ICYMI: Reflections on Wednesday's protest against genocide...
ICYMI ~ 04: Netanyahu is a war criminal, the absurdity of the NYPD, and a decade of fighting for Palestinian liberation.
“Kamala understands what is needed. And if she wants to become the next president of the United States of America, she has to demonstrate to our base, to Arab and Muslim and Palestinian American voters, to pro-ceasefire voters across the country, that she is going to disassociate from the policies of Joe Biden.”
Wednesday was a beautiful and hopeful day down in Washington, DC. Thousands of us got on buses from all over the country and headed to the capital to express our dissent for the genocide in Palestine and to demand that Netanyahu be arrested. We rallied and made our voices heard from within the belly of the beast. We inspired each other to continue the fight and uplifted Palestinian humanity.
The difference between what people feel on the streets and what our government is up to could not be starker. The fortress erected around the Capitol will forever be known as “Fort Netanyahu.” The government wasn’t taking any chances with peaceful protestors and brought out its violent, militarized police. In fact the D.C. armed police forces were deemed insufficient, and so they shipped down 200 IOF trained NYPD cops to help out.
Predictably, the NYPD led a completely and totally unprovoked chemical weapons attack on the protestors as we set out on our march. There are a lot of bogus stories coming out, but I was only a few feet away from the police attack and I can say with certainty that the police attacked without warning. The march had stopped and protestors were yelling “move cops, get out the way.” We were flanked by NYPD on one side. Let’s be clear that they were not there to ensure the safety of protestors exercising our constitutional rights, but rather to protect a genocidal war criminal and maintain the cracking image of him as a legitimate world leader and Israel as a legitimate state.
My friend and I were only around 10 feet away from the stream of pepper spray and are pretty sure that it was the NYPD that launched pepper spray into the crowd injuring multiple protestors. The stream clearly came from where we had commented to each other on the absurd NYPD presence. Not surprisingly, their violent tactics worked effectively to limit our right to peaceful assembly and free speech. As protestors rushed to the aid of the injured, the police let the massive crowd through and redirected the march away from the Capitol building.
Here’s a video to give you a sense of the absurd militarized police protecting the Zionists and war criminals committing genocide.
As you may know, I’m not on Facebook much anymore, but I popped in yesterday and Facebook reminded be that it was the 10 year anniversary of an action I took part in to stop the killing and maiming of thousands in Gaza during the 2014 Israeli bombardment. (That’s me in the jeans.)
We sprayed fake blood on IDB Bank near 42nd and 5th in Manhattan to highlight the immoral and illegal activities of Israel Discount Bank, which illegally funds and provides financial services to the illegal settlements. It’s hard to believe that this was a decade ago, and there were only about 200 of us protesting the genocide in Gaza then.
But every life Israel and the Zionists have stolen has meaning and value. The Palestine Liberation movement has grown exponentially, because we have continued advocating for justice and human rights for our brothers and sisters in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - and we will never stop. A decade ago the Palestinian struggle connected the dots between banks, white supremacy, dispossession, and climate disaster. This is even more true today. Israel’s genocide has put more greenhouse gases into the environment than the whole of more than 135 countries for all of 2023. And we’re not even talking about the climate cost to rebuilding. All of our liberation is bound together.
While the election dynamics have shifted and have opened the opportunity to push Kamala hard on the U.S. investment in genocide in Palestine, more and more voices are yelling for us to keep quiet because Trump is worse than anything the Democrats can produce. In a globally connected world, MAGA’s “America first” foreign policy really only goes so far. We have to be careful not to fall into the same pitfall on the left by prioritizing fear of Project 2025 and the many racist initiatives we would be subject to under Trump. Noura Erakat puts this perfectly:
Of course, the entire disgusting display from Congress on Wednesday is all about the dying gasps of a world based on racial hierarchies that once seemed natural. If we look at Trump and Kamala as representing two world views, it becomes obvious that no matter who wins this election, a new approach is not far off on the horizon. If Trump represents a social structure with whites on top and BIPOC on the bottom but with all boats rising, Kamala represents a (fantasy) victory for Civil Rights where Blacks have greater access to the white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist system and work in complicity. Her approach opens opportunity in exchange for assimilation and allegiance to white supremacy. We reject both these approaches for humanity in the long term.
