The Pogrom, Indians, and Genealogies of the Israeli Settler-Vigilante

By Gary Fields

Republished from Monthly Review.

On February 26th of this year, the world witnessed an outbreak of untold savagery in the Palestinian town of Huwara perpetrated against town residents by vigilantes from nearby Israeli settlements. During this mayhem, settlers set fire to cars, businesses, and homes of Huwara residents, and killed one resident by gunfire as Israeli soldiers looked on and even assisted the perpetrators in committing these crimes. So depraved was this settler rampage that the Israeli military commander in the West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs described it as a “pogrom.”

The choice of the term, “pogrom” to label the carnage committed by these Jewish settlers was poignant. History is replete with examples of such mayhem committed against Jews by anti-Semitic European Christians, but the irony of Jews animated by similar kinds of racist animus toward the Palestinian “other,” and enlisting the same types of brutality against innocent Palestinian civilians, was particularly jarring. Sadly, it is no secret that Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has become routine in the Palestinian West Bank, especially in rural areas where groups of settlers target Palestinian farmers, often at gunpoint, while uprooting and setting fire to Palestinian croplands, especially olive trees (Fields, 2012).

At the time of events in Huwara, Israeli settler violence, was already on the rise, emboldened if not encouraged outright by the most settler-friendly, and arguably fascist government in Israel’s history. Trending at three attacks per day in February, settler violence is now averaging 7-9 daily attacks as documented by the Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din—with nary a condemnation by Israeli officials, and virtually no effort by Israeli authorities to prevent and punish this criminality.

Currently, as this settler regime continues its vengeful bombardment of Gaza, settlers in the West Bank have become even more brazen in their brutality—with Huwara as a model. Palestinian houses and cars are now being routinely targeted, vandalized, and set ablaze, Palestinian croplands ripped up and burned, and bodily attacks against Palestinians, above all olive harvesters, appear daily on the inventory of settler misdeeds.

In just one of countless incidents since October 7th, settlers in the West Bank town of Qusra near Nablus, shot and killed three Palestinians, and the following day attacked the funeral murdering another two men, ramming their cars into the funeral procession before stopping and opening fire on the procession. It is now the olive harvest in Palestine and in town after town, olive harvesters seeking to pick the crop confront setters with guns who threaten these Palestinians and order them off their own lands. Arguably the most revealing of this vigilantism in terms of motivation, however, occurred in the small Bedouin village of Wadi Seeq 10 kilometers East of Ramallah where settlers succeeded in terrorizing the residents so completely that the latter abandoned the village, fearing for their safety and leaving behind houses, livestock, and crops. Settlers have now taken possession of the village in what is surely a signal of the end game in this sinister activity.

It is tempting to view this settler violence as something so macabre and sinister as to be unique. There is, however, quite another way of understanding the Israeli settler-vigilante. This actor is actually the modern-day mirror image of a certain settler counterpart from the American colonial past. This genealogy not only imbues the Israeli settler with an identity as an historical actor. It enables a different kind of question to be posed about Israel settler violence: In what way is the vigilantism of the Israeli settler embedded in past colonial settler societies, and who is the Israeli setter-vigilante as an historical actor?

The Israeli Settler as Colonial Actor

In most major media accounts of settler terror against Palestinians, Israeli settler-vigilantes invariably escape critical categorization beyond the moniker of “extremist.” Portrayals of these perpetrators of violence invariably focus on the theme of fanaticism while presenting these figures as unsavory if misguided fringe elements in Israeli society. Such characterizations are naïve and incomplete.

The Israeli settler is the modern-day counterpart of a recurrent figure in settler societies worldwide but one specific example from American colonial history stands out in connecting the colonial past to present day.

In the early 19th century, in the American Southeast, most notably in Georgia, groups of settlers, believing themselves to be the deserving inheritors of American bounty and the rightful stewards of land in America, took it upon themselves to rid the landscape of those who would stand in their way. Their mission was to evict from the land those already anchored to the landscape whom these settlers believed to be impediments to their imagined vision of themselves and their rightfully dominant place on the landscape as ordained by God. Their target was none other than the Indigenous inhabitants of the American Southeast.

Motivated by theories of entitlement to land in the tradition of John Locke, and sentiments of superiority deriving from destiny and God’s will, these 19th century brethren of today’s Israeli setters squatted on Indian lands, burned Indian homes and croplands, stole Indian livestock and horses, and harassed and even killed Indians who failed to vacate their properties. These settlers, however, did not spring to life from any spontaneous impulses of self-organization.

For years, federal and state government officials along with voices from the white intelligentsia had been advocating publicly for the removal of Indians from the land contributing to a formidable “removal discourse” in American political, legal, and cultural life. These voices not only tolerated, but applauded acts of vigilantism against Indian groups as a useful instrument for helping accomplish what they were ultimately seeking through politics and the law—the removal of Indians from the landscape. Settler violence was a complement to this political, legal, and cultural climate. There was, in effect, a groundswell of support for Indian removal from the land, and the transfer of this group across the Mississippi to lands in the West. Settler violence was destined to play an integral role. What were the drivers of this project of removal and its complement of settler vigilantism in evicting Indians from their land?

Land Grab, Slavery, and Indian Removal

In the wake of the victorious Revolution against England, American colonial settlers were poised to be free of restrictions on acquisition of Indian lands that the English Crown had imposed on them. Nevertheless, administrations from George Washington through John Quincy Adams retained similar prohibitions on private acquisition of Indian land. Settlers who had expected freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the Revolution were furious at what they perceived as this betrayal.

Those in Georgia pressured the State into a “Compact” (1802) with the Federal Government in which the latter agreed to extinguish Indian title to lands in the State and reallocate the Indian lands to settlers. In the years that followed, settlers and state officials in Georgia, including the Georgia Congressional delegation as well as politicians from other federal and state jurisdictions, clamored for the Federal Government to act more decisively in extinguishing Indian title to land and evicting Indians from the landscape. Settlers, believed that they could hasten this process of displacement, and reap the bounties they believed themselves entitled to, by direct action on the land. What made conflict on the land seemingly more inevitable, however, and what elevated the role of settler violence against Indians in this conflict was an economy poised to transform not only the American South but the world economy as well.

In the early decades of the 1800s, following refinements in the cotton gin and newly developed hybrid strains of cotton, settlers, especially in Georgia, saw untold opportunities for cotton-growing with slave labor on plantations. Plantation agriculture, however, required land but much of the land in Georgia coveted by these would-be cotton growers was held by Creeks and Cherokees. Although the federal government was indeed securing land in Georgia from these tribes and reallocating it to settlers in the spirit of the Georgia Compact, settlers and politicians alike from the State demanded that the Government hasten the pace of these acquisitions and evict Indians from their lands. Finally, in 1828, settlers found a sympathetic voice in a fiery populist whose presidential campaign focused on a single issue—Indian removal. The candidate was Andrew Jackson.

A decorated army General who made a name for himself from campaigns against Indians, Jackson the populist also championed “states’ rights” when it came to Indian affairs. Following his election, Jackson in 1829 emphasized that if states themselves voted to extend their own laws over Indians, he would not enlist the power of the federal government to prevent it (Cave, 2003: 1332). Jackson was thus prepared to use both states’ rights and the federal government to remove Indians from their lands and transfer them to lands West of the Mississippi River.

Equally critical, Jackson was also amenable to direct action by settlers as a complement to an already well-established climate of fear associated with the campaign to remove Indians from their land and did not conceal his support for such efforts. In 1829, he famously signaled his advocacy of settler violence as a component of Indian removal when he suggested to a Congressman from Georgia who was irate at delays in extinguishing Indian title to land from the Georgia Compact: “Build a fire under them [Indians]. When it gets hot enough, they’ll move” (from Cave, 2003: 1339). Settlers who would build these fires had little reason to fear retribution from either federal or state authorities for their criminal actions.

In 1830, Jackson signed the legislation that defined his presidency and became the law of the land, the Indian Removal Act. Even before the Act became law, however, Cherokee and Creek Indians in Georgia, aware of the incendiary removal discourse within the halls of government and among the colonial population, alongside the violence being committed by settlers on Indian lands, began “voluntarily” removing themselves to lands in the West. In this sense, setter violence and intimidation was successful as a complement to the Law. One Cherokee chief, wrote to Andrew Jackson to complain that white settlers had invaded Indian country to “steal our property” and that federal soldiers in the area not only refused to help the Indians, but aided the vigilantes in hunting down and shooting Indians who resisted “as if…they had been so many wild dogs” (Cave, 2003: 1340).

The parallels with the actions of Israeli settlers are unmistakable. A highly charged legal and political climate, complemented by settler rampages on Indian lands in which authorities did nothing to stop these activities had rendered life impossible for Indians. The latter believed that they had little choice but to transfer themselves West and escape the violence.

Final Solution: Vigilantism and Transferring Populations

If settler violence prior to passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was critical in creating splits among Creeks and Cherokees and compelling large numbers of these tribes to move West voluntarily, a vast array of vigilante groups, emboldened by passage of the Removal Law, emerged after 1830 to finish the task of evicting Indians from their lands. From horse thieves known as “The Pony Club,” to various paramilitary formations engaged in burning homes and crops and terrorizing Indians populations, settler vigilantism became even more widespread in the aftermath of the Removal Act as a weapon against tribespeople who tried to resist the Law and remain in their lands.

