StandWithUs, an Israel-advocacy group, is sponsoring a pinkwashing event in Seattle, this time with a trans soldier who “advises youth, soldiers, and professionals on how to better integrate trans* people into the armed forces.” The Seattle LGBTQ Commission has invited its own commissioners, as well as a handful of local queer activists, to a roundtable discussion with the Israeli military officer. Nada Elia asks, “Will the Seattle LGBTQ commission do the right thing, and completely dissociate itself from the event, by refusing to participate in the roundtable discussion, or will it knowingly acquiesce to being a tool of propaganda for a foreign regime widely denounced as engaging in the worst forms of brutal settler-colonialism and apartheid?”

Millions breathed a deep sigh of relief last week, when it was announced that the FBI, in coordination with police forces in New Zealand, Australia, and Israel, arrested Michael Kaydar, a 19-year old man with dual Israeli-American citizenship, who was behind the majority of the bomb threats made to Jewish community centers around the U.S. The threats were a hoax and, in typical official lingo, the “motive remains unclear.” The hoaxes, by resurfacing and foregrounding anti-Semitism, widened the net of those caught in the justified fear of white nationalism. They also had a totally unintended effect, as they brought threatened and marginalized communities closer together, to face the greater enemy.

A necessary and productive debate has been going on in US feminist circles following the International Women’s Strike on March 8, with its openly anti-colonial, pro-Palestine platform. In an Op-Ed, writer Emily Shire questioned whether there was room for Zionists in the feminist movement. This exchange is the latest chapter in a long conversation in activist circles around Palestine as a feminist issue. The question Shire should have asked is “Is there room for Zionists in any justice movement?” The answer is No.

Activists for Palestinian rights have long known that our universities are overwhelmingly hostile environments where freedom of speech about, and critical inquiry into, Israel’s oppressive policies are heavily censored. Over the past few weeks, two separate and noteworthy incidents have illustrated this heavy-handed approach.

From the grassroots to the upper levels of government, the national conversation today reflects a new development in the U.S. where resistance is widespread, diverse, and aboveground. As we march and strike to denounce this country’s multiple wrongs now is the time for an intentional revisiting of how we can organize to win. Nada Elia says the leadership of this new movement are the perfect leaders for this moment, “The leaders of national and transnational resistance movements are mostly young, overwhelmingly gender non-conforming women of color, with a critical understanding of violence encompassing intimate as well as institutional, state-sanctioned violence. It’s a leadership grounded in an experiential understanding of intersectionality.”

If Trump’s first week as president exceeded our worst fears, his second week confirmed that we are truly in a state of emergency. However, we have also secured some real victories of late. Nada Elia writes that Trump’s presidency should teach us one thing: When we organize, and mobilize, and are determined to do whatever it takes to shut it down, then we can shut it down.

US President Donald Trump’s first week in office far exceeded our worst fears. Nevertheless, as the orders came in, millions of Americans were ready. When, barely a week in office, Trump issued his Muslim Ban, cities and smaller towns across the nation erupted again in rallies and marches. One of the chants heard at the protests was “From Mexico to Palestine, All Walls Will Fall.” It is a chant that indicates an awareness of our connected struggle. And just as “Gaza to Ferguson” has entered and taken hold of American consciousness, expanding our understanding of solidarity and intersectionality, so “No Ban No Wall” and “All Walls Will Fall” must and will become part of American resistance.

Nada Elia reports: At the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, on January 7, 2017, the Delegate Assembly voted against a resolution calling for the boycott of Israeli universities complicit in the denial of academic freedom for the Palestinian people. A resolution that would add racist insult to injury, by blaming the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, but not Israel, for the plight of Palestinian scholars, was tabled.

Language matters because it impacts how we think of reality. Nada Elia’s New Year’s Resolution, which she hopes millions of others will also make, is to stop substituting “the occupation” for “Zionism.” She writes, “The era of discussing the occupation as the presumed greater Israeli evil is over, and should be tossed into the trash heap of history. As we celebrate the discursive change around Palestine, we must be cautious no longer to speak or write about “the occupation” except as one of the many varied facets of Zionism. Palestinians cannot afford any more erasures, as these are extremely detrimental to our cause, to justice. And just as we realize that the two-state “solution” was never a viable option, we must also inscribe into our new discourse that the occupation was never the problem. Zionism is.”

Scholar-activist Nada Elia writes: “I believe that BDS will play as important a role in restoring Palestinian rights as the global boycott of South Africa did in ending apartheid there. The BDS movement will achieve its full potential impact through mass information—by more and more people learning how they can advance the movement, and by corporations and governments understanding the breadth of BDS support. This is where Mondoweiss plays a pivotal role. In recent years, the growth in our movement’s success has been enabled by constant reporting and opinion pieces published in Mondoweiss, where they reach hundreds of thousands of readers regularly. I urge you to join me in supporting Mondoweiss as a key movement tool. By connecting those of us building power, Mondoweiss makes a difference that is essential for any hope of justice in our lifetime.”