Palestine and the global fight against oppression

Latest

Palestinian Youth Movement
Palestinian Youth Movement, Detroit Chapter, speaker tells crowd: “We cannot be marching in the streets saying Free Palestine and not also saying Black Lives Matter, and all the walls have to go, from the US to Palestine to Mexico. When you’re saying Free Palestine, you’re also saying free everyone else, because the same Israeli military police that we know as the militia trains this police [here].”
Dearborn, MI.
Video Still, Detroit Will Breathe

As this is written, people across America and the world are demanding that Israel stop its brutal oppression of the Palestinians.

In a recent article in Truthout, Lea Kayali, a Palestinian community activist and writer, noted that the dispossession of Palestinians that began in 1947 and 1948 (the Nakba) when Zionist militias violently drove three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes (including her grandparents), is still continuing today. She also pointed out that the “U.S. finances the Israeli military with a colossal $3.8 billion annually,” and that American police departments “waste public resources sending officers to Israel to learn strategies for increasing the discrimination, surveillance and harassment already faced by our communities.”

Kayali said, “The average American pays about as much to Israel’s murder machine as they do toward the public library system. All of this money should be going into our communities instead.” Americans “should decry the ongoing catastrophe wrought against Palestinians not only because we are funding it, but also because opposing this violence is the right thing to do,” she wrote. She urged readers to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and to encourage their congressional representatives to halt all aid to Israel.

pro Palestine protest in Chicago
Chicago, IL.
Photo / Sarah-Ji Rhee

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian-American, spoke on the House floor May 13. These are excerpts: “If we are to make good on our promises to support equal human rights for all it is our duty to end the apartheid system that for decades has subjected Palestinians to inhumane treatment and racism, reducing Palestinians to live in utter fear and terror of losing a child, being indefinitely detained or killed. . . .As Palestinians talk about our history, know that many of my Black neighbors and Indigenous communities may not know what we mean by Nakba [Catastrophe], but they do understand what it means to be killed, expelled from your home, your land, made homeless and stripped of your human rights. . . .

“We all deserve freedom, liberty, peace, and justice, and it should never be denied because of our faith or ethnic background. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will rain from the sky. . . . Meanwhile, Palestinians’ rights to non-violent resistance have been curtailed and even criminalized. Our party leaders have spoken forcefully against BDS, calling its proponents anti-Semitic, despite the same tactics being critical to ending the South African apartheid mere decades ago. What we are telling Palestinians fighting apartheid is the same thing being told to my Black neighbors and Americans throughout that are fighting against police brutality here: ‘there is no form of acceptable resistance to state violence’. . . .

“I stand before you not only as a Congresswoman for the beautiful 13th district, but also as a proud daughter of Palestinian immigrants and the granddaughter of a loving Palestinian grandmother, living in the occupied Palestine. You take that and you combine it with the fact that I was raised in one of the most beautiful, blackest cities in America, a city where movements for civil rights and social justice are birthed, the city of Detroit. So I can’t stand silent when injustice exists, where the truth is obscured. If there’s one thing Detroit instilled in this Palestinian girl from Southwest it’s that you always speak truth to power, even if your voice shakes. The freedom of Palestinians is connected to the fight against oppression all over the world.”

+ Articles by this author

Free to republish but please credit the People's Tribune. Visit us at www.peoplestribune.org, email peoplestribune@gmail.com, or call 773-486-3551.

The People’s Tribune brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: ©2024 peoplestribune.org. Please donate to help us keep bringing you voices of the movement. Click here. We’re all volunteer, no paid staff.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Featured

Students Walk Out Across the Country to Protest Trump’s Election

Read the speech delivered by a student at the student walkout at MSU two days after the Presidential election. Thousands of students nationwide walked out to protest Donald Trump's election and his policies on the same day.

Let’s Join Hands to Resist the Trump Agenda

Thousands of groups and millions of people are beginning to reach out to one another to resist the Trump agenda. Regardless of who we voted for, we the people, have a common interest in seeing to it that all our families are well taken care of, that all children are well educated and have a future, and that we have a society free of climate disaster, racism, bigotry and inequality.

How Democrats Ignoring Gaza Brought Down Their Party

"Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral."

Undocumented Families Are Fighting for Our Future. Will You Join Us?

'As an undocumented mother, I can’t help but worry for my son’s safety first. As an organizer, my worry turns to resolve.'

Fighting for Climate, Students Walk Out Over Trump

"[The student nationwide] walkouts represent a call to action for both parties," said Sunrise Youth Movement, a group that advocates for political action on climate change.

More from the People's Tribune