The Palestinian cause is uniting the world.
Image: islamtimes.org
We often see defenders of Israel and the US mock young pro-Palestinian protesters. “They chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free,’ but they don’t even know what river and what sea they are talking about. They just want to feel good about themselves.”
The genocide deniers might have a point; Americans are notoriously ignorant of geography. But you know what? It doesn’t make any difference which river or which sea, because Palestine is now everywhere. It’s from all the rivers to all the seas, wherever people are oppressed by the empire centered in the US and spearheaded by Israel. That is why the world is rising in support of Palestine. The slogan they are chanting means the world is Palestine and will be free.
Another chant heard at pro-Palestine protests goes, “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.” Palestine’s resistance is inspiring people to fight for a better world, which is why the Empire is so desperate to demonize pro-Palestinians, including Jewish protestors, as terrorists, Jew-haters and dupes of Iran, Russia, China or Hamas.
The Palestinian flag has become the standard of people struggling for liberation in Latin America, in Africa, Haiti, and increasingly in Europe and North America. We see that flag on campuses, in city streets, and on t-shirts. Palestinian colors now symbolize revolutionary change. For the first time since the collapse of the USSR, Empire is threatened.
The rulers’ insecurity drives them to shut down speech on campuses, at workplaces, in the streets and on the Internet. It’s why they shadow ban pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram, demonetize pro-Palestine content on YouTube, and want to ban TikTok completely.
Ruling class fear explains why protestors are arrested, beaten, and sometimes slammed with long sentences for nonviolent demonstrations. Not only pro-Palestinians, but indigenous defenders of water, land, and animals are attacked by an increasingly repressive state. We are all becoming Palestinians, and we’re starting to see ourselves that way.
As the great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, the United States needs a “radical revolution of values” to overcome “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” That revolution has not happened, and those triplets are dragging people into endless wars and poverty all over the world. They’re killing our planet.
The genocide in Gaza, the proxy war in Ukraine, the mass suffering in Africa, Haiti, and in the streets of America are shaking people out of our dazed acceptance of the system’s horror. How much cruelty, depravity, and hypocrisy, like that displayed by Israel and the US, can people take before we snap? We are moving away from this nightmare world. Palestine is leading us.
Where will we go? I don’t think the Palestinian movement will lead to worldwide Islam or to communism. I think different societies will go in different ways, but we will help each other, not war against each other. (By the way, this is China’s plan, different systems cooperating.)
In that same 1967 speech, Dr. King said US society was “thing-oriented” and needed to become “people-oriented.” I would add that we also need to be Nature-oriented, not profit-oriented. Perhaps each society will do this in its own way.
The military-industrial complex (MIC) — of which Israel is a central part — will not like this change one bit, and they will try to stop it with propaganda and with deadly force. This is what we’re seeing from Gaza to militarized police crackdowns on protest, to the lie-filled pages and screens of the New York Times, Fox News, NPR, and CNN.
Silence will not protect us
One year to the day after King’s speech opposing war, he was assassinated in Memphis by the FBI or its hired guns. We have seen in Palestine the depths to which Empire will sink, the atrocities it commits, and the lies it tells to promote their narrative and hold on to their power.
This is a dangerous time, calling for great courage, as the Palestinians and revolutionaries before them have shown. As the African-American feminist Audre Lorde wrote, “Your silence will not protect you.” She said we must “transform silence into language and action,” not only to change the world but to be true to ourselves.
I’m quoting African-American thinkers because they show us that this is one struggle, from all the rivers to all the seas. Palestine is leading at the moment, and we must give them all the support we can, give them all we’ve got, but we can’t stop there. We have to see that Palestine is everywhere, and that we all need to be free.
The war in Palestine isn’t about Jews vs. Muslims. It’s about indigenous people who love their land vs. colonizers who only want to profit from it. What’s happening in Gaza in a few months is what happened to the Native Americans over 300 years.
At a rally for Gaza, I heard a Palestinian speaker say that when they say ‘Free Palestine,’ they don’t just mean their people. They mean the animals and plants, the land and water. That strikes me as a militant indigenous way of approaching the world, a way that might enable us to heal some of the terrible damage colonialism/capitalism has done to us and to our sacred Earth.
The Jordan River, the one in the chants. Image: Immanuel Tours
The Palestinian cause can unite us, and it is already bringing the world together. On the comment thread of any pro-Palestine video, one can read messages from all continents, all religions and races, in many languages, all supporting and giving love to each other and closing with ‘Free Palestine.’ We used to call that attitude ‘solidarity,’ and I think it’s the right way to live.
Solidarity feels great, and Palestine is bringing it back. Why not join in? Let’s make Gaza the turning point our grandchildren learn about and say, “This is where it all changed. Palestine is where we were saved.”
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