Have you been asked about your support for Palestinian's? Mr. Qumsiyeh offers some help.
1) Palestine was colonized and replaced by a colonial settler state called
“Israel”. The ideas was simply to take a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural,
multi-religious country and transform it to a "Jewish state". The core of
this project (Zionism) is ethnic cleansing which started under British Rule
(to fulfil the illegal Balfour declaration) and continued and accelerated
under more direct Zionism control and continues today in places like Shaikh
Jarrah in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine (inside and outside the
so-called green line). That is why we have 7.5 million Palestinian refugees
and displaced people and 530 villages and towns wiped out.
2) International law is very clear: Palestinian Refugees have a right to
return to their homes and lands, Israeli colonial settlements built since
1967 including in Jerusalem are illegal, and Israel has engaged in
processes that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity
3) Israel has never been a democracy. It is an apartheid racist regime that
even after expelling most Palestinians, have instituted 65 laws that
discriminate against the remaining 1.5 million native Palestinians (who
became a minority of 20% of the population). Yet Israel also is the power
that rules over the lives of 4.7 million more Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza who are not given Israeli citizenship and they are subject to
hundreds of military orders that serve as racist laws. For example the
denial of entry to our own city of Jerusalem even for religious reasons to
visit the holy sites.
4) Zionist propaganda is easy to refute with logical explanations based on
facts (and the three principles above). For example, it is easy to answer
the nonsense like Israel is defending itself and using wrong analogies like
what if Mexico shoots rockets into the US, what should be the response?
Answer: wrong analogy: If someone comes and shoots your brother, points a
gun at your head and tells you to get out of your house and they claim
their religion tells them to do so. Then you are pushed down the street and
they besiege you and stop you from getting food and medicine and test new
guns on you every few years then you decide to throw a stone towards your
old house so they take an RPG and level your new house, do you call this
"self-defense" or "disproportionate response"? Who is then the terrorist?
Anyway international law is clear on this point: colonized/occupied people
have a right (and even duty) of resistance. Anyway colonization is itself
violence: ask native Americans and Blacks in South Africa or any other
country that went through the experience. Colonization kills 10 native
civilians for every 1 colonizer (in Palestine as in South Africa under
apartheid). The answer is simple, end apartheid ends the violence (exhibit
A: South Africa).
5) No colonial – anti-colonial struggle has ever ended in a “two-state
solution”. It is fictional and the TALK about it from the time that Ben
Gurion proposed it over 100 years ago is merely (as Ben Gurion himself
stated on more than one occasion) intended for PR efforts (he even cited
colonial treaties with native Americans which could be broken after
consolidating powers). Colonial-Native struggles end in one of three
scenarios: a) Algerian model (nearly 2 million killed, 1 million colonizers
and their descendants left the country), b) genocide of natives (USA,
Australia), c) coexistence in one country of descendants of colonizers and
of native people (the rest of the world >140 countries). There is no fourth
scenario. Palestine will not be an exception. It is the last struggle and
prolonged only because of the resourcefulness and wealth of Zionists and
the weakness of their victims with the collusion of corrupt Arab leaders
and western governments beholden to special interest lobbies. This explains
Israel's impunity from international law.
6) If we want a roadmap to real sustainable peace (not pacification), all
we have to do is insist that we implement the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. It has all the needed elements (no discrimination, rights pof
refugees to return etc).
7) Thus it is clear that people around this planet need to have joint
struggle (including via a push for boycotts, divestment and sanctions) just
like we did with South Africa to end the Israeli regime of apartheid and
implement human rights.
You can add resources here like reports and statements from Human Rights
Watch, Amnesty International, B'Tselem etc
Stay Human and keep Palestine alive