Thread by @artisanna01

on #Palestine: people defend israel saying it's reparations to Jewish people for the Holocaust — and yes like I will not hear debate on if reparations were needed for the Holocaust, obviously reparations couldn't even begin to address the horror — BUT (1/?)

the idea of Palestinian territory given as European #reparations TOTALLY ignores the fact that the land was not Europe's to give! Britain was a colonial power playing cards with Palestinian lives, lands, and homes beginning in 1917 (pre-holocaust) w/ the Balfour Declaration (2/?)

The #BalfourDeclaration was a British colonial mandate over stolen Arab land that declared an intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine that was ratified by the league of nations in 1922. Arab resistance to European theft of their land prevented the manifestation (3/x)

of that mandate for a while, but continued Jewish migration from Europe in response to rising antisemitism through the next ~3 decades, and under British authority, a predominantly Jewish gov't began to displace the local Arab leadership (4/x)

In 1929, this manifested tragically+violently in the Palestine riots, where, per the Shaw Commission, groups of Palestinians — (correctly) afraid that the influx of (mostly) European Jewish ppl was a threat to their nation, access to Muslim holy sites, and their livelihood (5/x)

were driven to violence while counter-protesting an inflammatory demonstration by 'Revisionist' Jews who sought to claim the Western Wall and denigrate islam while claiming Palestine for themselves under the flag of Zionism. (6/x)

~ 100 Arabs + 100 Jews were killed, with ~200 and 300 more injured, respectively. At that point tensions spiked — Palestinians felt certain that the Zionist project threatened their claim to their homeland, and the Jewish authorities redoubled the Zionist cause to assure (7/x)

Jewish people around the world whom they hoped to recruit to the region that it was in fact an amenable place for the founding of a Jewish state. At this point, the region is still under British colonial control with little to no regard being given to the Palestinians whose (8/x)

families had existed on the land for centuries. As tides of Antisemitism rose around Europe in the 1930s, the Anglo-Palestine Bank — a subsidiary of the London-based Jewish *COLONIAL* Trust — helped negotiate the Ha'avara Agreement which transferred 50,000 German Jews (9/x)

to Palestine — again, w/o consulting Palestinians. This deal was struck by Nazi German and the British Zionist project because its financial small-text guaranteed Germany's economy a major export market in British Palestine while also furthering the *COLONIAL* (see name (10/x)

of the brokering Trust) project of British Zionism. This deal negotiated for Nazi Germany's amoral and fiscal benefit helped to cement British Palestine as a place of refuge for other Jewish Europeans as their rights of citizenship were revoked in various European countries(11/x)

I am not denying that Jewish people needed a place of refuge; they needed far more than that. However, the offering up of Palestine, and the resulting displacement of Palestinians — all while the US and UK were turning away Jewish Refugees — was not within Britain's right (12/x)

The 1936-9 Arab Revolt in Palestine was focused on ending British colonial rule and stopping the British Mandate's open policy on Jewish immigration and land-purchased that existed w/ the EXPLICIT goal of facilitating the establishment of a Jewish homeland (13/x)

Palestinian opposition was not to Judaism as a concept or Jewish people as a people; it was to the fact that their land was being given away by Britain to form a homeland for other people — many with explicitly racist and/or anti-Arab views —w/o their input or jurisdiction (14/x)

A side note on the Racism — other people have written far better than I ever could on the anti-Arab racist rhetoric of modern political Zionism, starting w/ the words of Herzl himself. To limit the animosity of this thread, I'll share a less vitriolic quote from his dairy (15/x)

about Palestine: he referred to the countryside on one trip while scoping out the land for the Zionist project as “neglected in Arab fashion.” Anyway, back to the timeline: the Palestinian riots against British colonial rule began as strikes and political protest; this was (16/x)

quashed by Britain invoking int'l diplomacy that the Palestinians, due to their colonized state, could not leverage + also threatening martial law. What followed was a larger, class-spanning violent uprising of Palestinians to resist oppressive British colonial rule (17/x)

May I remind you — the USA also put up violent resistance to British colonialism — and we still celebrate it hundreds of years later. This failed, and British suppression lead to an estimated ~20k Palestinian casualties. Britain then instituted the Peel Commission to (18/x)

investigate the origin of the unrest. The British-led Peel Commission's recommendation in 1937 was the partition of British Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state. This was unilaterally rejected by Palestinian authorities, who instead proposed a independent Palestinian (19/x)

state with guaranteed "protection of all legitimate Jewish and other minority rights," as they were understandably not huge fans of the idea of displacing 250,000 Palestinians and losing their land (as the plan called for). This plan was abandoned and unrest continued. (20/x)