By 1838, even Cherokee who had resisted the Indian Removal Act and remained steadfast in their homes, conceded that the incessant settler rampages against them, along with inaction by the authorities, left them no choice but to accept removal and move West. What ensued under the auspices of the Federal Government was one of the sorriest criminal events in American history, the death march of 60,000 Indians from the Southeast to Oklahoma known as “Trail of Tears.”

In effect, settler violence had become an unofficial but acceptable expedient for carrying out a policy of forcing Indians from their land and insuring the promise of economic opportunity for Georgia’s white citizen-settlers (Pratt, 2022). In many ways, settler vigilantes in the West Bank are staking out a similar role for themselves in the model of Huwara and Wadi Seeq. These vigilantes are involved in an unmistakable effort to make life for Palestinians so unbearable that the latter imitate their Indian brethren from the American Southeast and leave their lands.

In the end, settler violence in the service of Indian Removal in Georgia reveals an unsettling resonance with the Israeli settler-vigilante of today. The pogrom in Huwara and the countless incidents of Israeli settler vigilantism, both urban and rural, are essentially historical mirror images of the White man’s vision in the American Southeast, differing in time and place but aligned in their mutual determination to drive the Indigenous from their lands. This symmetry emphasizes once again that Palestine is not alone in its encounter with settler colonialism and its impulses of dispossession and ethnic cleansing. From the West Bank and Gaza, these impulses to subdue and subjugate Indigenous people through the most hideous kinds of carnage are on full display for the world. It is incumbent upon the world to wake up to this lesson of history and stop the madness that is now fully transparent for all to see.

References

Cave, Alfred A. (2003). “Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.” The Historian. Vol. 65 (6): 1333-1353.

Fields, Gary (2012). “This is Our Land’: Collective Violence, Property Law, and Imagining the Geography of Palestine.” Journal of Cultural Geography. Vol 29 (3): 267-91.

Pratt, Adam J. (2022). Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence, and the White Man’s Chance. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

The Battle Of Algiers Shows How Decolonization Is A Bloody And Messy Affair

By Eamon Tracy

On October 7th a group of around 2,000 Hamas militants breached a security barrier on the Gaza border astonishing the world and forever changing Israel’s sense of security. In response to that brazen attack, Israel has ruthlessly targeted 2.3 million people in Gaza who faced a siege for weeks facing an endless barrage of bombardments - which have so far amassed more than 25 times the tonnage of ordnance dropped on Hiroshima - and are currently experiencing a ground invasion by the IDF. Now more than ever, The Battle of Algiers is worth remembering. Not only is it a searing testament to collective resistance against foreign occupation, but it is also a reminder that rebellions or decolonization are a bloody procedure unfortunately full of atrocities.

It has been 75 years since the Nakba incident permanently displaced 720,000 Palestinians carried out by Israelis which occurred upon the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948. Professor Rashid Khalidi writes in his superb book The 100 Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017,

WHAT HAPPENED IS, of course, now well known. By the summer of 1949, the Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted. Some 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory that at war’s end became the new state of Israel had been forced from their homes and lost their lands and property. At least 720,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians were made refugees. Thanks to this violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who had been able to remain, barely one-fifth of the prewar Arab population. This seismic upheaval—the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, as Palestinians call it—grounded in the defeat of the Great Revolt in 1939 and willed by the Zionist state-in-waiting, was also caused by factors that were on vivid display in the story my father told me: foreign interference and fierce inter-Arab rivalries. These problems were compounded by intractable Palestinian internal differences that endured after the defeat of the revolt, and by the absence of modern Palestinian state institutions. The Nakba was only finally made possible, however, by massive global shifts during World War II.

Today, 2.3 million people have survived living in what some refer to as a concentration camp, or at the very least an open-air prison. 70 percent of the people residing in Gaza, which is 25 miles long and 5 miles wide, are refugees from the Nakba tragedy. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Most of the limited but necessary resources like electricity, gas, and water are controlled by the Israeli government. Around 70% of the well water is undrinkable. In Lowenstein’s excellent book The Palestine Laboratory published by Verso, he thoroughly details Israel’s local and global techno-fascistic rule. In the beginning, he bluntly states, Even the publisher of Haaretz, Israel’s most progressive, albeit Zionist, newspaper, admits it. “The product of Zionism, the State of Israel, is not a Jewish and democratic state but instead has become an apartheid state, plain and simple,” Amos Schocken wrote in 2021. And as Israel’s government moves further to the Right, while increasing Zionist settlements, Palestinians have been forced into a desperate corner.

Israel’s Zionist government was formed off the political project fostered by the activist Theodor Herzl. His project was founded on the principle of a Jewish supremacist state. At a fundamental level, this extends the colonial crisis beyond a territorial conflict into a larger issue that is both religious and ethnic. Over the decades of Israeli occupation a growing number of Ashkenazi Jews, from Europe or America immigrated to Palestine ultimately kicking more indigenous Palestinians off their lands. Some of these moments have been documented in viral videos, where settlers are seen callously taking grieving families’ homes.

After Algeria was suffering under French occupation for over one hundred and thirty years, The National Liberation Front, or FLN formed in 1954 as a paramilitary force to fight back. During colonial rule, a majority of the Arabs were treated as subjects with second-class status, and only a small minority able to transcend their lower status if they renounced their faith and culture. The FLN wanted a right to self-determination and self-governance following Islamic beliefs. Although religious, the ideology encompassed an inclusive Pan-Arab society. One which would not be prejudiced against any race or ethnicity. It even included the emancipation of Women and other values drawn from modernity. If you have a look at the daily lives and constraints of a citizen within Gaza, this second-rate status is all too familiar. 

An avowed Marxist, Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo wanted to capture the incredible true story of an occupied Algeria removing the yoke of colonial rule. Pontecorvo’s yearning for truth led him to film in a verite style with such stark realism, that it could fool a modern-day audience into thinking it is an old newsreel or documentary. Sharing screenwriting credit with writer Franco Solinas, the two Italians cared about international struggles and noticed their inherent underlying solidarity. In Sergio Corbucci’s The Mercenary, written by Solinas, his story centered on a Polish capitalist who has a road to Damascus moment where he teams up with a couple of proletarians and helps a revolt against the Mexican government during the 1910s. Pontecorvo and Solinas’s screenplay for Battle of Algiers was based in part on the memoirs of Yacef Saadi, who wrote them in prison after serving as a leader for the FLN.

The Battle of Algiers begins in 1957 where a group of revolutionaries are meeting their end. It opens with an Algerian man who is still recovering, having just been tortured by the French military. Enter, the commander Col. Mathieu (played by Jean Martin, the only professional actor in the entire cast) instructs the man to put on a French uniform. With tears in his eyes, the man does so begrudgingly. In the next scene, Col Mathieu is speaking to the revolutionaries led by Ali who are hidden in a wall. They are told to give up and the story cuts back to 1954.

Before the Algerian revolution was sparked, Ali was a hustler wielding cards to sucker unsuspecting French citizens. Subsequently getting into an altercation, he is sent upriver on a five-month stint in prison, where he witnesses an inmate being executed by guillotine. Upon his release, Ali is more than ready for revenge. In the wake of the attempted assassination of a French police officer being sabotaged, Ali discovers it was a test orchestrated by FLN leader El-Hadi Jaffar. Saadi Yucef who plays El-Hadi Jaffar and Samia Kerbash who plays Fathia were both actual members of the FLN. Upon passing this dangerous test, Ali is accepted into the organization. Then he is forced to navigate a world of violence, traitors, and a nation’s youth being exposed to traumatic experiences or mistakenly caught in the crossfire. His journey is nothing short of compelling - as are most of the fearless fighters showcased on screen. The targeted killings of military officers and police led the occupying force to inflict unbridled state-sanctioned pain against the Algerian rebels and noncombatants alike. In one scene a car full of French soldiers places a bomb outside a residential building killing scores who were sleeping inside their beds. Col Mathieu looks to ratchet up the unrest so he can give the French forces an excuse to carry out even more brutal retribution.

When exploring similar historical events, two of the foremost intellectuals W.E.B. Dubois and C.L.R. James both acknowledged the atrocities carried out by the likes of John Brown during his uprising that preceded the Civil War, and the Haitians during their Revolution against the French. Nat Turner, who inspired John Brown, was similarly a religious fanatic, whose gospel was also rooted in blood and brimstone. Both men were more than willing to take lives and a large number of innocent civilians were killed in the process. But Turner was enslaved and dehumanized along with other Blacks who were subjugated to some of the worst conditions known to humanity. His blind rage was not necessarily admirable, but it was understandable. And as Turner’s Rebellion killed around sixty people, two times as many Blacks were killed in response. Most of them uninvolved with Turner’s actions were nonetheless horribly executed by White mobs. In James’s Black Jacobins detailing the Haitian Revolution, the racism and extraordinary number of mass murders were appalling. In an even crueler twist of fate, Haiti has been ordered to pay France billions in reparations due to revenue lost for their slaves and colony.

Pontecorvo and Solina displayed an understanding of the consequences when targeting civilians going about their business in a public space. Especially in the iconic scene where a group of women remove their hijabs before cutting their hair - changing their appearance to look more like their European occupiers. Armed with explosives, they are instructed to blow up a cafe full of French civilians. It is a tough scene to watch yet these guerilla bombing campaigns of terror undoubtedly turned the course to the FLN’s strategic favor. These attacks combined with labor strikes were an attempt to hit the security and economic sectors hardest while promoting solidarity.

