For many Americans the history of Israel and Palestine started on October 7th, 2023. Footage and headlines announcing an unprovoked attack by Palestinian terrorists against our good friend and ally Israel suddenly appeared everywhere. For people who had not been familiar with the situation this, understandably, came as a shock. But for those of us who are familiar with the history the events on and since October 7th are simply a continuation of the struggle by the Palestinian people for freedom since the 1940s.
Far from an unprovoked attack, what we witnessed on October 7th was a last ditch effort at obtaining freedom for a group which has had every avenue towards peaceful liberation denied to them. For 75 years the State of Israel has been engaged in an illegal campaign of permanent occupation of Palestinian lands and mass murder and displacement of Palestinian people. All throughout this time we have seen numerous peaceful efforts at diplomacy and protest met with overwhelming lethal and destructive force from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF.) For those of us who have been following this ongoing atrocity the pattern of: Establishing a ceasefire, the IDF violating that ceasefire through attacks on Palestinian civilians or illegal land seizure, militant Palestinian groups engaging in acts of symbolic retaliation, and the State of Israel using that as an excuse to commit mass violence against the Palestinian population, is very familiar.
This incursion into territory, which had previously been illegally occupied by the State of Israel, by Palestinian militants on October 7th (referred to as the Al-Aqsa Flood in reference to an attack on Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque back in September) is an act of self defense against ethnic cleansing by an illegally occupied people. Any claim to self defense that the State of Israel might make against Palestinian militants ended with the Nakba back in 1948. It is the responsibility of the State of Israel to cease all illegal occupation of and violence towards the Palestinian people before it has any claim to self defense.
I want to be crystal clear, I oppose the killing of civilians and any human rights violations made by Palestinian militants, just as I oppose the killing of civilians and human rights violations committed by the IDF before and since October 7th. I will not, however, equivocate between them. The violence of the oppressed is not comparable to the violence of the oppressor. Furthermore, the reporting on human rights violations during this conflict from western sources has been consistently biased at best and outright fabricated at worst. In the days following October 7th we saw claims of mass civilian execution, mass rape, baby killing, and all manner of other atrocities. Since then we have seen the majority of these claims quietly debunked through the appearance of those reported to be killed, photos and audio clips found to be doctored, and the testimony of Israelis taken prisoner who have since been released. These blatantly fabricated war crimes invalidate the actual suffering as a result of actual war crimes committed during this conflict. Additionally, by exclusive reporting on crimes committed by Palestinian militants during the Al-Aqsa Flood and not the crimes committed on and before October 7th by the IDF media reinforces the narrative of Palestinians as savage animals attacking an innocent Israel. Human rights violations are a grim reality of war, not exclusively committed by brown Muslim Palestinians, and must oppose them on all fronts.
Since October 7th we have seen a military response by the IDF which can only be described as genocidal. The mass targeting of civilian residential buildings, medical buildings, doctors and members of the press with conventional and chemical munitions, such as white phosphorous, by the IDF are clear for all to see and are cut and dried war crimes. At time of writing the IDF has killed nearly 30,000 civilians in Gaza, 12,000 if which are children, and they have bombed every hospital in Gaza. All the while they have continued to receive support from the US, even after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to cease targeting civilians. I remind the reader that as the occupier and aggressor the IDF is justified in killing neither civilian nor combatant.
This historic and ongoing campaign by the State of Israel to cleanse the Indigenous population of Palestine to make way for Israeli settlers stems from political Zionism. The insistence by the State of Israel and the US government that condemnation of the State of Israel or Zionism is an act of antisemitism is absurd. In addition to placing the label of antisemite onto thousands of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jews in the US and around the world, it asserts that Israel is representative of the Jewish population as a whole and that all Jews are guilty of Israel’s crimes. This is a concerted effort to paint criticism of, and resistance to, the apartheid State of Israel as simply a continuation of the historic oppression of Jewish people and the violence actions taken by the IDF as in the defense of all Jews. Historic and modern Jewish anti-Zionist movements show us that this is not the case and that these claims are actually antisemitic. In fact, since October 7th, we have seen extensive and violent repression of Jewish people inside Israel who oppose the ongoing genocide by the IDF. We’ve also seen violent suppression of anti-Zionist Jewish groups in the US and elsewhere in the world.
The bottom line is that the presence of Jewish people in Palestine is not the issue. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian people have lived together in harmony in Palestine for hundreds of years. Nor is the immigration of Jewish people to Palestine an issue. The issue is the Zionist insistence that Palestine must be for Jewish people only, that any non-Jews living in Israel must be considered second class citizens under an apartheid system, and that the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is necessary for the safety of Jewish people.
The solidarity with Palestine we have seen from governments and people around the world is righteous. It has been heartening to see hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in the US to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the ending of funding and military aid to Israel. A growing number of Americans are becoming aware of the reality in Palestine with 61% now supporting a ceasefire. In the United Nations the US has now used its veto power to stop three resolutions calling for ceasefire in Gaza while nearly every other country in the world supports it.
With that, I call on every person in the Copper Country who supports freedom for all to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to make your voice heard to your community and to your representatives for as long as the genocide continues.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.