CfP Book Project Woke Zionism

The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) invites scholars, authors, intellectuals, columnists, activists and others to send us papers and articles dealing with the timely topic of “woke Zionism”.

The unprecedented crimes of Oct. 7, when Muslim and Palestinian men butchered, gang raped, tortured, burned alive, shot 1200 Jewish women, men, children, babies and Holocaust survivors and other nationals and abducted 251 Jews and others to Gaza, were the worst crimes against the Jewish people since the Shoah.

It was precisely the unthinkable brutality of the killing, the fun of torturing Jewish women and men alike, the burning alive of entire families and the joy of the murderers. Survivors, who were in their safe rooms, heard Palestinian women enjoying the homes of Israelis, they were cooking or watching Arab TV – while their husbands, brothers or sons killed all Jews they could find like in kibbutz Nir Oz.

Today we see an equally unprecedented wave of antisemitism and Jew hatred around the globe. Calls for killing Zionists appear on posters, stickers and are slogans like in Berlin, Naples, Paris, Madrid, London or New York City, to name but big European and American cities.

This book wants to give left-of center, left-wing and woke Zionists a public voice: Fighting antisemitism, including Islamism and secular anti-Zionism, while pursuing peace in the middle east, against Jewish supremacism, racism, the occupation, the War in Gaza and ultra-nationalism as well as religious messianism.

This book project is looking for papers and articles to deal with the very unusual but tremendously timely perspective of left-wing or woke Zionism. Is there still an option for a Palestinian state without abandoning the Jewish and democratic state of Israel? What about violence in the Westbank or the consequences of projects such as E1? What about the judicial overhaul by the Netanyahu government? How to fight queer anti-Zionism?

How can we heal the unprecedented shock of the brutality of Oct. 7 without aligning ourselves with the disastrous and murderous policies of the current Israeli government and the IDF in Gaza? Hunger may never ever become a strategy of war – but Israel does use hunger as a weapon, against Zionist and IDF principles of equal treatment of human beings. When did the „justified war“ against Hamas end and become an „endless war“? Why did the government abandon the hostages and when?

Then, what about Reform Judaism’s role in the current fight against antisemitism and against the War in Gaza? What about women’s rights and current far-right policies in Israel? What about the analysis of capitalist economy and the history of left-wing Zionism, including the socialist kibbutz movement?

Finally: Why do many people in the Diaspora and the (anti-woke) Zionist camps reject any public criticism of Israeli policies? Doesn’t that endanger both Jews outside of Israel and the Zionist project as such? Zionism is not a given. We have to fight for its future in a democratic and Jewish state of Israel, alongside a future Palestinian state, as Resolution 181 from November 29, 1947 stated.

These are some of the core topics of “woke Zionism” today. We look very much forward to your contributions. Please send us your papers and articles via email – ranging between 1000 and 5000 words, written in an essayistic or scholarly style – by Oct. 31, 2025. The book will be published by the end of 2025.

Contact information: bicsa@bicsa.org

Editors:

• Clemens Heni, PhD, Director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), former Post-Doc at Yale, former Fellow at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, currently teaching at Heidelberg University.

The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

c/o Edition Critic

Kolonnenstr. 8

10827 Berlin

Germany

Clemens Heni/Thomas Weidauer

Am Israel Chai

Der Antisemitismus der »Ja, aber«-Fraktion seit dem
schlimmsten Massaker an Juden seit der Shoah:
der 07. Oktober 2023

Mit einem Vorwort von Gert Weisskirchen und
einem Nachwort aus Amerika von JM Sorrell

187 S. | 38 Abbildungen | 12,5×19 cm | ISBN 978-3-946193-41-8 | 16€ | The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studien zum Nahen Osten, Band 7 | Dezember 2023