westandwithpalestine - Tumblr blog

[westandwithpalestine]

israel's invasion of jenin is so aggressive and inhumane that it speaks volumes how underreported it is in mainstream media. blocking aid from the refugee camps (classic starvation tactic), displacing at least 20 families in the last 24 hours alone, and now setting fire to jenin's market. they are razing streets with bulldozers. people are left without electricity, food, or water. and now they're targeting ambulances and medical staff without even trying to pretend it's erroneous or they're just terrorists. this is what complete impunity looks like

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Banks in the US are actively complicit in the forced starvation of Palestinians. Palestinians have known since the Holy Land 5 that anything we do for Palestine can get us sent to jail and it's a risk we have been willing to take. But now banks even refuse to allow us to send aid to a population that has nothing. Almost every public and private sector powerhouse in the world intends to wipe out the Palestinian people and Palestine and they're more than content in lending a hand in it.

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The entire basis for declaring Hamas a terrorist organization and illegitimate government seems to be that they occasionally manage to do a tiny fraction of the violence towards other countries and their civilians that the US does every single day.

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the settler-colonial state reproduces by making the settler citizenry culpable in the project. it endangers the people to legitimize it's monopoly on violence, it generalizes to reinforce the violence through identitarian schema. it's a production cycle that makes every actor guilty. why were there so many kibbutzim near gaza concentration camp? why were they so closely wedded to IDF bases? why is every Israeli citizen conscripted into the military at the age of 18? you would think well-meaning people would be smart enough to understand this, 11 months into the genocide, after thorough polling has revealed that Israelis are not only complacent, but incredibly enthusiastic about the killing!

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Constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want. - Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German historian and philosopher

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–Palestinian poet and editor of Mizna, George Abraham.

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Repeat after me:

These are not evacuation orders, they are death threats.

These are not evacuations, they are death marches.

These are not safe zones, they are killing zones.

And Gaza is an extermination camp.

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What lessons can we take from the anti-war movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s? First and foremost — there is hope. A Peace Movement before us had a documented, tangible chilling effect on imperial aggression. President Johnson’s advisors warned that if he fulfilled Westmoreland’s request for an additional 200,000 troops, then he would face “increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities”. Johnson refused to send Westmoreland’s 200,000. Nixon chose to “drop… an intensification of the war” because — in his own words — “I knew… that after all the protests and the Moratorium, American opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war”. Refusing to fight works. Picketing the White House works. Seizing weapon shipments works. Interrupting 4th of July parties works. Sabotaging railroads works. Marching outside the Democratic National Convention works. Occupying campuses works. Thus far, our modern anti-war movement has not ended the genocide, but that is no reason to give up. Any struggle won once can be won again. 

From Pop Quiz: Are These Quotes about Palestine or Vietnam?

[westandwithpalestine]

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְה Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn. [my best translation] Hear Israel (beginning of a prayer in Hebrew) I should outlive him long enough to bury him. (an old Yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

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What is going on with them my God…

[westandwithpalestine]

Pro-Palestine ancaps:

Regularly and uncritically repeat pro Hamas propaganda that could be factually debunked with a few seconds of checking, like "Israel shut down the Iron Dome to let the missiles through" or wild misuse of the term "genocide". 

Victim blame Israel for decades of attacks on their civilians. 

Say Israel should not react with armed force in any way to those attacks. 

Refuse to believe that Israel could ever be anything but actively and maliciously evil even when it would be of no profit to Israel.

Ignore and hide criticisms of Hamas, get caught, and then lie about it.

Make an explicit and unambiguous statement victim blaming Israel, get criticized, and then claim that they were obviously saying something very different. Then yelling at and blocking the people who took them at their word.

Block people who disagree with them on the matter, including direwolf himself, repeatedly.

Direwolf: wE'rE juSt aSKIng yOU To be SkEpTICAl of ISraEL's goVeRnmeNt!

[westandwithpalestine]

Full data is hard to come by. But according to police data cited by the watchdog organization Shomrim, also known as the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel, by May of this year the state prosecutor had allowed police to open investigations into 524 social media posts. That figure itself is likely an undercount, as it does not include investigations into social media activity opened independently by police, or other prosecutions that have been reported publicly, but don’t appear on Shormin’s list. One of the first posters to be arrested was a man named Yarmuk Zuabi, a restaurant owner in Nazareth. Last October, Zuabi changed his profile picture on WhatsApp to a Palestinian flag and posted the following cartoon on his account:

Source

[westandwithpalestine]

[westandwithpalestine]

Please consider spending time to learn more about Afro-Palestinian experiences and living under occupation while Black and Palestinian, along with Afro-Palestinian resistance efforts throughout the years. Here are some valuable articles and resources:

Articles:

In the heart of the Old City, generations of Afro-Palestinians persevere in the face of occupation by Mousa Qous

Putting the pieces together: Fragments of oral history in exile by Samah Fadil

‘Afro-Palestinians’ forge a unique identity in Israel by Isma'il Kushkush

The Africans of Jerusalem by Mousa Qous

The History Of Afro-Palestinians, Past And Present by Fayida Jailler

African-Palestinian community’s deep roots in liberation struggle by Electronic Intifada

Remembering Fatima Bernawi: Historic Palestinian fighter and liberated prisoner (1939-2022) on Samidoun

Fatima Barnawi, founder of Palestinian Women's Police and veteran prisoner, dies at 83 by Middle East Eye

On Fatima Bernawi, Women's Struggle, and Black-Palestinian Solidarity by Elom Tettey-Tamaklo

Afro Palestine: the African Diaspora in Palestine (not an article but a quick video summary of Afro-Palestinian history)

Note: highly recommend checking out Mousa Qous, the founder of the African Community Society, for his writings above all!

African Community Society of Jerusalem:

Their website— organization centered around the Afro-Palestinian community in Jerusalem.

General info about the group

ACS's instagram to learn more about Afro-Palestinian history.

Here is a write-up about the African Community Society, their impact within Palestinian society, and Afro-Palestinian history in Jerusalem specifically. Highly recommend taking the time to read this if you can.

Please take the time to watch this Documentary by Stephen Graham about former Israeli prisoner Ali Jiddah where he takes the viewer on a tour throughout Jerusalem and describes the unique struggles the Afro-Palestinian community face. He is quite a friendly guy and very funny:

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These are incredible articles and I encourage everyone to read them.

The articles give the Resistance a chance to set the record straight and state their goals and motivations. These aren't irrational terrorists, they're freedom fighters. Read and share.