What is the Critical Study of Zionism?

The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) was launched in October 2023 with a conference on ‘Battling the “IHRA Definition”: Theory and Activism’ held at at Santa Cruz and New York.

The Institute aims to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies, and to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism as a political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project that intersects with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, studies of land and climate, disability, performance, and many other related areas scholarship and activism. The Institute approaches Zionism as a broad set of colonial and repressive work and solidarities, efforts to curate knowledge and identities, and to dismantle movements that resist it. In other words, Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine. Many scholars and activists are working to illuminate such “other work” of Zionist institutions and discourses, historically and in the present, to shape the material conditions of life, the movement of capital, the construction of racial identity, and more.

Since its launch, coinciding with the start of the current phase of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, and now the West Bank and Lebanon, the ICSZ has been organising a wide range of work groups on topics such as ‘Zionism and race’ and the ‘Sayegh archive’, online and in-person events, and doing defence and campaigning work. The first issue of the Journal for the Critical Study of Zionism was published in October 2024. It also hosts the ‘Unpacking Zionism’ podcast and produces educational materials and political education through social media.

Hosted by the Anti-Genocide University at University College London, you are invited to a gathering in London to introduce the work of the ICSZ. The ICSZ brings together scholars who, in a range of ways, are already doing Critical Zionism Studies because their work is anticolonial, antiracist, anti-fascist, anti-queerphobic, feminist, anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, etc. The aim is to discuss how the Institute can facilitate the development of links between those doing this work and its specific aims and to extend its reach within UK activist and scholarly spaces.

The event will involve short presentations followed by open discussion. The speakers are:

• Alana Lentin, ICSZ Founding Collective member
• Hil Aked, ICSZ Advisory Board member
• Clive Gabay, Birkbeck College
• Gargi Bhattacharyya, Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre, and the Anti-Genocide University, UCL
• Tom Western, the Anti-Genocide University, UCL

Photo by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash