Israel is on an open-ended, devastating offensive — committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, carrying out a wave of violence elsewhere throughout Palestine, and bombing people from Iran to Yemen, Lebanon and Syria — where the state is seizing land as well. This is all being done with the weapons and backing of the United States. But the genocide in Gaza is also resulting in the greatest crisis in Israeli credibility — and the legitimacy of the US-Israel relationship — in the state’s history. This will be a conversation about the new opportunities and responsibilities of activists in the US to stop US support for the genocide and end policies that are rooted in colonization as we fight for a present and future rooted in solidarity and shared humanity.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and the Co-Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He researches U.S. empire, borders, and migration and strategizes with activists to work against the violence that the U.S. carries out and supports around the world. Khury focuses especially on U.S. militarism in the Middle East and in the Pacific, and movements that resist it. He graduated from the Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Massachusetts, after completing a dissertation on U.S. military bases in the Pacific. He is one of the co-authors and organizers of the 2023 Black Voices for Ceasefire statement, which was signed by over 6,000 Black activists, artists, and scholars.