[News] A Call for Solidarity with Palestine and the World's Oppressed

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*A Call for Solidarity with Palestine and the World's Oppressed*

**

By: Noura Khouri**

29 November 2015
*http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/A-Call-for-Solidarity-with-Palestine-and-the-Worlds-Oppressed-20151128-0012.html*

Today the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, 
comes at a time of intensified aggression by occupation forces and 
violence in Palestine and throughout the region. As conditions on the 
ground continue to deteriorate globally, the situation is amongst the 
worst facing Palestinians since 1948.

In Palestine, Zionist settlement expansion continues to usurp more land 
unabated in the West Bank, while settler and soldier violence has 
reached relentless levels in all of historic Palestine. Meanwhile, Gaza 
has experienced three devastating assaults by Israel since 2008 -- which 
according to a recent UN report will render the strip uninhabitable 
within five years.

Palestinians have watched helplessly, as every so called peace process 
since Oslo, has only served to provide Israel with diplomatic cover, to 
kill and blatantly steal more land and consolidate power. Meanwhile, the 
international “quartet” tasked with negotiating a solution are consumed 
by violence they are responsible for creating, thus rendering hopeless 
any chance of creating a more peaceful solution, in the foreseeable future.

As the complacent Palestinian leadership, tasked with the role of 
suppressing resistance, serves to accelerate the colonization of our 
homeland –the situation becomes more desperate than ever. In what many 
have called a Third Intifada, individual Palestinians are lashing out 
with kitchen knives and whatever limited means available to resist the 
bleak situation.

The acts of resistance by Palestinian youth are spontaneous expressions 
of anger - yet lack sufficient organization and strategic direction, 
calling into question whether the demonstrations can be sustained. 
Despite a lack of political leadership or clear organization, the 
Palestinian people continue their struggle for freedom against one of 
the world’s largest and most powerful militaries in the world. 
Regardless of what it’s called, the biggest achievement of the latest 
surge of rebellions is its ability to reactivate the youth to directly 
confront Zionism.

Palestinian Youth Movement Call for Solidarity

To combat this Zionist project of erasure, the Palestinian Youth 
Movement (PYM) the only transnational, independent, grassroots movement 
made up of Palestinians in exile, and within historic Palestine, put out 
the following statement:

“On this international day of solidarity November 29, 2015, the PYM 
calls on Palestinians worldwide and the solidarity movement to join us 
in support of the Palestinian resistance, culminating in an 
international mobilization on this day, and until Palestine is free: Our 
aspirations for justice and liberation motivate us to assume an active 
role as a young generation in our national struggle for the liberation 
of our homeland and people.

In recent weeks, Al-Aqsa Mosque has been the target of particularly 
brutal assaults while arbitrary killings are committed daily by the 
Zionist military and settlers and mass youth arrests are implemented in 
Palestine. In response to this Zionist violence, we must recognise that 
resistance is a mandatory element to surviving in the face of an ongoing 
project of ethnic cleansing.”

Solidarity glimmers, beyond the otherwise bleak horizon

As a principle, solidarity with the world's oppressed provides a guiding 
light of how to navigate in an increasingly hostile, complex and violent 
world. Every day in the corporate media - from Palestine to Iraq, Syria, 
Ferguson and beyond, we are bombarded with images of mass violence and 
those spewing hate against poor people and people of color.

Settlers, police and soldiers are portrayed as the victims, while given 
free range and even incited by government officials to kill with 
impunity, while media pundits provide no context or cause of the 
violence. In 2005, the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) call was 
signed by more than 170 civil society organizations and has gained 
unprecedented global success, and its leadership has filled an important 
vacuum left by the traditional political parties.

Likewise solidarity for Palestinians means overcoming the media 
misinformation and recognizing that #BlackLivesMatter and Indigenous 
peoples around the world that are killed with the same impunity. For us 
to be in solidarity means we too must make these connections and 
understand that all state violence is connected - while working to 
address the root causes. BDS is central to our movement, however BDS 
alone is not enough. A genuine strategy for Palestinian liberation must 
be based on uniting all Palestinian workers--in the West Bank and Gaza, 
within Israel's borders and in the diaspora. The Palestinian working 
class can then make regional and international alliances with all those 
seeking the democratic self- activity necessary for liberation.

