#Israel's enforced starvation of Palestine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

khlur · 3 months

Text

We are a group of individuals and collectives in revolutionary solidarity with the people of Palestine. As a response to the feminist call to strike for Gaza on the 8th of March (International Women’s Day), we feel the need to put out this statement to recognise the occupational, genocidal deprivations perpetrated by the terrorist settler-colonial Zionist state of Israel that has led to a death toll of over 30000 Palestinians with countless trapped under rubble, decomposed, and millions displaced. We bear witness to the carceral violence, torture, humiliation and murder of Palestinians, especially those held captive in besieged Gaza and hostages taken by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). This includes a wide range of carceral forms of torture including the use of Palestinian men as human shields, widely circulated dehumanising images of public sexual violation of Palestinian men, sexual assault of Palestinian women in Zionist prisons, enforced disappearance of children, and other acts of violence and debilitation. These largely go unreported, under-reported or misreported because of the Zionist hold over mainstream media.

Humanitarian aid is being withheld by Israel to intentionally starve Gazans as an instrument of ethnic cleansing and genocide. When the few aid trucks are allowed by Israel to finally cross into Gaza, or aid is airdropped by other countries attempting to break Israel’s siege, the Zionist army bomb, shoot, kill, and run over Palestinians rushing to food trucks as seen in multiple incidents including the recent flour massacre. Children continue to die from starvation and severe climate conditions; and those not dead yet are severely malnourished. Since October 7, Israel has incessantly bombed Gaza from F16s using 2,000-pound US-supplied bombs that blow up whole neighborhoods, internationally banned white phosphorus, and smaller lethal bombs dropped from the constantly circling drones. Israel has destroyed the 70% of the housing stock in Gaza, rendered all hospitals unable to provide care, and has further destroyed medical facilities, desalination plants that supplies clean water, schools and universities, public archives, cultural and historical landmarks, mosques and churches, bakeries, roads and highways, and all civilian resources and infrastructure crucial for survival rendering Gaza unlivable. The sustained targeted attack on medical facilities have necessitated medical procedures like amputations and C-sections without anesthetics while the neonatals and infants are dying on hospital beds and ICUs for lack of oxygen. Palestinian medics are not only overworked and severely under-resourced but under direct attack. Mass graves continue to pile up and Israel strips Palestinians of dignity even in death. Palestinian families are not allowed to recover bodies. Instead, the occupying forces attack and bomb graveyards and steal dead bodies for organs and skin to be used in Israeli forensic institutes. We have also seen the insidious images of Israeli soldiers posing with looted Palestinian women’s lingerie, mannequins, stealing children’s toys and making videos cooking inside houses Gazans have been forcibly displaced from. The entire population of Gaza has been subjected to collective punishment directed towards the acts of resistance forces, which is, in fact, the right of a colonized people for self-determination and autonomy. Israel has carried out targeted attacks on journalists, medics, artists, academics and anyone who can help save lives and ensure the survival of Palestinian culture. The Zionist regime has killed over a 100 journalists to suppress news coming out of Gaza. Murdering journalists has been a tool to silence Palestinian voices throughout the 75 years of occupation. We recall the targeted killing of journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 in occupied West Bank. We honour and learn from resilient voices like Wael Al-Dahdouh who survived an Israeli attack and whose entire family was murdered by Israel.

The Zionist entity also has a long history of pinkwashing, touting itself as a queer haven, and using that as a justification for genocide. We see IDF soldiers proudly upholding rainbow flags on rubble or others proposing to their partners amidst the horrors they inflict on the Palestinians. We see from various archives of queerness that Palestinian queers have always resisted this. Queer people all over the world reject Israel’s pinkwashing with the slogans, ‘Not in our name’, ‘Not Gay as in Happy but Queer as in Free Palestine’ and ‘No Pride in Apartheid’, and lately, ‘No Pride in Genocide’. We call for all queer comrades to include the liberation of Palestine in their imagination of queer liberation. Amidst the excruciating, incomprehensible ongoing physical and emotional trauma genocidal occupation inflicts, we call on our mad, queer, crip comrades to unflinchingly demand a free Palestine because disability and queer justice is intimately tied to Palestinian liberation.

On January 26 2024, in the case against Israel brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that through the actions of Israel, Gaza is experiencing a plausible genocide. The ICJ ordered six Provisional Measures that under law, Israel must fulfill. The ICJ ordered Israel to take measures within its power to prevent genocidal acts, including preventing and punishing incitement to genocide, ensuring aid and services reach the Palestinian population in Gaza, and preserving evidence of crimes committed in Gaza. As we can see, Israel has completely ignored and defied all Provisional Measures.This also shows the impunity Israel enjoys because it is backed by imperial regimes. It reveals how colonial imperialism undergirds international law that has historically failed the colonised by protecting the interests of colonial imperialist regimes. Yet, the colonised have stood strong in their struggle for freedom and liberation, which has historically led to the downfall of colonial empires.

