Anonymous
Palestine: Intersectional Solidarity
Statements from Afghans, Iranians, Hongkongers, Tibetans, Kurds, Syrians, Taiwanese, Uyghurs, and Ukrainians
Excerpts from “On The Allies We’re Not Proud Of: A Palestinian Response to Troubling Discourse on Syria”
Published October 12, 2016.
“We, the undersigned Palestinians, write to affirm our commitment to the amplification of Syrian voices as they endure slaughter and displacement at the hands of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. We are motivated by our deep belief that oppression, in all of its manifestations, should be the primary concern of anyone committed to our collective liberation. Our vision of liberation includes the emancipation of all oppressed peoples, regardless of whether or not their struggles fit neatly into outdated geopolitical frameworks.
“We are concerned by some of the discourse that has emerged from progressive circles with regards to the ongoing crisis in Syria. In particular, we are embarrassed by the ways in which some individuals known for their work on Palestine have failed to account for some crucial context in their analysis of Syria.” [...]
“We will no longer entertain individuals who fail to acknowledge the immediate concerns of besieged Syrians in their analysis. Despite reaching out to some of these individuals, they have shown an unwillingness to reflect on the impact of their analysis. We regret that we have no choice left but to cease working with these activists whom we once respected.
“We would like to encourage others who are guided by similar principles to do the same.”
Read full letter at joeyayoub.com
Afghans & Iranians on Palestine
Published October 9, 2023.
The issue of Palestine is the issue of statism’s bankruptcy! In recent days, we have witnessed a renewed conflict in the Palestinian region and an attack by the Islamist[1] group Hamas on the lands under the control of the Israeli government, which was unprecedented in the past years or even decades. This incident shows more than anything that the Palestinian issue, which everyone liked to consider a “dead” issue, is still alive and with no apparent end in sight, at least as long as the governments exist!
The ancient land of Palestine belongs, first of all, to the people of this land. The people who once had a peaceful and happy life are now being slaughtered for decades in the meat grinder of nationalist and Islamist ideologies and the temptation to form Jewish, Arab, and Islamic governments. The lives of the Jewish people, the Arab people, and others living in this region are being played as pawns by the governments and corrupt politicians inside and outside this geography, and the opportunity for a healthy and safe life is taken away from them.
From the United States to Iran with their interferences, from the Israeli government suppressing and usurping the land of the Palestinian Arab people to Islamist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who have used innocent people as human shields for their reactionary and inhumane ideology, they are all complicit and responsible for this situation. even if they appear to be the opposite and enemies to each other.
Palestine is a perfect mirror of what anarchists have been shouting throughout history: As long as governments exist, there will be no peace and security.
Signed,
Federation of Anarchism Era, Anarchist Union of Afghanistan & Iran Instagram: @asranarshism | Twitter/X: @anarshist
Hongkongers & Tibetans on Palestine
Published on October 20, 2023.
We must embrace a truly liberatory politics that recognizes the shared fates of all fighting against oppression.
As overseas Hongkongers and Tibetans based in the US, UK, and Canada, we wholly condemn the Israeli apartheid state’s settler-colonial occupation of Palestine and support Palestinian liberation. We call on the US, UK, and Canadian governments to withdraw military support to Israel, demand Israel to cease its attacks on Gaza, and end the genocidal siege. We also call on our fellow exiled and diaspora communities to stand in solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
Solidarity does not entail conflating different experiences of oppression and suffering. However, we hope to point out that colonizers often share the same tools. The People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s elite police academies have sought to “explore the successful experience of Israel’s anti-terror strategies” to apply to East Turkestan. China’s Minority Ethnic Commissioner has suggested the state should draw upon Israeli settler strategies—as well as historic American and Russian expansionism—in its own colonization of Uyghur and Tibetan land. As our oppressors and colonizers borrow tactics from each other, we, as the oppressed and colonized, lend each other our understanding and solidarity. It is in this vein that we urge fellow Hongkongers and Tibetans to understand Palestinian suffering in its own context.
The Palestine-based Birzeit University’s Union of Teachers and Employees have said: “We do not need to speak of our right to resist, for it is not a right, but a way of being and survival for Palestinians” and that “there is no moral equivalence between the colonizer and the colonized.” Despite how mainstream media portrays the events in Gaza, we must be clear that this tragedy is not a conflict between two equal sides, let alone sparked by unprovoked aggression by Palestinians against Israelis. Supported by multiple major superpowers with vast resources, Israel has threatened and displaced Palestinians over the last 75 years. These displacements and the military violence used to enforce it has marked itself in the collective memory of Palestinians as the Nakba, literally catastrophe. Israel has systematically crushed Palestinian civil society and dispossessed them of their land over decades.
This current campaign against Gaza shows the extent of the power Israel holds over Palestinians. Israeli officials have cut off food, fuel, water, and electricity in Gaza after Hamas’ attack. Israel is bombing hospitals, schools, and homes—even using white phosphorus in densely populated areas, which violates international humanitarian laws. As Israeli historian of Holocaust Studies Raz Segal puts it, “Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza, with hundreds murdered and thousands injured every day. Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians, instructing millions to relocate from North to South Gaza in less than a day—then proceeding to bomb the only escape route along with another humanitarian corridor. The UN has decried Israel’s plan as one which will have “devastating humanitarian consequences.” We mourn the elders, wounded, disabled, and all those who are unable to flee to so-called “safer terrain.”
It is crucial to emphasize that our solidarity as Hongkongers and Tibetans comes from understanding this long historical perspective of colonialism and apartheid. Our solidarity includes grief for all victims who have borne the cost of violent settler colonialism, a project that spills blood inside and outside the fence. Israel and its allies have been consistently speaking in the language of genocidal violence towards Palestine, suppressing many attempts at nonviolent responses from Palestine, such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. The constant suppression of nonviolent tactics with violence has led to this moment.
Some of our own movements hold to principles of nonviolence, but we recognize other forms of resistance that were crucial in our movements’ histories. We call attention to how liberals’ emphasis on “nonviolence” is often used to delegitimize decolonial struggles. We also highlight the hypocrisy of Western media in their portrayal of different decolonial struggles. As Tibetans—a people who are fetishized as ideal “nonviolent resistors”—we strongly condemn the ways in which the West has deployed the rhetoric of nonviolence to distract from the genocide unfolding in Palestine. In a similar vein, we remember the silence and inaction from the international community during the 2018–2019 March of Return, when Palestinians peacefully marched towards the border and were shot at indiscriminately. 266 Palestinians were killed and over 30,398 wounded, 16,027 of whom were children. We also wish to emphasize the ways in which nonviolent protest has been actively criminalized through anti-BDS Laws, as well as the policing and banning of Palestine Solidarity Protests in France, Germany, and numerous other nation-states.
The PRC has politically and economically supported Israel alongside the US, even as it performatively supports the Palestinian cause. This has made it incredibly difficult to translate the experience of resisting violent regimes to our communities, let alone to those who have never had the experience of being caught between oppressors. Few understand the terrible toll of grappling with such strategic and tactical questions, when an oppressed people have exhausted every possible peaceful option, only to be met with ever more state violence at every turn.
These are questions we have grappled with in our own movements for self-determination. In many such movements, we have asked: what constitutes proportional response to oppression? What is justified violence? Who on the international stage can offer us material rather than symbolic support? Even when some in our movements pursued tactics that some of us disagreed with, we refuse to accept that they delegitimize the entirety of our movements—instead, we struggle through the contradictions and manifest the movements that we want to see.
We call on those in our communities to be in solidarity with Palestine—to reject a shallow perfunctory politics that does not uphold nor affirm the humanity of the Palestinian people, and to embrace truly liberatory politics that recognizes the shared fates and humanity of all fighting against oppression. From this essential solidarity, we call on those in our communities to bring our knowledge of Chinese collaboration with Israel, such as Chinese investments, technology, and trade support. We encourage our communities to use this information to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign and identify more ways to interrupt the supply chains that support Israeli apartheid. Words are free. Actions are felt.
From the river to the sea!
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world.”
— Nelson Mandela, Address by President Nelson Mandela at International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People, Pretoria, 4 December 1997.
