Struggling for Liberation: A Comparison of Black Americans and Palestinians

Abstract

As the world is constantly being reshaped by various and numerous factors, the resurfacing and/or development of arising core issues has been inevitable; concepts of slavery and colonialism remain to find new shapes, forms, and trends into existing in today’s modern world. Notably, in a world where individualism is being promoted on a wide range, and is in fact a dominant concept, liberation movements have failed to accomplish their goals and aspirations towards a better future, specifically with the lack of a unified forum that provides genuine and substantial support, further intruding on the possibility of facilitating functional and practical dialogues for purposes of discussing and achieving the goals and demands of these liberation movements. Today, Black Americans are still suffering the oppression and injustices resultantly related to racism and institutionalized discrimination, while black underclass remains a distinct feature of Black Americans lives. Further, Palestinian people remain under the rule of the Israeli occupation, constantly, suffering Israel’s systematic and widespread oppression, discrimination, dehumanization, and ethnic cleansing, with complete and evident disregard to their fundamental and inherent human rights. Evidently, in both case studies and other similar cases of oppression and discrimination, Human Rights Defenders, politicians’, vocal opponents’ of aforementioned policies, and liberation movements, have all been labelled as terrorists’ and demonized by their oppressors’ and third parties within the international community who failed to provide any accountability for the real perpetrators due to political pressure, or mutual interests, underpinning the tragedy of millions of human being spread across the today’s modern world. Liberation movements’ found refugee and inspiration from previous, current and similar movements, advocating for solidarity for various causes in different and available forums. Notably, the clear Palestinian Black Solidarity, which was most obvious in which Kristian Davis Bailey, and Naber referred to as the “Gaza-Ferguson Era”, allowed for the first distinct steps in introducing organized solidarity with movements advocating for the right of Black people; however, the shared solidarity was lacking in some aspects and was not perceived strongly. This research aims at exploring and analyzing the commonalities between Black and Palestinian Liberation movements, furthermore, it will seek shaping a framework that allows for more organized solidarity between liberation movements’ that could be made with other movements [Zionism for instance]. Additionally, this research will highlight the importance of creating a comprehensive global liberation movement, or alternatively a unified forum for all liberation movements, and will study the initial steps towards either, in order to create a systematic and sustainable change within a global context.

Key Words: Palestinians, Black-Americans, Palestine, Israel, USA, Demonization, Criminalization, Racism, Black Lives Matter, Terrorists, Riots, identity, enemy, capitalism, crisis, movements, protests, language.