We understand that our liberation as oppressed people is deeply intertwined with struggles of the oppressed worldwide. We recognise India’s complicity in enabling the genocide and occupation of Palestine. A recent report by Pew Research Center, shows that India leads in support for autocracy and military rule among surveyed nations. Indian right-wing accounts are among leading amplifiers of anti-Palestinian fake news and have used it to fan and escalate anti-Muslim violence in India. As Azad Essa traces in his book Hostile Homelands, despite its official stance supporting the 1975 UN resolution that concluded Zionism as racism, India continued maintaining relations with Israel through security and defense engagements. For example, India adopted Israeli security systems in response to the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Thereafter India bought its mass surveillance systems infrastructure – the Central Monitoring System – from Israel, which can operate without court orders and access any individual’s communication data. The BJP-led Hindutva regime (under whose fascist vision of ‘Hindu Rashtra (state)’ crimes against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis is at an all time high) upgraded this relation to a ‘strategic partnership’ following Modi’s 2017 Israel visit where the two parties signed a defense deal worth 2 billion USD. This deal included the Israeli spyware Pegasus, that the government used to arrest journalists, government critics, students, especially Dalit and Muslim organisers and throttle political opposition. India is now the top arms buyer from Israel, and our taxes fund Hermes 900 drones manufactured by the Adani Elbit UAV Complex (the first facility in India and outside Israel to manufacture this drone) which Israel uses to massacre Palestinians. Israeli drones ‘field-tested’ on Palestinians are imported to be used on Kashmiris, thwart Adivasi movements in Bastar, and are being used against the ongoing Farmers’ protest.

Much like Israel, the Indian state is a settler-colonial state occupying Kashmir. The abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir in 2019 that catapulted the facilitation of Indian citizens settling in Kashmir is starkly similar to Israeli settler-colonial policies. Kashmir has thus had a long history of what Ather Zia calls ‘affective solidarity’ with Palestine embodied through various ways of resisting whereby the Palestinian struggle is ‘inspirational, cathartic’ to Kashmiris. Following the article 370 abrogation, Palestine-Kashmir solidarity strengthened with the BDS movement’s call for solidarity for Kashmir. Pro-Palestine protests in Kashmir continue to be repressed, a history that goes back to 2014 where amidst chants of ‘Save Gaza’ and ‘Go India, Go Back’, the Indian Armed Forces shot at young boys who were stone pelting, killing a 14 year-old.

We also stand with the workers of India who have made their solidarity to the Palestinian cause clear – the water transport workers who have refused to aid the shipment of arms to Israel on 14/02/2024 as well as the major Indian trade unions who, on 09/11/2023, rejected the Indian government’s move to replace Palestinian workers with Indian workers in Israel. We extend our revolutionary solidarity to the workers of the world resisting the ongoing genocide. We stand with the students who have organised for Palestine and whose protests have been met with repression by several Indian universities. Indian academia continues to receive funding from and collaborates with Israel. We call for an immediate cessation of this act of enabling occupation. We call for a total academic boycott of the Zionist entity – no more enabling of the coloniser’s knowledge production, which is a tool for genocide. The Zionist regime continues to murder academics and destroy schools, universities and libraries. We recall and honour the memory of professor, writer and poet Refaat Alareer. We urge Indian academics to see how Zionism is directly connected to the Hindutva machinery that continues to imprison Indian scholars like Hany Babu, GN Saibaba among others and student organisers like Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima, among others, arrested for being dissenting voices. Our universities have long been bastions of resistance and we should strengthen our solidarities in knowledge production with the people worldwide facing violence. We learn from and honour Palestinian resistance in every form and remember Rafeef Ziadeh’s words, ‘We Teach Life, Sir!

Following the call for strike on 8th March we put out this statement and will be participating with various actions in individual and collective capacities in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We learn from and honour Palestinian resistance in every form and remember Rafeef Ziadeh’s words, ‘We Teach Life, Sir! Actions can range from actively engaging in the Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, raising awareness in-person and on media platforms, sending emails to government representatives to send aid to Gaza and push for permanent ceasefire, amplifying fundraisers, donating e-sims, and more. From Palestine to Sudan, Congo, Western Sahara, Kurdistan, Balochistan, Kashmir all the way to Haiti and Tigray—no one is free until everyone is free. We call for economic, academic, cultural and social boycott. We call upon organisers to honour the call for the strike by addressing and embracing the call for a free Palestine in their 8 March programs and events. We call for the end of patriarchal, capitalist, colonial regimes that oppress us. We demand immediate permanent ceasefire, end of the siege on Gaza, end to settler-colonial occupation and the dismantling of the Zionist state of Israel. We demand a free Palestine from the river to the sea.

