Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine

by Adam Hanieh, Rob Knox, Rafeef Ziadah

Why does the West unwaveringly back Israel? This anti-imperialist critique from authors who are centrally involved in Palestine solidarity work offers a clear answer.

This essential read provides clarity on the intertwined relationships of global capitalism, energy politics, and racial oppression, and challenges readers to rethink their understanding of Palestine.

Dismantling the simplistic narratives that dominate mainstream discourse, the authors provide a material analysis of Israel's violence, its support from international states, and the various political responses of the Palestinian liberation movement. Historical and regional dynamics of Western imperialism, capitalist accumulation, and racialization form the core of their argument. 

This book offers a thorough critique of the forces that sustain the Israeli settler-colonial project and the unwavering support it receives from Western powers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History

128 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2025

Reviews

[Angeline Tolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not sure why this says it is not published, as I quite literally have a copy of it in my room and table.

I was already pro-Palestinian by the time I even encountered this book within a local store. I am deeply interested in the topics written on the cover and thus, purchased the book and got set to reading it after a few days. It consolidated knowledge I knew already but also expanded my ideas of the region, putting the modern-day oppression and murder of the Palestinian nation into a historical context that is both regional and industrious; it gave me hope to remember there is solidarity.

[Dania · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Solidarity is not an act of charity – but a shared fight against the common structures that produce dispossession, repression, and exploitation across the region and beyond".

Well written and clear, informative and political.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the context of the Palestinian struggle, but also to those who are already familiar with it, as it helps put events in order. The authors expose how, in a fossil fuel global order, Western powers (i.e. the States and Europe) created Israel. The book also provides an overview of how Israel's settler-colonial capitalism operates, as well as its link to a broader system of exploitation.

[Anaïs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as part of a reading circle and thought this was a really good introduction to Palestine, in less than 100 pages. Pushes against liberal and oversimplified discourses about Palestine, Israel and the US as well as the exceptionalization of Palestine, places Palestine within oil centered global capitalism and what is at stake in the Middle East, clearly explains US strategies of political and economic normalization of Israel in the region... Perhaps the introduction was not as strong a chapter as the rest of the book, but the list of references is really good and there are a few things I've bookmarked to read. This is a brilliant read and great for a reading circle because it is short, critical, packed with information, and super accessible.

[layan ليان · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grant you refuge in knowing that the dust will clear, and those who once fell in love and died together will one day laugh.
— Martyr Hiba Abu Nada

The book’s analysis situates Palestine within the broader intersections of global capitalism, energy politics, and racial oppression. It convincingly shows how Palestine is not an exception, but rather a concentrated site where empire, profit, and racialized dispossession converge. The strength of the book lies in this very specific framing - it refuses to treat the violence against Palestinians as an isolated conflict, instead placing it firmly within the infrastructures of colonial domination and global capital.

That said, I find myself pausing at one point of contention (an argument I strongly hold onto in any book discussing this point about Palestine, bear with me haha) The book suggests that the current violence in Palestine is not fueled by religious hatred. While it is true that to reduce the struggle to “religion” alone would be misleading, it is also true that religion has been a consistent element in both the ideological foundation and the lived practices of Zionist settler-colonialism. Consider the very infamous David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister… while he operated within secular politics, his project was deeply tied to his interpretation of Judaism -not Judaism as a faith, nor Jewish identity itself, but his particular mobilization of it as a political tool. From the very beginning, religious symbolism and justification were embedded into the settler-colonial logic. And believe me, this is the case for so many other Zionists.

We see the continuation of this dynamic today. The repeated burning and demolition of mosques in Gaza and the West Bank, or the April 2023 assaults at Qubat al Zakhra mosque, where women were beaten and detained during Ramadan prayers, are not merely incidental acts of war. They are attacks on faith, on sacred spaces, on the spiritual fabric of a people. To dismiss these acts as unrelated to religious hatred risks overlooking how central that hatred has become as fuel for the broader project of domination, quite literally.

Of course, the violence in Palestine cannot be reduced to religion alone - it is inseparable from land theft, racial hierarchies, and global capitalist interests. But religion, in this context, is not a side note… it is one of the engines. The book is right to stress the economic and racial structures that underpin the occupation, yet we must also recognize how religious hatred is mobilized within and alongside these systems to deepen the harm.

That said, I want to extend my thanks to NetGalley and Verso Books for granting me an early access to this eARC.

[Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inhoudelijk heel sterk, maar echt zo ontzettend droog dat ik er weken over gedaan heb (ondanks dat het pamflet slechts 97 paginas telt).

