BREAKING: Jewish-Palestinian Solidarity Behind New Hunger Strike for Gaza
Because, writes columnist Eman Abdelhadi, starving Palestinians are met with bullets not bread.
Eman Abdelhadi
[The following speech is from In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi at a news conference in Federal Plaza on Monday, June 16 at the launch of an indefinite hunger strike by six members of Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago.]
I woke up today, and the first thing I did was check how many of my people Israel killed yesterday.
I have been waking up this way for 618 days, and so have most Palestinians.
Joining this daily ritual have been Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis and now Iranians. For 618 days, Palestinians have been watching Israel slaughter our people in the tens of thousands.
We have been watching video after video of our children, our women, our men covered in the rubble of their homes, covered in their loved ones’ tears, covered in makeshift shrouds, covered by dirt in mass graves.
Over 618 days we have watched Israel slaughter — in cold blood — 60,000 Palestinians. For 618 days, it has deliberately destroyed the infrastructure that makes life possible — homes, schools, universities, hospitals, and water, electricity and sewage infrastructure.
Israel has been unleashing disease that has killed an additional 200,000 Palestinians.
It is not clear whether the survivors are lucky or unlucky.
Israel is starving everyone its bombs have not managed to reach. In the last few weeks it has distributed meager rations through a shady U.S. operation that’s been condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups. Israel has killed 300 Palestinians at aid distribution sites and wounded 2,000 more.
Starving Palestinians are met with bullets not bread.
None of this would be possible without U.S. support. We’ve given Israel carte blanche instead of a red line, offering endless money, weapons and protection.
I call my cousin in Nablus and don’t know how to look her in the eye, knowing my tax dollars are paying for the siege of our hometown, for the destruction of our people. I was born in this country. I pay taxes here. This is the only passport I hold. I don’t know how to live with the fact that my country is killing my people every day.
But I know I am not alone. Poll after poll shows that Americans stand with the Palestinian people and want our government to stop funding and arming Israel.
For 618 days I have linked arms and joined voices with brave siblings from every ethnicity and religion to say enough is enough. Today, I am humbled and awed by Jewish Voice for Peace launching a hunger strike to say stop starving Gaza.
These hunger strikers are standing up for humanity and for the will of the American people. It is time our elected officials join us, it is time they actually represent us in standing squarely against the systematic starvation and slaughter of Palestinians.
Enough is enough. Stop starving Gaza.
Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072.