Do make your support for the statement heard by posting on social media and handing out the handouts we have made here .

Do comment your organization’s name below to be added to the list of signatories.

Signed

Trans Queer Feminists in Solidarity with Palestine Feminists in Resistance, Kolkata LGBT Academics collective, India COLLECTIVE, Delhi

#palestine #kashmir

59 notes · View notes

workersolidarity · 3 months

Text

🇵🇸 🚨

PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST DOCUMENTS HIS OWN HUNGER AS ISRAEL'S BLOCKADE STARVES THE GAZA STRIP

📹 A Palestinian journalist documents his own hunger as Israel's blockade enforces starvation amidst famine conditions throughout the Gaza Strip.

Previously, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), Phillippe Lazzarini said the Israeli occupation has denied its requests to send food aid trucks into northern Gaza since January 23rd.

#source

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

22 notes · View notes

xxxjarchiexxx · 7 months

Text

We write this letter as academics and students who specialise in the study of children and childhood to call for the immediate cessation of the Western-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and the egregious violation of Palestinian children’s rights.

For many of us, entering this field of study was motivated by a desire to improve the material, social, and political conditions of life for children globally. We cannot, therefore, sit by as the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate because of Israeli bombardment with arms provided by Western powers; the forced evacuation of over a million people by the Israeli Defence Forces; and the denial of food, water, and fuel by the Israeli state. This compounds 75 years of settler-colonial occupation in Palestine and 17 years in which Gaza has been little more than an open-air prison. Together, this has produced some of the most heinous conditions of life imaginable for Gaza’s civilian population, almost half of whom are children.

Children are losing their lives, their futures, and their ability to breathe. As we write, more than 7,000 people have been killed in Gaza, nearly 3,000 of whom are children, and more than 16,000 have been wounded since Israel launched its attack on the besieged territory on 7th October. According to Defence for Children International, more than 100 children killed each day or 1 child every 15 minutes. Many others are among the wounded and orphaned. As the British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta pointed out, the Al Shifa Hospital has had to create the category of ‘wounded child with no surviving family’ given the sheer numbers the hospital is supporting. He explained that children are being operated on without anaesthesia and with no support, leaving them in a state of “daze” and total loss. Gazan children are writing their names on their arms so their bodies can be identified should they be killed.

Our research with children has shown that colonial occupation, state violence, and terrorism means a real threat to children’s physical and psycho-social continuity. Our research exposes the long-term effects of wartime experiences, and in Gaza it reveals the ongoing cumulative trauma, and its effect on children’s well-being and emotional, mental, and physical health. There is no moral justification whatsoever for continuing this brutality which will result in the debilitation, wounding and death of thousands more children. These injuries and deaths are preventable. It is a choice, and we call upon those who have the power and can act to save the lives of these children to do so. Stopping the genocidal war NOW is crucial for the survival and wellbeing of children.

It is often assumed that if children are the targets of state-sanctioned killings, enforced starvation, and dispossession, perpetrators will be immediately condemned. As they should be. Yet, not all lives are treated equally. The lack of attention to the horrific hardship facing Palestinian children furthers their debilitation and traumatisation, and continues to be complicit in dehumanising them, while minimising their agonies and death. Palestinian children have names, families, stories, and dreams, yet they are facing global and local brutalities that reduce them to anonymous numbers. As academics and students of childhood, we say that no child should be subjected to violent death, injury, or starvation, no matter where they are from. We affirm: Palestinian children’s lives are precious.

The intolerable consequences of the genocide in Gaza are not just affecting children, but their parents, grandparents, relatives, and adult neighbours. To protect and support children also means protecting and supporting the adults in their lives. The availability of emotional resources for children – including from family, friends, and neighbours – can ease the ‘wounds inside’. But the lives of Palestinian adults do not only matter because they care for children. We say: all Palestinian lives are precious.

We therefore support the call for immediate action from the people of Gaza for:

1. An immediate ceasefire.

2. The urgent restoration of water, food, fuel, medical supplies and humanitarian aid.

3. Immediate protection of medical and mental health facilities and the reversal of the illegal and inhumane evacuation orders for hospitals.

