PALESTINE IS A PARADIGM SHIFT

I woke up in a Brooklyn brownstone with twelve Black Caribbean and South American organizers and scholars on October 7, 2023. We had been together for four days, deepening our social fabric at a Black geographies conference held at Rutgers University. On our last morning together, someone turned on the news as we settled into the kitchen for coffee and hellos when images of violence at a music festival held in Israel (pre-1948 Palestine) near the border with Gaza came rushing into the living room. My heart hurt in two simultaneous directions. One, for Palestine and the undoubtable violence the Palestinian people were about to endure in the retaliation, and for the youth at a music festival, met with reactionary violence in a space made for creation. 

Tears fell as fast as hips folded in front of the television; we huddled with open jaws. We were already organizing to be at the emergency protest for Palestine in Washington Square Park because, in this room, we knew. We knew of the century-long colonial occupation of Israel over the Palestinian people, and we knew this kind of retaliation would not go unpunished. We knew of the historical colonial powers and present-day superpowers that built and supported the State of Israel and that would be ready to serve once again. We knew of Israel’s secondhand violence in our own communities, far from the region, where the population control of Palestinians had been studied, mapped, and exported to our corners of the world.

Shocked with every live update, the room swayed to the motion of the waters our hearts sank into. I recalled a photograph a fellow organizer and friend had shared with us the day before. The black and white image of her defiantly standing in front of an Israeli war tank designed for crowd control on the narrow streets of Palestine- exported to the narrow streets of her favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she grew up. In the photograph, her limbs are outstretched, trying to take up as much space as possible. In her hands, a sign telling anyone who would listen that she wasn’t going to accept state violence silently. She stood alone, with only the gaze of her neighbors and strangers, mostly too afraid to join within the frame of the target. The courageous few, mid-stride, stepped towards the center of the frame, finding their moral compass more potent than their fear.

I’ve recalled this image time and time again over the past two years. The feeling of it. Standing alone, defiantly, in front of a war machine, the onlooking crowd, hesitant to join but also present to the injustice. This photo has become a microcosm of what the last two years have felt like. The few, slowly becoming the many,  as the forced and hopeless witnessing of a state sanctioned  genocide spills into our phones, live streamed, in front of everyone to see. 

The courage, dignity, and resilience of the Palestinian people as they face the U.S. backed Israeli war machine and those who dare stand beside them have the potential to shift everything if our moral compass becomes stronger than our fear.

The horrors we have witnessed in real-time, on a daily basis, have stirred our humanity in an unprecedented way. We find ourselves illuminated by the light of a collective awakening and are responsible for not letting the slumber befall us once again. The liberation of Palestine is more than a political movement; it is a profound shift in the very essence of who we are as humans.

This is the first time in our collective human history that we are all front-row witnesses to colonial violence, and are experiencing a visceral, somatic, spiritual connection to our collective trauma due to the grotesque violence our ancestors experienced for centuries, whether they inflicted the violence or perpetuated it. 

As more and more people rise for Palestine, the backlash, targeting, firing, and even physical violence toward those unwilling to look away and do nothing has also grown. The threshold of fear is closing in, narrowing the path forward. Yet, to become, miracles must first traverse through the smallest of passages. We can’t be collapsed by the closing of the threshold when we are being called to midwife the unseen. What other worlds might our courageous hearts conjure if we move past the threshold of fear, apathy, desensitization, and overwhelm? What other liberated realities might we bring into existence?

The rising tide of solidarity with Palestine isn’t just a moral stance. At this crucial moment, an unwavering posture for justice has the potential to shift the current of time, restitching it by fundamentally challenging the existing geopolitical colonial frameworks, narratives of statehood, control over capital, and notions of justice. The stitches will sting, but wholeness will come with the precision of justice if we are capable of mending with love. This kind of love, sustained by courage, will make visible that which can no longer be kept in the dark.

The Palestinian fight for liberation is over a hundred years old with a seventy seven year history of compounded violent displacement, theft, and death of Palestinians through Israeli colonial rule. Because of this, Palestinians are the world’s largest and longest- running refugee population. This history and continued narrative, created by colonialism, capitalism, and perpetuated through masterful marketing, has finally broken the international silent seal, bringing to an end a mostly hidden struggle. 

We are now facing a shifting paradigm. In the words of scholar and historian Noam Chomsky, “Palestine is the last phase of European colonization.” He continues by saying, “Notice the countries that are most strongly in support of Israel: the United States, Australia, Canada. They are the offshoots of England's anglosphere, sometimes called unusual forms of imperialism. These are settler colonial societies in which the settlers came in and essentially eliminated the native population.”

