Palestine: history, current events, ways to help

I originally had these resources pasted to the end of poem, but by request I am pasting them as their own post now, with more links added.

Please feel free to recommend more resources. Let us all do our part — Palestine will be free!

HISTORY

• History & facts about Palestinian Christians
• “Palestinian Christians and Muslims have lived together in the region for centuries”
• “What’s the Israel-Palestine Conflict about? A Simple Guide”
• https://decolonizepalestine.com/ — fantastic resource for getting your history + learning to recognize and debunk propaganda 

• Free ebooks on the history of Palestine & Israel
• Other book recs:
  • “Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel” by Gardner Thompson: history of the UK’s role in the creation of israel as a state
  • “Humane: How The United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War” by Samuel Moyn: discusses the role human rights frameworks and arguments for ethical combat have played in entrenching endless war in the post-9/11 era
  • Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis: essays, interviews, and speeches, that illuminate the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world

• Why is Gaza called an “open-air prison”?
• Stats around Israel’s military detention of Palestinian children
• The history of HAMAS — a nonviolent org radicalized into violence by Israel (a twitter thread with linked sources)

CURRENT EVENTS

• I highly recommend Democracy Now’s website + daily podcast as a news source that doesn’t dehumanize Palestinians or coddle Israel’s propaganda
• “Advocating for Palestine” — fantastic online booklet in multiple languages that dismantles propoganda like “but they use human shields!” and “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
• “A Nuclear Superpower and a Dispossessed People” — great starting-point article
• “How Big is Israel’s Military and How Much Funding Does It Get from the US?”
• Responding to people who weaponize the LGBTQIA+ community against Palestine
  • “LGBT+ people should not be a weapon of Israeli Apartheid: There should be no hierarchy of the oppressed”
  • “A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine”
  • “I’m a Queer Palestinian. Here’s how I’m fighting for liberation”
  • Article by a Queer Palestinian living in the USA about the interconnections between these two identities
  • Screenshots from Queering the Map, which allows queer people across the globe to add comments, showing two comments from within Gaza — reminding us that queer people live in Gaza.
• “Despite What You Think, Palestinians Are Not Celebrating (Israeli) Death”
• Claims that Hamas beheaded 40 babies are unfounded

• “But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience” (video of live event with various speakers sharing speeches, poetry, etc.)
• It’s not antisemitic to be anti-Israel!
  • To me, fighting antisemitism across the globe is actually key to combating Israel’s propaganda: Israel claims to be necessary because nowhere else on the planet is safe for Jews — and they aren’t wrong about that lack of safety, but Israel is also not safe for Jews. A settler-colonialist state constantly in conflict with the group it’s occupying/ethnically cleansing, that requires every single civilian to spend some time in its military, is NOT safe either. (I found this TikTok video on the topic illuminating.)
    • On top of that, Israel is only “safe” for Jewish persons who accept its propaganda without protest. Holocaust survivors have been mistreated in Israel since its beginning in 1948, in part because many of these survivors spoke out about the similarities they saw between Germany’s attempted genocide of Jews and Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
    • Israelis who dare to protest Israel’s violence against Palestinians are often arrested or beaten by police. 
    • Others are detained, fired, or attacked.

• We need to fight to make our communities across the world truly safe for Jews. Some steps towards that goal:
  • If you (like me) are Christian, you must work to uproot the supersessionism that is deeply embedded in Christian biblical interpretation and beliefs. Here’s a tag of posts explaining what that means and where to get started. For instance, I highly recommend looking into the works of Amy-Jill Levine.
  • It’s also important for us to understand how some Christian groups weaponize Zionism for their own theological gain. Here’s a helpful resource made by a Jewish person about Christian Zionism.
    
• We also need to listen to the Jewish people who anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine when they denounce Israel’s weaponization of their religion for its imperialist and genocidal purposes.
  • Here is the Jewish Voice for Peace’s discussion on Zionism.
  • And an article by Arielle Angel recommitting to peace and liberation
  • Look for the news stories that most of Western media is hardly sharing about Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace protesting Israel’s occupation (like this article, or this video of a Jewish rabbi telling Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire).
  • An article explaining how anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism.
  • And an article on how Zionism is linked to white supremacy

DREAMING OF A BETTER FUTURE

• “When Palestine is free I will…” – imagination is vital
• One-state solution
• Article sharing 3 Palestinians’ visions of liberation
• Art that empowers: Palestinian Poster Project archives and this Google doc with various artists’ pro-Palestine posters

WAYS TO HELP

• Boycott the orgs that BDS is asking us to boycott (it’s a much more manageable list than the huge ones many people are sharing around)
• Palestine Action – direct action options
• Jewish Voices for Peace also offers ways to take action
• Ways to use your money to help:
  • Buy an e-sim for Gazans to access internet (and get free art!)
  • https://palestinelegal.org/
  • https://www.map.org.uk/
  • https://www.pcrf.net/
  • https://www.unrwa.org/
  • https://twitter.com/gazamutualaid – mutual aid!

• Urge your University/School/Organization to put out a statement denouncing Israel
• Organize a Protest/Participate in a local one
• While calling your reps, tell them that as a voter, you’re unwilling to support them in the upcoming election unless they urge the White House to take a stand against Israel and stop funding them
• Share art/writing/films around Palestinian culture (see this tumblr post for Palestinian media to watch; I also recommend Oriented (2015) for an un-pinkwashed queer Palestinian story)
• If you’re part of a union, ask them what they’re doing to urge their industry leaders to take a stand against Israel + pressure the White House OR urge them to start a strike/walkout/etc if they’re not doing anything already
• Talk with your friends IRL about Palestine; keep spreading information on social media — don’t let talk of Palestine die down!
• See if your city/state council has put out a statement in support of Gazans. If not, try to push them to do so.