4. The facilitation of safe passage for casualties and critically-ill individuals.

5. The opening of crossings for those seeking to evacuate and permitting the entry of medical and rescue teams.

We support calls from within Palestine/Israel for a long-term political solution, premised on ending the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the Israeli apartheid regime.

We support global calls for the immediate release of civilians, including the 500-700 Palestinian children arbitrarily detained by Israel each year and those children held hostage by Hamas.

We commit ourselves to taking action wherever we are by:

● Demanding that our governments urgently and actively press for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, publicly on the international stage and in back-channel discussions with Israel.

● Calling for Israel, our local and national governments and professional associations, the international community, and Hamas to uphold the rights of children affected by armed conflict as laid out in the Geneva Conventions and Article 38 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

● Countering the dehumanisation of Palestinian children and adults, wherever we encounter these, whether in our schools, universities, media, or communities.

● Demanding the immediate release of Palestinian children arbitrarily held in detention and children held hostage by Hamas.

● Exposing our governments’ complicity in enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza to continue unabated.

● Standing in solidarity with those organisations and individuals working for a just and lasting peace in Palestine/Israel, including those who have faced threats and harassment for speaking out in support of Palestine.

Link to sign for childhood research students and professionals

#free palestine

7 notes · View notes

kp777 · 2 months

Text

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

March 25, 2024

"Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure."

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.

The advance unedited version of the report—entitled Anatomy of a Genocide—concludes that Israel's far-right government and military "have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people."

"The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group," the draft report states, enumerating Israeli actions that violate Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: "Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

"Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as 'terrorist' or 'terrorist-supporting,' thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable," the paper continues. "In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza, and causing irreparable harm to its entire population."

Israel rejected the report as "an obscene inversion of reality."

According to Palestinian and international humanitarian officials, Israel's 171-day Gaza onslaught has killed at least 32,333 Palestinians, most of them women and children, while wounding nearly 75,000 others and displacing around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people. Thousands more Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings. Disease and deadly starvation caused and exacerbated by Israel's siege and blockade of Gaza are spreading rapidly.

"Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure," the draft report asserts. "For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group—demographically, culturally, economically, and politically—seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources."

Referring to the flight and ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the paper contends that "the ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land."

"The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all."

The draft report urges U.N. member states to "enforce the prohibition of genocide in accordance with their... obligations" under international law. In January, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel was "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza and ordered the country's government to "take all measures within its power" to prevent genocidal acts. Human rights defenders say Israel has ignored the order.

"Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death, and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people," the publication argues.

The draft report recommends measures including:

Immediate implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the ICJ;

Immediate referral of the situation in Palestine to the International Criminal Court in support of its ongoing investigation;

Ensuring that Israel, as well as states who have been complicit in the Gaza genocide, acknowledge the colossal harm done, commit to nonrepetition, with measures for prevention and full reparations, including the full cost of the reconstruction of Gaza;

Deploying an international protective presence to constrain the violence routinely used against Palestinians in the occupied territories; and

Ensuring that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is properly funded to enable it to meet the increased needs of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel on Monday informed the U.N. that it will no longer allow UNRWA convoys carrying food aid into northern Gaza, even as the Palestinians are starving to death, a move that one humanitarian campaigner called a "death sentence."

#U.N. Human Rights Council #genocide #israel #gaza

2 notes · View notes

m0tel6mxzzy · 4 months

Text

recent update: (9 minutes ago) A landmark decision putting Israel and allies on notice: HRW

(tw: mentions of genocide/murder/violence. source link below. this is a copy paste of a recent update from al jazeera.)

Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, has described the ICJ’s ruling as a “landmark decision” that puts Israel and its allies on notice that immediate action is needed to prevent genocide and further atrocities” against the people of Gaza.

“Lives hang in the balance, and governments need to urgently use their leverage to ensure that the order is enforced. The scale and gravity of civilian suffering in Gaza driven by Israeli war crimes demands nothing less,” Jarrah said.

“The ICJ’s speedy ruling is recognition of the dire situation in Gaza, where civilians face starvation and are being killed daily at levels unprecedented in the recent history of Israel and Palestine.”

Jarrah also noted that the court’s “clear and binding orders raise the stakes for Israel’s allies to back up their stated commitment to a global rules-based order by helping ensure compliance with this watershed ruling”.

