In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and U.S. Colonialisms

This forum discusses the comparative dimensions of settler colonialism in Israel and the U.S.-Mexico border region, including separation walls, issues of migration, and the control of movement, dispossession, and settlement. The contributions take a variety of perspectives, both activist and scholarly. They engage with the longer historical perspective and with contemporary realities that suggest the comparability of the experience of Chicana/os and other Latina/o minorities in the United States and Mexico and that of the Palestinian populations of the Occupied Territories and Israel itself. Methodologically, they cross the disciplinary boundaries that separate disparate instances of oppression and struggle and propose that both scholarly and activist work should make connections between locations while respecting the distinctiveness and specificity of places and histories. Solidarity, these essays suggest, is based not on absolute identification, but on differentiated experiences of oppression and struggle against systems of domination like settler colonialism and capitalism.