As we mark Nakba Day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Nada Elia implores us to make radical demands that secure a life of dignity for all.
Everywhere, COVID-19 has revealed the disproportionate effect of the disease on communities that are already disenfranchised by state-sanctioned violence, including the incarcerated. April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, brings new urgency to calls to free all prisoners in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
It was always the case that the left was working to elect its opponent for the next four years. Now that Bernie Sanders has left the race, that struggle carries on.
Nada Elia says it is offensive to compare our circumstances with the coronavirus in the United States to those of the besieged Palestinians in Gaza.
The “Deal of the Century” has reinvigorated the discourse naming Israel’s practices as apartheid, but Nada Elia says we must push for a denunciation of the entire scope of the initial catastrophe that befell Palestinians last century, rather than its recent manifestations.
Palestinian-American activists discuss why they are supporting Bernie Sanders for president despite his long-standing and seemingly unshakable appreciation for Zionism. Although not all in the community are on board.
Nada Elia reflects on the the complexities of the rise in antisemitism we are currently seeing in the United States. “More than ever before, as hatred sweeps this country, we must be the ones who protect each other,” Elia writes.
Nada Elia says that once again she is reading the statistics about casualties in Gaza and is deeply disturbed by the emphasis on the number of women and children. “This does not do the Palestinians any favor,” Elia writes, “as it inadvertently reinforces the racist Zionist narrative that treats every Palestinian man as a fighter, a militant, a terrorist.”
Bernie Sanders’ editorial, “How to Fight Antisemitism,” strikes many right notes with today’s progressives, but Nada Elia says his shockingly anachronistic understanding of Israel shows the two-state delusion is a hard one to give up.