Signed,
Anonymous Tibetans and Hongkongers
Read the Chinese version here: https://lausancollective.com/2023/overseas-hongkongers-tibetans-solidarity-palestine-chinese/
Kurds on Palestine
Published on October 18, 2023.
Statement of solidarity with Palestinians, Armenians, and all children of occupation.
As our Kurdish communities endure the violence carried out by yet another Turkish offensive against the Autonomous Administrationo of North and East Syria, we want to affirm our unconditional solidarity with all nations living under colonial violence.
In the past few weeks we have seen the complete ethnic cleansing of Arsakh by Azeri forces, an escalation of attacks by Turkey on public infrastructure, governing bodies, and civilians in Rojava, and we are currently watching Israel carry out a genocide in Gaza.
We refuse to carry the burden of justifying our struggles as bombs rain down on our schools and hospitals. We refuse to entertain the notion that depraved heads of state can patiently be persuaded to acknowledge our humanity. We refuse to appeal to the moral senses of immoral warmongerers who view all of us, collectively, as a target.
The distinction between right and wrong is as clear as the devastation we bear witness to every day. As one side wages war to continue a legacy of subjugation and oppression, the other fights in defense of its freedom and existence.
Our right to exist is undeniable. Our right to live on our land is unquestionable. Any attack on our right to self-defense is a call for our extermination.
Freedom is in sight.
Signed,
CityKurds Instagram: @citykurds
Syrians on Palestine
Published November 10, 2023.
We, Syrians united in the revolutionary struggle against the Assad regime and its imperialist sponsors, stand firmly and unequivocally with the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and across historic Palestine, in their fight for liberation from Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid.
The scale of the current violence in Gaza is unprecedented. A besieged population is trapped under bombardment with no safe space to flee to. Close to 10,000 have been killed in the Israeli onslaught, more than 3760 of whom are children, as thousands more remain trapped under rubble. Hospitals, schools and homes have been deliberately targeted. Prohibited weapons such as white phosphorus have been used against a civilian population, in the most densely populated place on earth. Water, electricity and food supplies have been cut and aid is not getting to those in need. Hospitals, overflowing with the injured, are on the brink of collapse. Israel has been given a green light for this slaughter by western states as the Arab dictatorships stand by. In the West Bank, scores of Palestinians have been killed in recent days, as occupation forces and settlers try to drive more people from their homes, and attacks on and arrests of Palestinians have increased across historic Palestine. And we remember those Palestinians languishing in prison, hostages to the Israeli occupation.
Yet this Israeli war against the Palestinian people did not start on 7 October. It dates back to the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the subsequent expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land since 1948. The Palestinian cause started with the occupation of Palestine by the settler colony of Israel which has since perpetuated massacres, mass expulsion, erasure, detention and apartheid rule against the Palestinian Indigenous population. We fear such measures and more land-grabs will increase under the current far-right government in Israel which has made very clear its racism, savagery and genocidal intent.
Our solidarity is rooted in our inherent humanity and shared culture, history and heritage. Prior to the British and French occupations and advent of the modern nation states within Sykes-Picot borders, the peoples of bilad ash-sham were closely connected. Since the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands in 1948, we Syrians have adopted the Palestinian cause as our own. This has been reflected in our poetry, music, civic discourse and armed resistance. Syrians welcomed Palestinian refugees as they arrived in our cities, and Palestinians in Syria became embedded within the fabric of our society.
Whilst the Syrian people have always stood with the Palestinian cause, the Assad regime has used it as a rhetorical tool which, far from liberating Palestine, has instead led to increased oppression within Syria’s borders.
During the 1967 war, as defence minister, Hafez al-Assad ordered the Syrian army to retreat from the Golan Heights before any Israeli troops had arrived. The Syrian Golan has been subject to brutal Israeli occupation and colonisation, severed from the Syrian homeland and intentionally marginalised by the Assad regime and wider region. The Golan Heights remain confined by Israeli colonisation, the genocidal Assad regime and geo-political schemes.
When the Lebanese civil war erupted, Hafez al-Assad loudly declared Syria’s support for the Palestinian-Muslim-Leftist alliance against the pro-Israel Falangists. But when the Falangists appeared at risk of defeat in 1976, Assad ordered the Syrian army to intervene against the pro-Palestinian alliance. The Assad regime slaughtered up to 1500 Palestinian civilians in camps in Lebanon, most notably at Tel Za’atar.
