Say no to authoritarianism, say yes to socialism. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone deserves Human Rights
Leahy Law
Multiple provisions in U.S. law restrict the sale or provision of weapons to other countries, including the federal Arms Export Control Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Leahy Law. The open letter draws on evidence from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other watchdogs to argue that continuing to provide weapons to Israel blatantly violates these laws, in addition to international treaties.
The PA is an arm of Israeli Apartheid, Occupation, and Suppression.
The PA creates the appearance of Palestinian autonomy, but in fact, much like the governments of the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, it is simply an extension of the colonial state, a tool of counterinsurgency that is highly effective for the repression of local rebellions, because it makes the native population police itself. Fatah, which was a revolutionary movement in the early days of the armed struggle, is now mostly contained by the PA.
Israel’s stabilization strategy, inspired by modern counterinsurgency doctrine, has rested on two pillars: the employment of pacification measures to co-opt Palestinians and reliance on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to police its population on Israel’s behalf. However, many Palestinians are now fighting back against this approach, while the PA’s eroding legitimacy has only hardened the population’s refusal to accept its restrictive methods.
It is presented here as it has been perceived by the Israeli policymakers and bureaucrats down the years. For them the PA was an integral and crucial component in the open-air prison model suggested in the 1990s, and one which the pragmatic elite of Israel still hopes to instate in the West Bank, at least in the near future.
In appearance, the PA has all the trappings of a state, with ministries and a civil service, but Israel wields the real power, turning the tap on tax revenue, and controlling access to the shrinking territories – a status quo often compared with the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa.
The PA has actively helped Israel to keep tight control over the Palestinian population. Many perceive the body as a tool of the Israeli security apparatus, its US-trained forces not only targeting those suspected of planning attacks on Israelis, but also arresting union figures, journalists and critics on social media.
Israel relies on this division of the West Bank to foster the fiction that the Palestinian Authority is the entity primarily responsible for administering the life of the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank. In practice, however, Israel still retains control over the entire West Bank and all its residents.
There is the Saif al-Islam Gaddafi Isratin proposal:
The Gaddafi Isratin proposal intended to permanently resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through a secular, federalist, republican one-state solution, which was first articulated by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, at the Chatham House in London and later adopted by Muammar Gaddafi himself.
Creation of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state called the “Federal Republic of the Holy Land”;
Partition of the state into five administrative regions, with Jerusalem as a city-state;
Return of all Palestinian refugees;
Supervision by the United Nations of free and fair elections on the first and second occasions;
Removal of weapons of mass destruction from the state;
Recognition of the state by the Arab League.
Similar to the Binational State Solution advocated by the Palestinian leadership and some others prior to the Nakba.
The Zionist position changed in 1928, when the pragmatic Palestinian leaders agreed to the principle of parity in a rare moment in which clannish and religious differences were overcome for the sake of consensus. The Palestinian leaders feared that without parity the Zionists would gain control of the political system. The unexpected Palestinian agreement threw the Zionist leaders into temporary confusion. When they recovered, they sent a refusal to the British, but at the same time offered an alternative solution: the partitioning of Palestine into two political units.
On 31 August 1947, UNSCOP presented its recommendations to the UN General Assembly. Three of its members were allowed to put forward an alternative recommendation. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine into two states, with an economic union. The designated Jewish state was to have most of the coastal area, western Galilee, and the Negev, and the rest was to become the Palestinian state. The minority report proposed a unitary state in Palestine based on the principle of democracy. It took considerable American Jewish lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, as well as a powerful speech by the Russian ambassador to the UN, to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly for partition. Even though hardly any Palestinian or Arab diplomat made an effort to promote the alternative scheme, it won an equal number of supporters and detractors, showing that a considerable number of member states realized that imposing partition amounted to supporting one side and opposing the other.
This ongoing Settler Colonialism annexing the West Bank continues to make a Two State Solution less possible, it has already divided the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves. This Apartheid State needs to end as a binational state for all Palestinians and Israelis.
Here are resources by Historians about a One-State Solution. In many ways, it’s already a One-State, an Apartheid State, this change would be the emancipation of Palestinians to bring forth a One-State with equal rights.
The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
At the time the Balfour Declaration was issued, Jews constituted about 10 percent of the population of Palestine, and owned about 2 percent of the land. While Zionist land purchases remained relatively limited during the Mandate period (6 percent until 1948), Jewish immigration into Palestine began eroding the immense numerical superiority of the Palestinians.32 Growing Arab awareness of Zionist aims in Palestine, reinforced by Zionist calls for unrestricted Jewish immigration and unhindered transfer of Arab lands to exclusive Jewish control, triggered escalating protests and resistance that were eventually to culminate in the peasant- based great Arab Rebellion of 1936-39.