Since the blockade was placed on Gaza in 2007, only under extenuating circumstances, are Palestinians allowed to leave the open-air prison. Reports of cancer patients and other preventable diseases have led to unnecessary deaths that could have been avoided if they were allowed to travel to clinics outside Gaza. And a majority of young people have never experienced any life outside the towering 21-foot-high walls that surround them, chock full of surveillance, AI systems, snipers, or remote-controlled devices that can shoot citizens, as well as drones hovering overhead every moment. These capabilities are laid out, once again from The Palestine Laboratory,

The IDF uses extensive facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and mobile phones to document every Palestinian in the West Bank. Starting in 2019, Israeli soldiers used the Blue Wolf app to capture Palestinian faces, which were then compared to a massive database of images dubbed the “Facebook for Palestinians.” Soldiers were told to compete by taking the most photos of Palestinians and the most prolific would win prizes.48 The system is most extreme in the city of Hebron, where facial recognition and numerous cameras are used to monitor Palestinians, including at times in their homes, instead of the extreme Jewish settlers living there, who routinely express genocidal threats against the Palestinians. The IDF claimed that the program was designed to “improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population.” In 2022, Israel installed a remote-controlled system for crowd control in Hebron, a tool with the ability to fire tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets, and stun grenades. It was created by the Israeli company Smart Shooter, which claims to successfully use artificial intelligence when finding targets. Smart Shooter is a regular presence on the international defense show circuit and has sold its equipment to more than a dozen countries. Blue Wolf was a smaller version of the Wolf Pack database, which contained the personal details of virtually every Palestinian in the West Bank, including educational status, photos, security level, and family history. Soldiers in the West Bank were instructed in 2022 to enter the details and photos of at least fifty Palestinians into the Blue Wolf system every shift and were not allowed to end their shift until they did so.

In The Battle of Algiers, when a group of French civilians joyfully letting loose at a dance hall is suddenly cut short by an explosion inside the club, it was hard not to see the comparison between October 7th. On that day a music festival full of carefree civilians who consciously or unconsciously participated in an active occupation became both crossfire by the IDF and the intended targets by members of Hamas. Made up of mainly young men, who perhaps were unleashing decades of pent-up aggression. The actions are admonishable, the loss of innocent lives is tragic, and the horrific consequences are comprehensible.

Israel’s catastrophic response exposes how the manufactured so-called rules-based order on which there is a broad permissive framing of what are considered war crimes, historically leaves imperialists like them unpunished. Just the other day, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, when asked if the double-bombing of a refugee camp that killed one hundred and ninety-five people constitutes a war crime, said, “I'm not in a position to say if it is or it isn't”.

Because it does not fit the model of imperialist or colonialist propaganda, The Battle of Algiers is rarely shown on TV or streaming beyond the Criterion Channel. Thus, most modern audiences have not seen Pontecorvo’s masterpiece. And being in French, with subtitles filmed in black and white does not help it reach American viewers. But interestingly, The Battle of Algiers is one of the few films in Oscar history to be nominated in two separate non-consecutive years. Originally it was a foreign film nominee in 1966, and then again it was nominated for screenplay and direction in 1968. Furthermore, It was screened by the Pentagon in 2003 for officials and civilians to showcase the challenges of occupying a country that wanted anything but.

Following civil wars in the 80s against various Islamist groups, the FLN regained control of the country in 2002. To this day Algeria mostly remains a testament to a modern society and thriving culture - not being occupied by foreign powers trying to extract valuable resources and labor. Whereas Hamas was propped up by the Israeli government to undermine and destabilize the Palestinian Liberation Organization or the PLO. As usual with these Faustian arrangements - they come back to haunt you. Hamas is a religious fundamentalist organization with troublesome elements, yet it is also the only security force the Palestinians have to rely on. We do not need more religious fundamentalist countries but it should be up to the indigenous peoples to decide their future. The best hope we have right now is a ceasefire - and ideally a peaceful resolution that specifically addresses the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation.

Pan-Africanism, Palestine, and the Colors That Bind Struggle

By Shauntionne Mosley

I went to Europe for the first time this year. I stayed for 10 days. Mostly in Paris, but two of those days were spent in London. I took a train from Paris to London with the intention of going to the Notting Hill Festival - a festival I’ve heard about and had been planning on going to for some time now. While in London, I specifically chose my lodging in Brixton because it’s the city's Blackest neighborhood. It was also the location of the Brixton Uprising of 1981. If you know me, I love Black people, Black history, and revolutions. It’s a neighborhood I thought it would be easy for me to blend into, southern American accent or not. I wasn’t entirely wrong. I was surrounded by brown skin of every shade, 4c hair and natural styles, and various accents different from my own. This only increased when I went to the Notting Hill festival itself. Never have I been engulfed by so many people of the diaspora. The roads were barely walkable with the amount of people around me. And their flags: Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica (Jamaicans run London, ok?) and more… all draped on people’s bodies, hanging from the windows of apartments, flying proudly on the tents of different vendors. I cursed myself for not bringing my own. I was going to bring the Pan-African flag I keep at home, but my luggage was already filled to the zippers the day before I left the states. Maybe I could find one there, I thought. 

I went to three different vendors who were selling flags and none of them had Pan-African ones. One man had never even heard of it. I showed him a picture of it on my phone, and he shook his head and shrugged. “We don’t have American flags at Notting Hill,” he said with a chuckle and a thick Jamaican accent. That stung a little. To me, I wasn’t talking about an American flag. I rapidly (and playfully) explained the history of the Pan-African flag, how it was designed by a Jamaican man, and although it has been known to represent Black people in America, it’s really a symbol for the Black diaspora worldwide The vendor listened, then shrugged at me again. He said, “sorry, I’ll remember next year. I promise!” Then he went on to another customer and I went and got some curry goat.  I wasn’t angry at him for not knowing. Can’t even say I was surprised. I don’t expect those abroad to know about Black American history. Lord knows I didn’t learn more about the Black diaspora until college. No, this is not the first time my Blackness was overshadowed by my nationality. However, I did feel stupid again for not bringing my own flag. For it is why the Pan-African flag was created in the first place: Every Race Has A Flag but the Coon. 

I can’t speak for all Black Americans, but personally, I’m Black first and American second. To me, I’m an American because of a clause in the US constitution. I’m American because the African in me was violently beaten and bred out of my people. The continuous genocide of Palestanians in the Gaza Strip has confirmed this for me. As if American slavery, the police shootings of Black lives, disproportionate birth mortality rate of Black mothers, and blatant underfunding of overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods weren’t enough. The horrific deaths and intentional erasure of generations of people, and the bombings of hospitals and churches in Gaza do not only make the miserable migraine of colonization and the Civil Rights movement in America throb in my temple. These savage atrocities carried out by Israel, and funded by the US, force me to pose this question to the US government: how could I possibly be a “fellow American” when I’m Black?

Something that is darkly ironic and sinister about being Black and American during a genocide is when the president speaks. President Biden recently visited Israel and delivered a speech upon his arrival back to the Oval Office. “Good evening, my fellow Americans,” he started with. Was he talking to me? He’s the oldest president to be elected in US history and, like most presidents, from a wealthy family. While I dream of having a president that matches the median age of current America, and is a president that knows what a syrup sandwich is, President Biden continued: 

“The terrorist group Hamas unleashed pure unadulterated evil in the world, but sadly, the Jewish people know, perhaps better than anyone, that there is no limit to the depravity of people when they want to inflict pain on others.”

Better than anyone, he said. After visiting Israel, a country that is responsible for a land, air, and sea blockade over the Gaza Strip, and has been since 2007, making those in Gaza almost totally cut off from the rest of the world. While upholding severe restrictions on the movement of goods, information, and people. Restrictions that leave Palestinians dependent upon another country that has wanted them dead for 75 years. The president of the United States, a country that violently kidnapped people from Africa with the intentions of enslavement and relentlessly halted these people’s progress for 400 plus years. He is the leader of a country that led Native Americans down a Trail of Tears, occupied and abandoned Puerto Rico, and allowed ICE to put Latinx children in cages. 

I must mention that, in America, we learn about the horrors of the Holocaust from middle school through high school in every history class, while the horror history of the other ethnic groups that reside here are “elective” courses. This is not an oppression competition, but America has made it very clear on whose oppression should be discussed and mourned the most. The Never Again Education Act was signed into law by the president on May 29, 2020. The commitment to Holocaust education is written into American law. Meanwhile, the country’s own Black history curriculum teaches how slaves “developed skills'' that could be applied towards their pursuit of happiness and subjects like Black queer studies have been eliminated, the Black Lives Matter movement has been demonized, and reparations for descendants of enslaved Black people are deemed unreasonable despite historical precedence suggesting otherwise. Something the US government might know better than anyone. I doubt The Never Again Education Act will be teaching American students about that though. Or about the concentration camp that is Gaza. Nor will lessons go into detail about a Zionist prime minister committing a genocide. 

It wasn’t done on purpose, I’m sure, but the Palestinian flag has the same colors (aside from white) as the Pan-African flag. The colors of Palestinian flag are the Pan-Arab colors. Each of which represents the successors of the Prophet Muhammad who acted as religious leaders/government officials in Arab history (called caliphate or خِلَافَة). It was also  inspired by a verse crafted by one of the most beloved and emotionally honest poets of the 13th century, Safi al-Din al-Hili, when he wrote: 

White are our deeds, 

black are our battles, 

Green are our fields, 

red are our swords.

