MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
A comrade attending rallies supporting Palestinian resistance to the
I$raeli war distributed ULKs this winter and talked to
attendees. Here are a couple of the interviews ey sent to
ULK.
1.What brought you to this event?
Well, seeing as I am Black and a Christian, I find it important to
come out and demonstrate solidarity with the people of Palestine as I
believe our struggles are connected. Many people tend to see what is
going on in Palestine as a sort of religious conflict, portraying it
simplistically as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. Many Christians
in this country support Israel because the Church tells them to, when in
reality Christians are just as persecuted as Muslims in Palestine. I
mean, they just bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius – one of the
oldest churches in the world – last night.
2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical,
between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?
Yes, I see many parallels actually. The biggest one being that they
are both settler-colonial projects. It is important to remember that in
both cases, the land was not empty when the settlers arrived. Israel has
been waging a war against the Palestinian people in order to clear and
settle the land. When the Europeans came to America, the first thing
they did was wage war against the Indigenous population to do the same
thing. They are both guilty of ethnic cleansing. Think about the Nakba.
Think about The Trail of Tears. In Ohio, they said the land was “too
good for Indians” – similar justifications were made for the initial
Nakba.
I would also say that Israel is almost as racist as the United
States. They have different laws for different people. That’s apartheid.
Zionists call us anti-semetic, yet they treat non-White Jews like
second-class citizens. Look at how they treat Ethiopian and South-East
Asian Jews within their borders. You know they sterilized them in the
1970s and 1980s. Zionism isn’t about Judaism, it’s about white
supremacy. So I think there are very real parallels to draw between
Israel and the United States as they both are rooted in war, ethnic
cleansing, and white supremacy.
3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed
nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do
you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@,
First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the
so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to
realize self-determination?
I’m not entirely sure if I think it is possible, but I support it.
That said, I am very skeptical. The only feasible way I think that could
happen is if the American Government allows it to happen by carrying it
out themselves, but I really don’t see that happening anytime soon.
4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could
demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?
I think we could demonstrate our support and solidarity by boycotting
Israeli products and participating in the BDS movement as a whole. By
continuing to protest. By not allowing Israel to participate in soccer.
And by not allowing Israeli academics to sanitize what has happened in
the past 70 years. It is important that we utilize our legal means and
push politicians to support an end to the genocide.
Second Interview
1.What brought you to this event?
I’m here to show support against the repression of Arabs in
Palestine, to demonstrate mass support, and to lift the spirits of
others who find these war crimes unacceptable.
2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical,
between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?
Yeah, I see parallels in that they’re settlers, racists, and repress
native populations. But I also see parallels between First Nations and
the Palestinian people – especially in their emancipatory spirit.
**3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed
nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do
you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@,
First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the
so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to
realize self-determination?
Yeah, of course! The first priority is emancipation of those groups,
even if that means through violence.
4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could
demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?
I think we can demonstrate our support by continuing to go to these
demonstrations and by showing our support for fringe groups such as
Hamas, PFLP, etc…the militant fighters.
NOTE: PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
an organization that arose during the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in China, and was one of the Palestinian organizations
greatly influenced by the Maoism of the time. In those early years they
gained notoriety for hijacking airplanes and remain on the U.$.
terrorist list to this day. They took a pan-Arab approach to the
revolution, and co-ordinated with many organizations outside the Arab
world, including providing training to communists from Azania (aka South
Africa). This connection is relevant to why South Africa today has
brought charges of genocide against I$rael to the International Criminal
Court, as well as the fact that Palestinians today are facing the same
apartheid conditions that Africans in South Africa once faced. PFLP took
part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th along with Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The
latter is also a Maoist-inspired group that came out of PFLP.
Seems clear that the United State’s lurch to the right is a done
deal. On a quantitative scale, how much so is still an open question,
but it is an astonishing thing to see and one we better get better at
grappling with.
The Biden administration has recently vetoed a UAE brought emergency
meeting to vote on a Gaza ceasefire in Israel’s “unceasing” assault on
Gaza. Time magazine of 10 December 2023 and virtually all U.S.
media describe it as a campaign to eliminate Hamas. Always the
materialists, they never forget to remind that it is due to Hamas
terrorist attack of October 7, its alleged sexual assault and taking of
hostages etc. In fact, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Robert A. Woods
states as his reasons for vetoing this emergency resolution that it was
“an imbalanced resolution that was divorced from reality and would not
move the needle on the ground in any concrete way.”
Woods goes on to state the U.S. couldn’t understand why the authors
declined to include language condemning “Hamas’s horrific terrorist
attack” and “the resolution failed to mention Israel’s right to defend
itself.” Indeed the U.S. did propose adding language about its “role in
diplomacy, increased opportunities for humanitarian aid, encouraging
release of hostages, the resumption of pauses in fighting, and laying
the foundation for peace” the Time article wrote. But Wood says
the “recommendations for peace were ignored.”
The Time article was further confirmed by a clip of Wood’s
speech aired on Democracy Now! (11 December 2023), which then
went on to play a clip of Jamie Raskin’s outrage of U.S. society’s
obvious lurch to the right in regards to the ousting of an MIT president
for trying to defend bourgeois free speech. However, Democracy
Now! makes no mention of Raskin’s earlier calls for the need of
Israel to eliminate Hamas or his refusal to call for an immediate peace
agreement or even his stance on the UN resolution for an immediate cease
fire. All this clearly, even on the part of such petty bourgeois outfits
as Democracy Now! to accept and adjust to this obvious social
shift, but still find some space to claim to be left or progressive etc.
It should be noted Amy Goodman often has Raskin on to help her with her
Trump and MAGA bashing and to tell people to vote for their
democracy.
Back to Woods, he states the U.S. wants a 2 state solution, but
doesn’t support an immediate ceasefire as “this would only plant the
seeds for the next war because Hamas has no desire to see a durable
peace, to see a 2 state solution.” This stupid equivocation could only
be logical to a bully on the verge of victory. Recall he told the same
council it was due to the resolution not giving the U.S. its props for
all the fine things, like 4 hour “humanitarian pauses” and the U.S. aid
for Palestinians, not being in the resolution.
A “good thing” one could point to is how isolated the U.S. is on this
and the exposure of its hypocrisy on a world scale. Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stated after the U.S. veto that the
U.S. is “complicit in war crimes” and the vote was “aggressive and
immoral.” China’s U.N. rep Zhang Jun accused the U.S. of “double
standards”, “claiming to care about the lives and safety of people in
Gaza.” Russian U.N. rep Dmitry Polyansky stated “our colleagues from the
U.S. have literally before our eyes issued death sentences to thousands
if not tens of thousands more civilians in Palestine and Israel.”