During the later years of the Holocaust and the full-swing of WWII, Britain closed not only its borders but also the borders of British Palestine to Jewish immigration — they made minimal effort, with either their land or their stolen land — to help the Jews in their plight(21/x)

With almost every country in the world closed to Jewish migration, and very few sources of help, European Jews turned to the illegal (but absolutely understandable, because no one can be condemned for fleeing the Holocaust) assistance of Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, a paramilitary(22/x)

Zionist branch British Palestine's police force. Tragically and with blood on the hands of the int'l community — particularly neighboring European states, very few Jewish people escaped Europe during this period. There was also a substantial amount of British/Zionist (23/x)

conflict during this period but I honestly do not know enough about that. In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established w/ no Palestinian input to answer the 'Palestine question' surveyed the remaining European Jewish people. 95% wanted to move to Palestine.(24/x)

The reason, at this point, that there WAS a 'Palestine Question,' is because Palestine was still subjected to British Colonial rule. After WWII, tho, Zionists in Palestine began to attack British interests b/c they felt Britain no longer supported the 'Zionist Project,' (25/x)

or the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In reaction to a bombing by a Zionist underground org, Irgur, Britain put Tel Aviv under strict curfew and questioned almost 20% of the Jewish population. The US, which had picked up the Zionist cause for reasons including (26/x)

but not limited to anti-Arab racism, genuine Jewish Zionist support, Christian fundamentalism, and a good old White Saviour Complex, threatened to withhold British war-recovery $$ until they 'fixed' the 'Palestine Problem'. Britain, in panic, started to detain European (27/x)

Holocaust survivors in internment camps, not letting them enter the British Mandate of Palestine. Cyprus, where the camps were, resisted d/t overcrowding, and Britain slightly relaxed the borders — but not my much. They were still withholding authority from the (28/x)

native Palestinians while *also* holding Jewish refugees in camps. At this point, Britain decides that this is international disaster they have almost single-handedly orchestrated is not worth their trouble any longer. In 1947, the 'Palestine Problem' is referred to the UN(29/x)

The UN partition team traveled to Palestine + met w/ Jewish Zionist leaders, who had an interest in meeting to establish a Zionist state, while the Arab leaders boycotted the meeting on the grounds that it was their land and they were not sure why Britain has asked the UN, (30/x)

and not them, what to do with it. In late 1947, the UN officially recommend, and the member states adopt, the plan of "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem ...[under] an International Trusteeship System." Not one single UN state (31/x)

makes any effort to actually undertake this agreed-upon resolution. Finally, in 1948, while not allowing any UN representatives to oversee any part of the partition (to which the Palestinians have not agreed and on which they were never consulted b/c their colonizers did (32/x)

not recognize them as an independent state), Britan withdrew from what was now 'a Jewish state and an Arab state'. What the UN did not see during the partition process was a literal civil war. People claim, along partisan lines, to know how the war began. But between (33/x)

Zionist jubilation at the creation of a state+Palestinian horror at the loss of a homeland, it is utterly impossible to truly point to where the violence began. But it is certain that w/o British colonialism's at-this-point 30 year interference, it would not have occurred. (34/x)

The conflict escalated. The US withdrew support for the partition entirely while Britain now decided to back Jordanian annexation of Palestine. The unequal conditions of the land 'given' to the Arab state and the land 'given' to the Jewish state, along w/ respective (35/x)

uneven access to resources (the partition gave the minority European+Arab Jewish population a majority of the land+natural resources), over 100k Palestinians (but vanishingly few Jewish ppl) were internally/internationally displaced in the first few months of the conflict (36/x)

In the deeply confusing era between the end of WWII + the Cold War, Palestine was both a proxy for greater powers (ex WW2 and future CW)+a fundamental struggle for Palestinians to defend their ancestral/long-colonized land while Jewish Refugees laid claim to a Zionist St8 (37/x)

But herein lies the heart of the problem between Religious Zionism and Political Zionism — religious Zionism, or the concept of Jewish right to self-determination/return/refuge in, say, the land of Israel does not necessitate apartheid. It does not necessitate colonialism. (38/x)

