In light of the events in Palestine/Israel in May 2021, we felt compelled to give special attention to theory and practice that emerges from, is critical of, and devoted to the political present of this place.
In Part 2, we talk with Azar Dakwar about an article he wrote with Raef Zreik entitled “What’s in the Apartheid Analogy? Palestine/Israel Refracted” we explore the question of what’s between South Africa and Palestine/Israel and between apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation.
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In conversation with:
Azar Dakwar (University of Kent)

Azar Dakwar is a Ph.D. candidate in political and social thought at Brussels School of International Studies, University of Kent, where he is completing a dissertation titled Thinking the Muslim Question by way of Rethinking the Jewish Question: A Critique of Frankfurt School’s Secular Analytics of Religion. In addition to the politics of Palestine/Israel, his scholarly interests revolve around the epistemological and ontological status of the modern question and category of religion and the problematics of domination, emancipation and progress in critical theory, political economy and political theology. His work appeared, among others, in Theory & Event, Contemporary Political Theory, European Law Journal, Journal of Palestine Studies [Arabic] and Theory and Criticism [Hebrew]. He is co-Editor of Rethinking the Politics of Israel/Palestine: Partition and Its Alternatives (2014, with Bashir Bashir) and Israel and the Apartheid: A Comparative Study (2018, with Honaida Ghanim) [Arabic].
References:
- Dakwar, Azar and Zreik, Raef. “What’s in the Apartheid Analogy? Palestine/Israel Refracted”. Theory & Event Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 664–705, 2020
- Goffman, Erving. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harvard University Press, 1974.
- Mamdani, Mahmood. Neither Settler nor Native. Harvard University Press, 2020.
- Sfard, Michael. “Why Israeli progressives have started to talk about ‘apartheid’”. 3 June 2021 available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/03/israeli-apartheid-israel-jewish-supremacy-occupied-territories
- Sfard, Michael. “Executive Summary The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion”. June 2020, available at https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.yesh-din.org/Apartheid+2020/Apartheid++Summary+ENG.pdf
- Zreik, Raef. “Palestine, Apartheid and the Rights Discourse”. Journal of Palestine Studies. 2004, Vol. 34. No. 1, pp. 68–80. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2004.34.1.68
- “After 54 Years: From Occupation to Aparthied”, 22 June, available at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=285217306329384&ref=watch_permalink
- Yesh Din: https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/
- B’Tselem: https://www.btselem.org/apartheid