The Pan-African flags colors are red, black, and green. Created by Marcus Garvey, Red represents the color of the blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty, black is the color of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong, and green is the color of the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland. Both flags stand for these two oppressed groups and their persecution. These flags encourage pride in one’s people, even when there are others telling you there’s nothing to be proud of. The strife for liberation has been never ending for me and mine, and is a strife that Palestanians understand too well. Flagless in Notting Hill, I still danced, ate, and admired faces that looked like kin. I care about all the strangers I met, and felt a sense of relief looking out onto the sea of Black lives. Wishing I had my flag. This fabric of belonging, existence, and claim. Rebel flags must be flown from the river to the sea because the blood of innocent Brown and Black people murks the water. 

If Americans are not on the side of those who are oppressed — and from President Biden’s remarks, they are not — then this man with the highest title in this carnage fertilized land isn’t speaking to me and could never speak for me. I’m mourning the Palestinian past, present, and future that is currently being obliterated, cringing at the fact that the descendants of those who survive this won’t be able to trace their family history. Like Black Americans. I’m also doomfully thinking, maybe even selfishly, about the consequences that must surely come after yet another tragedy funded by America. And how these consequences will be applied to every ethnic group in America that has also been wronged by America; The ones who are only considered Americans in times of war or when we’re abroad and our passports are navy blue. If the soil of Palestine could talk it would cough up blood first, then scream. We the People must not let their, and our, screams go unheard. And we must not let their flags — nor their bodies, belongings, lineage, and livelihoods — disappear under rubble.

Germany Has a Historic Debt to the Palestinian People

By Marcel Cartier

The crimes of German fascism are of a magnitude so enormous that they are almost difficult to comprehend. Without question the most heinous in its breadth was the Holocaust, the systematic attempt by the Nazi regime to annihilate the Jewish people that ultimately led to the mass murder of around two-thirds of the European Jewish population. It is only correct that today’s German state would see itself as having a historic responsibility towards Jews, both at home and abroad. This point should be indisputable. However, there are divergent positions on what the nature of this responsibility should entail.

For the modern German state, being responsible means seeing the State of Israel as the primary representative of the Jewish people. It means muting any serious criticism towards Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Germany refuses to retrospectively assess how the country was established through ethnic cleansing, and certainly doesn’t actively challenge today’s status quo in which an system of occupation and apartheid prevails.

That solidarity with the self-professed Jewish state today goes beyond placing Israeli flags outside of official government buildings, where they have flown in the aftermath of October 7. It also explains why it was inevitable that Chancellor Olaf Scholz would end up in Tel Aviv just over a week later to express his condolences and offer an increase in military support, saying Germany’s place in hard times was “by Israel’s side”. The German state’s notion of “Never Again Ever” means ensuring Israel’s stability and security as a Jewish homeland. It sees expressions of anti-Zionism as inherently anti-Semitic.

Contrary to this view espoused by the German government is that Israel does not necessarily represent the Jewish people. This perspective either holds that Zionism as an ideology is inherently racist and rooted in settler-colonialism, or at the very least that the State of Israel today is an entity that engages in dispossession and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. This view places a distinction between critique of the Israeli state and anti-Semitism.

This position allows Jews themselves a sense of agency in being able to choose to either support Israel’s actions, or to stand firmly against the crimes that are carried out in their name. For those who agree with the latter, it means “Never Again Ever” applies equally to all scenarios that take on genocidal proportions, not merely to those claiming to safeguard the Jewish people.

Tough Times Opposing War Crimes in Berlin

These are difficult times in Berlin if standing up for Palestinian liberation – or even simply international law – are on your agenda.

Just after the bombs began being rained down on Gaza, Bernie Sanders visited Berlin to great fanfare. However, not pleased with his presence was the Social Democratic Party’s co-leader Saskia Esken, who cancelled an appearance alongside him. Why? Because he had the nerve to make a simple, humanitarian statement: “The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter who does it.” Apparently, Sanders – perhaps the most famous Jewish political figure in the western world - was displaying anti-Semitism by aligning with the Geneva Convention.

Demonstrations in support of Palestine, or those merely calling for a humanitarian pause or ceasefire, have been banned. In the German mainstream media, these protests have been billed as the work of “Hamas lovers” or “Jew haters.” In some cases, protests are literally banned minutes before they are set to begin, when hundreds have already assembled. When it comes to calling out war crimes, the German state has decided that the right to assembly that is enshrined in the country’s Basic Law can simply be ignored.

A cursory look at these illegal demonstrations over the last two weeks reveals that many Jewish organisations have also endorsed and actively participated in them, among them the Jewish Bund and Juedische Stimme. In fact, police have hauled off Jewish activists and arrested them, because Jews are not granted the agency to espouse their positions.

For those who are Palestinian, the ban on demonstrations by Berlin’s authorities means a complete targeting of their identity. When a German police officer arrests somebody for wearing a kuffiyeh, or schools in the capital ban the Palestinian scarf, they are saying the Palestinian identity is that of a terrorist.  

Palestinians are being threatened with deportation if they are proven to be supporters of Hamas, but also Samidoun - the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network associated with the Palestinian left (both organisations have now been banned). This means the possibility of Palestinians being uprooted not once (from their historic homeland), but twice (now from Germany).

The Other Germany and the Palestine Liberation Organisation

Although Germany’s post-war history has been shaped by attempts to deal with the crimes of the Nazi regime, this hasn’t always meant that German state entities have taken the view that the current state does towards Israel. The history of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, offers a very different perspective.

First off, it’s necessary to understand that the GDR was created principally as an anti-fascist state, something that was considered even more important than the construction of socialism. Its top priority was indeed “Never Again Ever,” which is why a much more robust de-Nazification process happened there than it did in the western part of the country.  

The new Federal Republic of Germany set up by the U.S., Britain and France became a country where Nazi ideologues were not only allowed to join the government, but were actively sought out for participation in the Cold War. On the other side, much of East Germany’s leadership knew first-hand what is felt like to be hounded and targeted by the Nazis – we should remember that the first concentration camps, after all, were set up for communists, and that they were accused of being part of the global “Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy”.

In 1948, the newly created Socialist Unity Party that was operating in the Soviet occupation zone that would become East Germany the next year, backed the creation of Israel, saying "We consider the foundation of a Jewish state an essential contribution enabling thousands of people who suffered greatly under Hitler’s fascism to build a new life".

Once it became clear that the new Israeli state was actually a reactionary entity that refused the right of return for the 700,000 refugees it had created, and enacted martial law against the Palestinians who remained, the SED leadership changed its tune. It reverted to the position long-held by the communist movement in regards to Zionism, which is that it was an expression of a reactionary, bourgeois nationalism that always sought the patronage of colonial and imperialism powers.

In 1973, the GDR set up official relations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Yasser Arafar. That same year, it had supplied Syria with weaponry for use in the Yom Kippur War against Israel. In 1975, East Germany voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination.

It is not merely coincidental that the PLO was supported by East Germany at the same time that another crucial liberation movement against minority rule, that of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, was also being given support from East Germany. The battle against apartheid was inextricably linked by the East German leadership to that of opposing settler colonialism in Palestine. This was all happening at the same time that West Germany held deep relations with the racist South African government, branding those who rebelled against this rule as “terrorists” - just as the Palestinians are referred to today. Given the similarities in their struggles, it’s no small wonder why Nelson Mandela once proclaimed upon the end of apartheid that, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

This history of the rival German states that existed for 40 years shows that there was no consensus on the question of whether Zionism could be seen as representing the legitimate aspirations of Jews as a whole.

Germany’s Dual Responsibility

It should be evident that today’s Germany has in fact not learned the lessons of history. It’s selective application of “Never Again Ever” is symbolic, but ultimately meaningless. It is complicit in Israeli war crimes, and those who espouse anti-fascist politics have a responsibility to stand against it. To fight against anti-Semitism should also mean fighting against imperialism, colonialism, and all forms of racial discrimination.

As the creation of Israel was agreed to by world powers against the backdrop of Nazi Germany’s attempt at exterminating the Jewish people, this means that the consequences – including the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab masses from what became Israel – should also be laid at Germany’s feet. It means that not only does Germany have a responsibility to the Jewish people – it also has a responsibility towards the Palestinian people. Simply put, Palestinians should not have to suffer for the crimes of Hitlerite fascism, whether at home or here in Germany.

Settler-Colonial Theology: From Lāhainā to Palestine

By Kieran McKenzie Clark

From grandstanding in the rubble after our fire in Lāhainā to posing on top of a tank in Palestine, Harvest pastor Greg Laurie is the poster boy for white Christianity in occupied lands. I went to Kumulani Chapel for over a decade (through its transition to Harvest). I got my undergraduate degree in religious studies... let me tell you something: this is what settler-colonial theology looks like. The corporate religion espoused by Harvest is performative and littered with internal contradictions; it is quite explicitly a demonstration of Plato's “Allegory of the Cave”. As a friend of mine noted, Laurie “was one of the early Trojan horse pastors that dressed Christofascist bullshit in a hip new package”. His church serves as a superstructure to reproduce Settler-Colonial/Capitalist society.

