Terms of Servitude

​”Terms of Servitude is a blistering, timely testament to the unyielding power of Palestinian resistance in the age of digital empire. With eloquence and rigor, Omar Zahzah exposes how Silicon Valley’s so-called “neutral” technologies collude in Israel’s settler-colonial violence, demonstrating that censorship, algorithmic bias, and surveillance are not glitches but blueprints for silencing Indigenous struggles. Written in the midst of ongoing genocide yet unwavering in its vision, the book slices through corporate euphemisms to reveal how Big Tech encodes the brutality of occupation into pixels and code. It insists on situating Palestine at the center of any decolonial project seeking to reclaim the digital commons.” —Laila Shereen Sakr, author of Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives

“From social media censorship to the pernicious surveillance of Palestinians and their supporters, Omar Zahzah chronicles the intimate involvement of American Big Tech corporations in Israel’s unrelenting settler-colonial project. Terms of Servitude provides a guide to understanding and resisting digital settler colonialism. It is a timely and urgent read for everyone concerned with the fate of Palestine.”—Michael Kwet, author of Digital Degrowth: Technology in the Age of Survival

​”A bold and utterly captivating exposé, Terms of Servitude delivers the most powerful indictment yet of Silicon Valley’s pervasive use of surveillance, egregious censorship, and other digital tools not only to facilitate Israeli violence but to aggressively stifle Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices that dare to expose it. Omar Zahzah’s brilliant, meticulously-researched, and irrefutable arguments unequivocally demonstrate that digital technology is being actively weaponized to fuel settler colonialism in Palestine. This book is absolutely critical, not merely for a profound understanding of the sinister alliance between Big Tech and the Israeli occupation, but as a chilling, prescient warning of how such technology can fundamentally deepen oppression against marginalized communities worldwide.”—Ramzy Baroud, author of These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons

“Zahzah reveals—in damning clarity—the paradoxical use of technology to both suppress and amplify the Palestinian liberation struggle, offering us a meticulous yet accessible articulation of the digital resistance to Zionism and why, ultimately, Big Tech is failing to silence it. Terms of Servitude is a masterful and essential record of this pivotal moment in history.” —Nora Barrows-Friedman, associate editor ​of The Electronic Intifada

OMAR ZAHZAH is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar has covered digital repression in relation to Palestine as a freelance journalist since May 2021, with work appearing in such outlets as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and more. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA.

STEVEN SALAITA is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. His most recent books are a memoir, An Honest Living, and a novel, Daughter, Son, Assassin.

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