Sure, perhaps she has taken money from AIPAC and supports Zionism due to a cynical political calculation - but it doesn’t really matter why, because now she has to do their bidding. There isn’t a compromise to be found on every issue and Israel/Palestine is an issue where there cannot be any compromise. There cannot be a “democratic” state in Occupied/Historic Palestine that does not include the Palestinian people as equal citizens with all rights. This is a moral principle. It is not negotiable.
Unfortunately, the language that Kamala used in her statement opposing the protests in D.C. already shows us where this is going. Her statement contains numerous falsehoods and is essentially disinformation. The idea of Hamas being designated a terrorist organization is ridiculous. There is no other option for Palestinian freedom than armed resistance. Armed resistance is not the same as “terrorism.” Because language often expresses power dynamics, we refer to the Palestinians held by Israel as “prisoners.” But they are not prisoners, they are hostages. They have not been tried and often have not even been accused. Israel is holding at least 10,000 Palestinian hostages.
The area inside Israel that Hamas attacked is only legitimized as Israel by the West. It is only considered Israel due to weapons used to force the indigenous population out. The people living in this area could be understood as “human shields” in the same way that all Palestinians in Gaza are viewed as “human shields” by Israel. The status of a body of people who are occupying land unethically as innocent victims is unclear - and particularly so because Israel does not consider any Palestinian male living in Gaza to be a civilian. Not a single one. Even a man with autism and Down’s Syndrome is not a civilian by Israel’s stated standards. So, the idea that Hamas attacked civilians and is therefore a terrorist group, whereas Israel is not, is simply a racist double standard.
Furthermore, saying that Hamas wants to “annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews” is complete and total disinformation. Hamas, the Palestinian people, and people of conscience all across the entire world want to see an end to Israel in its current form. The current Hamas charter does not say they want to “kill the Jews.” Yes, they do want to end Zionism, which is clearly an ideology rooted in racism, isolationism and white supremacy. It is only Israel that falsely claims that Zionism is the same as Judaism. The idea that God gave Jews historic Palestine and so they have a “right” to be there and a God given right to ethnically cleanse the area so that it is a Jewish only apartheid state is a ridiculous, radical view that is believed most fervently by fundamentalist Christians who believe the earth is 6000 years old.
This anti-science perspective is most violently adhered to by those who are apparently blind and cannot see that the vast majority of Jews in Israel are white and of European ancestry. Ok, look, all of us humans are from Africa, but who could claim that we are all indigenous to Africa? Both Arab Jews, who descend from people who lived in peace as custodians of major religious sites for three of the major world religions, and Black Jews from North Africa, live as second class citizens in Israel in similar ways to Black and brown folks here in AmeriKKKa.
Because the militarized police forced the march off course, we ended up at Union Station. It was obvious that the police had successfully thwarted some of our efforts, but that we had made our voices heard nonetheless. How the protest would end became unclear. The flags at Union Station that many of us see as a symbol of white supremacy and imperialism were a natural symbolic target and so a couple of protestors decided to take them down. At least one of the protestors was arrested as the crowd chanted “let her go.” It was after the police violently swooped in to arrest what looked to be a 20-something woman, that the flag was burned. And soon after the effigy of Netanyahu was set on fire.
There was no antisemitism or hate; there was strong opposition to genocide, a demand for the full and complete liberation of the Palestinian people, and a demand to hold Netanyahu accountable for war crimes. “Free Palestine” is not hate speech. Neither is “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” And so if this is the reference to antisemitism, it is a dangerous one. “From the river to the sea” does not even mean to get rid of the Zionists who are illegally occupying illegal settlements in the West Bank - which the ICJ ruling requires.