Even domestically, social democrat Bernie Sanders, who has
consistently (see below) refused to call for a ceasefire up to now, now
states the “U.S. should not be vetoing a U.N. (ceasefire) resolution.”
He goes on to his usual duplicitous doublespeak stating “children need
food” and “it’s imperative - it remains imperative that Israel puts a
premium on civilian protection.” Social democrat Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (A.O.C.) went even farther: “Shameful. The Biden
Administration can no longer reconcile their professed concern for
Palestinians and their human rights while also single-handedly vetoing
the U.N.’s call for ceasefire and sidestepping the entire U.S. Congress
to unconditionally back the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza”
(Newsweek, 9 December 23)
As for the above comment of “sidestepping” Congress, she is referring
to the 13,000 plus, worth $106 million, of tank ammo sold to Israel that
Secretary of State Blinken et. al managed to get to Israel in an
emergency sale. The Biden administration additionally has a $100 billion
package in aid for Israel, Ukraine, and “other national security
priorities.” So A.O.C. is likely to get her wish. As to why this sale
required “sidestepping” Congress, Blinken stated, “The needs of Israel’s
military operation in Gaza justifies the rare decision to bypass
Congress.” He goes on, “Israel is in combat right now with Hamas and we
want to make sure Israel has what it needs to defend itself against
Hamas,” hence the $106 million sale of 13,000 plus ammo (shells) to
Israel.
And in case anyone missed it the larger bill which needs
Congressional approval is tied to the U.S. immigration issue and its
border, “National Security”.
On 10 December 2023, Mitt Romney stated on Meet The Press
that Biden didn’t have to tie the border policy issue to the Ukraine
issue. But he did so now the Republicans will be holding him to it.
Biden, obviously acknowledging he must move to the right, has recently
hinted he is willing to make significant compromises on the border. He
seems to be saying he needs to be able to say he had no choice. J.D.
Vance has stated, “What will $60 billion (going to Ukraine alone) more
do that $100 billion hasn’t done?”
In both of the last 2 presidential candidate debates, Vivek has
stated he will be smoking the terrorists on the southern border and
“Bibi” has to do the same.
Something we can’t go into here but worth mentioning is the
conservative Center for Renewing America’s Project 2025 handbook, which
is a 1,000 page “Let’s finish what we started” playbook, which is part
of the Heritage Foundation’s think tank. This involves many “right
flank” organizations, many new to mainstream bourgeois politics. This is
to do away with the “deep-state” and in doing so avoid Trump’s 1st term
pitfalls of being thwarted by those not willing to go as far as he
wished. The point made here is that all Democrats and ol’ fogey
Republicans realize this shift is very real and it seems a little
conscious compromise is a tactic the bourgeois left is making for its
own reasons. Late capitalism is not running on fumes though pixie dust
no longer seems to suffice. Now the machine requires the flesh and blood
of little boys and girls.
Recently heard our old friend Bill Fletcher on KPFA’s Sunday
Show (10 December 2023) saying, like always, 3rd parties are a
waste of time, must vote for the Democrat even though he agrees it is
genocide in Gaza and Biden administration was wrong for their U.N. veto.
Again, according to Fletcher, we must do as he suggested the first time
and push Biden to the left.
If only Mao was here and could fight our battles for us. Obviously no
real revolutionary is saying this but in practice we are saying these
are not revolutionary times and I contend this is why we’re in this
situation. Yes these are revolutionary times. We simply must learn and
apply the stages of revolution. We may be limited by majority having no
current interests in revolution. But we are in no position to be talking
about a majority any way. We clearly accept objective factors. Even
MIM’s 3 dividing line principles.
But contradictions (all) carry within them their very opposite. It’s
a unity of opposites, mere “identity”, not absolute of contradictions.
We indeed should be pushing some to the left but not bourgeois
politicians who would have no interest in social change in any situation
but our own nations, prison class, musicians. And we definitely should
be serious about drawing clear distinctions between ourselves and the
bourgeoisie with its values and world outlook. This is simply accepting
the phase of revolution we’re in. Too many fear armed struggle and fear
its adventurist aspects. I contend this means to fear the people or at
the very least fear they are unable to grasp revolutionary theory or its
requirements.
We’re in the middle of it. This rightward shift is but a shift no
more to my mind than a deeper neo-Liberal shift. Only by relying on the
bourgeoisie and the fakes should we care if its a rightward shift or
leftward shift. Especially if out of our control.
From the outset of this flareup and resulting genocide of Palestine
the pretensions of the left media and settler nations obvious new center
of gravity has led it to pretend the U.S. is at least grappling with the
moral consequences of innocent civilians. Yet Blinken, Biden, and
Sanders as well as virtually all bourgeois outlets and mouthpieces have
stated “Israel has an obligation to defend itself” Blinken 13 October
2023, Biden “Israel has the right to respond, indeed has a duty to
respond” 10 October 2023, and 300 former staffers of Sanders asked
Sanders (very nicely) to support a ceasefire saying “We believe in you.”
In mid October, Jamaal Bowman was roundly condemned for going to Israel,
to see the apartheid for himself, by A.O.C.’s and Sander’s Democratic
Socialist of America (DSA). Even MSNBC’s Al Sharpton states “Gaza is not
occupied.” We could literally go on and on about how this lurch is not
only acknowledged but immediately dressed up and condoned by all
progressives, leftists, moderate Republicans, and a great majority of
this settler nation.
In the backdrop is always Trump, the MAGA movement, and settler
nation chauvinism. Beside Project 2025 mentioned above, recently Trump
announced the need for “ideological screening” to “bar Christian hating
communists and Marxists” stating “those who come to our country must
love our country.” Such is already the practice in Israel. Trump goes on
to list things that would be grounds for disqualification: “If you want
to abolish the state of Israel you’re disqualified”… Again we encourage
all to check this out because this shift is now much bigger than any
individuals or even movements. Trump was one of the first to
congratulate the Congresswoman who held the 3 college presidents to
these new standards.
As stated we are very much in “heightened contradictory times.” Not
having the right line on the make up of the U.S. and world economy,
nature of settler society, neo-Liberalism, following idiotic communists,
and being afraid to rely on ourselves and our own nation has led to very
bad practice for years and deprived our people of a prepared and
organized fighting force. Lurch to the right or revolution.
In the United $tates, prisons mean war against the oppressed nations.