Already at the time of the Balfour Declaration, apprehen sions concerning the fate of the “non-Jewish communities’ had been voiced in British establishment circles. Edward Montagu, a Jewish cabinet minister at the India Office, had expressed in 1917 his belief that the Zionist drive to create a Jewish state in Palestine would end by “driving out the present inhabitants.”33 Even the enthusiastically pro-Zionist Winston Churchill had written in his review of Palestinian affairs dated 25 October 1919 that “there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."
By February 1947, Britain had had enough. It had more soldiers in Palestine than on the Indian subcontinent, and had been constantly involved in direct clashes with both political leaderships. The number of British casualties had also risen, mainly due to a terror campaign waged by Zionist extremists, the most notorious being the Stern Gang. This terror campaign peaked with the blowing up of British headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. But it was not terror that forced the British out. A particularly bad winter in 1946–47, and a harsh American attitude towards Britain’s debt to the United States, created an economic crisis in Britain that served as an incentive for a limited process of decolonization, mainly in India and Palestine
Zionism has always been about the ethnic cleansing of the native populations. You are falling for antisemitic conspiracy theories if you are conflating Zionism and Judaism. Same with conflating Palestinians resistance with Islam as a whole, as if the resistance is born out of some bullshit ancient Antisemitism instead of the resistance to ethnic cleansing.
Zionism goes against the actual teachings of Judaism, it’s very revisionist. Jewish opposition to Israel is as old as Zionism itself. Hasidic Jewish people, while small in number, are still the largest Anti-zionist group in Israel. Jewish people have been at the forefront of Anti-zionist activism for a long time, including Jewish Voice for Peace. Palestinians too of course.
Zionism uses Judaism as a shield, deflecting criticism against it’s fascist actions as anti-semitic, which in-turn raises the amount of genuine anti-semitism experienced by Jewish people worldwide, due to that false conflation of Judaism and Zionism. That’s why it’s critical to detangle that false conflation.
Zionism comes from the same roots of other-izing Jewish people as seen in white supremacy, that’s exactly why it’s been supported by white supremacist since the beginning to present day. For white supremacists, Jewish people are inherently different and need to go back to ‘where they came from’ in the middle east. Christian Zionists, who far outnumber Jewish Zionists, want to trigger the end-times which will kill every ‘nonbeliever’ with the holy war.
Adi Callai, in his video Anti-Semitism, Weaponized, does a phenomenal analysis the history of antisemitism and how Zionism fits into that picture. He has another on the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and on Frantz Fanon which are also just as relevant to the current situation in Palestine as well.
No, supremacism is not a cornerstone of every country’s governance, only the fascist ones
this is what happens when you have an entire country based on religion and genetics supremacy
The existence of Hamas, and any armed resistance movement, is directly due to the decades of violence experienced daily under the permanent occupation, the Apartheid State, of Israel. It’s impossible to understand their existence if you don’t understand the lived experience and material conditions they are forced to live under. There is no such thing as a perfect victim when it comes to anti-Colonialist resistance, not for the Vietcong, the IRA, or the ANC either. Can you condemn the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the same way as the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto?
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video
Adi Callai has also done a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history, as well as an analysis of Franz Fanon and Identity Politics in the context of Colonialism and Anti-colonialism.
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
So you think the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was not OK by that same standard
Way to ‘both sides’ a genocide. Disgusting.
You OK? Equating being anti-genocide and antifascist to being ‘no better’ than modern-day Hitler, who is currently doing a genocide of mostly children, makes zero sense.
It’s already a one-state reality, an apartheid state. The solution is equal rights and right of return for all Palestinians within historic Palestine, and reparations.
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas, alongside many other factions, are resistance groups born out of the apartheid with the goal of liberation from the apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Between July 1971 and February 1972, Sharon enjoyed considerable success. During this time, the entire Strip (apart from the Rafah area) was sealed off by a ring of security fences 53 miles in length, with few entrypoints. Today, their effects live on: there are only three points of entry to Gaza—Erez, Nahal Oz, and Rafah.
Perhaps the most dramatic and painful aspect of Sharon’s campaign was the widening of roads in the refugee camps to facilitate military access. Israel built nearly 200 miles of security roads and destroyed thousands of refugee dwellings as part of the widening process.’ In August 1971, for example, the Israeli army destroyed 7,729 rooms (approximately 2,000 houses) in three vola- tile camps, displacing 15,855 refugees: 7,217 from Jabalya, 4,836 from Shati, and 3,802 from Rafah.
Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986.
In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60% over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50% decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (combined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.
Page 402
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy
Hamas began twenty years into the occupation during the first Intifada, with the goal of ending the occupation. Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.
After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted.
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
I think this is the first image that has made me physically sick
At the time the Balfour Declaration was issued, Jews constituted about 10 percent of the population of Palestine, and owned about 2 percent of the land. While Zionist land purchases remained relatively limited during the Mandate period (6 percent until 1948), Jewish immigration into Palestine began eroding the immense numerical superiority of the Palestinians.32 Growing Arab awareness of Zionist aims in Palestine, reinforced by Zionist calls for unrestricted Jewish immigration and unhindered transfer of Arab lands to exclusive Jewish control, triggered escalating protests and resistance that were eventually to culminate in the peasant- based great Arab Rebellion of 1936-39.
Already at the time of the Balfour Declaration, apprehen sions concerning the fate of the “non-Jewish communities’ had been voiced in British establishment circles. Edward Montagu, a Jewish cabinet minister at the India Office, had expressed in 1917 his belief that the Zionist drive to create a Jewish state in Palestine would end by “driving out the present inhabitants.”33 Even the enthusiastically pro-Zionist Winston Churchill had written in his review of Palestinian affairs dated 25 October 1919 that “there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."
By February 1947, Britain had had enough. It had more soldiers in Palestine than on the Indian subcontinent, and had been constantly involved in direct clashes with both political leaderships. The number of British casualties had also risen, mainly due to a terror campaign waged by Zionist extremists, the most notorious being the Stern Gang. This terror campaign peaked with the blowing up of British headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. But it was not terror that forced the British out. A particularly bad winter in 1946–47, and a harsh American attitude towards Britain’s debt to the United States, created an economic crisis in Britain that served as an incentive for a limited process of decolonization, mainly in India and Palestine
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
After the Nakba the Palestinians within now Israel that survived the ethnic cleansing were under the draconic Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations, which we’re then practiced in the occupied territories instead after 1967. Even then, Arab Israelis continued to be second class citizens for many reasons including Education, continued.
Zionists are committing genocide. You are falling for antisemitic conspiracy theories if you are conflating Zionism and Judaism.
From a previous comment of mine:
Zionism goes against the actual teachings of Judaism, it’s very revisionist. Jewish opposition to Israel is as old as Zionism itself. Hasidic Jewish people, while small in number, are still the largest Anti-zionist group in Israel. Jewish people have been at the forefront of Anti-zionist activism for a long time, including Jewish Voice for Peace. Palestinians too of course.
Zionism uses Judaism as a shield, deflecting criticism against it’s fascist actions as anti-semitic, which in-turn raises the amount of genuine anti-semitism experienced by Jewish people worldwide, due to that false conflation of Judaism and Zionism. That’s why it’s critical to detangle that false conflation.
Zionism comes from the same roots of other-izing Jewish people as seen in white supremacy, that’s exactly why it’s been supported by white supremacist since the beginning to present day. For white supremacists, Jewish people are inherently different and need to go back to ‘where they came from’ in the middle east. Christian Zionists, who far outnumber Jewish Zionists, want to trigger the end-times which will kill every ‘nonbeliever’ with the holy war.
Adi Callai, in his video Anti-Semitism, Weaponized, does a phenomenal analysis the history of antisemitism and how Zionism fits into that picture. He has another on the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and on Franz Fanon which are also just as relevant to the current situation in Palestine as well.
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
The PA is Counter Insurgency, an arm of the Israeli Apartheid apparatus. Still sounds they only care about how that negatively affects Israel
Surely it was a spontaneous development and not at all planned to whitewash Israeli fascism to a western audience
He’s planning on going after all political dissenters from what he said when he addressed the nation yesterday
Don’tbe evil - Google
At least their logo was 2/3rds right
You don’t understand how Democratic politicians that have directly funded trump and normalized right-wing positions (immigration is a great example of such) are far more responsible for Trump winning the election than online commenters who criticize the Democratic Party due to it’s proximity to the Republican Party?
Capitalists are responsible for the rise of fascism. Both parties are beholden to the interests of their capital donors, they simply play different roles to uphold that interest.
Progressives who criticize the Democratic party for failing to represent their constituents, who are supposed to be working class Americans, not billionaire donors, are the ones applying pressure on the Democratic party to actually fight against fascism instead of against progressive candidates and policies. The Democratic Establishment will not change without overwhelming pressure from working class Americans
Leaked Drone Papers