Recent news stories have thrust the issue of Palestinians returning to their homes and lands back into the spotlight. The Right of Return remains the core Palestinian demand because it is fundamental to what it means to be Palestinian.
Renee Good, like many Palestinians before her, died because authoritarian forces decided she did not deserve to live, and because the entire legal and political structure exists to ensure those agents never face meaningful consequences for murder.
Israel murdered Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues because genocide can only proceed without witnesses. Western media outlets have failed to condemn the systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, and in the process have become accomplices.
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York not only upended the political establishment, but it also repudiated the Islamophobia of U.S. politics since 9/11.
We are told, again and again, that Israel is defending itself. But it is only defending its right to act with impunity throughout the Middle East to maintain its supremacy. Israel’s attack on Iran is just the latest example.
Israel’s attacks on the Madleen aid mission to Gaza and the repression of the anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles represent the same imperial logic: any challenge to injustice will be met with state violence.
The New York Times’ Tom Friedman has warned readers that the current Israeli government “is not an ally,” but on the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, we must recognize that all Israeli governments have participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour were the latest Palestinian journalists to be assassinated in Gaza. Responsibility for their killings rests in part on their Western colleagues who have failed to accurately cover Israel’s genocidal assault.
The fight to free Mahmoud Khalil is not merely about preserving First Amendment rights, it is about whether we will allow our government to criminalize resistance to its complicity in human rights abuses and genocide.
The fires burning in Palestine and Los Angeles today are symptoms of the same disease: a system that values conquest over conservation, profit over people, and expansion over existence.