« Assimilation in the French colony: Nadia Zerrouk, ‘French assimilation in Algeria: Between its logical aspects and the racism of colonialism’, Art Law and Accounting Reporter, 44, 2, 2025, pp. 201-212
German settlers during WWI (with illustrations): Ron Hellfritzsch, ‘On the Road to the ‘New Eastern Lands’: Plans for the German Colonization of the Baltic States during the First World War’, Copernico, 2025 »

Early Palestinian reflections on settler colonialism: John Harfouch, ‘”The being of Israel is the non-being of Palestine”: Understanding Zionism through the Work of Fayez Sayegh’, Liberated Texts, 10/11/25

19Dec25

Excerpt: November 10th, 2025, marks the fiftieth anniversary of UN Resolution 3379, when the United Nations General Assembly voted to declare Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination. This statement effectively condemned Zionism as a racist political ideology and Israel as a racist state, to be relegated alongside other colonial, apartheid, and imperial state projects. Passing with a vote of 72 in favor and 32 against with 35 nations abstaining, it was overwhelmingly supported by the newly liberated Third World countries who saw the statement as a challenge to American and European hegemony. Resolution 3379 was not the work of a single individual. Nonetheless, several Palestinian intellectuals deserve special recognition for their efforts in passing the resolution. Foremost amongst them is Fayez Sayegh, who spearheaded the effort and argued the Palestinian case on the Assembly floor. This review will work through Sayegh’s writings to come to a better understanding as to just what he and his counterparts within the Palestine Liberation Organization meant when they argued that Zionism is racism. How did they understand ‘racism’ and where does Zionist racism fit within what Sayegh called ‘the Palestine Problem’ more generally? Given that context what then is ‘anti-racism’? Is racism the appropriate lens through which to approach the problem? Readers may know Fayez Sayegh from his 1965 essay, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. That was the first publication from the PLO Research Center, which Sayegh founded and directed for a short period. While interpreting Sayegh’s statements on Resolution 3379, I draw from both his own and his colleagues’ writings for the PLO Research Center, so it is useful to have some idea as to what that Center was. In its 18 years of operation in Beirut the Center published a total of 340 books. At its peak, the Center employed roughly 80 full-time researchers in a 6-storey building in downtown Beirut.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed