Black Palestinian Solidarity Statement
In honor of Black History Month, the Bronx Antiwar Coalition would like to highlight just some of the ways that Black and Palestinians, as oppressed peoples, continue to fight for liberation both in our respective communities and together in our collective struggle against imperial powers. Our oppression does not and cannot exist separately, nor do we resist Israel or the United States alone. We seek to reject settler colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism globally. In this statement, we address just some of the parallels between movements for Black and Palestinian liberation historically and in the present day.
Witnessing the parallels between Black people massacred by the KKK and Palestinians murdered in 1948 during their forced removal to create a Jewish supremacist state, late civil rights figures and leaders of the Black Power movement demonstrated their support for the liberation of Palestine. In 1964, Malcolm X visited the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza where he attended a press conference given by Ahmad Shuqayri, chair of the newly founded Palestine Liberation Organization. He then published a statement about Zionism, asking the following:
“Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes, and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the ’ religious’ claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago, the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a Moroccan nation where Spain used to be, as the European Zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?”
The Black Panther Party has also demonstrated its solidarity during the 1960s and 70s through visits with PLO members and numerous statements in support of the Palestinian resistance. In 1969, early leader of the Black Panther Party Eldridge Cleaver met with Yasser Arafat, leader of al-Fateh and the PLO. Following this meeting, The BPP declared, “We support the Palestinians’ just struggle for liberation one hundred percent. We will go on doing this, and we would like for all of the progressive people of the world to join our ranks in order to make a world in which all people can live.” Extensive reports on events in Palestine were also reported in the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service.
Black and Palestinian liberation movements also have experienced similar forms of repression through the carceral system, such as the targeting of specific organizers in an attempt to disrupt the progress of these movements. Mumia Abu-Jamal, Walid Daqqa, and Georges Ibrahim Abdallah are just some of many political prisoners who are still incarcerated today for resisting Western imperialist regimes, both for the liberation of Black people and Palestinians. As argued by Angela Y. Davis in her co-written book Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, “The important issues in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination are minimized and rendered invisible by those who try to equate Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid with terrorism.” This same “terrorist” label that has been used to target and incarcerate Black radicals who fought for our right to education, housing, healthcare, and the freedom to live without being executed by forces of state violence is the same label used to incarcerate numerous Palestinian political prisoners and anyone who resists Israeli occupation. After years of challenging police violence while a member of the Black Panther Party and being placed on the FBI COINTELPRO program for “surveillance” and “neutralization” (assassinaton), Mumia Abu Jamal was beaten by police and convicted for the murder of one of their own based on forged evidence from the crooked cops. He is still behind bars today, despite the push from community activists that many aspects of the case (false evidence, witnesses coerced into lying, biased prosecutor) have highlighted his innocence. Similarly, Ahmad Sa’adat, a member of the Palestinian armed resistance and Secretary-General for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is currently being held in Israeli prison after being kidnapped by Zionist armed forces as part of their “Operation Bringing Home The Goods.” As we think of the parallels between how Western powers utilize prisons to further their regime, we must also acknowledge that this suppression is ongoing and vow to continue to fight for the freedom of political prisoners around the world today.
It’s important to note that activists and well-known political figures are not the only ones that are targeted by the oppressors in the United States and Israel. It is no coincidence that in 2022 Black people consisted of 26 percent of the jail population in the U.S. and that at the end of 2023 the Israel Prison Service was holding 4,764 Palestinians in detention, including children. The Zionist system that works to criminalize resistance and protect colonial power has as its objective detains and dehumanizes anyone who stands in the way of their colonial objective, including youth whose very survival is resistance. It is for this reason that Israel has a history of detaining and killing children as an act of collective punishment, similar to the ways that killing of Black youth by police continues to occur as the United States expands police power.
Mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex are tools for imperialism, and the use of surveillance to dispose and punish those who challenge it can be seen internationally. The interconnectedness of the prison industrial complex is demonstrated in the current objectives to expand state forces into Cop Cities both nationally and around the globe. For example, companies such as G4S (Group 4 Security) influence Palestinian political incarceration, the apartheid wall, imprisonment in South Africa, Mexican border patrol and U.S. prison-like schools. The same can be said for the NYPD, who not only has an office in Israel where Mayor Adams and numerous other New York politicians often take business trips, but actively uses Israeli methods of surveillance to terrorize Black and brown communities in NYC. The militarization of the police in the U.S. is directly tied to the IOF. In NYC for example, the NYPD deployed police drones 13 different times to monitor pro-Palestine demonstrations just in the month of October alone.
The use of drones has been accompanied by the deployment of state violence by the police to harass and arrest Pro-Palestine protests and organizers.The use of brutal force we have seen in NYC at protests for Palestine are the same ones that have been used when we protested in 2016 and 2020 for the Black Lives Matter movement, which are the same tactics used to repress the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
In true black radical tradition, we acknowledge that the freedom of Black people relies on the freedom of Palestinians and freedom of ALL oppressed and colonized groups. The Black community stands with Palestine because we recognize that the African Diaspora spans the entire world and we know that our struggle is and has always been interconnected.
From the Bronx to Gaza, we call for the freedom of ALL political prisoners and an end to the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Free Palestine, from the river to the sea,.
Same struggle, same fight, Gaza and the Bronx unite!