In 2021 and 2022, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, found that Palestinians are living in an apartheid state under Israeli rule. The term “apartheid” was first coined to describe a political system in South Africa that enforced racial segregation and upheld white supremacy through the domination and oppression of one racial group over another. Under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute, and customary international law, the crime against humanity of apartheid occurs when any inhumane act—essentially a severe violation of human rights—is carried out within the framework of a structured regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intent to sustain that system. 

South Africa’s apartheid system was established in 1948, the same year the State of Israel was established on Palestinian territory with support and recognition from the United States and the United Nations. After decades of colonial rule, in 1994, Black liberation from apartheid in South Africa was won and the international community outlawed state sanctioned apartheid by criminalizing it through three main treaties:

• The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) 

• The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (Apartheid Convention) 

• The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) 

We no longer accept it as a way to treat one another, except for the case of Palestine. In Palestine, Amnesty International found that Israel has caused dispossession of land and property, fragmentation into domains of control, deprivations of economic and social rights, and successive Israeli governments have pursued a strategy of establishing domination through discriminatory laws and policies which segregate Palestinians into enclaves, based on their legal status and residence. Israel denies Palestinian citizens their rights to equal nationality and status, while Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory face severe restrictions on freedom of movement.

Apartheid is unacceptable anywhere in the world. So why has it been tolerated in the case of Palestine?

The U.S. is showing its military might to the world through Israel, and Israel is flexing its power over the region by tag-teaming with the superpower of the West. Now Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and then where? Already, a McCarthyism wave of censorship is starting to crack the foundation of democracy in the United States. UN special rapporteur Irene Khan, a year into the genocide in Gaza, said: 

No conflict in recent times has threatened freedom of expression so seriously, or so far beyond its borders than Gaza, and rarely have we seen extensive patterns of unlawful discriminatory and disproportionate restriction by state and private actors on freedom of expression. International legal standards are being distorted and misinterpreted to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism. Conflating protected speech, which is political criticism, with prohibited speech, which is hate speech, undermines the fight against antisemitism, and it also chills freedom of expression. Israel is a state, and Zionism is a political ideology. Under international law, no state or political ideology can be shielded from criticism. 

Whatever we allow to happen in Palestine now, we are giving permission to happen anywhere. If we become complacent to the normalization of genocide, ecocide, and spaciocide by governments, corporations, and settlers, the entire international community is putting itself and future generations at great peril.

The liberation of Palestine emerges not just as a call for freedom but as an opportunity for a profound paradigm shift—a seismic wave rippling through the very fabric of our collective consciousness and practices. Palestine is a paradigm shift because it stands at the apex of decolonization. Here, I offer six reflections toward that end.

1. The struggle for Palestinian liberation highlights the ongoing impact of colonialism and dispossession, urging global discourse and action to prioritize Indigenous rights and self-determination. To see a free Palestine after a hundred years of theft, displacement, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, systemic and militarized control over daily life, and now the brink of complete destruction will offer a powerful ancestral healing. This first paradigm shift will help to heal ancestral wounds not only in Palestine but in the Global Majority, where the colonial agenda has wounded the very soul of our people and lands. 

2. The liberation of Palestine has galvanized global solidarity movements, inspiring and connecting intersectional struggles against oppression and injustice, challenging the very foundations of how we understand power, identity, and justice, and representing a significant shift in global consciousness and activism. We have witnessed, over the past two years, millions across the world fill the streets, demanding an end to the genocide for both its human and environmental rights violations. “They wanted to erase Palestine from the world, so the world became Palestine” is the rallying call that echoes from college campuses to social media feeds. Jewish, Black, and Indigenous organizers, thinkers, philosophers, professors, environmentalists, and artists have spoken out against this genocide, clearly drawing connections to intersectional and historical oppressions. 

   Jewish activists shouting “Not in our name” has become synonymous with “Free Palestine!” The Black Lives Matter, Indigenous, environmental, and LGBTQIA+ movements are organizing across sectors for a liberated Palestine like never before. Every day, people are risking arrest, being fired from their jobs, and even altering or losing their lives through self-immolation as an extreme form of protest. The watermelon is everywhere, and we all know what it means. This paradigm shift centers on intersectionality through interconnectedness, fostering a more unified approach to social justice, and pushes for systemic change across state violence, displacement, and environmental injustice.

