Over the last 11 days, over 2 million people in Gaza have been under siege by The Israeli State. The number of deaths are rising every day and presently hover around 3,000 Palestinians, mainly children.
Over the last 11 days, we have seen a US funded and diplomatically supported genocide play out in real time through our television and phone screens.
For the first time in many of our lives, we are seeing the extermination of entire generations of Palestinian families whose origins lie in the very place their blood was shed for the final time.
For people of conscience around the world, The Nakba of 1948, a violent mass expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their home has never ended. For over 75 years, Palestinians have been subjugated to the stripping of basic resources including water, food, electricity, mobility outside the region of Gaza, land and homes. Many are without passports and Gaza itself does not have an airport. They are harassed at mandatory checkpoints, tortured, wrongfully imprisoned and slaughtered in the streets where they live by the Zionist occupation.
To create an image of what life is like for Palestinians living under occupation is unfathomable. These are just the initial facts. Typing these words from the comfort of my bedroom without fear of retaliation and the audacious concept of American safety is jarring in this moment. And in this moment, we cannot look away.
We have seen over the last 11 days Palestinians sending messages to the world. Asking us to bear witness to this devastation. Asking us to translate their goodbyes to the world. Asking us to watch as they lay their uncle to rest on a street covered in rubble and stone. Asking us to heed this last message before the Israeli government cuts off internet service and blackens the day and night. Asking us to watch them carry injured loved ones in makeshift ambulances with Israeli soldiers insidiously continuing to shoot already injured Palestinians. Asking us to see that while they rush their children to the hospital, Israeli forces have done the unimaginable and bombed Al-Alhi hospital killing 500 people, predominantly young children. Asking us to see that genocide is tactical in its practice, targeting mainly women and children to erase those that create life.
Are you seeing?
Are you seeing that the United States has bestowed billions of taxpayer dollars since the Democrat led Clinton administration? This is not including a nearly 2 billion dollar grant program that advances the settler colonialist zionist project by moving US Israelis to Palestine. Are we seeing that in the middle of economic devastation in the US including astronomical price tags on home, basic goods and healthcare that President Biden has just this week promised additional financial aid to an Apartheid regime so they can use new weaponry to slaughter people in the streets? Are we seeing that over 30 international laws have been violated by Israel including taking land by force(occupation), claiming sovereignty and the practice of ethnic cleansing? Are we seeing that Palestinians, under International law, have a legal right to defend themselves by any means?
Are you seeing the Zionist Western media propaganda?
Western media, specifically the US, has held down a campaign of lies and slander (retractions from several major media outlets including cnn and la times) about the siege in Gaza and is continuing to use manipulative tools of engagement through language like “conflict” and refusing to acknowledge the actual genocide that is taking place.
The repeated dehumanization of Arabs that has plagued our western thinking for decades including the use of terms/slurs like “barbarians, terrorists, and heathens” to justify genocide and destruction is by strategic design. Zionist propaganda works not only to physically displace and suppress the people but create psychological warfare so that we are stripped of compassion, critical thought, and empathy in regards to Arab life. It strips us all of dignity.
We are also seeing the mighty Palestinian resistance and their demands to immediately end the occupation. We are seeing that the resistance is overwhelmingly supported by millions of people around the world from Yemen to London to Dearborn who are organizing, chanting, marching, and linking arms against the depravity of US imperialism, Israel and its allies. We are seeing and have seen with clarity, that there is no moral or legal justification to support the state of Israel. We see that this resistance has historically understood, alongside Black liberatory ideology, that the oppressor will not just hand you your dignity and freedom. You must take it.
End the Occupation Now!
By Monica Isaac, Member, Yemeni Liberation Movement