( source: ICJ orders Israel take measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza )

(quoted from journalists Nils Adler & Alma Milisic)

#tw genocide #tw murder #tw violence #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #free gaza #international justice court #icj

2 notes · View notes

meowmaids · 4 months

Text

Man I hate this stupid fucking ‘country ’, relevant every day of the year, but Biden literally ordering strikes on Iran and funding the Israel’s genocide of Palestinians

The only concern right now should be the immediate actions to save lives in Palestine. Ens the U.S. occupation of military bases around the world. End the enforced starvation, everyone receiving medical care, end the war, end the occupation, and prosecute US soldiers and policy makers who support genocide and settlers and the IDF

Palestine must have the right to self determination and the safety and well being of all Palestinians

0 notes

xtruss · 4 years

Text

With Justice and Equality as Central Issues, Bernie Sanders is the Best Choice For President

On March 10 vote for Bernie!

— Friday March 06, 2020 | The Arab American News

As of Thursday, there are now three candidates vying for the position of 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and on March 10, Democratic voters in Michigan will decide which of these candidates they want to lead the nation in the White House. The Arab American News has been fortunate enough to be the community’s voice for more than 35 years and has researched and presented many issues important to it during this time. We believe that Bernie Sanders’ campaign and proposals most closely align with the interests of the community at large. After our meeting last month, we are in continuing talks with the campaign on more systematic issues like the “terror watch list” that has plagued innocent and law-abiding members of our community for too long.

Bernie Sanders has consistently been at the forefront of the fights for social justice, climate awareness, racial equality, workers’ rights and universal health care. As Arab Americans, we care deeply about these issues that affect every American. We share Senator Sanders’ maxims of protecting the weakest in our society and we believe he has held the most steady and principled positions in this regard. His core motto of “Not Me, Us” is as central to Arab American culture as it is to his campaign.

Arab Americans also hold interests unique to us. Electing a president who advocates a foreign policy based on justice and equality is of paramount concern to us. Sanders has garnered much acclaim for saying that American policy must not simply be just pro-Israel, but that “we must be pro-Palestinian as well.” He has repeatedly stated that Palestinians must be treated with “respect and dignity” and he has frequently highlighted the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza as untenable. While Senator Sanders doesn’t say everything we’d like him to say on the Palestinian issue, he fundamentally changes the conversation and moves it in a positive direction.bernie muslim pac

We believe that Bernie Sanders’ campaign and proposals most closely align with the interests of the community at large. On March 10 vote for Bernie.

Further, Senator Sanders led the effort to pass legislation to end American funding of the Saudi-led war against Yemen, which Sanders labeled “a humanitarian and a strategic disaster.” According to international humanitarian agencies, more than 85,000 Yemeni children have died of starvation as a result of this war. Unfortunately, this landmark bill was vetoed by President Trump.

Senator Sanders has stood against anti-BDS bills, which seek to stifle free speech and disproportionately target Arab Americans, including S.1., which passed last year. That legislation sought to protect state and local governments that outlaw contracts with entities or individuals who favor boycotts of Israel. Sanders has consistently held that BDS rights are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Additionally, he has spoken out against law enforcement targeting of the Arab American and Muslim American communities:

“The terror no-fly lists are a racist creation from the 9/11 era that denies due process to Americans and should be reformed. Under our current system, marginalized and vulnerable Americans are more likely to be stopped by the police, subjected to excessive force, arrested and jailed than White Americans. And in the wake of 9/11, Muslims were racially and religiously profiled, spied on and illegally detained. Muslim Americans have been subjected to the government’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program, an Islamophobic Muslim ban, unconstitutional terror watchlists and indefinite detention in Guantánamo. A Bernie Sanders presidency will end these abuses once and for all.”

Importantly, Bernie Sanders has stood up for those in our own community. When Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are constantly attacked by Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists, Sanders consistently defends them. When Tlaib and Omar were banned from visiting occupied Palestine last year, Sanders stated, “If Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country… maybe they can respectfully decline billions of dollars.”

In 2018, Sanders endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a serious gubernatorial candidate who inspired hundreds of thousands of Michiganders with his campaign and energy. During this presidential campaign, Palestinian American Sanders’ surrogates Amer Zahr and Linda Sarsour have come under massive fire and accusations of anti-Semitism at every turn. Instead of turning his back on them, the Sanders campaign has defended their presence in his movement, declaring, “As he campaigns to become the first Jewish president in American history, there are cynical political operators employing racist and Islamophobic tactics to undermine his campaign. We reject this kind of politics and are not going to play that game.”

Sanders has shown the ability to inspire young people, immigrant communities and a multiracial coalition of Latinos, African Americans, Arabs, Muslims, Asians and beyond. He also speaks directly to working people of all backgrounds with authenticity and consistency. We believe this formula provides the best chance to defeat the incumbent president. We fear Joe Biden simply won’t create the inspiration necessary to achieve the same thing.

