Palestinians Can Learn from the African-American Struggle – Ali Abunimah = ONE COUNTRY!

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Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the award-winning online publication The Electronic Intifada + Author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Palestinian Church overlooking New Settlements on Palestinian Lands

BOOK = Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a single secular-democratic state for both Arabs and Jews. The destinies of Jews and Arabs have become inextricably intertwined = Both sides currently favor a two-state solution but Israelis equate that with the destruction of the State of Israel. = Such raw tensions = One state encompassing either a federalist system or a binational state with two separate government systems (one unified government with seats allocated to each group and separate ones dedicated to cultural/religious affairs). = Power sharing like Belgian system = Devotes a significant part to painting a detailed picture of what true coexistence might look like. In the very long term, his ideas are relevant. = He points out, the demographics are shifting in such a way that Israel will eventually lose its Jewish majority. When that day comes, Israel will be confronted with a very painful dilemma between remaining a Jewish state or a democracy. Binationalism may someday become Israel’s only moral option = Abunimah lays out this structure.

PALESTINIANS MUST LOOK FOR THE RIGHT FUTURE

From the book, “While abolishing the racism and violence of Zionism practices against Palestinians is the key to justice and peace in historic Palestine, no less than the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States were absolutely necessary, recent American history demonstrates that systems of racial control and the ideologies underpinning them remain robust and adaptable. A formally liberal and rights-based order can allow a system just as oppressive as Jim Crow to hide and flourish in plain sight.” = Palestinians can learn from African Americans when seeking a new system = equal rights as in the US but we cannot honestly hold the US up as a model when there is so much systematic racial injustice.

Michelle Alexander’s Book – The New Jim Crow = Directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. = “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. = Equality before the law CONTRADICTED by US mass incarceration = Serves as a warning for Palestinians that full liberal rights in a single state may not get out from under the yoke of racism and oppression and apartheid.

Shared Values US and Israel = Examined the kind of so-called shared values in chapter called “Shared Values, Shared Struggle” = Frequently President Obama and all his predecessors say the US and Israel have shared values. = What are these shared values? = Really racialized view of the world, where Palestinians, in the case of Israel, and African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color in the US are viewed as some kind of demographic threat that needs to be policed and controlled and surveilled. SHARED VALUES = Police Brutality + Mass Imprisonment + Torture + Solitary confinement + Execution + Radicalization of discourse + Security State + SYPING + Israelis niche of so-called homeland security industry + Exporting Weapons and Security Systems for SYPING + Corporate Takeover of Government + Hyper-militarization of policing + Rail to jail for schoolchildren in the cities + Public education gutted + Privatization for Profit of every GOVERNMENT Function + No equality under the LAW + Declaring you abolish abolish formal discrimination and Jim Crow is NOT ENOUGH — Insufficient.

EXAMPLE: South Africa = Declared everyone equal = FACT actual living and quality of life = Availability of water and other things = Worse now than it was under apartheid. = NO ECONOMIC JUSTICE + NO economic democracy + NO restitution + NO redistribution = Yet claim to have civil rights (USA) has NOT HAPPENED IN US or South Africa.

USA CIVIL RIGHTS of 1960s = Had some gains in Transportation Seating + Fair Housing Act + But didn’t change substantial fact of the chronic poor + Job Discrimination + who’s in prison and so on.

Israel = Physical separation = Deliberate strategy to prevent Palestinians from being able to organize or even meet. Deny Palestinians permission to go from Gaza to the West Bank = You can’t even travel, how can you organize? = Now Palestinians have found a global movement to mobilize people = Boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The Fair Housing Act is unimaginable in Israel today = New legislation going in the opposite direction making it legal to discriminate against people for not being Jewish. = Chicago are still the most segregated in the world in terms of the ongoing effects of that = Result of racism that we now repudiate = Actually the goal that Israeli policymakers. = Israeli Housing minister a few years ago said — we have populations mixing who shouldn’t be mixing and we have to keep them apart = Israel pushs policies designed at promoting ethnoracial, ethnoreligious segregation. = President Obama heartfelt declarations of the values he shares with Israel. = Racism against Palestinians, against Africans, against others is so systematic. = Palestinian citizens of Israel have actually had to go to court for the right to live in Jewish neighborhoods. + Gaza is really an open-air prison where 1.7 million people live = 80+% are refugees from land Israel has taken from them = Because they’re not Jewish. = Rabbis sanction this taking of land using decrees.