As the zionist occupier unleashes another round of genocidal violence against Gaza, the Black Alliance for Peace stands firmly with the Palestinian people in their long and just struggle against the depravities of settler colonialism. Over the past week the zionist occupier has brutally bombed homes, schools, media houses, killing at least [200 people, including 59 children] since the writing of this statement and still climbing. We know that the latest escalation comes after a series of illegal, immoral, and racist acts initiated by the zionist occupiers: the attempted forced evictions of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem; and the assault on the Al Aqsa Mosque (the third holiest site in Islam) during Ramadan and one of the holiest days in Islam, a day before Eid al Fitr.
We also know that May 15th marked the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba or “The Catastrophe,” when the zionist occupiers drove more than 700,000 Palestinians off their land, with hundreds of thousands landing – and remaining until this day – in refugee camps. Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. Since then, the constant land grabbing and state-sponsored terror by the occupation illegal government, have left Palestinians as refugees in their own land, separated from family and friends by road blocks and walls, cramped in the open air prison that is the Gaza strip, under constant surveillance, and brutalized by military force, including bombing, assassinations, and indefinite detentions.
The latest attacks represent the ongoing Palestinian Nakba.
But we know that the ongoing Nakba is only possible because of the Pan-European white supremacist and imperial support for the crimes of the zionist entity. The settler colonial state of the U.S., for example, supports this entity with $3.8 billion a year in military aid. It also continues to support the settler’s land expropriation, and provides legal cover for zionism’s atrocities through its undemocratic veto power on the UN Security Council.
Revolutionary Africans must stand with the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism. We know that this settler colony was planted in the Middle East by imperialism to serve the dictates of the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist project. It is why we must also understand the ways that zionism has and continues to work against African liberation. The zionist occupier of Palestinian lands and people gave political, economic, and military support to the racist apartheid regime in Azania/South Africa to further the oppression and exploitation of African people. And currently, Jewish Africans from Ethiopia serve as cheap, exploited labor and suffer from the most egregious racism at the hands of their fellow “Jews” from zionist Israel in occupied Palestine. There is also the continuing racist treatment of Black migrants (from Eritrea, Sudan, and Ethiopia) in the settler colony.
The zionist occupier in Palestine currently poses an existential threat for African and other oppressed communities. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commandos train security forces in more than a dozen African nations in tactics they use to control, colonize, incarcerate and terrorize Palestinian people. Israel also engages in policing exchanges with local U.S. police forces to promote and extend some of the most violent policies, behaviors, and tactics of the U.S. settler state disproportionately used against African (Black) and indigenous people.
A stand against zionism is a stand against colonization and a demand for the return of the land to Palestinians. It is a call for the end of settler genocide. It is also part and parcel of the African people’s struggle for true liberation. African People must be a part of the struggle against zionism. We must see, therefore, that the zionist dehumanization of Palestinians and its culture of anti-Blackness depend on the same system - white supremacy.
The Palestinian resistance against zionist expansion and genocide is a just struggle. Palestine will be free because its struggle is supported by the majority of the people of the world. The Black Alliance for Peace stands with Palestine, and its call for self-determination!
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The U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) is a network of volunteers committed to strategizing around creative and radical tactics for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa, the demilitarization of the African continent, the closure of U.S. military bases throughout the world, pressuring the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to unequivocally oppose AFRICOM and conduct hearings on its impact on the African continent. The USOAN is the driving force for the U.S. Out of Africa! Shutdown AFRICOM! campaign of the Black Alliance for Peace.
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Banner photo: Iraqi protestors in Baghdad wave Palestinian flags during a protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people. (Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)