We strongly encourage all Americans to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Michigan presidential primary on March 10.

0 notes

claraameliapond · 2 months

Text

The first ship carrying humanitarian aid reaches Gaza: aid must enter by sea, because Israel continues to enforce collective punishment by forced starvation of Palestine, not allowing food aid trucks into Gaza

Ceasefire now

Decolonise Palestine

12 notes · View notes

challengingpride · 7 years

Text

No Pride in Apartheid: Pinkwashing in Israel

Swarms of muscled, care-free, white men revel on the white beaches of Tel Aviv, a paradise for rich, white, gay men to vacation. With the rich blue sea, stunning natural landscapes, and modern cities, one almost forgets the coexisting ethnic cleansing project happening in Israel alongside this homoerotic beach party. This is what I gather from the television spots developed by Brand Israel in an attempt to engage in pinkwashing. Pinkwashing refers to the homonationalist efforts of governments to focus international attention of their progressive LGBTQ+ rights record (though more often than not, this is just a pseudonym for gay rights), in order to draw attention away from their human rights violations. In this case, these violations encompass the existing state of Apartheid within Israel in which Palestinians are designated second-class citizens. Meanwhile, Israel continues their settler-colonial project to appropriate ever-dwindling Palestinian land, engages in bombing campaigns against Palestinian civilians, and exploits Palestinian labor.

Brand Israel is a multi-million dollar marketing campaign developed in 2005 between the Israeli government and American corporate marketing executives (Schulman). This propaganda campaign was focused on shifting the then-dismal and accurate public perception of Israel as a conflict-ridden settler-colonial state, and works to maintain an image of Israel as a modern, progressive, and legitimate state. Brand Israel further promotes Israel as a refuge for persecuted Palestinians, when in fact, the Israeli Apartheid severely restricts the movement of Palestinians, and queer Palestinians taking refuge from homophobia in Israel are “often detained and sent back to the West Bank or Gaze where they face the same abuse they fled from.” Queer Palestinian refugees (queer activist groups reject the LGBT acronym and labels as a Western influence) often live in severely marginalized conditions to avoid detainment, despite the fact that their deportation as LGBTQ+ refugees violates Israel’s accord with international humanitarian law (Feng).

To be clear, Palestine is by no means queer-friendly. Homosexuality is illegal in the Gaza Strip, but has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s “when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians [must] follow” (Schulman). Queer Palestinians can potentially face both extreme interpersonal and state violence, including “beatings, stabbings, burnings, prolonged immersion in sewage water, and forced starvation” (Feng). Queer Palestinians do not have specifically outlined rights within the law. However, the definition of queerness as Other, and thus, the need for laws to protect queer Palestinians, is the result of the importation of homophobia from British colonialism. Further, the propagation of Israel’s LGBT rights is demonstrably a tool for rebranding, not done out of concern for queer Palestinians. Beyond the fact that Israel legally does not accept queer Palestinian immigrants, Brand Israel coordinates its pinkwashing with StandWithUs, an Israeli government-funded lobby group with ties to right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ activists such as John Hagee of Christians United for Israel (Barrows-Friedman). “The rise of the gay equality agenda in Israel is concomitant with the increasing repression of the Israeli state towards Palestinians,” explains anthropologist Rebecca L. Stein.

It’s important to distinguish between LGBTQ+ rights not as something gifted from the West to non-Western nations, but to reframe LGBTQ+ rights as something necessitated by the homophobia enhanced, imported, and imposed by Western colonialism. It must also be acknowledged that the representation of the non-white immigrant (especially Muslim immigrants) as intensely homophobic “opportunistically ignores the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church, and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays.” This narrative has been transposed from its origins as a European xenophobic tool to a facilitator of the Israeli apartheid. Puar clarifies that homonationalism in Israel is not “a reflection of any exceptionalist activity,” but is merely an iteration of a traditional colonialist tactic, which weaponizes the treatment of marginalized groups “to justify imperialist violence” (Jasbir 283). Classic examples include the British-Consul General Lord Cromer, head of the colonial Egyptian government, supposed supporter of the liberation of Egyptian women, despite restricting their education, and founder and president of the Britain-based Men’s League For Opposing Women’s Suffrage.