In occupied Palestine, war means prison for the Palestinians. Two sides
of the same blood-stained coin which built the richest empire in
hystory. Imperialism considers war to be a legal method of resolving
issues, in deeds if not in words.
The struggle for Palestine is a national liberation struggle. The
only consistently revolutionary class that may overthrow the bourgeoisie
is the proletariat, but imperial domination can unite a whole nation
against their occupiers for the establishment of independence. If
independence is a precondition for the dictatorship of the proletariat,
then Palestine’s struggle is revolutionary and progressive. If I$rael is
an arm of imperialism, then the Palestinian struggle against them is
revolutionary and progressive. Leadership of the proletariat in that
struggle would intensify its revolutionary character, but it is
revolutionary even without the proletariat in the vanguard. When
Palestinian communists align themselves with all revolutionary forces
against I$rael in a united front, that is a correct policy. We have a
clear hystory on this subject, and this practice is what led to the
victory of the Chinese people in creating the most advanced socialism
yet.
We in the United $tates face the strongest enemy in humyn hystory,
and I$rael is an arm of the United $tates in the Middle East. Everything
which weakens I$rael weakens the United $tates, which puts us in a
stronger position. Our comrades fighting in Gaza today are putting us in
a position of advantage for the final victory of the oppressed in
Occupied Turtle Island. To oppose the struggle in Palestine is to oppose
that which objectively weakens our enemy, to leave behind real friends
who are fighting real enemies.
“Leftist” support for I$rael in this war is often concealed by a
position against Hamas. This anti-Hamas, but allegedly pro-Palestine,
sentiment is often based on the supposedly inhuman crimes that have been
committed. On top of this being a complete deflection from the primary
question of imperialism, the claims surrounding such crimes as the
decapitation of infants have zero evidence behind them. Even bourgeois
press has shown that the claims are based on videos which show no
beheadings, only IDF soldiers claiming that the events occurred.(1)
Media campaigns in support of imperialist interventions can go much
further and be many times more difficult to uncover than what we are
dealing with here. This is a particularly obvious example of an
imperialist lie, and the propaganda will not always be so easy to see
through. Therefore, in addition to exposing blatant falsehoods, we also
need to be able to separate what makes a movement an ally or enemy and
what doesn’t, and be able to understand what line the media is
attempting to push when they tell a particular story.
The media will tell us that Hamas is committing heinous crimes,
killing babies and civilians. We need to ask why they are deflecting
from the principal contradiction in the world today. We need to ask who
weakens empire, and critically support those who do. We need to ask who
strengthens empire, and make ourselves their enemy. That is what it
means to understand what is principal and what is secondary. Contrary to
popular belief, the moral position of communists is not to do with
concepts like eternal justice and true liberty. Communists have one
moral position: we are for those actions which strengthen the
international proletariat. We understand that the work of Hamas as a
whole strengthens the international proletariat. Therefore we understand
that they are the allies of the oppressed and we align ourselves
alongside them.
The Biden/Harris campaign released the above image criticizing some
language coming from recent Donald Trump campaign speeches for the 2024
U.$. Presidential election. Meanwhile Trump continues to lead by a
landslide for the Republican ticket, which is not surprising, as Hitler
viewed the Amerikan project with envy.
The United $tates has been milking it’s alliance with the Soviet
Union to fight fascism for over 75 years now. If it were not for the
sacrifices of the Soviet people, over 20 million of whom died in the war
fighting fascism, and if it were not for the strategic leadership of the
Comintern in building alliances with some imperialist powers to fight
others, we might not have had 75 years of self-righteousness to have
leaned on by U.$. leaders.
Usually U.$. officials would raise the “Hitler” comparisons when it
was time to expand imperialist wars against another Third World country,
such as Iraq or Panama. But today the leading Democratic presidential
candidate is using it against the leading Republican candidate at the
same time that the Democrat is facing legal charges for enabling
genocide emself. It seems the mask is coming off.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint in
federal court in November on behalf of Palestinians that is seeking
recognition of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the requirement for
President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do all they can
to prevent Israel’s genocidal acts.(1)
While the occupation of Palestine by I$rael and their imposition of
an apartheid state has long been genocidal, the war has reached
unprecedented levels since the Hamas-led attack against I$rael on 7
October 2023. By mid-December, a whopping 85% of the population of Gaza
has been displaced from their homes and 1% of the population has been
killed by the I$raeli onslaught. At least 8 of the murdered and around
100 of those injured were at the hands of “civilian” settlers.(2) Large
numbers of the displaced have no access to food or clean water.
Whether the Amerikan courts will recognize what is happening to the
Palestinians in Gaza as genocide is questionable according to legal
experts. But legal filings continue to be submitted to bolster the
case.
The “We Declare Genocide” tribunal held within U.$. borders last year
already found the United $tates guilty of genocide against the internal
semi-colonies who are facing an ongoing low-intensity warfare.(3) Of
course, this finding does not have official legal standing by the United
$tates government itself. The CCR suit is attempting to get that for
Palestine, and further brings attention to the genocidal acts of U.$.
imperialism around the globe.
The United $tates has single-handedly prevented the United Nations
Security Council from implementing a ceasefire in Palestine. The United
$tates picks and chooses who is allowed to commit war crimes and who is
not, and the UN is toothless to stop it.
During the second inter-imperialist war, the United $tates was in a
position to play the good guy because of rival interests with the
fascist countries and the opportunity it allowed them to exert power
over Europe as a whole. I$rael on the other hand is the #1 U.$. client
state, receiving far more funding from the Amerikans than any other
country since World War II. As Biden said, if I$rael didn’t already
exist they would have to create it. This puts the U.$. in a position
where it is impossible for them to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
The settler state is by definition a genocidal state. Stalin helped
give the United $tates a fig leaf to cover that legacy in the form of
supporting the Soviet defeat of Hitler. That fig leaf is drying up and
falling off. And the legitimacy of U.$.-run international institutions
like the UN and the United $tates itself are coming more and more into
question by global public opinion.
On 23 December 2023 Reuters reported Iranian Revolutionary Guards
stating the Red Sea will be closed if the United $tates and its allies
continue to commit “crimes” in Gaza. The next day, a drone struck a
commercial tanker owned by an I$raeli billionaire in the Gulf of Oman.
The U.$. and I$rael claim it was Iran who launched the drone, but Iran
denies it.
While involvement of Iran in the emerging regional war remains
cryptic, the Ansar Allah party has been very open about drone attacks
launched by the Yemeni Armed Forces on ships in the Red Sea. They have
said that until the siege of Gaza ends, shipping by I$raeli companies
through the Red Sea is not gonna happen. When U.$. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken called for them to stop their attacks, they responded
brazenly with “No.”
