues that over the past decade-and-a-half, amidst the resurgence of US/EU solidarity with Palestine, several anti-Zionist analyses have emerged that sidestep national liberation, regional politics, or imperialism. It connects that terrain to the rise of a new, and partially anti-systemic, political Islam that gained strength with the fall of the USSR and the contradictions arising within US-led imperialism. The article links this phenomenon to post-Cold War imperialist counterinsurgency and accumulation strategies, and the chasm separating EU-US anti-Zionism from the Palestinian national movement. It discusses political repression and the professionalization of Arab regional studies and ‘the Left,’ with pressures to create a Palestinian narrative speaking to an alleged mainstream and thus making Palestinian rights fit within a world-system and its geoculture that have no place for them. It analyzes those theories that helped forge an anti-Zionism hostile to Israel that ignores, mischaracterizes, or rejects the concrete forces resisting Israel and the US. The article calls for a more catholic theoretical practice that is open to the liberation agenda and its historical agents.