Liberation Bound Together
Liberation Bound Together
The call for Mob to support Palestine
Words by Jazz Money | Images by Jimblah
A colonial force backed by a global superpower with an unlimited military supply is currently committing genocide on a fenced in group of Indigenous peoples. The current crisis in Palestine has so many echoes to our own stories, our own histories here as First Nations people in so-called Australia. The timeline is different, some of the players are different, but in every story of colonisation, there is the oppressor and the oppressed. The fight for liberty and humanity in Gaza that is bound up with our own.
I am not here to write a history of the occupation of Palestine by the zionist state of Israel, there are far better resources about this online and I am no expert in the matter. If you do not know this history, I urge you to seek them out. The news outlet Al Jazeera is a good starting point. No, today I am writing an urgent message to mob about our siblings in Palestine who are victims of a current genocide and crimes against humanity.
Simply put, since 1948 the people of Palestine have had every element of their lives determined by the occupying force of Israel. Displaced from their homes and homelands to make way for the state of Israel, Palestinians have been murdered, removed, imprisoned, tortured and subjugated by the occupier, all with the endorsement of the West. Prior to the Nakba in 1948 (the ‘disaster,’ ‘catastrophe,’ or ‘cataclysm,' that marked the founding of the state of Israel), Palestine had been occupied by the British, the architects of the Balfour Declaration who enabled the foundation of the Zionist state in the land of Palestine. This is a land viewed as ‘terra nullius’ by those who sought to control it. A piece of land that has been cared for by the people of the land, since always.
The fate of Blakfullas and Palestinians has been tied since before the inception of Israel, intertwined with the colonial logic with which the British empire laid claim to Indigenous land across the planet. In defending the plan for a Zionist takeover of Palestine at the 1937 Palestine commission, Winston Churchill said “I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America [sic], or the black people of Australia [sic]. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” The genocidal logic of English colonisation in Australia was used to justify the state of Israel from its conception. It’s worth noting too that in 1939 the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation also identified the Kimberley as being a potential home for a Zionist state, another presumed ‘terra nullius’ to be claimed.
And so, as mob, we have very literally had our liberation bound up with the liberation of Palestine since the beginning of the Israeli occupation. When any group of First Nations people is subjugated, we must stand in solidarity. The play book of what has been done to Blakfullas is used by colonial forces around the world and so we have to remind them, again and again, that the colony did not succeed, sovereignty was never ceded, we are still here, we will always be here. Always was, always will be.
When we call to "Abolish Australia" it is not a rally to kill everyone in Australia, but an understanding that the settler colony is rotten to its core and needs to be abolished before we can rebuild with any hope for equality. So too Israel is rotten to its core.
Zionists will say things like ‘it’s a complex situation’ or ‘there is a long history here that you don’t understand.’ As though there is something complex about the killing of civilians, as though there is a secret ancient reason that justifies the murder of children. They will question how it is that you have authority to speak, wonder about your authority in foreign policy. The authority of your humanity is enough. Knowing that people have a right to freedom is enough. And for what it’s worth, every humanitarian organisation and international expert in genocide describes this situation as genocide, including Jewish scholars of the holocaust. Do not let anyone ‘two sides of the debate’. There is a coloniser and a colonised. There is an oppressor and an oppressed. These are the only sides you need to know about.
This is not a conflict about religion. Palestinians did not choose their coloniser’s faith, ethnicity or ideology. Many Jewish people around the world stand with Palestine and reject Zionism. Do not allow anti-Zionism to be conflated with anti-Semitism. To learn more about this Jewish Voices for Peace is a good place to begin.
Western media has played a critical role in the demonisation of Arabs over the past half century. There has been concentrated and explicit campaigns in the media to demonise Palestinian men and to make helpless victims of Palestinian women. The media projects lies that Palestinian’s do not love their children, while also positioning those children as criminals deserving of adult punishment. We know these moves, we know these tricks. This is how the colony justifies crimes against our own communities, and the reason outsiders think these actions are justified.
In my heart I know, land that you bomb, you do not love. I know that Indigenous people do not burn ancient trees. I know that colonisation is destruction and the coloniser poisons the land as they poison their heart.
Colonisation is a blight upon humanity. We must fight this occupation until Palestine is free. We must fight until we are all free.
Beyond calling for a ceasefire, we must call for an end of Israeli occupation in its entirety. Palestinian people have a right to a dignified existence, to their homelands, from the river to the sea. Same as mob, we must address the original sin – stolen land must be given back. It is not what we own, it is who we are. This is the shared struggle, the shared resistance. Palestine will be free.
LAND BACK
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