#FreePalestine and Following the Ones Who Know the Way
The conversation about “Israel vs Palestine” is wrought with intense feelings and loyalties. It is a complex mess of history and harm that has shaped the people of the region for generations.
But it is not a conflict. Conflict implies a balance of power of which there isn’t one here. “There is an active oppressor (Israel) and an oppressed (Palestine). A colonizer (Israel) and a colonized (Palestine).”
Nor is it someone else’s problem. Each year, $3,800,000,000 of our tax dollars are invested in Israel's oppression of Palestinians. Palestinians have been existing under the longest illegal occupation in modern history. And the Human Rights Watch just released a report charging Israel with crimes against humanity and officially declaring it an apartheid state.
There is so much to do domestically - so much to repair and make right - that it is often difficult to acknowledge the what is happening around the world. But our struggles are intertwined as we stand against all forms of oppression and continue to fight active western imperialism and colonialism in Palestine and beyond. Which is “why we must be internationalists in the struggle” as Nelini Stamp encourages us.
Internationalism recognizes that the freedom of the other is bound in our own freedom and vice versa. Nelson Mandela knew this when he said “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians”. Don’t duck this issue because it seems heated and complex. Learn what you can, and engage with others.
The US is not only complicit in the violence and occupation of Palestine, it’s deeply invested. We have a part to play in this. Here’s how you can take action:
PRESSURE US GOVERNMENT. Demand that the US a) end military funding to apartheid Israel and similarly criminal regimes of oppression worldwide, (b) ban all goods/services of companies operating in Israel’s illegal colonial settlements; and (c) demand a UN investigation of Israeli apartheid. Sign here.
SUPPORT H.R. 2590: Representative Betty McCollum’s historic bill, H.R. 2590, the Palestinian Children and Families Act ‘insists on the rights to safety, dignity, and freedom for the Palestinian people: the freedom to thrive, free from child detention, home demolitions, continual Israeli annexation and land theft. Tweet your Congress Members to become co-sponsors.
BOYCOTT. DIVESTMENT. SANCTIONS. BDS is a Palestinian-led movement that upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. the movement is fighting for liberation from ethnic cleansing, dispossession, colonization, war crimes and apartheid through withdrawing support and investments from the State of Israel and from companies that sustain Israeli apartheid. Here’s a list.
On social media? Follow: Listen, learn and respond to the leadership of Palestinian solidarity organizations including @eye.on.palestine @theimeu @landpalestine @adalajusticeproject @ifnotnow
DONATE to Palestinian organizations on the ground like Grassroots Jerusalem.
