It’s funny hearing people say that ‘Palestine does not exist” or “there never was a “Palestine”” - forgetting how even the Zionist movement itself, from the earliest days, referred to that land as Palestine in its propaganda, brochures, ideological essays...
The Jerusalem Post (renamed in 1950) was originally founded in 1932 by Gershon Agron under what name again?
United Palestine Appeal - today known as United Israel Appeal.
That beautiful “Visit Palestine” poster? The one that’s now a symbol of Palestinian resistance in its own way? It was designed by Frank Krausz in 1936 to encourage Jewish immigration and tourism to Palestine. #PalestineExists
The Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the colonial destruction of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel referred to the land as..? #PalestineExists
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India is the largest buyer of Israeli arms - where do you think those arms are being used?
India routinely uses Israeli tactics to suppress, kill & disappear Kashmiri Muslims and entrench its occupation. Hindutva conceptualization of Indian identity and claims of indigneity take a lot directly from Zionist conceptions as well.
While the U.S. is responsible for the formation of the Global War on Terror, its ideas of security were taken from Israeli practices of security - which are rooted in Zionism. India used these ideas to expand laws and practices to, again, entrench its occupation of Kashmir and criminalize and kill our young men.
Zionism is an ethnosupremacist ideology that relies on Islamophobia for the continued “legitimacy” of Israel and its violence. Zionist groups, pro-Israel groups were foundational to fomenting Islamophobia in the U.S. (which already was racist, ofc). Guess where Hindutva talking points come from?
Connecting the systems of violence and supremacist ideology that exist, that feed off one another to uphold occupation and ethnic cleansing isn’t “antisemitism” and saying that this is, is not only an erasure of these connections but denial of what our peoples have experienced and at whose hands.
The way in which people dismiss what has happened to Kashmiris, and how deeply connected that is to Israel and the US, is one of my biggest frustrations. It is a complete erasure of what Kashmiri Muslims have experienced at the hands of the Indian state bolstered and armed by the Israelis and Americans.
The ethnic cleansing project in Kashmir, by the Indians, has been successful. It breaks my heart to know I will never be able to visit where my great (great) grandparents lived, where there may still be records of my family there & that the land that they knew has almost ceased to exist.
One of the key ways the ‘Antisemitism on Campus’ discourse has developed is through the categorization of “Pro-Palestinian students” vs “Jewish students”.
Muslim/Arab students are made to occupy a politic vs pro-Israel Jewish students who are made to only occupy identity.
It’s a very cynical use of language & categorization that is purposeful. “Pro-Palestinian” is, of course, an umbrella - it includes Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Black Americans, Jews, LGBTQIA, etc. But when pitted against “Jewish students” or just “Jews” - it’s made threatening, because of how Palestinians & fight for their liberation is manufactured in American/Zionist imaginings: anti-Semitic, wanting the destruction of Jews.
The categorization of “Jewish students” on campus - like how Abby Phillip does in her intv w/Asna Tabassum or as done in this congressional hearing - takes away the vested politics part of the antisemitism campaign: stifling any and all critique of Israel & distracting from anti-genocide activism. Thus, these are *pro-Israel* Jewish students, not just Jewish students.
this narrative of ‘low intensity’ or ‘scaling back’ the war (see: genocide) has been around for months while we have continued to see increased horrific slaughter & war crimes
I don’t care for the protests in Israel. I never have and never will. I don’t care about the political aspirations and grievances of people who are - by definition - violent settlers. Even those born there are settlers in the context of on-going land theft & occupation.
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If this strikes you as harsh, then I suppose you also would’ve found it harsh when people said they did not care about the political aspirations & grievances of white southerners during Jim Crow or whites in apartheid South Africa.
There’s no obligation, certainly not political or moral, to ever care for the aspirations and grievances of those who exist with the power that they have solely because their boots crush the necks of others.
For the last six months, there’s been a common refrain that pops up even among those sympathetic to the Palestinians:
‘What else did Hamas expect?’
Not only does this framing justify genocide as a logical response but it also erases US/Israeli culpability & history.
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From everything we know there was a simple plan & expectation for Oct 7: grab hostages & exchange them for imprisoned Palestinians. One hostage mentioned that a fighter told her she’d be back home on Tuesday - expectation was that Israel would want its civilians back.
No need to rehash everything re: the Oct 7th plan & what ostensibly went wrong, but it’s clear that Palestinian resistance groups - and it was a coaliton, not just Hamas - didn’t expect the mess of an Israeli response that we all saw.
‘91-‘92, >40k Haitian asylum seekers fled after a US/France-backed coup of Haiti’s first democratically-elected leader. HW Bush turned them away & the coast guard rerouted them to Gitmo.
Gitmo then became a concentration camp for Haitians w/HIV, later ruled unconstitutional. /1
The conditions in the camp were horrific: Haitians faced violence from US military, forced medical procedures, rotten food & no sanitation. It was pure filth and squalor because of how the US treated them. Almost 300 Haitians were kept in Gitmo bc they had HIV, per a 1987 US law.
(more than half of the refugees were deemed economic immigrants and repatriated back to Haiti, where they faced political persecution from the US-backed military, and the rest were allowed into the US, but had to undergo HIV testing)