Attorney and activist Ahmad Abuznaid, Esq. discusses his experiences working for social justice for Black Americans in the U.S. and Palestinians in the occupied territories and in the diaspora. As the first event in our 2018 Palestine Center Summer Intern Lecture Series, this talk focuses on the broad theme of intersectionality between the Palestinian struggle and other contemporary social movements in America.
Nada Elia holds no punches. A principled activist and an accomplished academic, she writes with honesty and vigour. As I embarked on a worldwide speaking tour, an article she wrote two years ago was present in my mind. Entitled, “No More Mr Nice Guy: White Male Israeli Activists Exploiting Palestine Solidarity”, the article details a degree of exploitation of Palestinian solidarity by ex-Zionist intellectuals, who seek high fees and special treatment when they travel the world talking about their moral awakening and ideological conversion. Indeed, some of these “nice guys” generate so much income that they turned solidarity into thriving careers.
By Palestine Center Interns
Connected by the similarities of their situations and a strong desire for liberation, Black Americans as well as the Irish have long stood in support of Palestine. Though people worldwide have supported the Palestinian struggle, the solidarity from these two groups is unique. Black Americans recognize that their struggles against state-sanctioned violence and institutionalized racism in the U.S. are quite similar to Palestinians resisting such actions perpetrated by the Israeli state and military. The Irish draw ties to Palestine based on their shared experiences of settler colonialism
By Zeina Azzam
Perhaps the most hard-hitting sentence in this section of the M4BL platform is, ‘The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.’ This linking of the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance with Palestinian genocide is indeed a forceful statement that points to the use of US tax dollars to serve pernicious and unjust policy decisions. One has only to look at the 2014 Israeli assault of Gaza, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ‘shocked and shamed the world,’ to find proof of such policies.
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