I'm struggling to find reporting that accurately models the power disparity between Palestinian citizens, who are living in an apartheid state, and Israeli soldiers, who are actively oppressing Palestinians, but: here are some horrors happening right now. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/7/al-aqsa-worshippers-protest-palestinian-evictions-in-jerusalem

I specify "right now" because Israeli soldiers abusing Palestinian citizens is an ongoing reality; this is an acute, very visible instance, but the situation in Palestine is one of intentional, systematized abuse whose goal is self-evidently the erasure of Palestine.

I say all of this as a Jewish American who feels his Judaism strongly; who has visited Israel and wishes, so powerfully, that he could live there, feel a citizen, ethically; who was near Be'er Sheva in Jan 2009 less than a mile from Hamas missile strikes...

...and for whom that background and those experiences form an immutable certainty that Palestine must - for every reason, ethical to political to practical - must be free, fully free, and fully recognized by the world and guaranteed in its independence as a sovereign state.

I don't talk about this a lot, here or elsewhere, but I think about, read about, feel about this every day, and have for a decade.

Palestine must be free. Palestinians must be safe. It is the state of Israel's fault that they aren't.

Addendum: clarifying again that it is the STATE OF ISRAEL'S FAULT. The fault is Israel's. All Israelis are to some extent culpable, in the same way all Americans are to some extent culpable for our disastrous wars. Some Israelis oppose the occupation; others support it.

If you made it to the end of this thread: thank you! Please get educated and make noise - today, next week, next year - about Israel's occupation of Palestine.

None of us are free until all of us are free.