Secretary of State Blinken has been behind imperialist bombings in
Yemen for many years, as we discussed in a 2015 article.(1) It is no
wonder that the Ansar Allah slogan is “Allah is great, death to the
United States, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for
Islam.”(2)
Yemen has been at war with the Amerikans and their Saudi partners for
decades now, and despite being one of the poorest countries in the
world, have maintained their sovereignty against those imperialist
attacks.
The Yemeni Armed Forces response to the bombing of Gaza started with
warnings against any ships entering the Red Sea associated with I$rael,
boarding ships and telling them to turn around. Then on 19 November they
took over the ship Galaxy Leader with helicopters dropping off armed
troops and boats flanking the tanker. They flew the Palestinian flag on
the ship and posted videos online.
In addition, the Yemeni Armed Forces has shot missiles and flown
drones into southern I$rael. They even knocked a $40 million U.$. drone
out of the air.(3)
In Yemen, hundreds of thousands marched in opposition to the recent
bombings of Gaza by I$rael. The people of Yemen have long stood in
strong solidarity with Palestine liberation.
The Red Sea, going through the Suez Canal, is one of the three most
critical shipping routes in the world, with bulk goods and containers
going to the Mediterranean. The Red Sea is full of war ships from all
over the world, Djibouti being the home of many imperialist naval bases.
As much as 30% of global shipping containers can be in this area at any
time.(3)
Many major shipping companies have stopped shipping through the Suez
Canal in recent weeks. This forces them to go around Africa, delaying
ships weeks to a month, greatly increasing cost.
In response to all this, the Amerikans recently announced a U.$.
naval task force to combat Ansar Allah named “Operation Prosperity
Guardian”. Can’t let interventions against genocide get in the way of
profit flows the the United $tates. No states on the Red Sea have signed
on and the only Arab state to sign on, Bahrain, has no navy of its own
but hosts U.$. military bases. Meanwhile, close military allies such as
Jordan and Saudi Arabia are not willing to sign on. It is not just in
Yemen that the people are outraged about what is happening in Gaza. No
Arab state, no matter how brutal and reactionary, is willing to stand
with the U.$./I$raeli camp in this genocide.
Even Egypt, whose whole economy is threatened by a halt of shipping
through the Suez Canal, cannot assist the U.$. effort against Yemen.
They figure they can survive economic collapse better than the response
of their people to such betrayal of Yemen and Palestine.(4)
Saudi Arabia is currently involved in the peace process in Yemen,
bringing internal peace and unity to Yemen, following Ansar Allah’s
victory against U.$./Saudi warfare. Standing up for Palestine militarily
strengthens Yemen’s position in the peace negotiations.(4)
I$rael is taking a huge economic hit from the war overall. The
I$raeli airport is mostly closed, cutting off important tourist money.
The Palestinian proletariat from the West Bank and Gaza are no longer
coming in to do work, and tens of thousands of Thai proletarians have
left kibbutz farms where they did much of the agricultural work for the
country. Meanwhile, half a million I$raelis evacuated the south and the
government is paying to house them in hotels. Unemployment in I$rael has
tripled in the last month, and businesses have lost half of their
revenues.(3) Ansar Allah is contributing to this increasing economic
pressure on I$rael demonstrating what real internationalism looks like
in the face of a genocide against an oppressed nation.
“This anti-Semitic agitation, frequently masking under radical
slogans, represents an enormous danger both to the Jewish people and to
the revolutionary movement in the country, for it threatens to drown in
fraternal blood the whole cause of freeing the people and to cover the
revolutionary popular movement with indelible shame.”
To this day we still have problems in the international communist
movement (ICM) of groups focusing on Israel, rather than the imperialist
powers. This reference to Jews by Ansar Allah’s slogan, similarly risks
misidentifying the enemy, though correctly putting U.$. imperialism
first.
I’ve been closely following the conflict between Palestine and
I$rael, which is one of a supremacist, colonial, capitalist power
imposing its will against a native people much as Britain, France, and
Spain fought like rabid jackals over the lands of the Cherokees, Arawak,
Shona, Khoisan, Fayu, Inca, the people of Kerala, Cuba, Australia,
Algeria, the Caribbean, South Pacific, and many, many other peoples to
divest them of their land and liberty purely for financial gain and
control of the world’s resources and humyn affairs. This is the
well-documented and ongoing history of western European colonialism.
Note the historical and cultural patterns which connect I$rael to the
scheme of using religious shenanigans to claim sacred and divine rights
to other people’s lands and bodies – via slavery – while committing
genocide upon those who resist.
The history of the colonial societies is one of making “missionary”
forays into lands to reconnoiter them, then instigating friction with
the native populations. When the natives rise up to resist the
systematic intrusion of the disease-ridden, perfidious colonials – who
move about the Earth like an insidious contagion – the colonials cry
“foul!”, “we’re under attack!” and make a ridiculous claim of defending
themselves.
I$rael’s strongest supporters are other colonial capitalist police
states, and their neo-colonialist sycophants – like Japan, South Korea,
and the Christianized parts of the southwestern United $tates.
The major cause of most non-natural catastrophes in the world is
colonialism. The poverty, violence, pollution, pandemics, etc are mainly
symptoms of colonialism, and would abate considerably if colonialism
were abolished. There are enough floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, spider
bites, blizzards, and other things in the world to fret about. We really
don’t need to complicate things with racism, genocide, global warming,
and the deranged antics of lunatics like Benjamin Netanyahu and the
proud boys. Hundreds of thousands of I$raelis have been invading the
West Bank of Palestine, killing many Palestinians in the process,
violating international law. When nations – like Venezuela, India, Cuba,
and even Canada and Italy call I$rael out on these crimes, the I$raeli
government either denies that it is happening – or simply doesn’t
respond. The United $tates and Britain simply look the other way.
When one carefully traces the development of humyn cultures around
the world and the present circumstances of humynity, what this likely
portends for the future becomes clearer. I think that former U.$.
attorney Eric Holder understood this quote well when he made his
statement about the U.$. being a nation of cowards: >“it’s easy to
pretend that we don’t see or understand the problem if we are afraid to
make the necessary sacrifices to arrest and remedy the injustices of
despotic governments acting under the pretense of humyn compassion and
divine guidance.”
I recently helped a seemingly kind and capable correctional officer
to examine the historical, cultural, and economic connections between
the antebellum slave trade. slave patrols, and the modern prison
industrial complex, with the militarized police state of the modern era.