At home, the regime declared a State of Emergency which suspended Syrians’ political and civil rights in the name of resistance to Israel, all the while carefully protecting the false border with the occupied Golan Heights. Both Syrians and Palestinians were arrested if they dared take any cultural, political or military initiative against the Israeli occupation. One case is that of Tal al-Mallouhi, a Syrian teenager who blogged in support of Palestine. She wrote articles and poems which encouraged Syrians, Arabs and Muslims to do more to help Palestinians. For this ‘crime’, the Assad regime threw her in prison in 2009. She remains in prison today.
When our revolution erupted, Syrians and Palestinians in Syria stood shoulder to shoulder. We worked together to supply food and medicine to besieged communities, to organise strikes and marches, and to build democratic alternatives to the murderous regime. Because Palestinians and Syrians stood together for freedom and dignity, the Assad regime attacked Palestinian camps as fiercely as it assaulted Syrian cities. The Palestinian camp in Daraa and the Raml camp in Lattakia were among those bombed and besieged. The Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, was known as ‘the capital of the Palestinian diaspora’. Its residents initially adopted a position of neutrality in the revolution, but for many that changed in May 2011 when the regime encouraged Palestinians to demonstrate on the Golan border to commemorate the Nakba and then failed to intervene as youth were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. In December 2012, the Abdul Qadir Al Husseini mosque, was shelled by regime warplanes, killing many of the internally displaced people who were sheltering inside. A five-year siege was imposed on the camp and residents were subjected to slow starvation and a lack of essential supplies. Comparisons were made at the time with the brutal Israeli (and Egyptian) imposed siege on Gaza. Following intense bombardment in April 2018 which destroyed much of the camp’s infrastructure, families were forcibly displaced, for many this was a second Nakba. Scores are now prevented from returning, as their homes have been expropriated under new ‘development’ plans from which regime loyalists benefit – despite the objections of former residents. The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) has documented 4,048 Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011. Of these, 614 died under torture in regime prisons and 205 died due to the siege on Yarmouk camp. Others were killed by regime bombing or execution by regime loyalists.
We do not wish to centre ourselves, but expose the interconnectedness of our struggles. Syrians feel deep solidarity with the Palestinian plight, one which comes from the shared experience of resistance to tyranny, a desire for freedom and self-determination, and the trauma of war. In towns and cities across the country, Syrians have taken to the streets to protest the genocide currently underway in Gaza and show solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. In Aleppo, doctors, who have faced the regime and Russia’s targeting of hospitals, have protested against Israel’s targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip. In Idlib, humanitarian workers, who know what it is like to pull children from the rubble, stood to show their solidarity. In Sweida, where daily protests continue against the regime, the Palestinian flag flew high. Numerous towns in northwestern Syria have taken to the streets for Palestine, despite a serious military escalation over the past month and being subjected to daily bombing including the use of white phosphorus by the regime on civilian homes.
Northwestern Syria is currently facing the most intensified bombardment by the regime since 2020, wherein over 120,000 Syrians have been internally displaced in the last month alone. In the diaspora, we have joined protests in the countries of our exile. We know the experience of displacement and dispossession – we have lived a Nakba of our own. Syrians stand with Gaza because we share the horror and pain of state violence – we mourn every Palestinian death as our own.
We are outraged, but not surprised, by the response of the ‘international community’ and its lack of meaningful action to immediately stop the massacre in Gaza. Syrians faced the same silence and betrayal when calling for a no-fly zone to cease the number of deaths, in the earlier years of the revolution. Despite campaigns, the call fell on deaf ears and we were left to fend for our own.
We Syrians, call for an immediate ceasefire and a just resolution to the Palestinian question, rooted in self-determination and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. We are appalled by the hasbara, Israeli narratives and ‘War on Terror’ discourse which seek to dehumanise Palestinians, de-legitimise the Palestinian resistance and justify the Israeli onslaught, and recall the way the regime, Russia and Iran use similar methods to discredit our struggle. We reject disinformation spread by propagandists, conspiracy theories and racists with wich we ourselves are too familiar with. We condemn those who have stood with the Syrian struggle but fail to stand with our brothers and sisters in Palestine, and those who support the Palestinian resistance but fail to support Syria’s struggle for freedom. Mutual and intersectional solidarity is essential, our struggles are one, our freedom each depends on the freedom of the other.