Road Map to Peace, Where to Begin?

Solidarity statements with Palestine are an important first step. Yet to 
transform the oppressive nature of occupation, we must navigate from 
this initial symbolic show of support - to practical liberatory action. 
We can begin by looking at historic and current examples - both of which 
provide an excellent source of inspiration.

Emigrating after the First World War, Palestinians created the first 
Palestinian institutions outside of Palestine, in Latin America. As 
early as 1920 and by 1947 there was a strong lobby in several countries 
against the partition of Palestine by the United Nations.Today Latin 
American solidarity is expressed in a variety of forms of delegations 
and cooperation, and organizations in Latin America demanding their 
governments break all relations with Israel.

As solidarity among oppressed peoples grew historically–so did Israel’s 
cooperation with dictators in techniques of surveillance, detention, 
torture and death squads in Latin America such as Somoza in Nicaragua 
and Pinochet in Chile. Today Israel shares “expertise” with U.S. police 
under “various facets of counter-terrorism and first response to better 
protect the American people." And as “cooperation” increases we see in 
both instances, an increasing number of victims are blamed for their own 
murders, even when evidence is clear they provided no threat whatsoever.

Exporting Global Repression

Israel is perfecting surveillance, and one of the top occupation 
profiteers, through the surveillance of the Palestinian people. Using 
knowledge and expertise gained from assisting in the occupation of 
Palestinians, the Israeli defense systems company, Elbit, has made 
millions exporting surveillance worldwide – and increasingly in Latin 
America. While, Israel’s role in arming dictators and oppressive regimes 
in Latin America during the last century is well documented, Elbit, is 
at the forefront of a new growing movement working in at least five 
Latin American countries, as well as along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Elbit - Crossing Borders, Building Fortress Walls

The technology Elbit is using to profit off of the “Wall of Death” along 
the U.S.-Mexico border was first deployed in Palestine along Israel’s 
Apartheid Wall that in 2004. The International Court of Justice ruled 
was illegal, and must be torn down, and that Israel must pay 
reparations. Despite this ruling, Elbit continues to participate in the 
maintenance of the Wall, thereby being complicit in a grave breach of 
international law, which is a war crime.

G4S - Leading Repression in Palestine and Globally

In August 2015, more than 1,100 prominent Black activists, artists, 
scholars, students and organizations signed a historic Black Solidarity 
Statement with Palestine. As part of the BDS campaign, they are taking 
up targeting the British security company G4S that backs Israel’s 
notorious prisons. From their statement:

“G4S is the world’s largest private security company. G4S harms 
thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel 
and Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the 
U.S. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the 
US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia. We reject 
notions of ‘security’ that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no 
one is free until all of us are.”

The current struggle is the uprising of a new generation of 
Palestinians, united with those everywhere around principles of dignity, 
justice and the liberation. It is a conflict between native Palestinian 
community and a settler colonial invading community that has been 
supported from the beginning by Western imperial powers who also 
succeeded in creating states and leaders in the region complicit with 
their interests.

Let us create an alternative, inclusive vision that is in solidarity 
with indigenous peoples and sovereignty rights globally, that challenges 
settler colonial practices, and violations of civil rights and military 
occupation and militarization, including the criminalization of the U.S. 
borders, mass incarceration and all forms of oppression. To remain 
silent in the face of injustice and violence that any and all people are 
subjected to, is to side with the oppressor.

Noura Khouri is Palestinian, her family is originally from Birzeit and 
Jerusalem, Palestine. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, United 
States where her family came to, after fleeing the '67 war. Noura has 
been a fearless community organizer, activist, writer, and blogger. She 
studied International Relations at San Francisco State and lived and 
worked in Palestine in 2003, 2005-07 and in Egypt 2011-13.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:

"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/A-Call-for-Solidarity-with-Palestine-and-the-Worlds-Oppressed-20151128-0012.html".

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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