Red Emma’s

What does it mean to extend Vietnamese diaspora studies beyond North America? Join us in exploring the place of Vietnamese refugees in Israeli racial politics, including how the figure of the Vietnamese refugee was mobilized in Israel's nation-building project. From 1977- 1979, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin granted asylum and citizenship to 369 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees: an unprecedented event in the state of Israel’s history of strict asylum policies. This event stands in stark contrast to Israel’s displacement of Palestinians due to ongoing settlement and occupation in Palestine. Given this context, what points of connection may arise between Vietnamese Israelis and displaced Palestinians? How may “home” signify differently for these two populations? To what degree are Vietnamese Israelis implicated in the Israeli settler colonial project—what Jodi Byrd has termed “arrivant colonialism”? In other words, is solidarity between Vietnamese Israelis and Palestinians even possible when the condition of legibility as citizen for one population is predicated on the dispossession of the other?