As the bombs continue to rain down on Palestine, a professor who recently traveled to Palestine on a Faculty Development Seminar with a Palestine solidarity group shared his thoughts at a recent protest in San Francisco. He will have a speaking tour in Northern California July 24, 25 and 26 in Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland. The following is the text of his speech.
“Israel” is an up-to-date Apartheid State.
“Israel” is a wicked Occupying Force.
“Israel” is a ‘raw,’ ‘primitive,’ viciously Colonialist State, other “neo-colonialisms” notwithstanding.
It’s a scourge upheld by another scourge: U.S. Empire
It could not commit its daily “crimes against humanity” were it not for what Malcolm X’s dubbed dollarism.
So it makes sense that when those “Israeli” colonial flags come out to resist our righteous protest of their crimes against Palestinians in particular, that Yankee rag is not far behind—once again on the wrong side of history, as it were. This is one very contemporary setter state force assisting another very contemporary settler state force in order to enforce and protect its settler-imperialist interest in another part of the world. All academics aside, it is absurd to think of settler colonialism as a thing of the past. This high-tech, Big Money settler colonialism is as brutally contemporary as the “white-supremacy” shared by “(North) American” and “Israeli” racism—it is a settler-imperialist racism of the past, present and, unfortunately, until we eradicate or disempower it, the future.
A month ago, I visited Palestine. They were shooting children in the back just days before I got there. They’ve been killing and burning them since I left.
For the entirety of my trip, a machine gun racism was trained up on my Black flesh and theirs. Soldiers in airports, at those inexcusable checkpoints and on any stretch of land or property desired by Zionism, these soldiers trained their well-funded weapons of everyday mass destruction on Black and brown flesh as the eyes and ears of their Apartheid; as the eyes and ears of their Occupation; as the eyes and ears of their Colonialism. And these soldiers were more often than not “child-soldiers,” of one sort or another, malnourished and mentally deformed by the lies and psycho-pathologies of the rulers who say, “Palestine doesn’t exist,” because their job is to do everything in their power to bomb and bulldoze it out of existence despite the existence and resistance of Palestinians, which is world-renowned, legendary, and an awesome inspiration to us all.
One cannot underestimate the importance of traveling to Palestine to see things for yourself. This is officially Occupied Territory, so any air travel will route you through Tel Aviv—through an overtly racist abomination of an airport aptly named for an overtly racist abomination of a “man.” I speak not of Reagan National airport here, but Ben Gurion airport.
Unless you code yourself as “Euro-Jewish” in the Zionist tradition, they will treat you like shit. They will do everything they can to discombobulate and terrify and simply intimidate you. They will do their best to make sure you never want to come back again. For neither Apartheid nor Occupation nor Colonialism can afford witnesses; witnesses who come back with first-hand knowledge energized by indignation and outrage; witnesses not in a Zionist tradition but in that tradition heralded by James Baldwin when he insisted on “disturbing the peace,” or that “peaceful violence” which the world is steeped in according to Frantz Fanon. And witness we must. Disturb we must.
We must put an end to the constant murder that is “Israel.” The constant land-grab. The constant home-demolitions. The standard military checkpoint assault on persons and dignity. The machine gun racism. The mass imprisonment and permanent, Guantanamo-style “administrative detention” without a whiff of “due process.” Etc., etc., etc… We must Boycott what they call “Israel.” We must Divest from what they call “Israel.” We must Sanction what they call “Israel.” At the same time, we must move against white-supremacist dollarism and decolonize the world of U.S. Empire, for real this time.
