Palestine Archives | Page 3 of 3

October 11, 2023

Palestine Will Be Free!

Socialists have always viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a project of Western colonizing countries. The capitalist states of Europe and the United States that supported the creation of Israel did so for two reasons: to establish a political foothold in a region rich with oil they wanted access to build their capitalist machinery, and to create a homeland for Jews they did not really want in their own countries to begin with. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, it has served as a watchdog for the United States.

It was Palestinians who paid the price for this colonizing project and imperial arrangement. Their indigenous homeland was taken from them. They were denied a state. They were forced to live under a United Nations partition they did not support. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation; many thousands more were murdered.

December 12, 2021

by Bill V. Mullen

Under Siege: why socialists must fight for Palestine and BDS

The struggle for Palestinian liberation from Israel’s U.S.-backed settler-colonial regime has become a cornerstone of most radical and progressive political platforms. Especially since Palestinian Civil Society launched the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign (BDS) in 2004, modeled closely on the South African campaign to end Apartheid; the broad U.S. and global Left have made the struggle to end Israel’s occupation part of a wider critique of U.S. imperialism.

Yet recent events have challenged the unity and momentum of both the struggle for Palestinian liberation on the Left, and its primary global weapon, the BDS campaign. One of those challenges has come from the reformist wing of the Left, the Democratic Socialists of America. Another, even more potentially threatening to Palestinian liberation unity, has come from within the ranks of the U.S. Arab political class and its institutions.

July 1, 2021

by Zack Frailey Escobar

Zionists Weep Crocodile Tears

As Israel bombs Palestinian civilians in Gaza, ethnically cleanses Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and deliberately unleashes right wing mobs to terrorize Palestinians everywhere, the whole U.S. congressional establishment has united to condemn Israel’s critics.

The entire Democratic leadership joined with the most rabidly racist sections of the Republican Party to slander congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s statements comparing Israel’s and the United States’ crimes with those of Hamas and the Taliban as antisemitic. The statement they issued on June 11th reads, in part: “Drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the US and Israel and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all.”

January 13, 2021

by Josué Ammerman

From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” is more than a slogan, it’s the call of a liberation movement. The Palestinian struggle for liberation is international and the fight for socialism begins when we unite to fight imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. The anthology Palestine: A Socialist Introduction published by Haymarket Books, gives us an overview of the possibilities of a better world, starting with Palestinian liberation. Editors Sumaya Awad and brian bean (brian bean is written in lowercase) offer us a succinct historical background of Palestinian liberation and an internationalist framework of socialism from below through which we can view this struggle.