Signed:
(Follow the link below to read the full list of signatories.)
Statement of Free Syrians in solidarity with the Palestinian people
Taiwanese on Palestine
Published on November 28, 2023.
Collective Statement on Solidarity with the Palestinian People: New Bloom is issuing the following collective statement to voice our solidarity with the Palestinian people. As a leftist pro-Taiwan independence organization, we find it important to make explicit not just our support for a free Palestine because we unequivocally oppose all genocides and settler-colonizer occupations, but also because of the ties between the Palestinian and Taiwanese struggles for self-determination. We believe it is also important to call out those within the Anglophone and Sinophone left who are supportive of Palestine and China purely as a challenge to U.S. imperialism, such as but not limited to the pro-unification left in Taiwan. Our stance as an organization is to continuously be critical of all empires, including non-Western empires such as China and Russia, and continue to stand with those fighting for self-determination, from Taiwan to Ukraine to Palestine. Taiwan itself is the product of multiple empires, undergoing four centuries of serial settler colonialisms that have and continue to affect Indigenous peoples here. We at New Bloom believe in every peoples’ right to self-determination at every level and to be free of their oppressors.
It has now been over fifty days since Israel began military strikes on Gaza’s civilian population, following the attack by Hamas that took place on October 7th. As Taiwanese leftists who believe in Taiwan’s political independence–and more fundamentally, as human beings–we stand in solidarity with Palestinians. We are issuing this statement as part of a planned series of events engaging the Taiwanese public and Taiwanese diaspora on present events, and linking Taiwan’s struggle for self-determination to the Palestinian freedom struggle.
Whether in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkistan, Palestine, or beyond, we believe in the universal right to self-determination and liberation from oppression. Taiwan’s own democratic freedoms were hard-won after decades of authoritarian one-party rule during the White Terror period, not to mention Taiwan’s own settler colonial history and its lasting effect on Indigenous peoples–it is our history that has led us to this perspective. At present, Taiwan’s self-determination and de-facto independence continues to face daily military threats from China.
Not long after October 7, Taipei 101 – Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper–lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag. This is hardly the first time that Taipei 101 has lit up for questionable political actors. In March 2022, Taipei 101 lit up with a message of welcome for former Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It has been the case for a long time that Taiwan has been framed within a campism that dictates alignment with right-wing governments that are believed to have some use in warding off the military threat of China. We know that performances of “support” such as these are cynical and self-serving, and it is with this context in mind that we choose to stand in solidarity with other peoples in the world facing oppression rather than whitewash authoritarian actors as like-minded allies that supposedly share values with us. We believe in the affirmation of humanity and building solidarity between peoples over clambering for conditional recognition from nation-states.
We acknowledge that many in Taiwan draw comparisons not between Palestine and Taiwan, but Taiwan and Israel as benefactor states of US military power. In this comparison, Taiwan is equated with Israel as a small nation-state surrounded by larger powers hostile to it, and China with Hamas as symbols of anti-Western forces threatening democracy and destabilizing regional harmony. This viewpoint highlights a trend in Taiwanese society in which Taiwanese people desire unconditional alignment with what is perceived as “the democratic West,” while failing to acknowledge that the same Western powers that nominally support Taiwan, too, fail in the test of adherence to democratic values.
In the struggle against oppression, there are no islands unto themselves–none of us are free until all of us are free. Yet, we have observed much of the left fall into simplistic binaries that compromise their ability to stand for freedom for all. There has been, for example, the continued willingness of some leftists to ignore the highly questionable views of certain political actors if they are supportive of self-determination for Palestinians–never mind that perhaps they may be the same actors who dismiss the genocide of Uyghurs because of their rose-tinted view of China, justify Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, or in fact, have a history of promoting white supremacist and anti-Semitic viewpoints.