Harvest Pastor Greg Laurie walks among the rubble in Lāhainā

According to the four accounts of Jesus’ life held by Christians as Scripture, Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was here (on Earth) right now. It’s what Jesus is recorded to speak on the most. According to the authors of these gospels, Jesus teaches that this Kingdom lives within us (Luke 17.21) and is expressed through our actions and social relation to one another. The preachings on such a kingdom include an active identification and critique of coercive relations of power as well as the call to an alternative community based on a kind of interconnected care and service - a horizontal society of group messiahship. In other words, the gospel of the Kingdom is prefigurative and rooted in material reality; including love of enemies and the subversion of leadership through mutual service. A summary of such teachings is known as the "Sermon on the Mount”.

The gospel of Harvest looks different; their theology is the extraction of souls for the expansion of "heaven". This is because they have inherited the legacy and refinement of imperial theologies from settler-colonialists. It is a theology that is about empire, security, accumulation, and fame. This is why they are anti-intellectual; they have to be. They need to push theologies made up a couple hundred years ago like “The Rapture” because they need the escapism. They need to focus on the amassing of souls for God in relation to the damned to rationalize the inaction they take toward material reality. It is seated in the Capitalist delusion and game of infinite growth. This shows face blatantly. The "Greg Laurie" Bible - all the commodities with his name on it, the grandstands, the movies, the events, the shows, the endless multi-industry marketing; it is not for Jesus, because that's not what Jesus was about.

For Harvest, whether they are playing their imaginary heavenly infinite growth game or wealth-building game, it is about profiteering, growth, and security; and it serves to conceal inaction towards the material conditions of human beings. This is why Harvest at Kumulani will have a Hula show on Sunday morning but will never mutter a word on the diaspora or plight of the Kānaka Maoli. The decline of health, land, population, culture, and language of indigenous populations are of absolutely no importance to them. The motive of their evangelizing is simply the accumulation of imaginary numbers and the assimilation of those willing to conform. Because their theology serves to reproduce a particular kind of society: settler-colonialism. This is why their politics are based on American culture wars and U.S. foreign interests.

Laurie posing on top of a tank in Palestine.

Pastor Greg Laurie, despite frequently bringing up the topic of the state of Israel, has not a muttering word for the Palestinians and the abhorrent treatment they suffer under the Israeli government - not on the apartheid, expulsions, ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements, occupation, and (now accelerated) genocide. He is in unwavering support of Israel, attending nationalistic rallies and endorsing Zionism. Atrocities at the hands of Israel are outshined by a pretend eschatology. Laurie preaches novel dispensationalist theologies of a “rapture” in which there will be a time when Christian believers will literally rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” A sign of the times for this rapture in Laurie’s words is “the regathering of the nation Israel in their homeland”. Laurie conflates, which obscures, which conceals. He conflates the modern nation-state of Israel with ancient Israel, and he conflates the modern nation-state of Israel with the Jewish people. Thus, creating the illusion that if someone is an anti-imperialist or an outspoken critic of Israel, they must be antisemitic. This tactic produces and maintains the conditions for Zionism. The irony of course is that the kind of conflating being done by Laurie is anti-Semitic. It is in blatant disregard of Jewish anti-Zionists willing to condemn and illuminate the injustices perpetrated by the Israeli state and their policies towards Palestinians.

This theology (along with the normative social influence of the congregation) acts as a reciprocal and circular pattern in reinforcing and perpetuating settler-colonialism. This is why Harvest Riverside or other locations of the Harvest franchise import settlers to Maui from California to preserve their institution. Consequently, contributing to the reproduction of Capitalist structures in Hawai’i, which reinforces occupation, which continues the process of settler-colonialism. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Christianity serviced feudalism by validating its power structures. The Catholic Church produced the theology of the “divine right of kings'', ultimately maintaining feudalism. Pastors like Greg Laurie and church franchises like Harvest fill this role today as the ideological apparatus supporting Capitalism. The internal structure of Harvest from their theology to leadership is a reflection of the dominant economic-power structures. They commodified religion to sell white culture. Within this business model, they paint their brand's image with the American dream: Greg Laurie. From being Trump's spiritual advisor, to leading tours in Israel, to slapping his name on the Holy Bible and selling it. He is the poster child of American settler-colonial theology.

The United States empire as a settler-colonial project moved from 13 colonies to 50 states by imperial expansion; through ethnic cleansing, indigenous erasure, and the enclosement of lands into private property. The last territory to become a state was Hawai’i. Hawai’i became a territory through a joint resolution in Congress in 1900 prompted by the reactionary forces of nationalism during the Spanish-American War. There was no treaty of annexation because in 1893 the United States conducted an illegal military coup of the internationally recognized sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. This overthrow of the constitutional monarchy installed a provisional government that was facilitated by American missionaries and businessmen.

The violence of settler-colonialism that amalgamates the United States and Israel as they both seek to replicate, capture, and preserve structures of Capitalism is what informs Harvest's unwavering support of Israel and their mute dismissal of the material conditions of Kānaka

Maoli. Lāhainā town burnt to the ground on August 8th, 2023; Harvest at Kumulani is less than 10 miles away from the burn zone. While the U.S. occupation secured and maintained the conditions that made the devastation possible, Laurie co-opted the event to rewind his end-times business pitch of escapist eschatologies. As Israel commits war crime after war crime– targeting and bombing churches, mosques, hospitals, shelters, markets, and refugee camps– Harvest has only cranked up the volume on this sales pitch; effectively aiding in the manufacturing of consent for the genocide of Palestinians. They will never speak for the oppressed, not in Lāhainā, not in Palestine. They lavish themselves in the privilege and luxury of being white landowners in the imperial core of expanding empire. They rake in capital and 10s of millions of dollars and give tokens back. It is a scam. Unless you're buying enclosed patches of stolen land as private property from the money of people in your scheme, then it is profit.

Matthew 25.40-45 absolutely applies to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians - and the people supporting their regime. Luke 18.25 absolutely applies to Greg Laurie and his constituents. The Jesus of the gospel of Matthew is recorded to say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” At the time of my writing this, since October 7th, Israel has killed 1 child in Gaza every 15 minutes. It is the position and belief of Harvest that if these beloved children and families are of the Islamic faith (or anything “other” than Christian), they are getting blown straight to hell. In mid-October, posting about the fulfillment of “biblical prophecies”, Greg Laurie uploaded a photo onto Instagram asking “Are you watching for Christ's return?”. Their theological anthropology projects God as the white man. They would nail Jesus back to the cross if he “came back”.

It's Not a Hamas-Israeli Conflict: It's an Israeli War Against Every Palestinian

By Ramzy Baroud

Republished from MintPress News.

At one time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was Arab and Israeli. Over many years, however, it was rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli conflict.’

But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful.

The supposedly astounding Israeli victories over the years against Arab armies have emboldened Israel to the extent that it came to view itself not as a regional superpower but as a global power. Israel, per its own definition, became ‘invincible.’

Such terminology was not a mere scare tactic aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians and Arabs alike. Israel believed this.

The ‘Israeli miracle victory’ against Arab armies in 1967 was a watershed moment. Then, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, declared in a speech that “from the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem.”

In his thinking, this could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”

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The sentiment in Eban’s words echoed throughout Israel. Even those who doubted their government’s ability to prevail over the Arabs completely joined the chorus: Israel is unvanquishable.

Little rational discussion took place back then about the actual reasons why Israel had won and if that victory would have been possible without Washington’s complete backing and the West’s willingness to support Israel at any cost.

Israel was never a graceful winner. As the size of territories controlled by the triumphant little state increased three-fold, Israel began entrenching its military occupation over whatever remained of historic Palestine. It even started building settlements in newly occupied Arab territories, in Sinai, the Golan Heights and all the rest.

Fifty years ago, in October 1973, Arab armies attempted to reverse Israel’s massive gains by launching a surprise attack. They initially succeeded, then failed when the US moved quickly to bolster Israeli defenses and intelligence.

It was not a complete victory for the Arabs, nor a total defeat for Israel. The latter was severely bruised, though. But Tel Aviv remained convinced that the fundamental relationship it had established with the Arabs in 1967 had not been altered.

And, with time, the ‘conflict’ became less Arab-Israeli and more Palestinian-Israeli. Other Arab countries, like Lebanon, paid a heavy price for the fragmentation of the Arab front.

This changing reality meant that Israel could invade South Lebanon in March 1978 and then sign the Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt six months later.

While the Israeli occupation of Palestine grew more violent, with an insatiable appetite for more land, the West turned the Palestinian struggle for freedom into a ‘conflict’ to be managed by words, never by deeds.

Many Palestinian intellectuals argue that “this is not a conflict” and that military occupation is not a political dispute but governed by clearly defined international laws and boundaries. And that it must be resolved according to international justice.

That is yet to happen. Neither was justice delivered nor an inch of Palestine retrieved, despite the countless international conferences, resolutions, statements, investigations, recommendations, and special reports. Without actual enforcement, international law is mere ink.

But did the Arab people abandon Palestine? The anger, the anguish, and the passionate chants by endless streams of people who took to the streets throughout the Middle East to protest the annihilation of Gaza by the Israeli army did not seem to think that Palestine is alone–or, at least, should be left fighting on its own.

The isolation of Palestine from its regional context has proven disastrous.

When the ‘conflict’ is only with the Palestinians, Israel determines the context and scope of the so-called conflict, what is allowed at the ‘negotiations table,’ and what is to be excluded. This is how the Oslo Accords squandered Palestinian rights.

