This chapter explores the criminalization of Palestinian resistance by Israel. It focuses on ‘’48 Palestinians’ (known also as Palestinian citizens in Israel) and the ways in which Israel systematically used mass arrests during the Unity Uprising in May 2021 as a colonial technology to stifle Palestinian protest and construct Palestinians as a security threat and as criminals. The chapter demonstrates the function of the Israeli justice system as integral to Israeli settler colonial violence. To punish Palestinians for their participation in the uprising, Israel, we demonstrate, mobilized racialized legal categories that enable it to subject Palestinians to aggravated punishment by classifying offences as racist and/or terrorist crimes. Israel, we further show, worked to connect the uprising – an act of resistance to settler colonialism – to the rising crime rates in Palestinian society in recent years, resulting in a dual process that we refer to as the securitization of crime (treating crime as a security issue) and the criminalization of resistance (treating political mobilization as a criminal issue). Through the entwinement of crime and political resistance, Israel sought to erase the anti-colonial sensibilities that drove ’48 Palestinians to the streets in May 2021.
Fabio Cristiano, Deanna Dadusc, Tracey Davanna, Koshka Duff, Joanna Gilmore, Chris Rossdale, Fede... more Fabio Cristiano, Deanna Dadusc, Tracey Davanna, Koshka Duff, Joanna Gilmore, Chris Rossdale, Federica Rossi, Adan Tatour, Lana Tatour, Waqas Tufail & Elian Weizman. This Intervention presents a conversation amongst a collective of scholars who are in the process of establishing a research network studying the criminalisation of dissent. The new UK Police, Crime, Sentencing, Courts Act 2022 is just one recent example of attempts by ‘liberal democratic’ states to criminalise political activism and restrict the right to protest. Similar legislative measures, repressive policing practices, and discourses delegitimating dissent can be observed across a variety of geographic and socio-political contexts. In this discussion, we interrogate both the concept of ‘criminalisation of political activism’ and the practices through which criminalisation is enacted by sharing examples and analyses from our research. We approach criminalisation as a process that changes with circumstances and is shaped by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors and agencies, and question the analytical gentrifica- tion that narrows resistance and rebellion to the exclusionary category of activism. Our different disciplinary and regional foci bring together the historical and the contemporary, the (liberal) settler colony and (colonial) liberal democracy, to reflect collectively on the formal and informal tools, technologies and strategies used to criminalise dissent. The conversation took place in November 2022 and was then transcribed and lightly edited for clarity.
This chapter explores the criminalization of Palestinian resistance by Israel. It focuses on ‘’48 Palestinians’ (known also as Palestinian citizens in Israel) and the ways in which Israel systematically used mass arrests during the Unity Uprising in May 2021 as a colonial technology to stifle Palestinian protest and construct Palestinians as a security threat and as criminals. The chapter demonstrates the function of the Israeli justice system as integral to Israeli settler colonial violence. To punish Palestinians for their participation in the uprising, Israel, we demonstrate, mobilized racialized legal categories that enable it to subject Palestinians to aggravated punishment by classifying offences as racist and/or terrorist crimes. Israel, we further show, worked to connect the uprising – an act of resistance to settler colonialism – to the rising crime rates in Palestinian society in recent years, resulting in a dual process that we refer to as the securitization of crime (treating crime as a security issue) and the criminalization of resistance (treating political mobilization as a criminal issue). Through the entwinement of crime and political resistance, Israel sought to erase the anti-colonial sensibilities that drove ’48 Palestinians to the streets in May 2021.
Fabio Cristiano, Deanna Dadusc, Tracey Davanna, Koshka Duff, Joanna Gilmore, Chris Rossdale, Fede... more Fabio Cristiano, Deanna Dadusc, Tracey Davanna, Koshka Duff, Joanna Gilmore, Chris Rossdale, Federica Rossi, Adan Tatour, Lana Tatour, Waqas Tufail & Elian Weizman. This Intervention presents a conversation amongst a collective of scholars who are in the process of establishing a research network studying the criminalisation of dissent. The new UK Police, Crime, Sentencing, Courts Act 2022 is just one recent example of attempts by ‘liberal democratic’ states to criminalise political activism and restrict the right to protest. Similar legislative measures, repressive policing practices, and discourses delegitimating dissent can be observed across a variety of geographic and socio-political contexts. In this discussion, we interrogate both the concept of ‘criminalisation of political activism’ and the practices through which criminalisation is enacted by sharing examples and analyses from our research. We approach criminalisation as a process that changes with circumstances and is shaped by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors and agencies, and question the analytical gentrifica- tion that narrows resistance and rebellion to the exclusionary category of activism. Our different disciplinary and regional foci bring together the historical and the contemporary, the (liberal) settler colony and (colonial) liberal democracy, to reflect collectively on the formal and informal tools, technologies and strategies used to criminalise dissent. The conversation took place in November 2022 and was then transcribed and lightly edited for clarity.
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This chapter explores the criminalization of Palestinian resistance by Israel. It focuses on ‘’48 Palestinians’ (known also as Palestinian citizens in Israel) and the ways in which Israel systematically used mass arrests during the Unity Uprising in May 2021 as a colonial technology to stifle Palestinian protest and construct Palestinians as a security threat and as criminals. The chapter demonstrates the function of the Israeli justice system as integral to Israeli settler colonial violence. To punish Palestinians for their participation in the uprising, Israel, we demonstrate, mobilized racialized legal categories that enable it to subject Palestinians to aggravated punishment by classifying offences as racist and/or terrorist crimes. Israel, we further show, worked to connect the uprising – an act of resistance to settler colonialism – to the rising crime rates in Palestinian society in recent years, resulting in a dual process that we refer to as the securitization of crime (treating crime as a security issue) and the criminalization of resistance (treating political mobilization as a criminal issue). Through the entwinement of crime and political resistance, Israel sought to erase the anti-colonial sensibilities that drove ’48 Palestinians to the streets in May 2021.
This chapter explores the criminalization of Palestinian resistance by Israel. It focuses on ‘’48 Palestinians’ (known also as Palestinian citizens in Israel) and the ways in which Israel systematically used mass arrests during the Unity Uprising in May 2021 as a colonial technology to stifle Palestinian protest and construct Palestinians as a security threat and as criminals. The chapter demonstrates the function of the Israeli justice system as integral to Israeli settler colonial violence. To punish Palestinians for their participation in the uprising, Israel, we demonstrate, mobilized racialized legal categories that enable it to subject Palestinians to aggravated punishment by classifying offences as racist and/or terrorist crimes. Israel, we further show, worked to connect the uprising – an act of resistance to settler colonialism – to the rising crime rates in Palestinian society in recent years, resulting in a dual process that we refer to as the securitization of crime (treating crime as a security issue) and the criminalization of resistance (treating political mobilization as a criminal issue). Through the entwinement of crime and political resistance, Israel sought to erase the anti-colonial sensibilities that drove ’48 Palestinians to the streets in May 2021.