Vijay Prashad University of Vienna June 2025 I Online Public Talk and Discussion

This talk with Vijay Prashad discusses solidarity in times of imperialism and Israel’s wars both on Palestine and Iran by explaining the significance Palestine as well as the Palestine solidarity movement have globally. Drawing from a post- and decolonial analytical framework, Hamid Dabashi from Columbia University discussed in one of our previous public lectures the role Western countries play in Israel’s colonial war on Palestine. He used the following equation: ‘The West is Israel and Israel is the West. The World is Palestine and Palestine is the World’. He underscored that the significance Western countries have, goes far beyond complicity with Israel’s genocidal warfare in Gaza. In contrast to this, he also referred to overwhelming global solidarity with Palestine when linking it to the world. From a materialist point of view, Vijay Prashad further elaborates on how we can understand the trajectory of US imperialism in the Arabic speaking region and Israel’s wars both on the Palestinian society in its different localities and on Iran. He will then highlight the global (strategic) significance Palestine has from a Southern perspective and explore as to how such a frame of reference is and can be materialised in today’s Palestine solidarity movement as well as transformative movements in general. Photo: UNCTAD, „UNCTAD Public Symposium 2013 - Plenary II (9200112948) (cropped)", color adjusted and background removed. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.