Cultural Anthropology joins the global wave of mourning for the loss of life in Palestine and Israel, and the global condemnation of genocide in Gaza. We join voices from around the world calling for an immediate ceasefire. This war on Gaza is a war on Palestine, including the accelerated onslaught of the settler regime’s expropriation of Palestinian land, water, trees, wells, and homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
We stand in solidarity with our sister organization of Palestinian anthropologists, Insaniyyat. We follow the call of our colleagues at Birzeit University for academic institutions to “fulfill our intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth” and take “concrete action to stop the genocidal war on the Palestinian people.” We stand with all people of good will who reject any instance of what Hortense Spillers has called “dehumanized naming” that paves the way to mass killing and genocide. We lend our voices and words to “voices from Gaza” fighting for humanity and human decency in the worst of circumstances.
To designate some people as “not fully human,” “children of darkness,” or outside the “civilized enlightened world,” to quote some phrases of the Israeli settler government, has a long and bloody history. The notion that some people have lower “civilizational status” and deserve to be consigned to a total siege with no access to water, food, or electricity as the bombs fall and eliminate entire families, blocks, schools, and hospitals, is all too familiar to anthropologists as students of colonialism and enslavement. We reject such logic and its genocidal implications in the present as well as in the past, and support the Resolution on Palestine advanced by the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association in November 2023.
Further inspired by journals such as the Journal for Palestine Studies and MERIP, Middle East Research and Information Project who have made the knowledge contained in their pages available for broader access and use in this terrifying historic moment, we gather here articles published in the pages of Cultural Anthropology on Palestine/Israel.
Swedenburg, Ted. 1989. “Occupational Hazards: Palestine Ethnography.” Cultural Anthropology 4: 265–272.
Ben-Ari, Eyal. 1989. “Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising.” Cultural Anthropology 4: 372–389.
Weingrod, Alex. 1993. “Changing Israeli Landscapes: Buildings and the Uses of the Past.” Cultural Anthropology 8: 370–387.
Kanaaneh, Rhoda. 1995. “We'll Talk Later.” Cultural Anthropology 10: 125–135.
Peteet, Julie. 1996. “The Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology 11: 139–159.
Jean-Klein, Iris. 2001. “Nationalism and Resistance: The Two Faces of Everyday Activism in Palestine during the Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology 16: 83–126.
Feldman, Ilana. 2007. “Difficult Distinctions: Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza.” Cultural Anthropology 22: 129–169.
Bishara, Amahl. 2008. “Watching U.S. Television from the Palestinian Street: The Media, the State, and Representational Interventions.” Cultural Anthropology 23: 488–530.
Allen, Lori. 2008. “Getting By in the Occupation: How Violence Became Normal during the Second Palestinian Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology 23: 453–487.
Fassin, Didier. 2008. “The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.” Cultural Anthropology 23: 531–558.
Kaplan, Danny. 2009. “The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio.” Cultural Anthropology 24: 313–345.
Weiss, Erica. 2016. “Refusal as Act, Refusal as Abstention.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3: 351–358.
Samimian-Darash, Limor. 2016. “Practicing Uncertainty: Scenario-Based Preparedness Exercises in Israel.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3: 359–386.
Feldman, Ilana. 2017. “Humanitarian Care and the Ends of Life: The Politics of Aging and Dying in a Palestinian Refugee Camp.” Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 1: 42–67.
Bishara, Amahl. 2017. “Sovereignty and Popular Sovereignty for Palestinians and Beyond.” Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 3: 349–358.
Meneley, Anne. 2019. “Walk this Way: Fitbit and Other Kinds of Walking in Palestine.” Cultural Anthropology 34: 130–154.
Allan, Diana. 2020. “The Long Turning: A Palestinian Refugee in Belgium.” Cultural Anthropology 35, no. 2: 225–230.
Romero, Andrés, and Ethnocine Collective. 2020. "Ethnocine: Hay Betl7em هاي بيت لحم." Visual and New Media Review, Fieldsights, September 24.
Pérez, Michael Vicente, and Elena Boffetta. 2018. "Repetition and Extraordinary Living in the Gaza Camp." Writing with Light, Fieldsights, June 20.
Finkelstein, Maura. 2019. "What is a Classroom For? Teaching the Anthropology of Palestine." Teaching Tools, Fieldsights, May 10.
DeLuca, Elizabeth. 2017. "Dilemmas of the Long Term: An Interview with Ilana Feldman." Supplementals, Fieldsights, May 31.
Brannen, Crystal. 1996. "The Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada: Supplemental Material." Supplementals, Fieldsights, May 1.
Merritt, Cari. 2008. "The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: Supplemental Material." Supplementals, Fieldsights, August 1.
"Stop the Genocide." Art by Favianna Rodriguez, photo by Nadine Naber. Produced with thanks to the INCITE! Palestinian Force and the Palestinian Feminist Collective.
Created by the Editorial Collective of Cultural Anthropology (2022–2026). Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Julia Elyachar, Joanne Nucho, AbdouMaliq Simone, Manuel Tironi, and Ather Zia assisted by Kate Herman.
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