Avodah claims it was not influenced by a right-wing smear campaign when it fired Anna Rajagopal, but the organization’s actions legitimized the harassment of anti-Zionist activists.
Zionism not only seeks to dismember Palestinian life and connectedness, but also the threads of signification that nurture steadfastness and resistance.
On May 29th, fascist Zionist settlers held a flag march throughout Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s Old City. Rotted to the core with colonial racism, this march was intended to celebrate Zionist forces’ seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967. But in the seeming surety of escalating violence, an anxiety about belonging lurks. A state defined by and through the negation of the native, through sanctioned racism and supremacy, is a state running on borrowed time. The settlers may have marched on Sunday. And they may have waved their flags. But their flag, like their state, will fall.
The “voice of Palestine” can be gunned down, but never silenced. 74 years on, it’s well past time for the world to really listen.
On March 18th, 2022, the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America officially dechartered the DSA’s BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group. This disciplinary action constitutes the latest development in an antagonistic relationship between the Working Group and the highest political body of the DSA in the fallout over the organization’s relationship to Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
The Sierra Club claimed to embrace racial justice principles in its environmental advocacy, but its decision to continue trips to Israel shows the organization is practicing its own “Palestine Exception” when it comes to racial justice-conscious conservationism.
The leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America have participated in one of the most time-tested rituals of those who prioritize cultural clout over political standards: selling out Palestine.
There is nothing quite like a mind poisoned by the lures of racial supremacy, of unmitigated colonial power. In this way Zionist fragility is far from unique. It is the younger relative of every anti-oppressive reckoning forced upon the privileged members of supremacist projects throughout history.
Understanding Palestine as a racial justice issue is to understand it as part of the broad fight for collective liberation.