The more Israel succeeds in isolating Palestinians from their regional environs, the more it invests in their division.

It is even more dangerous when the conflict becomes between Hamas and Israel. The outcome is a whole different conversation that is superimposed on the truly urgent understanding of what is taking place in Gaza, in the whole of Palestine at the moment.

In Israel’s version of events, the war began on October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli military bases, settlements, and towns in the south of Israel.

No other date or event before the Hamas attack seems to matter to Israel, the West and corporate media covering the war with so much concern for the plight of Israelis and complete disregard for the Gaza inferno.

No other context is allowed to spoil the perfect Israeli narrative of ISIS-like Palestinians disturbing the peace and tranquility of Israel and its people.

Palestinian voices that insist on discussing the Gaza war within proper historical contexts–the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the siege on Gaza in 2007, all the bloody wars before and after–are denied platforms.

The pro-Israel media simply does not want to listen. Even if Israel did not make unfounded claims about decapitated babies, the media would have remained committed to the Israeli narrative, anyway.

Yet, suppose Israel continues to define the narratives of war, historical contexts of ‘conflicts,’ and the political discourses that shape the West’s view of Palestine and the Middle East. In that case, it will continue to obtain all the blank checks necessary to remain committed to its military occupation of Palestine.

In turn, this will fuel yet more conflicts, more wars and more deception regarding the roots of the violence.

For this vicious cycle to break, Palestine must, once more, become an issue that concerns all Arabs, the whole region. The Israeli narrative must be countered, western bias confronted, and a new, collective strategy formed.

In other words, Palestine cannot be left alone anymore.

How Capitalism Killed Nutrition: A Review of 'Ultra-Processed People'

By Luka Kiernan

Republished from Red Flag.

Review of Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food ... and Why Can’t We Stop? By Chris van Tulleken. Cornerstone Press; 384 pages.

The maiden voyage of the Terra Grande, also known as Nestlé Até Você a Bordo (Nestlé takes you on board), set sail from the Brazilian port city of Belém in July 2010. The barge was described as a “floating supermarket” as it embarked on an eighteen-day circuit up the rivers of the Amazon lowlands, providing 800,000 people in impoverished riverside towns with the glories of the modern Western diet. The best-sellers were Kit-Kats, an 80-gram serving of which contains 38 grams of sugar. 

The products rapidly infiltrated the communities. To compete, local stores began stocking the ultra-processed junk food peddled by Nestlé. In its wake, the Terra Grande left dietary chaos. High sugar, ultra-processed food became a core food group. Childhood obesity rates rose as high as 30 percent in some communities, and cases of Type 2 diabetes have since been reported in large numbers, a disease that was previously unheard of.

Nestlé complemented the floating supermarket with another program, Nestlé Até Você (Nestlé Comes to You), to better access Brazil’s urban slums. Seven thousand women were employed as door-to-door salespeople, and the program now visits 700,000 low-income households each month with its ultra-processed goodness. As one company supervisor put it: “The essence of our program is to reach the poor”. 

This story of a multinational food company destroying the health of impoverished populations is recounted in Chris Van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People. The book is an insightful scientific, political and economic look into capitalism’s global destruction of nutrition and health. It points the finger squarely at the profiteering multinationals and complicit governments, regulatory bodies and NGOs. Van Tulleken contends that the rise of “ultra-processed food” (UPF), defined as any food containing synthetic additives, has led to the deterioration of people’s health. Today, in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada, UPF constitutes up to 60 percent of the average diet.

A tendency has emerged across the world over the last 50 years regarding health that contradicts the rest of human history. In most countries, the poorest people eat the most calories. They are also the most nutritionally malnourished. “Diet quality and associated health outcomes follow a social gradient in Australia, and internationally,” concluded a recent VicHealth study. In the UK, working-class children are getting shorter on average, at the same time that they are getting fatter. Rich children continue to grow. 

From the 1950s onwards, savvy food companies figured out ever more novel ways of using additives and synthetic ingredients to mimic more expensive foods. Modified starches from potatoes or corn were far cheaper than dairy fats, and, once packed with bulking agents, flavouring and colouring, could appear close enough to the real thing. The cheapest forms of fats, proteins and carbohydrates could be processed in any number of ways to create a lucrative mass product. With added preservatives, food was much more suited to the logistics of the market. Beyond just reducing ingredient costs, these chemicals and methods of processing were used to “extend shelf life, facilitate centralised production and, as it turns out, drive excess consumption”, according to Van Tulleken. Excess consumption became increasingly central to the profitability of these products.

There are an estimated 10,000 additives in modern food production, according to a study published in the journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety: flavouring, colouring, foaming and anti-foaming agents, bulking and anti-bulking agents, preservatives, emulsifiers and gums, among many others. Some of these have known serious health effects, but the overwhelming majority haven’t been researched enough to determine their consequences conclusively. The average UK resident consumes eight kilograms of these substances a year. 

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These additives are also incredibly effective at subverting the body’s natural regulatory system. Van Tulleken writes about studies that have shown that, when infants are given full access to a variety of nutritious foods, they feed themselves a nutritionally balanced diet, without over- or under-eating. This indicates that the body’s regulation of nutritional intake is as sophisticated as that for temperature or blood pressure. But the rise of UPF has disrupted these processes.

For instance, a 2019 study by the US National Institutes of Health found that even when UPF and unprocessed foods have identical nutritional profiles (in terms of calories, and macro and micronutrients), people will overeat the processed food. 

According to Van Tulleken, there has been “an evolutionary selection process over many decades, whereby the products that are purchased and eaten in the greatest quantities are the ones that survive best in the market. To achieve this, they have evolved to subvert the systems in the body that regulate weight and many other functions”. That is, getting people addicted to calorie-dense, nutritionally lacking, additive-loaded products—to the immense detriment of their health—is the food industry’s main game. 

Coca-Cola, for example, is packed full of sugar: ten teaspoons per can. To make it palatable (because spoonfuls of raw sugar don’t taste good) Coca-Cola adds bitter flavouring that cancels out some of the sweetness, so that consumers get the unnatural sugar and caffeine hit without their body rejecting it. 

Like the quantity of additives in their products, the profits of these companies are immense. Nestlé, the biggest of them all, grossed US$45 billion last year, PepsiCo $46 billion, Mondalez $11 billion, Archer-Daniels-Midland $7.5 billion.

Van Tulleken makes a series of compelling arguments throughout the book regarding the social and economic factors behind the health crisis. He rejects the individualist, personal responsibility framework that dominates mainstream discussions of nutrition and health. The book is explicitly not a self-help guide. 

He writes that, across the West, “there was a dramatic increase in obesity, beginning in the 1970s. The idea that there has been a simultaneous collapse in personal responsibility in both men and women across age and ethnic groups is not plausible”. 

Over the past 30 years, childhood obesity in England has increased by 700 percent, and severe obesity by 1,600 percent. This can be explained only by tectonic shifts in the diets made available. 

In Australia, the number of people living with Type 2 diabetes has tripled (or doubled when adjusted for population growth and age structure) over the last twenty years, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Comprehensive meta-analysis has demonstrated a conclusive link between UPF consumption and Type 2 diabetes. Multiple studies have indicated that higher consumption of UPF also leads to massively increased risks of heart attack and stroke.

Consistent with this structural approach, the book centres inequality as a major factor in health outcomes. The consumption of UPF is directly correlated with income, the poorest eating the most. This can largely be explained by pretty simple personal economics. In the UK, a study by the Food Foundation charity shows that the poorest half of the population would need to spend a third of their disposable income on food to meet the minimum nutritional guidelines. The bottom 10 percent would need to spend 75 percent. There are twice as many fast-food outlets in the poorer suburbs of England as in the richer, and advertising is most concentrated in those areas. 

In Australia, age-standardised rates of Type 2 diabetes are more than twice as high in the lowest socioeconomic areas as in the highest. Van Tulleken makes the case that diet and access to quality food are major transmitters of the “health-wealth” gap, alongside smoking and access to health care.

The book also decries the crimes of the major food companies that get rich by destroying the health of billions. For instance, in the 1970s Nestlé was accused of getting mothers in sub-Saharan Africa hooked on free samples of baby formula to the point where they stopped lactating. Mothers were then compelled to purchase baby formula or have their children starve—which thousands of the poorest did. 

In Ghana, one of the poorest countries in the world, obesity rates have risen from 2 percent to 13.6 percent since 1980, as fast-food outlets and UPF companies have expanded their territory. Former CEO of YUM!, KFC’s parent company, justified their intervention by saying: “It’s so much safer to eat at a KFC in Ghana, than it is to eat, obviously, you know, pretty much anywhere else”.

The agricultural system that serves the modern food industry is equally as destructive. Brazilian rainforests are chopped down to grow soybeans, which are used to force-feed factory-raised animals and produce various proteins and fats in their cheapest forms. Indonesian peat forests are burned to clear land for palm oil production, generating thick blankets of smoke and unfathomable amounts of pollution. In 2015, the burning of these forests emitted more CO2 in just a couple of months than the entire German economy that year. Modern agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, fuelled by the demands of the industrial food sector. 

There are broader dynamics at play than just the individual wickedness of CEOs. As Van Tulleken puts it, each company “is in an arms race with other companies ... all vying for that real estate in the shops that maximises sales. If Kellogg’s decided to take a stand [by making their food healthier and less profitable], the space would instantly be filled by another product from another company”. The nutrition crisis is a built-in product of modern capitalism, stemming from its competitive economic structures.

