2025/12/15 by Rhys Machold · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Belt and Road Initiative #Agricultural and Environmental Management
paper · doi:10.1177/20438206251406740
openalex created_date 2025/12/15 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This commentary engages with Mikko Joronen's provocative and timely notion of ‘malevolent weathering' developed to grapple with the formative roles of pollution within the Zionist settler-colonial project unfolding across contemporary Palestine. It argues that while Joronen's efforts to centre this weathering process as the main event is welcome and productive, the article less well attuned to grappling with this weathering's contradictory spillovers. I argue that addressing such spillovers requires more than simply weighing the costs of malevolent weathering against its material benefits to the Zionist project. And to do so, I suggest two things. The first, is to connect this weathering with Zionism's defining ‘addiction to violence’. The second is that because of its remarkable success in securing access to a nearly endless supply of Western arms and largesse, the Zionist project has never been forced to actually bear the full costs of its addiction to violence vis-à-vis its long-term viability. I suggest that this twin focus help us to explore how the spillovers of malevolent weathering might come to a head or be resolved in Palestine and beyond.