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Except Palestine: Traditions of Solidarity in Tower Hamlets and Beyond

When: Wednesday, April 3, 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: Mason Lecture Theatre, Bancroft Building, Queen Mary University of London, London, E1 4NS

Come hear from activists, researchers and writers who will discuss the challenges, but also the strategies for organising solidarity with Palestine.

Speakers:

  • Selma Dabbagh (Palestinian Novelist and Lawyer)
  • Abdalhadi Alijla (Palestinian Political Scientist)
  • Layli Uddin (Lecturer in Politics and International Relations of South Asia)
  • Anandi Ramamurthy (Professor and author of Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movement)
  • Clive Gabay (Reader in International Politics)
  • Tasnima Uddin (Nijjor Manush/Nejma Collective)
  • Co-chairs: Akram Salhab and Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal (Queen Mary, University of London)

Supported by:

  • International State Crime Initiative
  • Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context
  • Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice
  • South Asian Forum
  • Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production
  • Borderlines Research Centre
  • Global Politics Unbound

Except Palestine Series

Except Palestine is a series of town halls taking place at universities across the UK. Its purpose is to emphasise, think through, and reject the exceptionalisation of Palestine; to refuse the silencing, intimidation, and Kafkaesque framing of Palestine’s ongoing Nakbas. The purpose of Except Palestine is to emphasise the undeniable fact that there is something unique about Palestine: About the way that it is systemically excised from our classrooms, our universities, and our public debate because it is categorically labelled as criminal and terroristic politics and speech. And it is to think with this curious, universal excising to unpack, to chart, how attempts to remove Palestine and Palestinians as a land, a people, a politics tells us something about our shared condition. The particular censuring of Palestine tells us that there is something paradigmatic about Palestine. The uniqueness of how Palestine is treated tells us that Palestine is a universal, that tells us about all of our worlds, there and here and everywhere else.

Except Palestine was first held, with a panel of eight speakers to a packed room, at the London School of Economics. It has since traveled to SOAS, Kings College London, University College London, City University, and Birkbeck, with further events planned at Sheffield, Portsmouth, and Birmingham. Each Except Palestine retains a commitment to refusing the excision of Palestine, yet focuses on a slightly different theme. You can view details and recordings of the other events here.

We invite all of you to take Except Palestine elsewhere, to other universities, to refuse the exceptionalisation of Palestine. We need Palestine more than Palestine needs us. Because the liberation of Palestine – there and here – is tied the liberation of us all.

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