For one, it should go without saying discrimination in any form has no place on the left and one cannot oppose some genocides while being apparently supportive of others. But this continues the reductive, simplistic worldview of many who are nominally leftists–siding with those who back authoritarian actors of any stripe so long as they oppose the US and “the West”. At the end of the day, this campist worldview is the logical end for any leftist who has come to conflate leftism and nationalism–our basis for supporting self-determination is not rooted in nationalism, whether for ourselves as Taiwanese or other identities.
Neither is China any salvation from the US empire–it is simply another empire. China conducts substantial trade with Israel and provides it with surveillance technologies that have been developed through the digital enclosure and detaining of Uyghurs and other “ethnic minorities.” Discourse from the most hardline Chinese nationalists sometimes speaks of “Keeping the island, not the people” when it comes to Taiwan–genocidal rhetoric not unlike that which Israel uses against Palestinians. At the very least, Chinese invasion means not “liberation” for us but bloody warfare and interminable military occupation.
But China sees fit to embrace the Palestinian cause to try and erode the US’s claim to a moral high ground. And we are fully aware of how the Palestinian Authority has historically backed China’s claims over Taiwan–though let it be said that neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas are the Palestinian people, and one should never conflate states with peoples. This conflation is precisely what the Israeli state does in justifying genocide with the veneer of eliminating Hamas and attempting to claim that any who criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic.
Historically, there has been little connection between Taiwan and Palestine, but much more informal diplomatic activity between Taiwan and Israel since 1993. Hence, the persistence of such views come as no surprise–and we are very familiar with how calling for self-determination for one’s self unfortunately does not always entail calling for self-determination for all peoples.
Islamophobia and racism are present in Taiwan, which has perhaps led to greater attention to events in the world elsewhere, such as seen in Taiwan’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And by contrast, Taiwan has stronger trade and technological ties with Israel.
To this end, we find it concerning that many of the voices who have expressed solidarity for Palestine in Taiwan on the left have only been those voices who are of the Taiwanese pro-unification left. As with their Western counterparts, such individuals express support for Palestine and opposition to Israel because they see the shadow of the US empire behind Israel. And, similarly, these are individuals silent on the crimes that take place in China against Tibetans, Uyghurs, and others–they, too, are among those that may be vocal on some genocides in the world but entirely silent on those committed by their preferred empire of choice. Those in Palestine or who stand in solidarity with Palestinians should not misread them as true allies who act on the basis of genuine moral conviction, but rather as opportunistic actors who nominally support Palestinian liberation while being bad faith actors elsewhere.
The presence of bad faith actors in the global Palestinian solidarity movement–particularly in Taiwan–points to how many on the left who otherwise claim to be internationalists are attentive to genocides in select regions of the world but not others, and at times, even being active genocide deniers.
A famous video from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests shows a young man riding on a bicycle toward the demonstrations. When questioned by a Western journalist why he is going there, he cheerfully replies, “It’s my duty.”
This, too, is what we believe to be our duty. We support Palestinians’ right to self-determination not out of self-interest, and irrespective of what their views on Taiwan are–just as we also supported the A4 Movement in China even if it may be that many Chinese did not have views supportive of Taiwan’s self-determination. To this end, we support Indigenous peoples’ struggle for self-determination in Taiwan as they resist Han settler colonialism, and recognise the necessity of working towards truth, reconciliation, and transitional justice in the Taiwanese independence movement. Our support for Palestinian self-determination is politically and morally consistent with our advocacy for Taiwanese independence. From the river to the sea–freedom for Palestine means a step toward freedom for us all. In closing, we would like to offer the following resources for constructing solidarity between peripheries:
https://linktr.ee/chinesegazainfo
Signed,
New Bloom Instagram: @newbloommag | Twitter/X: @newbloommag | https://newbloommag.net/
Uyghurs on Palestine
Published on October 27. 2023.
Free Uyghur Now stands with the people of Palestine and unequivocally condemns the genocidal acts in Gaza.
These last two weeks of retaliative violence and collective punishment are among the latest in a long history of Israel’s unjust and illegal apartheid regime. Palestinians have been forced into a slow death through mass murder and blockade, in what is the world’s largest open-air prison, killing hundreds of civilians each year for over 75 years.
