This lecture caravan will highlight connections, power structures and agency between Belgium and Palestine to better understand the place of contemporary situations of occupation, social injustice and its resistance within larger worldmaking projects and the contemporary power dynamics of globalisation.

Click the link to register for each lecture session: https://linktr.ee/vliruos

Session 1 (09/03/2022) - ‘Feminist and Queer Solidarities’

VUB, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels

In light of International Women's Day, this lecture addressed how the Israeli state mobilises gender and sexuality within the context of occupation. What can a queer and feminist perspective bring to our understanding of settler-colonialism, not just in the context of Palestine, but also in light of Belgium’s own colonial past? And, what are the implications for transnational and internationalist feminist and queer solidarities with Palestine?

Session 2 (22/04/2022) - 'Against the Infrastructure of Colonial Capitalism'

ULB, Franklin Rooseveltlaan 50, 1050 Brussel

Colonial occupation has been the driving engine behind a prolific and highly profitable defence industry for Israel and Israeli companies. For Israeli companies, the symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship between private capital on the one hand, and the Israeli military apparatus on the other, serves as a lucrative opportunity to test their technologies and market them to customers worldwide. This partnership provides the basis for Israel’s infrastructure of occupation.

Session 3 (03/05/2022) - 'Entangled Histories of Solidarity: a cross-generational Examination of Palestinian Youth Organizing'

KU Leuven, Faculty of Social Sciences, Parkstraat 45, 3000 Leuven

This lecture examines entangled histories of solidarity between Palestinian youth organisers and Third World, indigenous, anti-colonial and anti-ractist movements worldwide. It offers a cross-generational, comparative, and transnational analysis of Palestinian student and youth organizing, starting in the 1930's until the present day, to illustrate how youth movements have both informed and been effected by the broader trajectory of the Palestinian liberation movement.

Session 4 (11/05/2022) - 'Labour Solidarities and the Question of anti-colonial Struggle'

UGent

On May 18 2021, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens in Israel stopped work for the day, as did other Palestinians across the Occupied West Bank and in Gaza, in a general strike and a remarkable show of unity against Israel’s unfolding military campaign. Moreover, the international call for solidarity and to organise actions in support of the Palestinian general strike issued by Palestinian trade unions was answered massively by trade unions across the world. During this lecture, with important voices from the Palestinian and Belgian trade union movement, we discuss the role of labour and trade union organising in a settler colonial context.

Adress: Campus UFO - Technicum - Auditorium D (St.-Pietersnieuwstraat 41 - Gent)

Date: 11/05/2022

Time: 17:30 - 20:00

Session 5 (17/05/2022) - 'Creating Spaces for anti-colonial Solidarity'

UAntwerpen

In this closing event of the Palestine Lecture Caravan, the ongoing colonisation of Palestine is linked with past and present European colonisation. This event suggests that to decolonise our minds, bodies and institutions in Belgium, we need to examine how European colonialism continues to impact our everyday lives: from Congo to South Africa, from Belgium to occupied Palestine, the wealth and wellbeing which we lay upon are in direct relation to a violent past and present of (neo)colonial logics and practices.

Date: 17 May 2022

Address: Institute of Development Policy – Chapel and surrounding spaces: Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerpen

Timetable:

5.15pm: Doors open

6pm - 6.30pm: Opening Speeches - all speakers and audience members present

6.40pm -7.20pm: Structural racism, colonialism and cultural/knowledge institutions

7.30pm - 8pm: Colonized Bodies

8.10pm - 9.30pm: International solidarities across South Africa, Palestine and Belgium & open conversation about the evening/event

9.30pm-11pm: Reception

The closing event of the Palestine Lecture Caravan will be an in-person interactive event. Corona measures will be respected, including limiting the number of attendees

Share this article

return to overview