On the Recent Attacks on Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and Gaza

What we’re seeing right now are not clashes.

They are attacks. 

They are violent assaults, by an occupying power, on the occupied. 

They are acts of ethnic cleansing, carried out by Israeli forces, on Palestinians, for the crime of worshipping at the al-Aqsa Mosque — one of Islam’s holiest sites — during the holy month of Ramadan. 

Or for merely existing in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. 

Or for simply living in Gaza, as evidenced by the airstrikes that killed 24 Palestinians this week, including nine children.

Again: what we’re seeing right now are not clashes.

What we're seeing is the oppression of an apartheid state, against people engaged in peaceful worship at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during the holiest nights of the year for Muslims around the world.

To quote Noura Erakat and Mariam Barghouti:

As May 15 marks the 73rd commemoration of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from cities such as Haifa, Tarshiha and Safad in 1948, let the world bear witness to Jerusalem today. This is how refugees are made, this is our ongoing Nakba. Our freedom struggle is not for a state but for belonging to the land, to remain on it, to keep our homes, to resist erasure. But somehow calling it by its name on social media, revealing to the world what has been happening for decades, seems more offensive than our ongoing displacement at gun point.

There’s no denying the reality: This is Zionist settler colonialism, where if one settler does not take our homes, another settler will. When will the world open its eyes to this injustice and respond appropriately? We do not need more empty both sides-isms, we need solidarity to overcome apartheid.

For those of us in the United States, we have a special responsibility incumbent upon us given the billions of dollars with which our government bankrolls the violence each year. 

Or the way in which our State Department claims the Israeli government has a “right to self-defense,” but Palestinians do not.

The Palestinians are a resilient people. They want freedom and liberation. They want to live with dignity. They want justice — all universal values, rights and principles we all deserve. 

None of this is possible under what Human Rights Watch finally officially recognized as apartheid just this past month.

If you pride yourself on siding with the oppressed, and not the oppressor, then the moral task ahead of all of us, no matter our faith, is straightforward: we must listen to and uplift the voices of Palestinians defending themselves from colonial violence. 

Here are places we can start:

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