A tribute to the Palestinian stone pelter:

There is probably no more vilified struggle than the Palestinian movement against colonialism & occupation which has long been portrayed as terrorists & suicide bombers. It is likely that the full-blown hate & war-mongering ideology of Islamophobia was honed in the campaign to demonize Palestinians.

Since 1948, Palestinians have stood mostly alone in their struggle against Zionist paramilitary death squads, armed settlers, & the Israeli army backed by the US, UK, & other colonial forces. Solidarity with them is a fairly recent, although massive, development. In 2014, over a million people around the world protested Israel’s 7-week carpet bombing of Gaza.

Like Kashmiris, unarmed Palestinians use stones as defense against brutal military forces armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated & deadly arsenal. Should they just stand there & let their olive trees be uprooted, their wells poisoned, their lands confiscated, their children brutalized & assaulted? Should they just accept occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing without a struggle?

The greatest tribute paid to Palestinians was by Kashmiri youth who recognized the political affinities between their own struggle & Palestinians, identified with Palestinian resistance, & began to call their own struggle against Indian occupation the Kashmiri Intifada.

These Palestinians stand opposite phalanxes of Israeli security forces trying to stop protests in support of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike near the West Bank city of Ramallah & the Israeli settlement of Beit El.

Support Palestinian Intifada & boycott all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729). Their struggle is our struggle.

Je suis Palestinian.

(Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)