He sheepishly admitted “well, I need a job, and this one’s legal.” I
reminded him of the U.$. government’s former policy of Indian removal
and open genocide, and asked if he would have participated in the scheme
had he been alive in the 1820’s. He mumbled something inaudible and just
kind of slithered away. Amerikkkan policy – foreign or domestic – holds
no quarter with what is virtuous! This is par for all fascist regimes.
People who parrot the ridiculously insipid “amerikkka is the greatest
nation on Earth!” are the most delusional and obtuse cowards in the
world.
I’m not implying that there aren’t some great things about amerikkka.
Anti-slavery revolutionary John Brown is one of the most honorary humyn
beings ever, much like Hamas in Palestine today. I am saying that being
the most deranged, murderous thief in the world wouldn’t make me a great
guy. It would make me a deplorable monster. The people in I$rael are not
Hebrews, and their ancestors were never slaves to any nation on the
African continent. None of those people would survive a day toiling in
the Egyptian sun, much less years, decades, and centuries. I can,
however, easily see them selling out the anti-colonial revolutionaries
for 30 pieces of silver, and oppressing others as colonial slave
traders. Their British, Spanish, and French ancestors did the same thing
to the Tainos, Cherokees, Fulanis, Maoris, and countless others that
they’re doing to Palestine: invasion, enslavement, and systematic
genocide. It’s the nature of the beast. A stand against colonialism is a
stand against genocide. Uhuru!
The October 7th attack that was launched by Palestine in the war for national liberation is but a response to their colonization from the hands of the settler colonialist Israel. For decades the Palestinians have maintained a consistent push for freedom to live without the threat of genocide at their doorstep. The Chicano nation overstands the need to struggle under the brute heel of colonization, our occupied territories – like the Palestinians – will not be free until the oppressor nation is overthrown point blank period! For this reason Aztlán stands with the Palestinian people in their freedom struggle.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry since 7 October 2023, 2,670 Palestinians have been killed [as we go to press that number has doubled] and Israel has continued to spread its disinformation in regards to the cause of the savagery unleashed by Israel. The truth is the Israeli war on Palestine has the full backing by Chief Colonizer in the World – the United Snakes. The U.$. completely ignores the decades of war crimes Israel has unleashed on Palestine, from white phosphorous cluster bombs to terrorizing generations of Palestinians with death and psychological warfare.
Today the U.$. propaganda “news outlets” snivel about 20 alleged U.$. citizens being supposedly held in Gaza. [By the time this article went live, Hamas had released two elderly prisoners who reported being handled “gently” and seemingly treated better than many prisoners who read Under Lock & Key in the United $tates.] Once again the people here in these occupied territories are being fed snake oil in preparation for U.$. Special Ops to enter Gaza and provide full technical and logistical support for its settler brethren. For this reason we hear a lot about allegations of violence from groups within Palestine. But how about the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was murdered on Friday the 13th of October 2023 after Israel unleashed a brutal shelling on Palestine?
The Chicano nation stands with Palestine and welcomes the wrath of resistance that oppression harvests.
As prisoners our imprisonment stultifies our social consciousness,
our isolation prevents us from receiving information about the world
from social interaction and direct experience. We are expected to relate
to the world – and form our opinions about it and what should be done in
it – through the ruling class’s media; if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t
happen. The way it’s shown is how it is.
All of the mainstream media sources claim objectivity, but they don’t
practice it. How can news be objective when the very language is biased
as in the I$raelis always being “allies” and the Palestinians always
being “terrorists?” This is obvious in the reporting being done by the
mainstream media and the U.$. government as it pertains to Hamas’ attack
on I$rael. The “terrorist attack” narrative is being shoved down our
throats. With their half-truths, omissions, spins, etc, they have led
the masses to conclude that what we are being told is the truth. This is
evident in my peers’ responses to the ongoings of the Middle East.
I encourage all prisoners to ascertain the truth of the matter via
conducting their own research. Because whatever the news story, trusting
and believing it as it is laid out is the most beneficial practice to
the ruling class and their “allies”.
The forthcoming is by no means an exhaustive piece, nor a diatribe.
My intention is to provide you with some context as it pertains to the
conflict between I$rael and Gaza. This conflict dates back to when the
Ottoman Empire ruled the region. Prior to WWI, the area now known as
I$rael was known as Palestine and was part of the Ottoman Empire. During
WWI, as the fall of the Ottoman Empire became imminent, the governments
of France and Great Britain signed the Sykes-Picot Agreements on 16 May
1916. France and Great Britain agreed “to recognize and protect an
independent Arab state or a confederation of Arab states” upon the
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In December 1917, Palestine was
occupied by the Allied Forces under General Allenby of Britain. After
WWI, the Allied powers divided the former Ottoman Empire into mandates
and Great Britain was given a mandate from the League of Nations to
govern Palestine.
In 1917, before the British mandate, the native Arab population
accounted for approximately 94% of the total population. Under the
mandate from 1922 to 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased
by approximately 725%. During the twenty-year British mandate, violence
was used by Jewish settlers to establish territory. As Jewish
immigration into Palestine continued, Britain refused to recognize
Palestinian right to self-government. The Zionists resorted to violence
to hold the ground they gained and to press toward their ultimate
aspirations of a Jewish state in Palestine.
On 29 November 1947, the U.N. voted to divide Palestine into separate
Jewish and Arab states and make Jerusalem an international city. The
Arabs rejected this plan, which was later dropped. After the
announcement of this plan, violence erupted in Palestine and within
three months, 869 people died and 1,909 people were injured in
Palestinian-Jewish clashes. Jewish paramilitary attacks on Palestine
villages led to the mass exodus of Palestinian Arabs to other areas of
Palestine as well as other countries. The displacement of over 750,000
Palestinians from their land during this period is referred to as the
Nakba, or catastrophe. The violence escalated as the neighboring Arab
states (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan) joined the
hostilities and fought what came to be known as the 1948 Arab-I$raeli or
Middle East War.
After the British mandate expired on 14 May 1948, I$rael declared its
independence as a state. The U.$. and the USSR subsequently recognized
I$rael. The I$raeli forces were well-armed and well-trained and quickly
overpowered the forces of the intervening Arab states. By the end of the
war, I$rael occupied most of the territory of Palestine, with the
exception of the area along the West Bank of the Jordan River (known
since as the “West Bank”) and a strip of land along the Mediterranean
Sea (known since as the “Gaza Strip”).
