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[enchantedreader]

I was punched and pepper sprayed by cops that my university administration set on student protesters yesterday. Including once where a cop ripped my mask off my face, grabbed my jaw, and sprayed pepper sprayed straight into my mouth. The university sent out an alert in the middle of our protest canceling classes for the rest of the day, only citing “adverse conditions”. After protesters dispersed under threat of even more violence and three buses of riot police from all over the state with rubber bullets and bully sticks parked in front of one our school’s famous landmarks. I staggered over to a couple of friends who were watching on the sidelines. They gave me water and an apple and held a bag of ice on my very pepper spray irritated face. As they were walking me back to my dorm we ran into one of their roommates. She had taken cancelled classes as an opportunity to get crumbl cookie with her friends. Standing in front of her, happy in a floral blouse with her box of cookies, in my pepper spray and water soaked tshirt, keffiyeh sadly hanging off my shoulder, holding an ice pack to my mouth, felt like a slap in the face.

After putting my pepper spray soaked clothes, shoes, and keffiyeh in a plastic bag and taking an extraordinarily painful shower, a friend and I went for dinner just off campus. There we had a pot of green tea and ramen to soothe pepper sprayed throats. We got ice cream after (shared a cup with chocolate and raspberry pomegranate with strawberry pieces on top, it was very good). From our spot outside the ice cream place we watched a steady stream of groups of sorority girls in matching jeans shorts and blue bikini tops walking back to their apartments after some apparently raucous parties. The cognitive dissonance was insane. I really felt a little like I was going crazy.

Even this morning, waking up to the smeared sharpie of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s phone number on my arm, a black and blue chest from where a grown man straight up clocked me while I was held up by two other protesters in a wall, and a still sore throat and eyes from the pepper spray, life goes on like normal. I still have final papers to write and a math exam to review for.

I’m not sure I really have a point. But, this feeling only makes me want to fight harder for a free Palestine. So, fuck Israel for being an apartheid state and all of their crimes over the last 76 years. Fuck university administration for not disclosing their level of investment in Israel. Fuck university administration for not divesting from this genocide. Fuck Joe Biden for actively supporting this genocide. And fuck the police.

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Occupation forces have released 150 kidnapped Palestinians from the Gaza Strip after they were subjected to several months of detention and torture

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NY city

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The student protests for Palestine have been an amazing show of solidarity and support and seeing the way that so many young people are willing to stand up for their values is admirable when so many others stay silent. But this is all to say that we are entering a pattern of glorifying these white “martyrs” from the global west to put all of this effort and resources and media coverage into instead of the actual cause they are fighting for.

I saw the same thing happen with Aaron Bushnell, when his self immolation was being talked about more than the actual genocide in Gaza (which went against everything he said he was self immolating for in the first place).

And again this happened with the prisoner from the US who worked 136 hours just to be able to donate his $17 check to Palestine aid efforts. In response to this, people wanted to help him and ended up raising over $100,000 in a gofundme for him. This feels almost satirical, as every gofundme to help Gazans evacuate Palestine and get to safety has a goal of less than $100,000 and most of them are not even close to reaching it.

And now, there are more and more posts on how to get aid to the college student encampments, and the “urgency” of getting enough bail funds for the students who have been arrested during them. Talking about Palestine itself and getting resources to Palestine has almost been put on the back burner in favour of making all Palestine related news about college students in the United States.

It think it is valuable to recognise the selflessness and importance of these protests, and getting these students resources but what is MORE important, and what these people are truly fighting for, and protesting, and make a statement about is PALESTINE. We have unsurprisingly reached the point where there are people who care much more about the white people fighting for the cause from the comfort of living in the global west than they care about the Palestinians undergoing a genocide in Gaza. It’s become almost blatant racism, the way people begin to drop everything the second a white/usamerican person does something in regards to helping Palestine, but will not put the same effort into a Palestinian IN Gaza who is telling their story or asking for help. I respect anyone who has done absolutely anything to help Palestine, but I hope people are starting to see the pattern of how the media gravitates towards the “white saviour/perfect martyr” instead of the first hand accounts coming from those in Gaza.

