The Palestinian people walk by a mural of George Floyd, whose murder by police in Minneapolis helped ignite worldwide support for the Black Lives Matter movement, in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, in June 2020
The Israeli occupation is a humanitarian crisis caused by imperialism, white supremacy, and colonization. From the eradication of Palestinian families and their bloodlines to the dispossession of their land, the Palestinian people continue to experience a genocide. The U.S. perpetuates similar dehumanizing and oppressive tactics towards Black Americans. The solidarity between Black and Palestinian communities continues to grow, and their struggles are interconnected.
Just like the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continues to subjugate and murder Palestinian individuals, the American police force continues to occupy and terrorize Black communities. From unjust killings to excessive force and brutality, police continue to carry on the torch of oppression against Black people. According to Mapping Police Brutality, police have killed 3,376 Black people in eleven years from 2013 to 2024. Their names still linger throughout the Black community: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Atatiana Jefferson, Yvette Smith, Michael Brown, Sonya Massey, Botham Jean, Keenan Anderson and many more. Historically, police departments were also made to punish Black people from achieving liberation or freedom. During the time of enslavement, police departments were formerly called slave patrols. They controlled and monitored enslaved people by eliminating slave uprisings and riots, and they returned enslaved people to their owners. The police were made to be an extension of white supremacy.
Many human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, have denounced the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for similar crimes, like in America. The IDF have committed illegal killings, torture, excessive use of force, and suppression of freedom against the Palestinian people. For example, a Palestinian man was killed by undercover Israeli forces during a raid in a hospital in 2015. Not only are the American police force and the Israeli Defense Force extremely connected, the IDF trains many American police forces and exchanges violent tactics. Similarly, the US and Israel show much degrading suppression of protests, such as tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets.
Almost 40,000 Palestinian people have been murdered by Israel, and almost 92,000 of them have been injured. The bombings of Palestinian communities by the Israeli government reflect the bombings of Black communities by American society, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. The Tulsa Race Massacre was a two- day white supremacist massacre that occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921 in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before the massacre, the predominantly Black community was prosperous with hundreds of Black-owned businesses, several churches, schools, and community organizations. The genocide of this Black community was ignited by the arrest of Dick Rowland, an African American shoe shiner, for being falsely accused for the sexual assault of Sarah Paige, a white elevator operator. After the interaction between them on May 30th, the Tulsa Tribune, the city’s daily afternoon newspaper, falsely reported that Rowland tried to rape Paige. The accusation sparked white rage in the streets of Tulsa. Hundreds of white individuals traveled to the Tulsa County Courthouse to demand that Rowland was handed over to them, and he was not. Over the next few hours, the city was plunged into chaos. Due to the failed attempt to lynch Rowland at the courthouse, white individuals started to attack members of Black residential neighborhoods, and armed white people began to make drive-by shootings in the neighborhoods. After the outbreak at the courthouse, Tulsa police officers deputized white individuals and instructed them to kill Black individuals.
On June 1, armed white people poured into the Greenwood District. They looted homes and businesses and set them on fire. Many white assailants flew planes and dropped bombs on the neighborhood. At the end of this massacre, three hundred people were estimated to have been murdered, and 1,256 houses were destroyed, including churches, schools, and businesses. None of the white assailants were held accountable. Many Black people in the U.S. connect with the Palestinian resistance because they know about facing a genocide and an erasure of their communities.
Oppressed people’s liberation is connected, and our struggles are intertwined; systems of oppressions always act in tandem. Upholding one form of oppression upholds them all. Just as Israel helps to commit a genocide in America, Israel is connected to the oppression of Indigenous people worldwide, such as the oppression of Armenians by Azerbaijan and the oppression of the Mapuche people by the Chile government. While the Azerbaijan government commits an ethnic cleansing against Armenians, Israel provides them with nearly all of their weapons, While the Chile government tries to oppress and control the Mapuche people, they use Israeli weaponry and technology to further their power. Upholding one form of oppression upholds them all. Our collective power is the foundation of resistance that allows us to overcome subjugation. Palestinian liberation is all of our liberation, especially of Black communities.
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