Since the siege, Israel has targeted universities, schools, hospitals, and homes, killing thousands of innocent Palestinians, bombing even those attempting to escape.
We recognize that the displacement of more than a million Palestinians in Gaza, starvation of essentatial needs, and intentional massacre of Palestinian men, women, and children constitutes as ethnic cleansing and genocide.
From Occupied East Turkestan to Occupied Palestine, we reject any form of occupation. We urgently call for an immediate ceasefire, recognition and end to the genocide in Gaza, access to humanitarian aid, and the dismantlement of Israeli occupation.
How you can help Palestine:
Share news and elevate Palestinian voices — education and awareness is important. Follow @ahmedhijazee, @motasem. Mortaja, @motaz_azaiza, @byplestia for live updates from the ground. Engage in the BDS (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions) movement to ensure that your money is not funding the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.
Donate to organizations that provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians, such as Medical Aid for Palestinians (map.org.uk) and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (pcrf.net).
Read books; The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, On Palestine, Fateful Call your representative and demand for an end to the Gaza genocide.
Signed, Free Uyghur Now Instagram: @freeuyghurnow
Ukrainians on Palestine
Published November 2, 2023.
We, Ukrainian researchers, artists, political and labour activists, members of civil society stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine who for 75 years have been subjected and resisted Israeli military occupation, separation, settler colonial violence, ethnic cleansing, land dispossession and apartheid. We write this letter as people to people. The dominant discourse on the governmental level and even among solidarity groups that support the struggles of Ukrainians and Palestinians often creates separation. With this letter we reject these divisions, and affirm our solidarity with everyone who is oppressed and struggling for freedom.
As activists committed to freedom, human rights, democracy and social justice, and while fully acknowledging power differentials, we firmly condemn attacks on civilian populations – be they Israelis attacked by Hamas or Palestinians attacked by the Israeli occupation forces and armed settler gangs. Deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. Yet this is no justification for the collective punishment of Palestinian people, identifying all residents of Gaza with Hamas and the indiscriminate use of the term “terrorism” applied to the whole Palestinian resistance. Nor is this a justification of continuation of the ongoing occupation. Echoing multiple UN resolutions, we know that there will be no lasting peace without justice for the Palestinian people.
On October 7 we witnessed Hamas’ violence against the civilians in Israel, an event that is now singled out by many to demonize and dehumanize Palestinian resistance altogether. Hamas, a reactionary islamist organization, needs to be seen in a wider historical context and decades of Israel encroaching on Palestinian land, long before this organization came to exist in the late 1980s. During the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were brutally displaced from their homes, with entire villages massacred and destroyed. Since its creation Israel has never stopped pursuing its colonial expansion. The Palestinians were forced to exile, fragmented and administered under different regimes. Some of them are Israeli citizens affected by structural discrimination and racism.
Those living in the occupied West Bank are subjected to apartheid under decades of Israel’s military control. The people of the Gaza Strip have suffered from the blockade imposed by Israel since 2006, which restricted movement of people and goods, resulting in growing poverty and deprivation.
Since the 7th of October and at the time of writing the death toll in the Gaza Strip is more than 8,500 people. Women and children have made up more than 62 percent of the fatalities, while more than 21,048 people have been injured. In recent days, Israel has bombed schools, residential areas, Greek Orthodox Church and several hospitals. Israel has also cut all water, electricity, and fuel supply in the Gaza Strip. There is a severe shortage of food and medicine, causing a total collapse of a healthcare system. Most of the Western and Israeli media justifies these deaths as mere collateral damage to fighting Hamas but is silent when it comes to Palestinian civilians targeted and killed in the Occupied West Bank. Since the beginning of 2023 alone, and before October 7, the death toll on the Palestinian side had already reached 227. Since the 7 of October, 121 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the occupied West Bank. More than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are currently detained in Israeli prisons. Lasting peace and justice are only possible with the end of the ongoing occupation. Palestinians have the right to self-determination and resistance against Israeli’s occupation, just like Ukrainians have the right to resist Russian invasion.
