Juneteenth in Palestine

The Black liberation holiday of Juneteenth was on my mind when we drove past a platoon of Israeli occupation forces as they marched into a Palestinian village, black automatic weapons in hand, likely about to execute a raid. As our bus drove past the handful of military vehicles parked alongside the road, a deep sense of rage, sadness, and powerlessness swelled up within me.

My people, African people, have been and continue to be colonized, beaten, raided, arrested, and incarcerated for no other reason than our race and resources. The crime of what I saw before me only gave form to Israel’s true colonial nature and the anti-colonial bond that Black and Palestinian people must build.

Many of the same police departments that have brutalized and killed Black people in American streets have been trained in so-called counter-terrorism tactics by the Israeli military in what Jewish Voice for Peace calls a “deadly exchange.” In return, the American government offers Israel $3,800,000,000 a year in military aid so that it can develop “butterfly bullets” to break the bones of peacefully protesting Palestinians and sell off to other authoritarian regimes. The end result is racial injustice and indignity for all.

On Juneteenth, I celebrate the resilience of my ancestors and a freedom hard-fought. I do so knowing that the only way to end white supremacy's continued shackling of my people domestically and colonized people all over the world is to fight for a collective liberation.

But what would liberation look like in Palestine?

It would look like an end to military raids, an end to the occupation, an end to apartheid. It would mean an international community ending its complicity with Israeli crimes against humanity. It would mean the beginning of justice.