   In an unprecedented time when the climate crisis is tipping into a climate collapse, activists, researchers, and scientists alike are drawing crucial lines between the genocide in Gaza and the impacts on our fragile ecological systems. According to the Guardian, “The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.” Previous studies done by Conflict and Environment Observatory and Scientists for Global Responsibility suggest that the actual carbon footprint could be five to eight times higher if the entire war supply chain were included. In the first three weeks following October 7th, Israel dropped the equivalent of two nuclear bombs on the Gaza strip as well as  internationally banned weapons, such as cluster and phosphorus bombs. The destruction of Gaza has been systematic and consistent for over a year now, and though the amount of toxins released into the atmosphere has yet to be fully understood, initial research done in the U.S. and U.K. showed that “the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal.” Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), and co-author of A Multitemporal Snapshot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Israel-Gaza Conflict, said, “This study is only a snapshot of the larger military bootprint of war … a partial picture of the massive carbon emissions and wider toxic pollutants that will remain long after the fighting is over.” 

   Those making intersectional connections, like climate and war, are widening the lens of understanding and bringing into the foreground an inseparability to this struggle for liberation. 

3. The ongoing displacement, violence, and now genocide in Palestine have positioned it as a disturbing testing ground for Israeli military technology, illustrating a strategic approach where real-world applications are leveraged to refine and promote weaponry intended for global export. This paradigm is not merely about military strategy; it reveals a broader ethical crisis and the implications of commodifying conflict. 

   Israel's military operations in Palestine provide a real-time environment to test and validate advanced weapon systems and tactics. Drones, surveillance technologies, strategies, and various armaments have been deployed in the urban settings of Gaza and the West Bank, allowing for data collection on their effectiveness against a population often unable to defend itself. These technologies are later exported to places like Ferguson, Missouri and my friend’s home in Brazil. To disrupt the study of violence and surveillance on a dense population would shift the paradigm of state violence exports to other regions of the world.

4. By strengthening our global solidarity movements, we emphasize a broader human rights framework that advocates for the rights of all oppressed peoples. This shift prompts a reevaluation of how international law is applied, emphasizing accountability for violations against any group while upholding the credibility of the rail guards established after World War II, such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, and later established, the International Criminal Court. 

   One hundred twenty-four countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court and has a legal obligation to arrest the accused. On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for the atrocities carried out in Gaza, marking a historic event that may lead to the first time the international law holds accountable a Western-backed country. Weeks later, U.S. allies United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Norway, Italy, France, and Germany, along with South Africa, made public statements to enforce the ICC ruling. Maintaining global solidarity and pressure at this time will help to uphold these rulings, as governments are forced to join the widespread shift in tide and reposition long-held statuses of power into ones that reflect justice in human rights. 

   Not only will creating international pressure help to uphold the ICJ ruling and ICC warrants, but it will also help to maintain credibility in these institutions. This visible crack in a long-held power grab offers an avenue for the transformation of the role of the ICJ and ICC into true upholders of human rights without their current power imbalance. 

   Given the current outsized power of the U.S. veto in the Security Council, it is only through a dedicated and robust global solidarity movement backed by universities, allied governments, and everyday people actively protesting, boycotting, and educating that we will ensure these guardrails for human rights are upheld, and one day, hopefully, transformed. These safety mechanisms are imperfect and out of balance, and they perpetuate the same power dynamics that got us into this disaster while also making it difficult to get out. For this reason, we must not stop here. Equity and balance of power in these institutions must be our final goal. 

5. The European Jewish community during the holocaust experienced horrors that no one should ever be subjected to. Humanity said, “Never again,” yet the fear and trauma born of that violence played a crucial role in the establishment of the Israeli State, and the systematic weaponization of that trauma, in large part, has perpetuated its violent expansion. Israeli children are indoctrinated to fear and hate the people whose land their parents, elders, and ancestors have colonized, much like the Nazis did with their own children. This is a tried and true method historically used by colonial powers to facilitate violence against a native population throughout the world. 

   Unhealed trauma begets trauma. A paradigm shift here would be a magnanimous opportunity, not only for Israelis and Palestinians but for the entire world. Israel/Palestine offers the latest cautionary tale of trauma weaponization. To truly embody this understanding would transform the way we view and tend to grief, in turn transforming the world. 

6. True liberation of the Palestinian people is a prerequisite for sustainable peace in the immediate region and beyond. It moves away from temporary solutions and fosters a narrative and reality that centers on justice, equality, and coexistence, which are essential for long-term stability.

Palestine is not a war happening far off in a distant land; it is a mirror demanding a re-examination of our humanity. The liberation of Palestine is not just an aspiration; it is a clarion call for reawakening, inviting us to challenge the very narratives and actions that have shaped our world, compelling us to confront our own complicity in systems of oppression and embrace a collective responsibility for justice.  

The human psyche has never known so fully the fear of an entire medical system destroyed in weeks or more children killed in one year than from four years of world conflict. We’ve never witnessed through the proximity of technology, grandmothers murdered as they walked through “safe corridors” holding the hand of their grandchildren, who in turn raised white flags, nor the killing of livestock by snipers and settlers when the population is starving, starving despite humanitarian aid minutes away. We’ve never seen so many children with blown limbs and no anesthesia or painkillers to ease the pain. Even the horrific images from the concentration camps during World War II that we have come to understand as that devastating historical period were hesitantly shared after the war was over. 

