Introduction: ‘Writing, Advocating and Resisting during Genocide’

In this introduction, co-authors Dr Ahlam Muhtaseb and Omar Zahzah begin by engaging the immense challenges particular to academics attempting to use their positions and their expertise to mount various forms of resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They name the substantial political repression that professors have faced under both the Biden and Trump presidential administrations in the United States, as well as the disappointing example of fellow scholars who have prioritized their careers above principled opposition to one of the most apocalyptic crimes against humanity witnessed in the historical record. From there, the co-authors segue into a sustained discussion of how each of the articles within our Special Issue constitutes an important example of engaged scholarship that refuses silence about genocide and variously illuminates issues pertinent to broader questions of anti-Palestinian repression and Palestinian resistance to genocide and settler-colonialism.