In 1948, the Arab-I$raeli war ended with the signing of the bilateral
armistice agreements between I$rael and Egypt, I$rael and Lebanon,
I$rael and Jordan, and I$rael and Syria. The purpose of these agreements
was to reach a formal peace treaty within six months, but it ultimately
failed.
In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and barred I$raeli ships
from using it along with the straits of Tiran, another shipping route.
[ULK editor: this is a precedent for what Yemen
is doing to stop ships to I$rael in the Red Sea today.] I$rael, who
was aided by Britain and France at the time, then invaded Egypt. The
Soviet Union, who was an ally of Egypt, threatened I$rael with nuclear
retaliation if they did not exit Egypt. This threat forced the U.$. to
pressure the British, French, and I$raeli forces to withdraw.
Subsequently a peacekeeping force was deployed by the U.N.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 in
Egypt. The purpose of the PLO was to unite Arab groups and liberate the
Palestinian territories through armed struggle. The PLO would later
become co-opted by the United $tates and I$rael and change its name to
the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In 1967, Egypt ordered the U.N. forces to leave and closed the
Straits of Tiran to I$rael again.
This sparks the Six Day War. I$rael attacks Egypt and later Jordan
and Syria, capturing Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Sinai
Peninsula.
From 1973 until 1979 – when the Camp David Accords peace deal was set
up by U.$. President Jimmy Carter and signed by Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat and I$raeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin – war raged
unchecked.
As all prior peace agreements the Camp David Accords peace deal was
short-lived. In 1987 Palestinians organized by the recently created
Hamas staged the first of the two uprisings [intifadas], in Gaza, I$rael
and in the West Bank, using mass boycotts, civil disobedience and
attacks on I$raelis. More than 50 I$raeli civilians were killed. From
1987 to 1990, the Palestinians and Hamas held numerous protest
demonstrations to which the I$raeli Defense Forces (IDF), special
forces, police, and I$raeli settlers responded with live ammunition,
indiscriminate beatings of Palestinians, as well as other means of
oppression. The primary focus of Hamas was to spread its Islamist
ideology and respond to the immediate needs of the Palestinian people,
particularly their need of basic services and psychological need to
resist I$rael’s brutal and racist military occupation of Gaza and the
West Bank.
After the PLO sold out the Palestinian struggle for national
liberation by signing the Oslo agreement with I$rael in 1993 the people
of Gaza supported Hamas becoming a political structure. Subsequently
they elected members of Hamas into positions of local leadership, then
ultimately as their overall national leadership. Hamas has remained
relatively free of pressures and outside influences. They have set up
social support programs to help provide for basic needs like food and
medical care that I$rael has been blocking for decades now. The
Palestinian people took up arms against I$rael and its illegal
settlements that have been murdering Palestinians, especially children,
and increasingly stealing their land. In 2006 the Palestinian people
elected Hamas as their national political leadership in place of the PA
despite knowing the United $tates and I$rael would retaliate by cutting
all funding they were giving to prop up the neo-colonial PA, and scraps
they were tossing to the already ruined Gaza economy. So if we are to
keep it real Hamas is a reflection of and carrying out the will of the
Palestinian people.
In 2008, I$rael launched a major military campaign against Hamas. The
fighting ceased on 18 January 2009, with 1,440 Palestinians and 13
I$raelis killed. I$raeli forces killed Hamas’s military chief Ahmed
Jabani in a missile strike. The strike was part of an I$raeli operation
to eliminate weapons, and Hamas members in Gaza. In the wake of the
death of their military Chief, Hamas made it clear that the “gates of
hell had been opened.”
From 2012 up until the most recent attack by Hamas there have been
constant clashes between Hamas and I$rael. If you noticed there have
been more Palestinians murdered. Even after the attack that occurred on
October 7, over 15,000 [and counting] Palestinians have been killed,
including people of all ages. The I$raelis have prevented any
humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, they have had Gaza under a blockade
for 16 years, and they have had over 2 million Palestinians confined to
a 147 square mile open air prison. It is axiomatic that violence begets
violence. The oppressor should never holla “terrorist attack!” when the
rooster is simply coming home to roost.
In yet another act of terrorism, Shareen Abu Akleh, a
Palestinian-amerikan journalist, was targeted and killed by the
illegitimate state of I$rael and its military. The I$raeli state, its
occupation of Palestine, and its armed forces are and have been backed
by the united state’s ruling class since 1932. On 11 May 2022, while on
the job, covering an I$raeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in
the West Bank, she was maliciously assassinated.
Shareen Abu Akleh became a thorn in the side of the I$raeli state as
a result of her continuous on the spot coverage of daily state
repression, human rights violations, and Palestinian genocide. She
covered many detentions, home demolitions (which Palestinian homes were
targeted in, and demolished to force them to relocate for I$raelis)
military raids of schools and universities, and Masjids, and killings of
Palestinians. This brave frontline work placed her on I$raeli hit
lists.
Shareen Abu Akleh was a journalist for decades and a Palestinian
revolutionary-nationalist, who being a trailblazer in her field,
inspired many Palestinian and Arab wimmin to serve their people through
the work of liberation journalism.
Her funeral brought out tens of thousands of supporters, mostly
Palestinian, in Jerusalem. As pallbearers carried sister Shareen, the
I$raeli military attacked them, and further disrupted the occasion with
malicious zionist violence against Palestinian nationals.
Sadly, the colonization of Palestine, the Apartheid regime of I$rael,
and violent and fatal repression of native inhabitants is all apart of
the imperialist system. What does imperialism look like? It looks like
land theft, it looks like millions of people living without power or
plumbing, it looks like bombing and shelling of homes, schools,
hospitals and finishing the job by attacking refugee camps. It looks
like storming universities, confiscating study materials, it looks like
the process of erasing an entire human group, and that’s exactly what’s
taking place in Palestine. There will be many who call for justice for
Shareen Abu Akleh, but the sad truth is that justice for her and justice
for the Palestinian nation can only be achieved with the end of the
I$raeli occupation.
FREE THE LAND!!! FREE
PALESTINE!!!
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is a grassroots
initiative that began in the early 2000’s to gain international support
for the occupied Palestinian nation against I$rael’s continued military
suppression, genocide and land theft.
In recent years the BDS movement has indeed gained international
support, even in the face of reactionary pro-imperialist backlash from
the states who support genocide, land theft and military crimes.
The goal of BDS is to isolate I$rael on the international field by
upholding the “simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the
same rights as the rest of humanity”.
