In this podcast, SWANA Collective members talk to Palestinian rights activist, feminist scholar and spoken word artist, Dr. Rafeef Ziadah, about the history and principles of the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions that aims to mobilize global civil society to bring an end to Israel’s settler colonization of Palestine and secure peace with justice for all. Further information about the principles and practice of BDS can be found on the website of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) at https://bdsmovement.net or usacbi.org.
Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian rights activist, feminist scholar and spoken word artist. Her poem “We Teach Life”, which we played as the introduction to this podcast, went viral soon after its release on YouTube and in the context of Israel’s renewed and bloody assault on Gaza in 2012. She has three albums of her spoken word performances, including We Teach Life (2015) and most recently Three Generations,which came out in November. Dr. Ziadah is also a Lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. Her research interests are broadly concerned with the political economy of war and humanitarianism, racism and the security state, with a particular focus on the Middle East. She is co-editor with Brenna Bhandar of Revolutionary Feminisms: Conversations on Collective Action and Radical Thought, published by Verso in 2020. Dr. Ziadah is also a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the coalition of Palestinian organisations that issued the call for BDS in 2005, about which we talk with her on this podcast.
We dedicate this podcast to the memory of Palestinian radio journalist Yusef Abu Hussein, killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike; and to the memory of Abir Ashkontana, 30, and her three children: Yahya, 5, Dana, 9, and Zin, 2, killed along with the members of three whole families by intensive Israeli bombing along Al Wehda Street in Gaza, before dawn on Sunday. Others among those families include Ayman abu al Ouf, an internal medicine doctor at Al- Shifa Hospital, and his two children: Tawfiq, 17, and Tala, 13; and the19 members of the El-Qolaq family, killed likewise by Israeli bombing, including Izzat, 44, his children, Ziad, 8, and three-year-old Adam, Doa'a Al-Qolaq, 39, and Sa’adia El-Qolaq, 83. Say their names, one by one. They are not statistics; they are not only victims of Israel’s repeated onslaughts on Gaza, but also of its decades long campaign to dehumanize Palestinian life. Name their names. We thank the Palestinian web group, We Are Not Numbers, based in Gaza, and Israeli journalist Amira Hass for the dedicated reporting that brings us the names of those that might otherwise be nothing but numbers.
