On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian paramilitary group Hamas launched a surprise attack
into the territory claimed by Israel.
At least 1,400 people were killed, most of them civilians,
and hundreds more were taken hostage.
The Israeli state responded by laying siege to the Gaza Strip,
cutting off supplies of food, water, energy and fuel,
We are fighting human animals
and we act accordingly.
and by launching a continuous barrage of indiscriminate bombings.
Over the first six days of the conflict, more than 6,000 airstrikes in and around Gaza hit
primarily civilian targets, including hospitals, schools, apartment buildings,
Palestinians attempting to flee the conflict zone, and camps for internally displaced refugees.
As of the making of this video, these bombings have killed over 6,600 people, including more
than 2,700 children, and injured thousands more.
By the time you're seeing this, those numbers will have grown.
This is only the beginning.
This massacre gives new scope to Israel's long history of reprisal attacks
and so-called retribution operations.
The position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was made clear by his words.
This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness,
between humanity and the law of the jungle.
This revealing comment and massively disproportionate retaliation have sparked fears that Israel's
ultimate goal in this campaign is to permanently displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip
and West Bank.
This is a goal that has been evident throughout Israel's historical military campaigns,
extending back to the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe.
Another suitable word would be genocide.
We will probably need to create a huge economic and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This is not a symmetrical war.
On the one side, Hamas is certainly worthy of condemnation.
Not only is it an authoritarian and deeply reactionary movement that imprisons queers
and tortures domestic political opponents, it has also shown itself willing to slaughter
unarmed Israeli civilians for political and military gain.
Yet its tactics, as repugnant as they may be, are carried out in the name of national
liberation from an occupying force.
This is simply not the case on the other side.
The Israeli army, euphemistically called the Israel Defense Forces, is the most powerful
military in the Middle East and one of the most powerful in the world.
In 2022 alone, it received almost $4billion in aid from the United States.
It uses the world's most advanced military hardware
against the homemade rockets
and kite bombs of Hamas.
Since its inception in 1948, the IDF has fought wars of territorial conquest,
fueled by Zionism.
Zionism is a political movement that seeks to establish
an ethno-nationalist Jewish state in Palestine.
Born of the trauma of the centuries of Jewish persecution in Europe that would ultimately
culminate in the Holocaust, the Jewish nationalist search for a homeland soon became wedded to
the imperial interests of European powers.
While the marriage of nationalist statecraft and imperialist sponsorship is hardly unique,
in Palestine this alliance ultimately resulted in the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians from their homes by Zionist militias.
The Jewish homeland was established on the rubble of Palestinian villages.
Zionism as we know it today can be understood as a racist and colonial ideology
Get the fuck out of the country.
This is Jewish country only.
We don't need Muslims here.
Death to the Arabs! Death to the Arabs!
that drives the policies of the Israeli state,
which are predicated on the dispossession of Palestinians,
whether through occupation, social exclusion, or exile.
Zionists believe that it is impossible to support Jewish people without supporting
the state of Israel.
This conflation means that people who criticize the racism, colonialism, and genocide inherent
in Zionism are then labeled anti-Semites.
This ignores both the many anti-Semites who have long supported Zionism, hoping they might
one day expel their local Jews and send them to Palestine, as well as the long tradition
of Jewish anti-Zionism, which includes the many thousands of Jews around the world who
are now rallying in opposition to Israel's military campaign, under the banners
'Not In Our Name' and 'Never Again For Anyone.'
I reject that it's complicated.
It's not Jew versus Arab.
It's human rights against oppressors.
Unsurprisingly, many other states founded on colonialism and racism support Israel.
Chief among them is the United States, which defends Israel's interests, along with its
own imperial agenda, by using its veto power on the UN Security Council.
Were there not in Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel
to protect her interest in the region.
Since 1973, the U.S. has blocked 53 UN Security Council resolutions, critical of Israel and
its actions in the region.
Those against?
Regardless, the UN General Assembly has passed multiple resolutions affirming the right of
colonized people to resist occupation by any means necessary, including armed struggle.
This may seem strange given that the UN is the body that sanctioned Israel's occupation
of Palestine in the first place.
At least 40 babies were killed.
Some of them, their heads cut off.
...demonstrations in Britain, backing for Hamas.
This right now is backing terrorism.
...That is just hard to see on the streets...
...Rally in New York City for Hamas.
We accept that this was poorly phrased and was a misleading description
of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Most western media and political establishments
have responded to the violence with an uncompromising pro-Israeli stance,
presenting Hamas as a fundamentalist terrorist group that attacked
an innocent civilian population without provocation.
This really is about barbarism versus civilization.
There's no talking with these barbarians.
The pure, unadulterated evil.
This narrative only makes sense if you ignore the historical, settler colonial,
founding of the Israeli state and the daily realities of the Israeli occupation.
If the international media is objective, it serves Hamas.
Nevertheless, it has been echoed and upheld by Western business and academic institutions.
Across Europe and North America, those who deviate from this scripted narrative have
found themselves blacklisted in a throwback to the McCarthy era.
Meanwhile, within the borders of the Israeli state, police chief Kobe Shabtai has made it
clear that there will be zero tolerance for protests in support of Palestine,
and has threatened to transfer any such protesters to the Gaza Strip.
Several Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested for merely expressing solidarity
with Palestine on social media.
Presenting itself as a beacon of progressive Western values in the Middle East,
"In the IDF, there are over 10,000 vegan soldiers."
Israel rules over an apartheid system even more brutal than that which existed in
South Africa in the 20th century.
This system is responsible for generations of Palestinian suffering born inside its borders,
in the occupied territories,
and in the massive refugee populations in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Over the last decades, settler expansion has been eroding Palestinian territory
at an ever accelerated rate.
The IDF arrests Palestinian children
who throw stones at the tanks and bulldozers destroying their homes.
Why are you crying?
While protecting Israeli settlers who brazenly steal land from indigenous Palestinians.
You are stealing my house.
And if I don't steal it, someone else is gonna steal it.
Taking advantage of the chaos in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, these settlers have
stepped up their attacks in the West Bank, encouraged by state officials.
And every time Palestinians try to resist the occupation and genocide, Israel uses that
as an excuse to apply collective punishment to all civilians
and push the occupation even further.
This means that our calls for peace must also be calls for liberation.
Or else the supposed peace will destroy Palestine as surely as the bombs.
For generations, Palestinians have shamed the world with their endless courage,
their steadfast determination, and their righteous defiance.
All around the globe, the name Palestine is synonymous with resistance.
As we hold our collective breath and watch the massacre unfolding in Gaza, the time
has come to transform the anger and despair of this moment into concerted action.
To move beyond protests and vigils and towards meaningful solidarity.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.