Anyway FIND A GOFUNDME AND DONATE TO HELP FAMILIES IN GAZA ESCAPE GENOCIDE

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nobody warns you this but addiction happens without you noticing and one of the first things that it attacks is your ability to care. if you find yourself using recreational drugs every day, stop and take one day a week sober. if you struggle with this or if you don't see the point of the exercise, you are likely already addicted and you need help.

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"My message to the colonizers who left their home countries to occupy our lands is simply to go back home. As for those who were born here, my message is: You are secondary victims of this colonial project. You are being used to occupy other people’s lands, and your Jewishness is being politicized for colonial means. Meditate carefully on the examples of South Africa, Angola, Algeria—they may not apply wholesale to the settler colonization of Palestine, but they hold lessons for you. Today you must make a choice: Either support this deadly colonial project, or side against it by supporting the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a democratic state that liberates Palestinians, as well as Jews, from Zionism. A state that will honor the right of Palestinian refugees to return and compensation and that will welcome and protect its Jews as citizens of Palestine. This transition from Zionism to democracy will not cost anyone’s life; it will cost you your colonial privileges, and will free you—and us, its primary victims—from colonialism."

—Mohammed Zraiy, Gaza coordinator for the One Democratic State Initiative in an interview with Jewish Currents

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It’s not about terrorism - it’s about purging Palestinian culture from the planet. This is a genocide with all of the West in full complicity.

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"Hands of Barnard and Columbia students in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Surrounded by more students holding hands to create a protective perimeter. All unflinchingly staring down imminent threats of suspension and arrest"

subway hands

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the Columbia University arrests are worse than they seem. They're arresting protesting students for trespassing. It goes without saying students cannot meaningfully "trespass" in the common areas of a university they attend. So Columbia University has suspended all student protestors from their institution, in the process revoking their access to housing, their belonging, and most crucially damaging their academic futures. We are witnessing full scale silencing and removal of anyone of conscience from the next generation of academia.

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Not just thousands of Palestinian children, but tens of thousands of Palestinian youths, men, women, and the elderly. 5% of Gaza's population has been either severely disabled/injured, has gone missing, or has been genocided. From destroying orchards and farms, to the destruction of Gaza Infrastructure to the point where it has collapsed in many spaces -especially their medical complexes, to the complete lack of access to fresh and clean water. Israhell is also still starving Palestinians -is still committing war crimes, and now this? The zionists are continuing their illegal settler-colonial project full steam ahead apparently, and it's beyond horrific.

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Preach.

We all have to find out comfort/discomfort levels.

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"doesnt israel have a right to exist too??" well its an apartheid ethnostate so no

"what about the people dont the PEOPLE have a right to exist??" yes! they do! however, they do not have a right to an apartheid ethnostate

"what about the holocaust survivors in israel dont they-" yes they have a right to exist too, however surviving one genocide does not give you the right to commit another, nor does it give you the right to an apartheid ethnostate

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palestinians refuse to lose hope, and you need to do the same. it is very difficult to not spiral into despair when it feels like all you can do is watch this unfold on social media but you can't let that happen. you cannot let yourself become numb and exhausted and indifferent. stay furious and stay devastated. hold onto your grief and let it give you the power to keep pushing. to keep protesting, boycotting, calling your state representatives and congress members if you live in the us - you have to stay emotional. israel and the us want to bully you into numbness and despair because that's the key to getting away with this. either get your citizens to accept your propaganda as gospel truth or make them give up the fight.

apathy and doom-spirals only aid in israel and the us's genocide of palestine. you have to keep hoping and you have to keep believing that yes if you try hard enough you can contribute to making a difference. don't look away, and don't give up either, okay? 🇵🇸💗