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better understand the present through the study of history, yet we can never, with any assurance, predict the future. History is elusive, enigmatic and it can be a cruel jokester. It can take away as well as give.
A SHARED HISTORY OF RACISM AND POLICE REPRESSION
Yet, there should be a connection between the George Floyd moment and a future moment of meaningful transformation in Palestine. The logic of the anti-racist demonstrations in the United States, and all over the world, should be extended to Israel’s suffocating occupation of Palestine and severe marginalization of Palestinians living inside Israel. Beyond any doubt, the Israeli repression, like the American police repression, is racist repression. The Israelis have a demonstrably racist prime minister who, as a result of repeated reelections, has served longer than any other prime minister in Israeli history. From the outset of the Zionist move-
ment, white Europeans sought to drive out and exclude the Arab “other.” Israel, at its essence, is a racist apartheid regime. Moreover, the Israelis have pioneered— and exported to the United States through various seminars and “deadly exchanges”— the techniques of militarized police repression that we have seen deployed on the streets of American cities. The United States underwrites police repression in Palestine even as it incorporates Israeli techniques into its own law enforcement agencies. According to Jewish Voice for Peace, the Anti-Defamation League—supposedly a civil rights group but actually a repressive wing of the Israel lobby—is the largest nongovernmental trainer of police in the United States, including facilitating worst-practice exchange programs between American police, ICE and FBI, and the Israeli police and military forces. As grassroots peace and justice groups across the United States demand diversion of money from police repression into community health and social (Advertisement)
service programs, we should at the same time demand either eliminating the $3.8 billion annual allocation to the Israeli military or, better yet, shifting it into social services for Palestinians. Can we forge a connection between racist repression and police violence in occupied Palestine and on American streets, and, in so doing, ignite an historical moment that will once again transform the Middle East, but this time in a positive direction? History will decide, but as the demonstrations against police violence in communities across the United States and the world have shown, people do have the ability to mobilize and to change the course of events. George Floyd may have appeared powerless on the evening of May 25, with that jackbooted officer’s knee on his neck, but history has shown that the reverse was true. Floyd’s death was tragic, to be sure, but it gave life to the most powerful and inspirational “moment” of our time. ■
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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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