Free Palestine

I’ve seen a lot of well intentioned liberals attempt to “both sides” this war in the last few days. Let me be clear, this is not a “both sides are bad” situation. One side is a settler colony, a nuclear power, backed by the full might and force of the U.S. empire’s military and media. The other side is 2 million people, who live in abject poverty and are trapped on a small sliver of land fully controlled by the colonial power. 

The Israeli government and Israeli settlers have been violently oppressing Palestinians and literally stealing their homes for decades. Palestine has been under a blockade for 16 years, and the people there struggle to obtain food and medicine. Their water supply and electricity are controlled by the Israeli government. Palestinian mosques are often ambushed by soldiers, hospitals and apartments are targeted, and schoolchildren are shot. An average of one Palestinian child is killed every three days. Palestinian journalists have been murdered by the IDF for covering these atrocities. The median age in Palestine is nineteen, with 40% of their population under fifteen, and only 3% over the age of sixty-five. 

We, from the comfort of our American homes, have no right to tell oppressed people how to fight back. We cannot pass judgment on the path they choose towards liberation. Peaceful tactics have been tried — be they protests such as The Great March of Return or political activism such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) — and those measures have failed. Even peaceful protest by Palestinians is confronted by Israeli violence. All successful revolutions have been bloody, from the American revolution in 1776 to the Russian revolution in 1917 to the Cuban revolution in 1959. Even revolutions or movements that are considered “peaceful,” such as India and Pakistan’s independence from Great Britain and the American Civil Rights Movement, would not have succeeded without violence. When we look back on those fights for liberation, we now know that the people did the right thing fighting back. In the future we will say the same about Palestine.

We must demand that the USA stop funding the genocide of the Palestinian people. We must demand that our government stop supplying weapons to commit war crimes on the people of Gaza and the West Bank. We must stand with oppressed and colonized people across the world. This is hard for Americans, as we must look in the mirror and cope with what we have done to the natives of this land as well. Only then can we be on the right side of history. 

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!