This July 4th, we contemplate parallels between the colonization of Turtle Island (“North America”) and Palestine.
Supporting Palestinians’ right to return and right to self-determination in their homeland goes hand in hand with supporting Indigenous people’s demand for #LandBack 🧵
Genocide. Land theft. Ethnic cleansing. Environmental destruction. Forced displacement of people from their homes, and sequestration into isolated areas with (artificially) scarce resources. Criminalization and surveillance.
Colonial control over lives, and denial of self-determination and sovereignty. Erasure of native history and culture. Ideologies (Manifest Destiny, Zionism) of entitlement to, and justification for, these atrocities.
The Israeli government has committed its largest act of land theft from Palestinians since 1993. Israeli authorities just legalized the Israeli government’s theft of nearly 5 square miles in the occupied West Bank.
While this act of ethnic cleansing is appalling in its egregious nature and legality, it isn’t new. And its devastating implications were immediately inflicted on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.
A few hours ago and under the Israeli military’s protection, more than 100 violent armed settlers lit fires targeting Palestinians living in Khallet al-Dabaa, Masafer Yatta while preventing fire trucks from assisting, and shot live ammunition at civilians.
The same day, Israeli settlers worked with the Israeli military to demolish homes and property across Umm Al-Khair.
“Making Jewish people the face of the US-Israel war machine is dangerous. The far right is rising all around the world, and with it, a real and violent threat against Jewish people, but rather than talking about or working together to defeat fascism and injustice everywhere, western states are mis-defining antisemitism to justify ongoing genocide.” — Stefanie Fox
JVP’s Executive Director, Stefanie Fox, spoke to the United Nations this week where she conveyed the urgent need to withstand the U.S. campaign of repression aimed at silencing, criminalizing, and crushing the movement for Palestinian freedom.
Her address comes at a moment in which militarized police target and brutalize hundreds of anti-Zionist Jews alongside their Palestinian classmates across student encampments.
Today, @Meta—parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp—is hosting its Annual General Meeting (AGM), and we must ensure that Meta shareholders hear us loud and clear: we cannot be silent while they systematically censor Palestinians and those standing up for Palestinian rights on social media as the Israeli government wages genocide and occupation. 🧵
Palestinians are facing the daily violence of genocide, theft of their homes and land, military occupation, and a brutal apartheid system of racial segregation — and a mainstream media that is hostile, biased, and dishonest about what they are enduring.
Social media is a vital tool for Palestinians to document human rights abuses, share their stories, and seek solidarity–all of which help us do the work to hold the Israeli military and government accountable.
The Israeli military has just carried out a massacre in Rafah. They bombed displaced families huddled in tents, killing over 35 people with more trapped in the flaming debris. The death toll is still rising.
We will never forget the images emerging from Rafah tonight. Human beings, including babies, were burned alive and torn apart. This genocide must end, it must end now.
In nearly eight months, half of the 2.3 million people in Gaza have been forcibly displaced to Rafah as the Israeli military carried out indiscriminate bombardments across the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel’s latest incursion into Rafah began, over 800,000 Palestinians have – once again – been forcibly displaced as they flee the latest attacks. And tonight the Israeli military targeted a camp that had been designated by the Israeli government as a humanitarian area where families were seeking shelter.
It might come as a surprise that Neo-Nazis and the far right, who have a long record of stoking antisemitism, are joining anti-Palestinian demonstrations, but for those familiar with the long-standing alliance between Zionists and antisemites, this is disturbingly predictable. 🧵
Remember, Zionism is the ideology that the Israeli government rests upon. It claims Jewish safety requires a Jewish-only nation-state. Zionists use the strategy of violent ethnic cleansing to ensure their goal of “maximum land, minimum Palestinians.”
Antisemitic Zionists, or people who both hate Jews and love Israel, are common in right-wing movements, and are the sources of the most tangible threats to Jewish people.