Palestine/Israel Scholarship in the Shadow of Genocide

Abstract

This afterword to the special issue “From Nakba to Genocide” reflects on the meaning and stakes of decolonizing knowledge production on Palestine/Israel in a time marked by genocidal violence. It argues that the current moment constitutes an epistemic rupture that compels a rethinking of the relationship between Palestine Studies and Israel Studies and of the very conditions under which scholarly knowledge is produced. We contend that approaches framed as “integrative” often reproduce settler-colonial logics by normalizing Nakba and genocide denialism, obscuring the structural continuity between the Nakba and the present. Against this, the afterward advances a decolonial framework that centers Palestinian experiences, insists on the inseparability of epistemic and political decolonization, and calls for studying Israel through the lens of Palestine. In doing so, it situates the journal as a site of epistemic intervention committed not only to critical scholarship but also to accountability and the articulation of decolonial horizons in and beyond the academy.