The discussion of pinkwashing consistently refers to the weaponization of “LGBT” rights, and yet, Israel’s gay-targeted marketing agenda and even outside pinkwashing activism, ambiguously situate trans people within their frames. Saffo Papantonopoulou terms this “trans-homonationalism” (because transnationalism was “already taken”). Papantonopoulou describes a “Zionist economy of gratitude” that inserts transgender people in Israel into “a cycle of debt...[in which the transgender subject is perpetually indebted to capitalism and the West for allowing her to exist” (281). Thus, although trans people targeted by pinkwashing in implicit terms only, as Brand Israel’s marketing describe an LGBT haven, but shows only (mostly white) gay men. Israel’s trans rights are relatively underdeveloped for a nation that seeks to align itself with Western models of modernity – specifically, it is very difficult for trans people in Israel to transition under the age of 18, and a significant number are turned away because of strict definitions of gender dysphoria diagnoses. Trans people may serve in the military, although the right to enforce the Israeli settler-colonial project should not correlate with progressivism. For example, Israel has recently promoted its first transgender military officer, Shachar Erez. Erez’s tour is, consequently, presented by StandWithUs. Israel’s neoliberal idea of progressivism once again situates itself in such a way as to distract from the state’s human rights abuses, in such a blatant way that it nearly satirizes itself. Luckily, Nora Barrows-Friedman can do that on her own, covering Erez’s tour with the Onion-worthy headline: “Israel’s First Trans Officers Helps With Ethnic Cleansing.”

Like homonationalism, pinkwashing insidiously appropriates the struggles of queer people to the detriment of others; in this case, it is those within our own community who suffer. Israeli Apartheid and the decolonization of Palestine is an LGBTQ+ issue. LGBTQ+ organizing against Israeli Apartheid is developing throughout the United States and beyond. We must give our support and deference to queer Palestinian liberation groups like Aswat, Al-Qaws, and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. We cannot allow apolitical Israeli or pro-Israeli events to take place in LGBTQ+ spaces. Not in our name.

Free Palestine.

- Emily

CITATION

Barrows-Friedman, Nora. "Israel’s First Trans Officer Helps with Ethnic Cleansing." The Electronic Intifada, 12 Apr. 2017.

Feng, Josh. "A Selective Sanctuary: "Pinkwashing" and Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in Israel." The Yale Review of International Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, Oct. 2014.

Papantonopoulou, Saffo. "“Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv”: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude." WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 1-2, 2014, pp. 278-293.

Puar, Jasbir. "Citation and Censorship: The Politics of Talking About the Sexual Politics of Israel." Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 133-142.

Schulman, Sarah. "Israel and 'Pinkwashing'." The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2011.

#pinkwashing #palestine #freepalestine

2 notes · View notes

exeterpalestineaction-blog · 7 years

Photo

Dear Thom, We are a collective of Palestinian students and allies at the University of Exeter- the same institution at which you completed your degree. We were disappointed when Radiohead announced that they would be playing in Tel Aviv this summer, and even more disappointed with your reaction to calls for the band to respect the cultural boycott of Israel. Many are not aware of this, but the park in which you will perform in Tel Aviv sits on the land of three Palestinian villages destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948, whose descendants live in refugee camps to this day. You will quite literally be playing on the rubble of Palestine. Whilst 70km south of Tel Aviv, in the Gaza Strip, the last power plant ran out of fuel just a few days ago, plunging it into darkness. Without power and on the brink of starvation, Gaza is in a humanitarian situation described as “dire”, as a direct result of the ten year siege Israel has enforced upon it. Unfortunately, the problem with Israel is neither its Prime Minister nor its government, as you seemed to imply in your responses. Previous liberal Israeli governments have not ended the occupation or ceased to oppress the Palestinians. The problem is that at its very core, Israel is a settler colonial state which continues in its attempt to erase the Indigenous Palestinians from their land and from history. Peace is only achievable with justice, and to this end we call for boycott as a tool for decolonisation and against an apartheid system that has kept Palestinians oppressed for nearly 70 years. And just to clarify, we are not “some fucking people”. We are the people. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has been endorsed world over by the likes of Naomi Klein, Desmond Tutu, Stephen Hawking and Brian Eno. But it’s not just celebrities that support our movement, groups like Black Lives Matter, Indigenous People movements and other groups for social justice have also taken up the call. Many anti-Zionist Israelis also support BDS, emphasising that it is a movement which privileges the voices of the oppressed and therefore any disruption or inconveniences to their lives as Israelis is justified. In one of your responses to the BDS calls, you claimed that music is about “crossing borders” not creating them. Yet Israel and its imperial sponsors are the sole creators of borders in Palestine. There are millions of Palestinians who are not be able to set foot in their historic homeland and yet you, a British man, will be able to travel there without hindrance. Israel’s legacy is all about borders. The BDS Movement is about breaking them. We would also like to remind you that this year marks 100 years since the signing of the Balfour Declaration- the famous British imperial document that signed over Palestine to a European settler colonial movement. It is thus even more important, that as a British man you take up the call to BDS and hold the British government to account for its complicity in the continued colonisation of Palestine. Again, Thom, we are not “some fucking people”. We are the people. Join us. Exeter Palestine Action

