“Decolonization Is Not a Discourse, It Is a Material Process” - Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani on Anti-Zionism as Decolonization

Jan 30, 2024

For this week’s episode we interview Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

We interviewed them on January 12th to talk about their recent piece “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation” which is published in the brand new debut physical edition of Ebb Magazine. We will also link a web version of the article in the show notes. I will also say quickly that just recently we hosted a conversation with Louis Allday on our YouTube channel that goes over some of the other topics and analyses in that issue of Ebb Magazine. I highly recommend it and I actually bought a couple copies so that I could share it with others. 

In this conversation we talk about both the terms anti-zionism and decolonization which have each faced their own forms of elite capture and distortion. Along the way we talk about settler colonialism, the Oslo Accords, NGO’s, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians, the problems of neoliberal identity reductionism, and why as Lara and Leila write, “the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure.”

I very much enjoyed this discussion and encourage people to check out and support the work of the Good Shepherd Collective which Leila and Lara are members of, and which they talk about through the conversation as well. We will link their work in the show notes.

Leila and Lara reference a number of articles in their discussion and we will link those in the show notes.

We do have a study group starting next week, where we will go over the US military counterinsurgency field manual Thursdays at 7:30 PM ET. If you are interested in that I put a link in our show notes. It is for our supporters whether you support us on patreon on or Youtube. And if you want to stay up to date on all of our work and support our work the best way to do that is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

"Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation" (their article the episode is based on)

"Jewish Settlers Stole My House. It's Not My Fault They're Jewish" by Mohammed El-Kurd

When Does a Settler Become a Native? Reflections of the Colonial Roots of Citizenship in Equatorial and South Africa by Mahmoud Madani

Guide for Jewish Anti-Zionist Allyship

Steven Salaita "A Postmortem on Bernie Sanders and Palestine"

Defund Racism (includes their report on Regavim)