The broad criminalization of Palestinian social media users occurs as Jewish Israeli extremists have been left free to incite violence on platforms in full view of authorities.
The thrust of American struggles has been to deracialize but not to decolonize. A deracialized America still remains a settler society and a settler state.
Central to "Cousins" is the struggle of the Maoris to retain ownership of their age-old lands in the face of settler colonialism dating back to the British invasion of Aotearoa/New Zealand by 1840.
While the Philippines and Palestine might not be obviously linked in popular imaginary, there is a complicated web of relations — threaded through militarism, settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism — that binds these entities together.
When reality does not correspond to the facts on the ground, the U.S. left often responds like the fictional French intellectual who maunders: “I know what you are saying is true in fact, the question is—‘is it true in theory?’”
Palestinians disconnected from each other have struggled immensely to maintain a national project with clear objectives. Now, struggling together across the entire geography of historic Palestine, the Palestinian body is coming back together.
At the end of the day Israel is a tool (and Palestine is terrain) of U.S. imperialism. We fight for the dignity and liberation of our people from here to our homelands. We need to be working to build power, not just support.
Lisa Hardy, Gwendolyn Saul, Kerry F. Thompson
The Conversation
Epidemics have been part of colonialism since settlers arrived. And, in the case of Indigenous nations, the story of inequity is imbued with dispossession of lands and is met with organizing from the inside.
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