The beauty of this movement is that even after 76 years of genocide and ethnic cleansing, most Palestinians and even Hamas believe that they could find a way share the region with the Israelis who are now there through no fault of their own, preferably as one democratic state with justice and equal rights for all. Yes, this is about stopping the genocide, stopping the illegal occupation, and stopping the land theft in Palestine. But it’s also about stopping all forms of hate, stopping white settler colonialism, ending racism, stopping climate change, and building economies that work for all humans on this planet. It’s about creating a much more equitable world with peace and justice for all. The cynicism of our politicians doesn’t represent us.
PS - Don’t forget to check out my notes where I post frequent commentary and updates!
📚 What I’m reading this week:
Any of us who have been involved in the Palestine struggle for even just a few months understand the power of censorship. We put our trust into communicating and connecting via platforms that have the right to take our networks away at any moment through various means of deplatforming. Being shadow banned or “permanently restricted” is a profound experience - it’s hard to see how much of a source of connection these platforms are until you’re no longer allowed to participate. But the good news is that you gain deep insight into how curated our ideas really are. If we want to continue to have free thought in a world with too much information, we are going to need to get serious about defending free speech on the platforms we now depend on for social and political connection.
“Speakers documented the coordinated efforts of the UN, EU, World Health Organization, Organization of American States (OAS), and U.S. government to police opinions and facts that interfere with their political goals, and to punish those who promulgate them. They mapped the immense governmental bureaucracies that have implemented a “whole of society” approach to censorship, leveraging opaque networks of agencies and offices with a mind-numbing multitude of acronyms. They explored the concerted effort among foreign policy and intelligence communities, philanthropies, the news media, NGOs, and universities to stop supposed “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.” And they reflected on ways to counter the alarming growth of a culture of censorship among the young and those on the left, majorities of whom support regulating speech.”
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I think it’s a beautiful idea to organize American citizens to defend Palestinian farmers in the West Bank from settlers simply by their presence as American citizens. The fact that the illegal settlers are so empowered toward violence and the MSM does not see fit to cover this story, already foreshadows the problem of getting these zealots to leave land that they have no right to occupy. Here in NY state there is a bill prohibiting donations to these illegal settlements that will most likely be difficult to pass. Selling stolen land that is illegally occupied is happening with increasing frequency as Israel prepares to annex the entire West Bank.
“The attack today, not even 24 hours after the ICJ ruled that Israeli occupation is illegal and that settlers enjoy impunity when exercising violence, serves as further proof for the dire need for international civil protection in Palestine. Eighteen communities in the West Bank have been completely wiped out by such violence since October, and the Palestinian people have no more time to wait.”
🔔 More articles of interest:
Medhi Hassan debunks Netanyahu’s lies: What Netanyahu Didn't Tell Congress
Not one but two Black men were killed near RNC: Milwaukee Protesters Demand Justice for Samuel Sharpe and D’Vontaye Mitchell
Quasim Rashid fact checks Netanyahu: Fact-Checking Netanyahu's Speech to Congress
Former U.S. Government Officials who resigned over Gaza speak out: Joint Statement of U.S. Government Officials who have Resigned over U.S. policy towards Gaza, Palestine, and Israel
Analysis and links to Netanyahu speech from Mondoweiss: Wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress
Let’s not forget what is happening in the West Bank: Israel kills 11 Palestinians in 24 hours in the West Bank
Report from UN Women: Six months into the war on Gaza, over 10,000 women have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned
Understand the student uprising in Bangladesh: Bangladesh: 174 Killed, 2,500 Arrests in Student-Led Protests over Jobs, Inequality & Corruption
The new documentary “Admissions Granted” examines the different ways Asian Americans are impacted by the battles over affirmative action.The Endless Pursuit of Equality Through College Admissions
The MSM has ignored the ICJ ruling and allowed the public to remain woefully misinformed: U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal
This is why we keep hearing the false claims about Hamas: Israel Is Reviewing a Proposal to Install a “Moderate Muslim” Puppet Regime in Gaza
Understanding Palestinian compassion for Israelis: A stark contrast
Say her name, Sonya Massey: Body-cam video shows Illinois officer fatally shooting Black woman in face
t is not up for debate: bombing hospitals is a war crime. To have this man in our nation’s capital is, to me, quite fitting, because that’s where they keep all the other war criminals.