Students around the world have been pressuring their schools and
universities to join the ‘Academic Boycott’, initiated in 2004 by the
Palestinian campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of I$rael
(PACBI). As student activism again comes to life here in the United
$tates, it is important that students engage in internationalist
frameworks. Amerikan student activists should support the academic
boycott of I$rael, which is part of the overall BDS movement. Students
should do this not as a mere moral cause, but the understanding that
over 50% of the U.$. states strongly support the I$raeli
military-apartheid-colonization, so much so that 35 states have Anti-BDS
laws. They support the frequent military raids of Palestinian
universities under the pretext of ‘countering terrorist activities’, the
imprisonment and murder of student activists peacefully protesting,
closure of schools and the recent I$raeli military move to arbitrarily
control what is and isn’t taught in universities. A new government
procedure allows the military to restrict visiting professors who teach
subjects supposedly ‘not relevant to Palestinians’.
In the United $tates, the free flow of ideas has begun to be brought
to an end. Book bans, Don’t Say Gay laws, the backlash against Critical
Race Theory, what’s next? Will the same reactionaries rally police/
military force to suppress your student demonstration? The book Chican@ Power and
the Struggle for Aztlán has been banned in prisons in many parts of
occupied Aztlán. Will the reactionaries prevent your free thought?
NEWSFLASH THEY ALREADY ARE! Students in North America should pressure
their institutions to join the Academic boycott and the wider BDS
movement. END ALL COLLABORATION WITH THE ILLEGITIMATE STATE, until
Palestine is free.
MIM(Prisons) adds: One of the first essays many
students of MIM study is On Contradiction by Mao Zedong. In it
Mao explains how change must come from within. The liberation of
Palestine depends on an effective national liberation struggle from
within Palestine, but it can be assisted by resistance to the funding
and arming of the I$raeli state by Amerikans whose government is the
primary prop of I$rael. A strong anti-imperialist movement in this
country would be able to limit the sale of military goods to I$rael,
Ukraine and anywhere else where the empire wants to fight wars against
its enemies without sending its own troops.
Notes: (1) ‘Palestinian-american journalist
assassinated,’ Monical Hill, FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3 (2)
‘Academic fortify boycott of Israel’, Raya Fidel,
FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3
The Republic of Aztlan extends our arms in solidarity with the
Palestinian people. Why should the liberation of Palestinian people be
so important to us Chicanos? It is because we share the legacy of
colonialism; a struggle for national liberation; a common destiny when
it came to empire-building of white nations; we share the common
experience of forced expulsion from our homelands; and we share the same
oppressor – world imperialism.
We will examine the five reasons that the Chicano nation should find
solidarity with our oppressed nation brothers and sisters in
Palestine:
We share a common thread of 100+ years of colonization;
We share a common thread of a struggle for national liberation;
The commonality in our histories is that both Palestinians and
Chicanos share a common destiny and historical role when it comes to
world imperialism. In the U.$. the doctrine of manifest destiny
justified land theft and genocide as a divine right of a specific
nation’s people. In the U.$. those people were the Euro-Amerikan
settlers. In Palestine, the Arabs face land theft and genocide which is
based on a belief that I$raelis have the religious right to said land
and therefore exterminating Palestinians and taking their land is an
unfortunate necessity in creating a supposed Jewish state.
With this idealist religious justification, forced expulsion has been
unleashed on the Palestinian people. We recall that in the 1950s,
Operation Wetback expelled 1-2 or more million Mexican people whether
they were born in the U.$. or Mexico didn’t matter.
Our oppressors are the same - world imperialism. At this point, the
primary contradiction in the world is with imperialism and the oppressed
nations. This is how Chicano liberation is inextricably linked to
Palestinian liberation.
The I$raeli-Palestinian conflict is not the product of ancient ethnic
nor religious hatred, nor is it about modern religious hatred either. It
is the tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land –
one claim being idealist and the other being historical materialist. It
is the outcome of a 100-year-old colonial occupation by Zionists and
later I$rael, backed by the British, the United States, and other major
imperial powers. This project is about the national bourgeoisie of a
persecuted religious minority in Europe speaking for all Jews in every
corner of the world (from Russia, Iraq, Ethiopia, Spain, the United
$tates, etc.) into building a powerful homeland granting them protection
which will be gained through eradication of an indigenous population. It
is about the rendering of the Palestinians as non-people, writing them
out of the historical narrative as if they never existed and denying
them basic human rights. It depends on the metaphysical idea that all
Jewish groups from all around the world all with different history,
language, culture, territory, and psychological make up all belong to
one nation because of religion. It feeds off of the anti-semitic idea
that Jews are outsiders in the various respective countries they reside.
Yet to state these incontrovertible facts of European colonization —
supported by innumerable official reports and public and private
communiques and statements, along with historical records and events —
sees I$rael’s defenders level charges of anti-Semitism and racism. We
ask the question: what is more anti-semitic? The claim that says zionism
requires an ethnic cleansing and assimilation of various historically
Jewish communities around the planet into the model European Jewish
groups? Or the claim that says Jews don’t belong in our country and they
should live in their own place where no one has to deal with them?
Edward Said, a Palestinian intellectual of the famous book
“Orientalism” who grew up in British occupied Palestine summarized:
“This is a unique colonialism that we’ve been subjected to where they
have no use for us. The best Palestinian for them is either dead or
gone. It’s not that they want to exploit us.”
Zionism was birthed from the evils of anti-Semitism. It was a
reaction to the discrimination and violence inflicted on Jews,
especially during the savage pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe in the
late 19th century and early 20th century that left thousands dead. The
Zionist leader Theodor Herzl in 1896 published “Der Judenstaat,” or “The
Jewish State,” in which he warned that Jews were not safe in Europe, a
warning that within a few decades proved terrifyingly prescient with the
rise of German fascism.
Britain’s support of a Jewish homeland was always colored by
anti-Semitism. The 1917 decision by the British Cabinet, as stated in
the Balfour Declaration, to support “the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people” was a principal part of a misguided
endeavor based on anti-Semitic tropes. The British elites, including
Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, also believed that Jews could never be
assimilated in British society and it was better for them to emigrate.
It is telling that the only Jewish member of Prime Minister David Lloyd
George’s government, Edwin Montagu, vehemently opposed the Balfour
Declaration. He argued that it would encourage states to expel its Jews.
“Palestine will become the world’s ghetto,” Balfour warned.
This partially turned out to be the case after World War II when
hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, many rendered stateless, had
nowhere to go but Palestine. Often, their communities had been destroyed
during the war or their homes and land had been confiscated through
fascist brutality. Those Jews who returned to countries like Poland
found they had nowhere to live and were often victims of discrimination
as well as postwar anti-Semitic attacks and even massacres.
