Eid Mubarak. Free Palestine.

Yesterday over a billion Muslims around the world celebrated the end of the sacred month of Ramadan. We also shared the dissonance of distress, rage, sadness, hope, grief, guilt, and faith because our Muslim and non-Muslim kin in Palestine face violence, displacement, and death.

In Jerusalem, residents of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah have been resisting violent Zionist settlers trying to steal their homes, a continuation of uninterrupted state-sanctioned colonization. Ongoing Palestinian resistance has been met with police violence in cities across occupied Palestine and now the indiscriminate bombing and murder of civilians in a besieged Gaza.

As an abolitionist collective, Believers Bail Out recognizes that the violence of American policing and incarceration are foundationally intertwined with empire and settler colonialism. The United States and Israel operate under explicit and tacit policies of genocidal disappearance of native peoples and their lifeways. The state of Israel wrests the homes and land of indigenous Palestinians who are among the world’s oldest Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities–in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the West Bank, Gaza, refugee camps, and throughout the diaspora.

The sacred site of Al Aqsa in Jerusalem connects Muslims, Christians, and Jews in ways that exceed and often contradict the discourses of property, the nation-state, and enclosure. During his miraculous night journey, the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him, prayed at Masjid Al Aqsa before ascending to Heaven where he met the Prophets Adam, Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Isa (Jesus), Yahya ibn Zakariya (John the Baptist), Idris, and Yusuf (Joseph), peace and blessings upon them all. For centuries Al Aqsa has been safeguarded as a sacrosanct place of worship, community, and pilgrimage. But this year, throughout Ramadan, the Al-Aqsa compound has been the target of Israeli police attacks and Zionist bombardment.

Incarceration breaks bonds, yet knows no boundaries. American imperialism funnels billions in public funding to the violent removal and murder of Palestinians. The settler states exchange weapons alongside dehumanizing military and police training. Our money upholds Israeli apartheid. As we demand abolition of American empire and its carceral system we must too demand the end of the ongoing Israeli occupation that has imprisoned and dispossessed millions of Palestinians since 1948.

It has been 73 years of ongoing Nakba, the catastrophe of the forced dispossession of Palestinians. We bear witness to the steadfast and popular resistance of indigenous peoples on Turtle Island and in Palestine that is rooted in deep ties to and care for the land. Our liberation is bound to the liberation of Palestine–Insha’Allah, soon.

 

ACTION ITEMS:

– Learn about Palestine from Palestinians and sources that value Palestinian life

– Follow Palestinian Youth Movement to find a rally in your area

– Join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement

– Contact your political officials to demand an end to aid to Israel