Our solidarity comes from a place of anger at the injustice, and a place of deep pain of knowing the devastating impacts of occupation, shelling of civil infrastructure, and humanitarian blockade from experiences in our homeland. Parts of Ukraine have been occupied since 2014, and the international community failed to stop Russian aggression then, ignoring the imperial and colonial nature of the armed violence, which consequently escalated on the 24th of February 2022. Civilians in Ukraine are shelled daily, in their homes, in hospitals, on bus stops, in queues for bread. As a result of the Russian occupation, thousands of people in Ukraine live without access to water, electricity or heating, and it is the most vulnerable groups that are mostly affected by the destruction of critical infrastructure. In the months of the siege and heavy bombardment of Mariupol there was no humanitarian corridor. Watching the Israeli targeting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us. From this place of pain of experience and solidarity, we call on our fellow Ukrainians globally and all the people to raise their voices in support of the Palestinian people and condemn the ongoing Israeli mass ethnic cleansing.
We reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel’s military actions, and we consider the calls to avoid civilian casualties by Ukraine’s MFA belated and insufficient. This position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades, including voting in the UN. Aware of the pragmatic geopolitical reasoning behind Ukraine’s decision to echo Western allies, on whom we are dependent for our survival, we see the current support of Israel and dismissing Palestinian right to self-determination as contradictory to Ukraine’s own commitment to human rights and fight for our land and freedom. We as Ukrainians should stand in solidarity not with the oppressors, but with those who experience and resist the oppression.
We strongly object to equating of Western military aid to Ukraine and Israel by some politicians. Ukraine doesn’t occupy the territories of other people, instead, it fights against the Russian occupation, and therefore international assistance serves a just cause and the protection of international law. Israel has occupied and annexed Palestinian and Syrian territories, and Western aid to it confirms an unjust order and demonstrates double standards in relation to international law.
We oppose the new wave of Islamophobia, such as the brutal murder of a Palestinian American 6-year old and assault on his family in Illinois, USA, and the equating of any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. At the same time, we also oppose holding all Jewish people all over the world accountable for the politics of the state of Israel and we condemn anti-Semitic violence, such as the mob attack on the airplane in Daghestan, Russia. We also reject the revival of the “war on terror” rhetoric used by the US and EU to justify war crimes and violations of international law that have undermined the international security system, caused countless deaths, and has been borrowed by other states, including Russia for the war in Chechnya and China for the Uyghur genocide. Now Israel is using it to carry out ethnic cleansing.
Calls to Action:
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We urge the implementation of the call to ceasefire, put forward by the UN General Assembly resolution.
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We call on the Israeli government to immediately stop attacks on civilians, and provide humanitarian aid; we insist on an immediate and indefinite lifting of siege on Gaza and an urgent relief operation to restore civilian infrastructure. We also call on the Israeli government to put an end to the occupation and recognise the right of Palestinian displaced people to return to their lands.
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We call on the Ukrainian government to condemn the use of state sanctioned terror and humanitarian blockade against the Gazan civilian population and reaffirm the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. We also call on the Ukrainian government to condemn deliberate assaults on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
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We call on the international media to stop pitting Palestinians and Ukrainians against each other, where hierarchies of suffering perpetuate racist rhetoric and dehumanize those under attack.
We have witnessed the world uniting in solidarity for the people of Ukraine and we call on everyone to do the same for the people of Palestine.
Signatures
(Follow this link for a complete list of signatories.)
https://commons.com.ua/en/ukrayinskij-list-solidarnosti/
This zine is a collection of solidarity statements published at Camas Books, a non-profit, volunteer-run, collectively owned, community bookstore and autonomous space. Located in Lekwungen Territory (Victoria, BC, Canada).
Instagram: @camasbooks Website: camas.ca
It was later edited by an anonymous anti-authoritarian located elsewhere on Turtle Island.
[1] Editors note: The editing team, which includes Muslims, feels that it is necessary to provide context for the term “Islamism” for a Western audience to combat ignorance and Islamophobic narratives. Islamism refers to currents of fundamentalist Islamic political thought that formed as a reactionary anti-imperialist response to Western colonialism. Islamist groups seek to establish Muslim majority states governed by conservative traditions of Shari’a and are inspired by a nostaligic and glorified Islamic past. Islamism is not representative of liberatory Islamic traditions practiced by Muslim communities fighting for an anti-authoritarian future.