In theory, and even in a different context of practice, it is not inherently 'bad'. But Political Zionism, as executed, was founded on British colonial disenfranchisement of Palestinian rights to their homeland, and upheld by now over 100 years of violence towards (39/x)

the Palestinian people, because it was 'decided' by Europe that their state could be taken away +given to someone else, and that 'someone else' then aggressively+progressively encroached on the already-unjust borders drawn by the UN against Arab wishes over the next 70 yrs(40/x)

... That deadly, colonial, apartheid practice of Political Zionism is what is discussed when discussing the state of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. You can't counter the thousands of Palestinian narratives of deadly oppression by claiming that's not what 'Zionism' (41/x)

is. Because, until the Israeli gov't stops claiming the practice of Zionism to justify their ethnic cleansing project in a land they took as a gift from Europe when it wasn't Europe's to give? The practice of Political Zionism IS the Zionism that everyone must discuss — it (42/x)

is the deadly reality of the matter. While there is no excuse for blaming random Jewish people for the oppression of Palestinians, and this is not a problem with Judaism but a problem with Israel, it cannot be framed as a discussion about religious theory. It is a fight for(43/x)

actual, real, concrete liberation from the practical reality of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
Anyway, I will not summarize the war. Or the Nakba. I will not discuss that the occupied territories of Palestine have been shorn down to what amounts to open-air prison (44/x)

camps. I will not explain how the US funds Israel as part of the states' shared colonial legacies. I will not explain #SheikhJarrah. I will not, because there are so many phenomenally articulate, passionate, critical, and dedicated Palestinians who have been screaming (45/x)

for years, about their history, their culture, their lives — who have been BEGGING you to listen to them. So go listen. Seek out their voices. Please. (46/x)

But if you won't, then listen to a British-American white girl when I say this:

Yes, the history of this world's treatment of Jewish people is tragically anti-semetic and our treatment of Palestinians is tragically racist. Both of these are true. (47/x)

But Israel is a state given to Jewish people that was never Europe's to give. It's as if the US suddenly decided to give Hawai'i to its Black population as reparation for slavery, never mind the rights of the Indigenous people whose islands we have colonized for years (48/x)

Israel is a racist, colonial project of Britain and the United States, a gift of stolen land, both taken from and given to a peoples who deserve better than to be pawns in an Imperialist game. This conflict is not religious. The sheer cruelty exacted upon Palestinians (49/x)

is neither the creed of, the fault of, or justified by any religion under the sun. There are legitimate questions to be answered as to the rights of Jewish People seeking refuge, and how to address the global anti-semitism that has threatened their existence. But (50/x)

the murdur of Palestinians is never justified. We cannot perpetuate legacies of British colonialism or American Imperialism any longer.
So, for you, who claims 'I just don't know enough' to care about human rights — this is the colonial history of Israel and Palestine. (51/x)

And this colonial legacy, and for the good+liberation of all humankind, and for the lives of displaced Palestinians around the world, is why Palestine must be free.

Israel cannot be reparations when the land was never Britain's to give.

#freepalastine

(it's 3 hrs past my bedtime i'll add sources 2morrow if this thread is still up, ty for reading if you made it this far <3 always open to discussion+correction+i literally can't thank every single Arabic +Jewish person who has ever
wasted time teaching me enough)

also super sorry for my random capitalization i tried to get all proper nouns but i already see i missed/overdid some — there is literally nothing to analyze there i'm just a messy typist and i Did Not Proofread

also 1 more note-I use 'Jewish Ppl' for this thread bc relevant migrations were groups of European Jewish Refugees+this thread is abt pre-Israel yrs. If u are discussing Israel post-1948, plz use 'Israelis' to avoid conflation of Israeli gov't/state violence w Judaism!!

i'm back w/ sources who MISSED me ?? please read disclaimer — as usual, am always open to correction + discussion but will not engage in racism, anti-semitism, or bad-faith. bolded are my most-recommended books/sources. clickable links here: tinyurl.com/3z7ksx3e

https://twitter.com/artisanna01/status/1392880639985152002?s=20

caveat-“correctly” bc we see that this Jewish migration has, decades l8r, manifested in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel. The refugees, who were just goin where they were told to based on a fake story of “empty land”, couldnt possibly realize this would occur

correction: should be “antisemetic” as earlier in the thread. my apologies; it was getting past 3 AM and i didn’t know the difference

correction: should be “antisemitism”, same as above - apologies; have since learned the difference