These first Jewish settlers knew they needed an imperial patron to
succeed and survive just like the early Euro-Amerikan settlers needed
sponsors from their old countries. Their first patron was Britain, which
sent 100,000 troops to crush the Palestinian revolt of the 1930s and
armed and trained Jewish militias known as the Haganah. The savage
repression of that revolt included wholesale executions and aerial
bombardment and left 10% of the adult male Arab population killed,
wounded, imprisoned or exiled. After the British left after the
contradiction between the settlers and the British became antagonstic,
the Zionists’ second patron became the United States, which now,
generations later, provides more than $3 billion a year to I$rael.
I$rael, despite the myth of self-reliance it peddles about itself, would
not be able to maintain its Palestinian colonies without its imperial
benefactors. This is why the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement
historically frightened I$rael. It is also why Chicanos should support
the economic boycott of I$rael as well.
The early Zionists bought up huge tracts of fertile Palestinian land
and drove out the indigenous inhabitants. They subsidized European
Jewish settlers sent to Palestine, where 94% of the inhabitants were
Arabs but once colonialism began to look bad in the post-World War II
era of decolonization, the colonial origins and practice of Zionism and
I$rael were whitewashed and conveniently forgotten in I$rael and the
West. In fact, Zionism — for two decades the coddled step-child of
British colonialism — re-branded itself as an anti-colonial
movement.”
“Today, the conflict that was engendered by this classic
nineteenth-century European colonial venture in a non-European land,
supported from 1917 onward by the greatest Western imperial power of its
age, is rarely described in such unvarnished terms,” Khalidi writes.
“Indeed, those who analyze not only I$raeli settlement efforts in
Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights but the
entire Zionist enterprise from the perspective of its colonial-settler
origins and nature are often vilified. Many cannot accept the
contradiction inherent in the idea that although Zionism undoubtedly
succeeded in creating a thriving national entity in I$rael, its roots
are as a colonial settler project (as are those of other modern
countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). Nor
can they accept that it would not have succeeded but for the support of
the great imperial powers, Britain and later the United States. Zionism,
therefore, could be and was both a national and a colonial settler
movement at one and the same time.”
Much like the United $tates, I$rael too was started by the outcasts
of the old world who were more useful in the new world (North America
and Palestine respectively) than the old (Europe). Through venturing
through North America old colonialism was able to gain a major section
of primitive accumulation (land conquest and enslavement of our First
Nation and New Afrikan brothers), and transform itself into modern
imperialism; and through the outpost that is I$rael, modern imperialism
was able to export its finance capital safe and sound into middle east
proper.
One of the central tenets of the Zionist and I$raeli colonization is
the denial of an authentic, independent Palestinian identity. During the
British control of Palestine, the population was officially divided
between Jews and “non-Jews.” One time I$raeli Prime Minister Gold Meir
said:
“There was no such thing as Palestinians … they did not exist.”
This erasure, which requires an egregious act of historical amnesia,
is what the I$raeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called the
“politicide” of the Palestinian people. Khalidi writes, “The surest way
to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical
connection to it.” Chicanos have been subjected to the same name erasure
by the U.$. government’s push to call us Hispanics, Latinos, or Mexicans
and erase our Chicano name which is fundamentally based on national
identity.
The creation of the state of I$rael on May 15, 1948, was achieved by
the Haganah and other Jewish groups through the ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinians and massacres that spread terror among the Palestinian
population. The Haganah, trained and armed by the British, swiftly
seized most of Palestine. It emptied West Jerusalem and cities such as
Haifa and Jaffa, along with numerous towns and villages, of their Arab
inhabitants. Palestinians call this moment in their history the Nakba or
the Catastrophe.
Since 1948, Palestinians have heroically mounted one resistance
effort after another, all unleashing disproportionate I$raeli reprisals
and demonization of the Palestinians as terrorists. But this resistance
has also forced the world to recognize the presence of Palestinians,
despite the feverish efforts of I$rael, the United States, and many Arab
regimes to remove them from historical consciousness. The repeated
revolts, as Said noted, gave the Palestinians the right to tell their
own story, the “permission to narrate.”
I$rael is an apartheid state that rivals and often surpasses the
onetime savagery and racism of apartheid South Africa. Modern I$raeli
society is infested with metaphysical racial chauvinism with “Death to
Arabs” being a common popular chant at I$raeli soccer matches. I$raeli
mobs and vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such
as Im Tirtzu, carry out indiscriminate acts of vandalism and violence
against dissidents, Palestinians, I$raeli Arabs. The government of
I$rael has promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews
that eerily resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews
in Nazi Germany. The I$raeli educational system, starting in primary
school, is an indoctrination machine for the military. The I$raeli army
periodically unleashes massive assaults with its air force, artillery
and mechanized units on the largely defenseless 1.85 million
Palestinians in Gaza, resulting in thousands of Palestinian dead or
wounded.
The Zionists could never have colonized the Palestinians without the
backing of Western imperial powers whose motives were driven by
anti-Semitism. Many of the Jews who fled to I$rael would not have done
so but for the virulent European anti-Semitism, that by the end of World
War II saw 6 million Jews murdered. I$rael was all that many
impoverished and stateless survivors, robbed of their national rights,
communities, homes, and often most of their relatives, had left. It
became the tragic fate of the Palestinians, who had no influence in the
European pogroms or the Holocaust, to be sacrificed on the altar of
hate.
Don’t forget that the Obama administration resupplied I$rael in the
middle of their slaughter of innocents in Gaza in 2014. Obama, Biden,
Trump the democrats and racist corporate media are all complicit with
the war crimes against humanity that I$rael is committing. On top of
this, the various police forces of Amerikkka utilizes exchange programs
with the state of I$rael to trade intelligence and train in I$raeli
tactics of suppressing Palestinian resistance in the urban areas. Those
same tactics will be implemented on the ghettos, barrios, and
reservations to discipline entire communities of oppressed nations. Back
in the George Floyd uprisings, the streets were littered with gas
canisters which claimed “Made in I$rael.” It got to a point Palestinian
activists were sharing counter-police tactics online for us in how to
deal with those tear gas and police tactics.
As revolutionary nationalists, we highlight the necessity for
solidarities for not only our nations but for all oppressed nations to
gain their self-determination. We also call to combat anti-semitism and
metaphysical views of what nations are which give to movements like
Zionism in the first place. For these reasons, the Republic of Aztlan
and the Chicano Nation finds solidarity with Palestine. From the river
to the sea, Aztlan and Palestine will be free!