The widespread adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism and the internalization of its norms has set in motion a simplistic definitional logic for dealing with social problems that has impoverished discussions of racism and prejudice more generally, across Britain and beyond. It has encouraged a focus on words over substance.

ERASING PALESTINE tells the story of how this has happened, with a focus on internal politics within Britain over the course of the past several years. In order to do so, it tells a much longer story, about the history of antisemitism since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is also a story about Palestine, a chronicle of the erasure of the violence against the Palestinian people, and a story about free speech, and why it matters to Palestinian freedom.

Rebecca Ruth Gould is an American-born writer and translator currently based in the UK. Her writing has been translated into twelve languages, including Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese. Her most recent book is Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom (2023). Her previous books cover a range of topics including prison poetry (The Persian Prison Poem, 2021) and anticolonial insurgency in the Caucasus (Writers and Rebels, 2016). She has also co-authored the monograph Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine with Malaka Shwaikh (2023), which is available in open access format at https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/prison-hunger-strikes.