ARUN KUNDNANI, arunkundnani@gmail.com, @ArunKundnani
Kundnani is the author of What is Antiracism? (2023) and The Muslims are Coming! (2014).
He said today: “The contradiction at the heart of Israel has been that a state founded by victims of racism was itself a racist state. For some time, that meant Israel had to carry out a difficult balancing act: an apartheid system with the rhetoric of liberal values, tolerance, and antiracism. And it became necessary to distort the concept of antisemitism to include criticism of Israeli apartheid.
“Now, the liberal pretenses have been jettisoned — and we face genocide, openly expressed, organized, and beginning to be carried out. To justify a genocide, Palestinians have to be dehumanized and the voices of their supporters snuffed out. That is why in Britain, in Germany, in France, in the U.S., the right to free speech has been weakened for supporters of Palestine. And that is why everywhere we are seeing an upsurge of anti-Muslim sentiment.”
See regarding censorship:
The Cradle: “Meta ‘taking steps’ to censor support for Palestinian resistance”
Deutsche Welle: “Berlin authorities ban pro-Palestinian protest”
CNN: “France bans all pro-Palestinian protests”
Middle East Eye: “Israeli minister seeks arrest of journalists who ‘harm national morale’”
See regarding anti-Muslim racism:
The Intercept: “FBI Targets Muslims and Palestinians in Wake of Hamas Attack, Civil Rights Advocates Warn”
The New York Times: “6-Year-Old Boy Fatally Stabbed in Anti-Muslim Attack, Authorities Say”
Kundnani has written for The Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library and lives in Philadelphia.