It is not new that humans are capable of such grotesque atrocities, but it is new to our collective humanity to be faced daily with mounting evidence of such truth. We are at the behest of technology; we can’t look away. We are clearly being reflected back by our own shadows and, therefore, hold in our hands and hearts the potential to transform it. What an evolutionary shift that would be!

The past and future are unfolding at this very moment. Every trauma compounded in the people, every greediness for land well placed, is erupting after silently and systematically being devoured in Palestine for the past 76-100 years. The colonial plan is being confronted by an awakening of the many, many of whom, for the first time, understand the intersectional violence that weaves the fabric of life. 

A year ago, in that Brooklyn browstone, the television flashed to commercials after the CNN newscaster shocked us with the news. Someone put the volume down, and the conversation erupted. I felt grateful to be in a room where no negotiation needed to take place. We shared values and a full-hearted knowing, a historical knowing, an ancestral one, too. We drew the lines between what had been and braced ourselves for what we knew in our bones was coming. 

I suggested we use the dozens of candles we had bought for the conference that hadn’t arrived in time, or so we thought until now, and made a circle of gentle flames on the living room floor. Someone turned off the lights, and we prayed for Palestine by candlelight in the heart of the Empire State—all of us from different regions of  Abya Yala. Our Creole Caribbean English swirled with South American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The language of every colonizer who stole, conquered, and mixed with our ancestors lifted like smoke from the remodeled subterranean Brooklyn apartment. In every mouth, the ancestral prayer of those colonized who still live through us begged for another people’s freedom because Palestinian freedom is entirely entangled with our own. 

The Potawatomi Nation elders say, “We do ceremony to remember to remember.” Over the past year, grief has become our ceremony, and it is one of the most important practices we need to centralize as we continue to do the liberatory work. This time is not just about standing against; it is also about getting close to the Earth and sitting together so that we may stand for life without the unprocessed trauma, a trauma that can so quickly become weaponized, as we have witnessed. 

This moment has given us a dimension of humanity that far outweighs our ability to communicate our sorrow, yet we must. Justice is love made visible. It is for this reason that we need to remain steadfast to one another, alchemizing the grief, and committed to never again like never before. If we manage to do so, the liberation of Palestine will be a transformative symphony, a paradigm shift that resonates beyond borders, crossing thresholds of possibility. To all who refuse the callusing of their humanity under the brutal weight of empire, this moment is a call for a paradigm shift. Palestine is a paradigm shift, and we chose to be here for the shifting.   

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Citations

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Amnesty International. “Israel’S Apartheid Against Palestinians,” August 12, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/34jmhmhd.

Anadolu Ajansi. “We See No Signs of Genocide by Israel in Gaza, German Spokesman Says,” October 14, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/47uu9f3d.

Chompsky, Noam. “Why Does the U.S. Support Israel?,” November 6, 2023. https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/opinions/noam-chomsky-why-does-us-support-israel/.

Citino Nathan, Martín Gil, Ana and Norman, Kelsey. Migration Policy Institute. “Generations of Palestinian Refugees Face Protracted Displacement and Dispossession,” May 3 2023. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/palestinian-refugees-dispossession#:~:text=Palestinians%20comprise%20the%20largest%20stateless%20community%20worldwide.,this%20population%20is%20unique%20in%20several%20ways.

Democracy Now! ““Absolutely Unimaginable”: Children in Gaza Face Amputations Without Anesthesia, Death & Disease.” Democracy Now!, December 28, 2023. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/28/palestinian_children_gaza. 

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. 2023. “Israel Hits Gaza Strip With the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs.” November 2, 2023. 

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Krauss, Joseph. 2024. “Why Isn’t Desperately Needed Aid Reaching Palestinians in Gaza? | AP News.” AP News, February 21, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/y34rudfn. 

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Lederer, Edith M. “Freedom of Expression Threatened More Seriously in Gaza Than in Any Recent Conflict, UN Expert Says | AP News.” AP News, October 19, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/4hu6dnk5.

Middle East Monitor. “Israeli Settlers Kill Over 50 Sheep on Palestinian Farm.” September 13, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/ynjvrmmf. 

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The Observatory of Economic Complexity. “Weapons in Israel | the Observatory of Economic    Complexity,” n.d. https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/weapons/reporter/isr.

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UN News. “Gaza: School Set for Polio Vaccine Campaign Hit in Deadly Strike, Says UNRWA,” October 14, 2024. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1155671.

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