From the River to the Sea…
Back on a rainy day in May of this year, I was proud to be invited to speak at the national March for Palestine at the Lincoln Memorial. It was such a transformational experience to be among 35,000 comrades in the fight against oppression around the world. Standing in unity not just in my hometown of Washington, D.C., but in Sheikh Jarrah, in Gaza, in Haifa, in the West Bank, in el Lydd, in Silwan, in Jerusalem, and in all occupied territories. I declared:
“My name is Anthony Lorenzo Green and I’m a core organizer for BLM DC and I’m here to tell you, to bring a message from the Black side of Washington, DC.”
Seventy-three years after the Nakba, when 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral land. We collectively with one powerful voice demanded an end to over $3.8 billion of our tax dollars going to the Israeli occupation regime every single year, funding the colonization, occupation and oppression of Palestine and the Palestinian people. The same Israeli regime that provides training to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to oppress and kill Black people in Washington, D.C.
I was shocked, surprised, and inspired by Sunrise DC’s bold stance against three Zionist organizations in progressive movement spaces and how their ideology is incompatible with our fight for DC Statehood.
🚨 The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) is an arm of the explicitly Zionist organization Union for Reform Judaism (URJ).
🚨 The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) lists pro-Israel policy efforts as one of its primary objectives.
🚨 The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) names supporting “a secure Israel” as one of its core principles.
Sunrise DC did not name the other two non-Zionist Jewish organizations affiliated with the coalition.
Because that anti-capitalist, youth-led, abolitionist Sunrise chapter has been my comrades in the fight for racial justice, I knew their intent was never to be antisemitic (they weren’t) and I also know how it doesn’t matter to those who want to conflate Judaism and Zionism while using the blood of Palestinian children to push a colonial theory. I also wasn’t surprised by the responses to their statement and the systemic pressure for them to bow with the expectation of throwing Palestinians under the bus, a common routine by progressives in America. However, no outrage over the years about how almost all Zionist groups exclude the participation of anti-Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist Palestinians, including people like me who support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Very little outrage over Israel declaring six Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations” to silence critics of apartheid.
I know this pressure well. It’s constantly deployed by the same entities to force Black people to support violent policies that are detrimental to Black lives. They’ll even go as far as to push the faces of Black Jews momentarily to the forefront who may dance with solidarity and abolition but always protect their proximity to whiteness.
I am of the belief that refusing to organize with Zionists is not antisemitic. In fact, it is the basic foundation of Palestinian solidarity. There are a number of people in the DC Statehood movement that only support freedom…for some. But Black DC natives been knew this for decades. Washington, D.C. is the prime example of what a Black internal colony looks like in America. An oppressed state within a state. Our elders prepared us for how Black Washingtonians would be the sacrifice to make statehood happen on a land my ancestors were enslaved on. Thousands upon thousands of Black D.C. residents have already been displaced.
This country tries very hard everyday to conflate Black liberation and solidarity with Palestinians as anti-semitic. This will be my last year doing direct organizing in the movement for Black lives, but fighting for a fair and just city is my life. I come from a village of Black D.C. natives who are grounded in the tradition of radical love, resistance and solidarity with oppressed people everywhere.
As a Black boy growing up in Black churches that preached Zionism from the pulpit, they want you to believe the issue of Israel and Palestine is complicated but it’s really not. There’s a reason you see Palestinian flags flying at Black Lives Matter rallies. Israel is an apartheid state committing human rights violations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It’s not complicated. We need to stop arming Israel and end the occupation.
Like we told D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman and many other people that share her belief on how we show up for oppressed people, support for Black lives is not transactional and neither will be our support for our Palestinian family.
A reckoning with Zionism in social movements is not easy but it’s necessary. Freedom and justice for all includes Palestinian people. #FreePalestine