[Matthias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ongelooflijk droog geschreven zoals enkel academici dat kunnen, maar inhoudelijk een essentieel andere visie, een essentieel ander narratief, in een essentieel andere context, voor deze o zo belangrijke kwestie.

[Neil Rogall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this short but incisive and very readable book about fossil capitalism, settler colonialism and the central place of the Zionist state within the networks of global capitalism . And centering the struggle for Palestinian freedom as a struggle against fossil capitalism and for the future of the whole planet

[mort reini · Rating 4 out of 5]

a solid and on-point breakdown of the role US and global fossil-fueled racist capitalism plays through settler colonialism in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. not giving it a full 5 stars only cuz you can’t write off religious hatred as one of the drivers of Zionist violence.

By deepening awareness of how capitalism [I’d add ‘and colonialism’] operates globally, we gain a greater understanding of how capitalism [again, ‘and colonialism’] works at home.

It’s so true for Eastern European countries resisting Moscovia’s (later rebranded as the russian empire, then russia) millennia-long colonization, with the same aim of erasing nations other than russians. and the tools are all the same.

[Bran · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good short marxist(?) analysis of Palestine which dispenses with appeals to humanitarian or legal ideals. Highlights are the discussions of Palestine’s role as a source of labor supply and demand for manufactures and food; normalization of Israeli occupation via international law; impotence of the Oslo-created PA. Shortcomings are the lack of direct historical links of Israel’s strategies to other mentioned regimes like South Africa etc., no discussion of Israel’s manipulating of religion and sectarianism to consolidate Apartheid. A great intro

[Ziggi Chavez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as easy reading as the Andreas Malm pamphlet in this series, but still an important framing of the history of racism applied to the situation in Palestine since the early 1900s, way before the state of Israel was enacted in the land. This points out the critical interest of capitalist powers in the region that have superseded the human rights of peoples native to the land in the pursuit of unending expansion and “progress.”

[Mohamed Nabil · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب جيّد ومهم؛ أظنّه كُتب لغير العرب ليكون مدخلاً حديثًا لتعريفهم بمعاناة غزة، جذورها وواقعها. تعجبني لغته الواضحة؛ فهو يسمّي الأمور بمسمّياتها: إسرائيل استعمارٌ استيطاني ورأسُ حربةٍ للمصالح الأمريكية في المنطقة، والتطبيع وسيلةٌ لإسرائيل ومن خلفها أمريكا لدمج الاحتلال سياسيًا واقتصاديًا في المنطقة؛ باختصار: تبيئة إسرائيل.

كنت أتمنى أن يتوسّع الكتاب ويستفيض في بعض الجوانب، خاصةً الجانب الاقتصادي المتعلق بدمج إسرائيل في اقتصاد دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي.
مجملاً، الكتاب جيّد ومهم كما ذكرت.

[Pari · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There can be no dismantling of the fossil order, nor any genuine Palestinian liberation, without breaking apart these alliances (the Gulf monarchies, the United States, and Israel). This is why Palestine is at its core a struggle against fossil capitalism - and why the extraordinary battle for survival waged by Palestinians today, in Gaza and beyond, is inseparable from the fight for the future of the planet.”

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the sharpness and clarity of the writing. The third essay was the weakest imo and largely looked at racialization through general frameworks of islamophobia and war on terror and could have talked more on the many specifities of anti Palestinian racism, but that's in comparison to the rest which set the bar pretty high. I was glad to see that despite coming out recently this copy has obviously been borrowed and read many times.

[Tilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone who wants a good introduction to a deeper understanding of the complex relationships between the opression of palestine by israel and its connections to racism, capitalism and their uses by the west should read this

[Chad Alexander Guarino da Verona · Rating 5 out of 5]

The left and putting out BANGER pamphlets, name a more iconic duo. In all seriousness, this is an essential primer on the reality of fossil capitalism’s role in the political sphere of the Gulf States and the future of Palestinian sovereignty. Read it.

[Emil Borgström · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heltäckande och tydligt, en grundlig genomgång av hur olika krafter, idéer och händelser spelar in i det folkmord vi ser israel utföra idag.

[David Lyndorff Paris · Rating 5 out of 5]

konflikten i Palæstina handler om olie = fossil kapitalisme. Nu står det skrevet sort på hvidt!

[sreeja ⭐ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very important read

[Maegan B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Real solidarity comes from understanding the systems that create injustice, and building against those systems in ways that strengthen us all.”

[eve is reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is short and concise book that discusses palestine within the global context of capitalism, exploitation of labor/resources, and imperialism. this book explains exactly what laws, money, and diplomacy have allowed israeli settler-colonialism to persist. a great starting point for further reading on what has predated and allowed the events of today to occur.