GAZA IN CONTEXT: The Colonial History that Shaped the Modern Middle East

A 4-part online series Sundays, Jan 5, 12, 26, and Feb 2, 2025, all at 3pm The Israeli war on Gaza – widely considered genocide – did not begin on October 7, 2023. This series will look at the background of Zionism and colonialism that laid the foundation for ongoing wars and today’s violence in the Middle East. Palestinian dispossession, we will see, began more than a century ago.

• January 5 – CONQUEST AND COLONIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST DURING THE 20TH CENTURY: The roots of the contemporary Middle East go back to the First World War and its aftermath; the birth of Zionism as a political movement.

Video: https://youtube.com/live/Y_75LgjQiAg

Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jTrcqiR3IZlebo5bUQHziKVeavw10VRO/

• January 12 – MANDATES AND REPRESSION IN PALESTINE AND BEYOND: The failure of the British colonial attempt to shape Palestine in conformance with the Balfour Declaration; Palestinian resistance and the first proposals for partition; Zionist terror; British, French colonialism in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duY-ABJP_8A

Slides:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nhUBtaPKkUQZdInsLL7GTMbgIgnGmoK0/

• January 26 – THE US AND ISRAEL IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Although the US government supported the Zionist project from the time of the First World War, and it was quick to recognize the independence of Israel in 1948, US policies toward the Middle East centered on Oil and later Cold War interests. The US was not much involved the Middle East until the 1930s and then oil-rich Saudi Arabia, not Israel, was its close all — as it remains to this day. Republicans – who as a party are now firmly pro-Israel —  were skeptical in the 1950s and 1960s of unconditional support for Israel. It was only in the 1970s that Israel came to be viewed as an important strategic ally, especially in the context of the Cold War. Since then, the Israel Lobby also became an important player in US politics.

Video:  https://youtube.com/live/Chuz0APhZic

Slides:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zSHbg52kYJI1Z27hx8mq-5rYGn_h4dbg/

• February 2 – LOOKING IN THE MIRROR: How the U.S. has shaped the contemporary Middle East from before the Cold War to the present. Indigenous nationalism and its opponents. Addressing the domestic colonial and imperial background to US support for Israel and its destabilizing interference in the region.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pdo_Q8Rpw&t=4418s

Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ZTXZlBuyRkkIfTFQ4aR-UConOBdpT-1/

Speaker: Jeff Klein is a veteran anti-war activist, retired machinist and local trade-union president, who for 8 years until 2023 taught a course on “The US in the Middle East” at the UMass Boston Lifelong Learning Institute.  He is a board member of Massachusetts Peace Action and a member of its Gaza Israel Mideast peace campaign’s steering committee. Since 2004 Jeff has traveled almost every year to Palestine/Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, and has many close friends among veteran activists in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan.  He has also worked in Nicaragua and for the exiled African National Congress in Zambia.  Check out his weekly presentations on “Genocide in Gaza” and read his articles on the Middle East.

Register to attend any or all of the four sessions. Course materials: Readings and Resources on Israel/Palestine Course Outline – the US in the Middle East – This outline was prepared for an 8-session version of the course given at UMass Boston in fall 2023.  The material will be condensed for this 4-session online version.