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June 15, 2021
The Society for Sinophone Studies stands in solidarity with Palestinians and the Palestinian movement for justice and freedom from Israel settler colonialism. We condemn the ongoing occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing waged against Palestinians. This includes the most recent campaign commenced in early May 2021, consisting of the forced removal of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, the storming of Muslim religious sites and Palestinian hospitals, the bombings of Gaza that have killed over 200 Palestinians many of whom are children, and the attacks against Palestinian protestors by settlers and Israeli military.
Despite the agreement to ceasefire, as of this writing, Jewish settlers and Israeli military forces continue to violently harass Palestinians. The ceasefire has not ended what the Human Rights Watch has declared Israel’s “crimes of apartheid.” It has not halted the Israeli besiegement and deprivation of Palestinians and non-Jews living under Israel settler colonialism. As HRW states, the “massive confiscation of land in the West Bank and the revocation of residency rights for many Palestinian Jerusalemites, have more to do with establishing Jewish Israeli control over demography and land than security.” It is clear that Israeli authorities “intend to maintain this system of severe discrimination into the future.” The ceasefire has also not ended the support of Israel from nation-states and corporations which directly benefit from the occupation and extraction of Palestinian lands and peoples.
Sinophone studies emerged at the intersections of fields such as postcolonial, settler colonial, ethnic, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and area studies. It recognizes the colonial history of racism, misogyny, and Orientalism in the military assaults and occupations of the Middle East, North Africa, and West Asia, and more broadly across the Asia Pacific region, and through the enduring Cold War. It acknowledges that the conditions of Sinitic-language communities worldwide are crucially and variously tied to the occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for freedom. This includes the “quadrilateral relationship” between the United States, Taiwan, Israel, and the People’s Republic of China, wherein the United States provides aid and weapons to Israel and Taiwan while Israel sells weapons to both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. It also includes the global vaccine apartheid, whereby biotech competition and concern over intellectual property between the United States and the People’s Republic of China have severely delayed worldwide vaccine distribution. Israel was guaranteed priority access to US-sponsored vaccines and has been hailed for its vaccine rollout success, even as it denies vaccines to Palestinians, instead shipping its supplies abroad in a bid for vaccine diplomacy. Although Taiwan was earlier touted for preventing COVID-19, a surge of infections since April 2021 has exposed its dire need for vaccines, which the Taiwanese government has accused the PRC of blocking access.
These quadrilateral exchanges expand defense, surveillance, and carceral technologies and industries while undermining a coordinated international solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. They involve the militarized and intertwined settler colonizations of Indigenous lands and Oceania by the United States, Taiwan, the PRC, and Israel; mass policing, murder, and incarceration of Black community members in the United States; detentions of refugees and family separations at the US-Mexico border, Australia, and across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia writ large; and the internment of Muslim minorities in the United States and PRC alike under the US-led “Global War on Terror.” The rise in anti-Asian discrimination and attacks are the result of historically embedded, systemic racism that has been inflamed by Cold War rhetoric. We reject any and all calls to policing, militarism, and state-sponsored, regional, cultural, or ethnic Chinese and Asian nationalisms as solutions to anti-Asian violence. We instead amplify the demand for internationalism which centers Indigenous leadership, sovereignty, and practices locally and globally to promote the end to settler colonialism and the COVID-19 pandemic.
We condemn the assaults on academic freedom and the silencing of academics who critique Israel apartheid. We instead join the growing chorus of scholars expressing international solidarity with the Palestinian peoples, including the Palestinian Feminist Collective, Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom, National Women’s Studies Association, Association of Asian American Studies, Middle East Studies Association, Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity with Palestinian Feminist Collective, UCSC Feminist Studies, UCSC Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UIC Global Asian Studies, UCSD AAPI Studies Program, UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies, UC Davis, UIUC Asian American Studies Department, Princeton University, Yale Ethnicity, Rights, and Migration, and UCLA Asian American Studies. As scholars, we respond to the call for continued Palestinian solidarity and the end to Israel apartheid by endorsing and committing to the international Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement, including the Academic Boycott.
Board Members
Society of Sinophone Studies