0 notes

workersolidarity · 3 months

Text

[ 📹 Horrifying scenes from the violent carnage inflicted on Palestinian civilians after a Zionist airstrike targeted a civilian vehicle in Bani Suhaila, in the southern Gaza Strip Wednesday morning.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ENDLESS OBSCENE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY ISRAELI OCCUPATION ON 152ND DAY OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA

Wednesday, March 6th 2024 brought more tragic killings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on the 152nd day of Israel's ongoing genocide, as Israeli occupation forces (IOF) renewed its bombing and shelling campaign across the Palestinian enclave.

According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, the Zionist occupation army committed a total of 9 new massacres of Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in the deaths of 86 Palestinian civilians, with another 113 others wounded in near constant strikes.

The Ministry also emphasized that a number of a civilians remain trapped under the rubble of their homes and shelters as Zionist forces prevent ambulance and civil defense crews from reaching the victims of Israel's ongoing bombardment.

Similarly, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of Palestine (UNRWA) made an announcement Wednesday, declaring that over 17'000 Palestinian children have been orphaned since October 7th, 2023.

Additionally, a 15-year-old girl named Marah Talal Al-Yaziji died today at Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City as a result of starvation and dehydration, the latest tool of the Israeli occupation in its genocide of Palestinian families. She was the 18th child to die of malnutrition in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel's ongoing blockade and enforced famine.

Meanwhile, intense Israeli bombing and shelling across the Gaza Strip continues unabated, with the number of martyred civilians unearthed from the rubble of destroyed homes in Khan Yunis rising to 23 over the previous 24-hours.

Zionist artillery forces also shelled the Al-Amour neighborhood, east of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza, while at the same time, the Israeli occupation army continues to besiege Hamad Town, north of Khan Yunis, while conducting mass arrests of civilians found in the city.

Local sources say a number of civilians were killed after intense Zionist occupation artillery shelling that targeted a neighborhood near the Al-Shoka School, located to the east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Occupation artillery shelling also targeted neighborhoods east of Rafah City, while the body of a woman was recovered from the Abu Anza family home, where three days ago, an Israeli jet conducted an airstrike that killed 21 civilians and flattened their home.

Palestinian sources also pointed to Israel's intense bombardment of Hamad Town, along with the town of Bani Suhaila and several other neighborhoods north of Khan Yunis, which they say resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians.

Elsewhere, Zionist warplanes bombed the Salman family home in the Al-Masha'la neighborhood of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killing six civilians and wounding a number of others.

Simultaneously, the Israeli occupation bombed another family's residence in Deir al-Balah, resulting in the martyrdom of three Palestinians, while an additional bombing in the city killed journalist Muhammad Salama, a broadcaster with the Al-Aqsa television channel.

Intense Zionist bombing and shelling also targeted the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in central Gaza, killing several Palestinians and wounding large numbers of civilians.

Violent Israeli bombing raids also targeted civilian residences in the village of Al-Mughraqa, along with neighborhoods northwest of Al-Nuseirat Refugee Camp.

In the northern Gaza Strip, IOF air forces bombarded the area in the vicinity of the Al-Dahdouh roundabout on 8th Street, south of Gaza City, murdering two civilians.

Zionist soldiers also opened gunfire on civilians gathered around vehicles carrying humanitarian aid near the Al-Shuhada Junction, located to the south of Gaza City.

According to reports of the incident, several Israeli soldiers forced the drivers of the humanitarian aid vehicles to stop and unload their aid near the junction before opening fire on the crowds of starving civilians gathered around, hoping to receive food but instead receiving live bullets from Zionist soldiers.

Bombings in northern Gaza also ramped up over the last day, with the bodies of at least 9 civilians arriving at Al-Shifa Hospital as a result of Israel's ongoing air raids across Gaza City. Meanwhile, the Israeli bombardment was also renewed in the Jabalia Camp, with intense artillery shelling and airstrikes targeting civilian residences across the Refugee Camp.

According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, as a result of Israel's ongoing war of genocide against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, in excess of 30'717 Palestinians have been killed, including what the United States Pentagon says is over 25'000 women and children killed, while another 72'156 civilians have been wounded in the genocide beginning October 7th, 2023.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#source4

#source5

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

7 notes · View notes