In this way, Van Tulleken approaches an anti-capitalist perspective. He argues that “shame and outrage are clearly inadequate to limit the survival of companies that are complicit in atrocities” and “their behaviour only changes when the flow of the money is diverted”.

Van Tulleken also lacerates the useful idiots and the actively complicit of the health NGO world. He slams the growth of “healthwashing”, whereby the worst offenders of the obesity crisis fund research about the very crisis that they are causing. He puts it firmly: “Organisations that take money from, for example, Coca-Cola, and claim to be fighting obesity are simply extensions of the marketing division of Coca-Cola ... the interests of [these companies] and those of obesity campaigners are not, and cannot be, aligned”.

However, Van Tulleken stops short of the full-blooded anti-capitalism that is required really to tackle the systemic issues he describes so clearly. While rejecting regressive proposals, such as sugar taxes, he falls back on milquetoast technocratic solutions. His proposals for policies like limits on fast food advertising and better regulated health research to prevent corporate influence would be welcome, but will not even scratch the surface of the structural causes behind the obesity epidemic. 

Elsewhere, Van Tulleken devolves into utopianism, arguing for a “fixing” of the agricultural system which today is based on monoculture crops, mass use of antibiotics and massive environmental destruction. But without a way to fight for such a system, the suggestions remain, as Marx put it 150 years ago, “recipes for the cookshops of the future”.

Ultimately, what Ultra-Processed People clearly demonstrates, but does not actually say, is that there is no solution to the health crisis under capitalism. For business, even the most essential of products, food, is just another way to make obscene amounts of money. The health of billions is sacrificed in the interest of profit.

The Publishing Problem: Reading Between the Lines of Industry Self-Censorship

By Chris Richards

Republished from the author’s substack.

At first I didn’t know what to make of Judd Legum’s piece on what he calls “Scholastic’s Bigot Button.” It raises some interesting ideas about whether or not a publisher should pander to conservative political biases by allowing them to hide liberal titles. It shows how not offending certain kinds of white people continues to be an important cultural priority. It informs readers of a right wing pressure campaign against Scholastic Corporation, spearheaded by a conservative Christian publisher of children’s books called “Brave Books.” What it doesn’t really engage with is who Scholastic Corporation is and why the company has so much power.

This is important because who Scholastic is, what they do, and the power they have is central to the right wing pressure campaign to which Scholastic is capitulating. At the moment, Scholastic is selling at $37.48 a share. As Judd Legum points out in his article, it is a publicly traded company with more than a billion dollars of market capitalization. What that means in plain English is that Scholastic’s division Arthur A. Levine Books is the original US publisher of JK Rowling and Philip Pullman. Levine himself left Scholastic in 2019 to establish his own company, but Scholastic still handles the back catalog. That means Harry Potter and “The Golden Compass” are controlled by Scholastic here in the US. In addition, Scholastic itself is the publisher of Suzanne Collins. That’s a lot of Young Adult literary culture in one place.

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That’s just one of Scholastic’s four main business lines. Children’s and Young Adult publishing is big money as it is, but the media rights for those books is big money too. Which is why Scholastic Entertainment exists, to develop intellectual property from Clifford the Big Red Dog, to Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, and the Golden Compass, to Goosebumps. There’s a lot of money in this area too, and a lot of power, but this isn’t why Kirk Cameron’s publisher is going after Scholastic.

You see, Scholastic pretty much controls school book fairs. It turns out that schools don’t just hold book fair themselves using decorations made by teachers and librarians. They pay someone to run the book fair for them. Usually that someone is Scholastic Book Fairs. So nearly every time a public school holds a book fair, Scholastic makes a buck. Scholastic also has book fair packages designed to appeal to different schools as different markets. Here is where Brave Books and their pressure campaign targeting Scholastic comes in.

According to its website, Brave Books was founded by Trent Talbot. Dr. Trent Talbot was a practicing ophthalmologist who was so disgusted by “the inappropriate content being pushed upon children”that he just needed to found a right wing Christian kids’ book and YA publishing company to give parents and schools “a wholesome alternative.” So he naturally decided that Kevin Sorbo and Kirk Cameron were the people he should turn to for help. I think of “wholesome” and I immediately want Kevin Sorbo to teach my kids about masculinity, right?

Because being an obnoxious conservative bigot is a brand in today’s America, Brave Books opened its own book club and book fair divisions to compete with Scholastic and chose an openly confrontational marketing tactic. Brave decided to accuse Scholastic of advancing the LGBTQ+ agenda, because we all know that blatantly accusing your competition of wanting to groom parents’ kids is one way to stake out your own recognizable brand. It also makes it clear that you value the thoughts, feelings, and spending money of the Christian conservative market.

This is the basic background of the specific issue that Legum is writing about. I want to be clear about this background before touching on the specifics of his piece and the core problem left unaddressed by his piece. That core problem, imo, is more important than the immediate specifics of what Scholastic is doing under pressure from Brave. The problem is one of capitalism, and of how the fiduciary responsibilities of corporate officers are seen in the modern business culture.

The specifics of this news are simple. In the face of a marketing offensive from a competitor accusing Scholastic of marketing “inappropriate material” at book fairs, Scholastic has introduced an easy button that school employees planning a book fair can use to eliminate any “objectional content” from their school’s book fairs. Naturally the “objectional content” is all about racial inclusion, the lives of Black people like Ketanji Brown Jackson and John Lewis, and teaching kids that LGBTQ+ families are as valuable as traditional Christian families.

It’s important to keep this in the proper context and look at the material underpinnings of what is happening. This isn’t about Scholastic executives being afraid they will be censored by an out of control state governor like Ron DeSantis. This isn’t even about complaints being made by vigilante parents. This is about a corporate competitor of Scholastic choosing to compete by condemning the morality of Scholastic, as a company, in order to try to sell some schools Christian book fair packages. This is the business of capitalism as usual, with Brave Brooks choosing to brand themselves as the “choice for Christians who want their kids to be safe at the book fair.” It’s a marketing gimmick.

When Scholastic adds a button to their system to exclude liberal content to which conservatives might object, they aren’t knuckling under to any public censorship campaign. They aren’t bowing to the forces of a repressive state. No, it’s much simpler.

They are protecting their market share by giving conservative Christian school employees the easy and quick option to keep liberal material out of the book fair. They don’t want to lose market share because the school districts in Texas and Florida go with the conservative book fair option. So they are making sure their interface allows conservative Christian school employees to feel comfortable with their buying decisions.

There’s a conversation that we should be having about corporate control of our “public” education system that we’re not having.

Progressive Coups Against Empire

By Yohan Smalls

Co-published with the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis.

Western leftists often explain socialism as an extension of democratic values. Across professional spheres, this belief is propagated by some of the most popular figures in our movement. For instance, the acclaimed academic Noam Chomsky described socialism as “an extension of democracy into the social sphere.” Jacobin, the largest socialist publication in the United States, has published writers who explain the Soviet Union’s shortcomings as a natural byproduct of its “rotten foundations of authoritarianism.” Even the controversial NATO-aligned streamer Vaush claimed that the Soviet Union was not socialist because “[d]emocracy is necessary under socialism.”

But this view leads to misguided conclusions. One of which is the condemnation of all revolutions that do not occur at the ballot box. Under “socialism as democracy,” any societal transformation not voted upon by the majority is undemocratic and therefore not socialist. 

History provides ample reason to doubt this supposition. Indeed, there is a long and illustrious history of progressive coups that all leftists should embrace. And this shows that revolutionaries should be open to a multiplicity of approaches to building socialism in our lifetimes. 

For instance, the legendary pan-African Marxist Thomas Sankara never campaigned to become the president of Burkina Faso. Rather, he seized state power from within the military. Though he was assassinated in a (likely French-backed) counter-coup only four years later, he made immense strides in concretely improving the living standards of the masses in Burkina Faso. Under his direction, Burkina Faso achieved self-sufficiency in food production and vaccinated 2.5 million people (60% percent of the total population), raising the national vaccination rate from 17% to 77%. Literacy rates exploded from just 13% to 73% in less than five years. Additionally, he spearheaded the “One Village, One Grove” policy in Burkina Faso, spurring a grassroots mobilization of tree planting that added 10 million trees to Burkina Faso to combat desertification.

But Sankara’s legacy is not limited to agricultural, medical, educational, and environmental victories. He was also a staunch, outspoken feminist. As a Marxist, Sankara saw clearly how patriarchy was reinforced by the capitalist mode of production, and understood that the liberation of women was an inherent component of destroying capitalism. To that end, he prohibited female genital mutilation and forced marriage, amended the Constitution to guarantee female representation in the Cabinet, and ensured the Ministry of Education would protect women’s access to education. 

Few, if any leaders have achieved a fraction of what Sakara was able to do for Burkina Faso and Africa more broadly. Why should we temper our support for him because he came to power undemocratically? His “authoritarian” seizure of the state is precisely what enabled him to achieve so much in such a short time. Nobody can contest that his government was undoubtedly progressive and, as materialists, we are bound to support progressive developments regardless of how “purely” these developments come to fruition. Our sole obligation is to liberate the working masses, and therefore we must uplift Sankara’s legacy.

Sankara is far from the only progressive leader who improved the lives of the masses through a revolutionary coup. In 1968, General Juan Velasco Alvarado seized power in a bloodless revolution and won substantial gains for the Peruvian proletariat — most notably, his large-scale campaign of industrial nationalization and redistribution of agricultural land to over 300,000 families.

Velasco also sought to free Peru from the extractive influence of Western multinationals by nationalizing a wide array of vital industries including telecommunications, energy (such as the International Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil), fisheries, and even American copper mines. His reforms were planned by the leading socialist intellectuals of the time. 

Velasco’s nationalization policies were among the most radical in Western hemisphere. His expropriation of the landed oligarchy was second only to Cuba’s. Velasco stands as a powerful example of the rapid progress that follows determined socialist leadership.

Across the Atlantic, in 1974, a group of left-leaning Portuguese military officers known as the Armed Forces Movement toppled the fascist Estado Novo regime in a military coup known as the Carnation Revolution, directly leading to the liberation of Portuguese colonies. The Portuguese regime had spent over a decade fighting the unpopular Portuguese Overseas War to maintain their colonial possessions in Africa, sacrificing thousands of their own young men in the process. Only after the Carnation Revolution could the anti-war will of the people be realized. Who can rebuke such a direct improvement in the lives of both the Portuguese and colonized proletarians? Why should we jump to condemn this movement for its “lack” of democratic purity?

One consistent trigger to these progressive coups is a capitalist sociopolitical system that is most capable of subverting revolutionary struggle in the Global South and against hyper-exploited minorities in the imperial core, because it has the full weight of Western capital pitted against the poorest and most oppressed workers. This can leave revolutionaries with almost no practical solutions to advance material conditions outside of a progressive coup.

As Marxists, we should not celebrate the liberal-democratic dogma that our oppressors use to subjugate us. In the American context, the black liberation struggle provides us with a multitude of revolutionaries who clearly articulated this predicament. For instance, both Malcom X and Chairman Fred Hampton realized that capitalist liberal democracies were directly responsible for the invention of racism and held no qualms about using any means necessary to restore dignity for the colored and working masses of the United States.

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Malcolm X most clearly indicated his indifference toward liberal morality in his famous speech ‘The Ballot or the Bullet.’ Throughout his delivery, he referred to those who myopically emphasized non-violent tactics as “chumps.” Challenging the legitimacy of the American political system, he exclaimed, “Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans and still has the audacity to call himself the leader of the free world.”

X was widely known for his criticism of establishment civil rights leaders, lambasting them for advocating purely non-violent struggle against an exceedingly violent enemy. He correctly reminds his audience that “liberty or death is what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.” Here, he implicitly asks the question: Why should we rigidly confine our movement to liberal tactics?

Any listener would ascertain that Malcom firmly believed in the legitimacy of armed struggle if it were to liberate the African American masses. In this speech he positively references the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and the Vietnamese anti-colonial revolution as justified reactions to an oppressive system, contrasting them with the impotent yet palatable strategies that have consistently failed to ensure a semblance of material equality to black Americans. 

Chairman Fred Hampton similarly had no issue with waging class struggle outside of democratic norms. In his speech “It’s a Class Struggle, Goddamnit!,” Hampton positively references the non-electoral victories of the Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, and the then-ongoing anti-colonial revolutions in Mozambique and Angola. The speech is replete with defenses of armed struggle against capitalist and imperialist forces of reaction. Hampton explicitly reminds his audience that despite one’s “revolutionary” aesthetic preferences,  “political power doesn’t flow from the sleeve of a dashiki… [it] flows from the barrel of a gun.” While direct armed struggle was not the only revolutionary strategy that Hampton advocated for, clearly he and the Black Panther Party scoffed at notions of ideological purity that stood in the way of proletarian victory. They would surely reject the Western socialist notion that proletarian struggle should be confined to the ballot box. While many on the Left love to uplift the Black Panther Party’s illustrious history of revolutionary struggle and associate their own movements with it, apparently few have spent time studying Hampton’s own words. 

These widely lauded revolutionaries provide insights our movement can and should apply to the present. Since 2020, a wave of progressive coups has swept across Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, and Gabon. Seizing power from compradore governments, revolutionary juntas in the Sahel have deposed “democratic” leaders who have done nothing but facilitate and exacerbate the extractive neo-colonial relations keeping this resource-rich region in a state of destitution. These revolutionary movements realize Africa cannot utilize its vast resources until it neutralizes the influence of western capital, and recognize that liberal democracy often facilitates these interests at the expense of the African proletariat.

In the West, we are told repeatedly that Africa, particularly West Africa, is poor and underdeveloped. While it is true that this region is underdeveloped, it is undeniable that it is also one of the most resource rich regions on the planet. Some of the highest quality uranium in the world is located in Niger, but ironically its largest uranium mine is mostly owned by the French state while 90% of Niger’s population has no access to electricity. In 2010, Niger exported €3.5 billion worth of uranium to France, but only received €459 million in return. Similarly, in Gabon the vast majority of the country’s crude oil is sold abroad. For example, crude oil accounts for 96% of Gabon’s total exports to the United States. This is due to their neocolonial economy having no incentive to build adequate refinery infrastructure, leaving the value of their most profitable export at the whim of Western financial speculators.

Coup leaders like Burkina Faso’s president Ibrahim Traore have recognized that their countries face  “the most barbaric form, the most violent manifestation, of neocolonialism and imperialism”. At the Russia-Africa Summit this past summer, Traore articulated how “African heads of state must stop acting like marionettes who dance each time the imperialists pull on our strings”. When the neocolonial alliance ECOWAS threatened military intervention in Niger to restore deposed president Mohamed Bazoum, the revolutionary juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso jointly declared “Any military intervention against Niger would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali.” A bloc of anti-imperial resistance has clearly blossomed in the Sahel, a movement Thomas Sankara laid the groundwork for. While Western imperialists attempt to destroy Sankara's vision, the popular support for these revolutionary coups demonstrates that the spirit of Sankara is alive and well in West Africa.

The collection of anti-colonial movements across the Sahel are justified and deserve our support. We should not oppose them merely because they defy the dogma that power must change hands electorally. The reality is that, as leftists, we must support any movement seriously dedicated to eradicating extractive neo-colonial systems. And that is the case whether or not it adheres perfectly to Western liberal-democratic ideals, or any other pretentious sense of purity that needlessly prohibits us from supporting anti-imperialist struggles wherever and however they arise.

Yohan Smalls is a socialist thinker analyzing liberal contradictions in the Western Left.

Liberatory Violence Is Never "Unprovoked"

By James Dugan

In today's world no one is innocent, no one a neutral. A man is either with the oppressed or he is with the oppressors. He who takes no interest in politics gives his blessing to the prevailing order, that of the ruling classes and exploiting forces." —George Habash

“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding” —Frantz Fanon

With Israel in particular, it is immediately apparent how willfully ignorant Americans are to the level of sheer violence that it takes to uphold a settler society. Every day that Israel exists as an apartheid State is a violent event for Palestinians. Further, every missile that strikes Gaza and every raid on a refugee camp in the West Bank is propped up by financial support from the United States. The focus of condemnation should therefore be Israel and the United States for creating the material conditions that have necessitated a liberation movement.

The purported concern about violence rings empty when it is devoid of any reference to Israel’s history as a settler colonial project; without any reference to the Nakba of 1948 or the 11-day bombardment of Gaza in 2021 which resulted in hundreds of lost lives and thousands of destroyed residences. Throughout the onslaught, hospitals and news agencies were deliberately targeted by the air strikes—which of course utilized U.S.-made warplanes and bombs. The conditions of colonialism and apartheid ensure that even the most ordinary day is subjected to violence in less blatant forms (e.g. the violence like hunger and poverty that Kwame Ture described as being “so institutionalized that it becomes a part of our way of life” and is accepted as normal). But 2021 was also preceded and followed by other explicitly jarring events, such as the senseless shootings during the Great March of Return in 2018-2019 (over 8,000 hit with live ammunition, over 30,000 injured) and the settler rampage of Huwara earlier this year (leaving hundreds of homes and vehicles torched).

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All of this illustrates that, as put by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals.” Israel’s colonization of Palestine is the embodiment of violence—and any notion that violence is “committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer [ ] blurs the nature of the historical processes.” Dunbar-Ortiz’s point has been reiterated by many voices committed to self-determination, decolonization, and universal freedom. Paulo Freire, the great Brazilian educator instructed that "with the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.” Walter Rodney, the radical Guyanese intellectual, put it similarly, "Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression.”

With this framework in mind, to call the recent militancy “unprovoked” is to ignore the systemic nature of oppression in Palestine. To those that opt not to ignore it, the response was inevitable for the same reasons that Angela Davis called certain tactics taken during the black liberation struggle inevitable: “Because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as reactions.” An acknowledgment of how violence permeates prior to the reaction is crucial.

And it should be clear that what we expect and what we desire are not always one and the same. Malcolm X, an early advocate of Palestinian liberation articulated this point well: "I don't believe in violence that's why I want to stop it. And you can't stop it with love. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary." When Palestine resists its oppression, it acts in self-defense; it aims at “the recovery of human dignity.” For anyone whose crucial guiding moral and political directive is self-determination and freedom, it is clear which side of the struggle we stand on.

To a Free Palestine in our lifetimes.

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them." —Assata Shakur

“The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. . . . [V]iolence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.” –Kwame Ture