NATIONAL SJP 

Today, we recognize 5 years since the Unity Intifada, a moment which brought the Palestinian cause to the forefront of popular consciousness and one which shifted the terms of engagement through all of occupied Palestine. Sparked by displacement efforts in Sheikh Jarrah, the movement spread quickly into global protests expressing solidarity with both Sheikh Jarrah and all of Palestine. This moment served as a prelude to the current political moment we find ourselves in now, and we understand that the popular movement and mobilization from 5 years ago lives on now through our continued struggle. From Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza, the Intifada lives!

Yesterday’s attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego is the product of decades of coordinated anti-Arab and Islamophobic propaganda, surveillance, and dehumanization normalized by the U.S. and Western powers. This agenda of violence has cultivated the conditions that target Muslim communities, from our masjids and neighborhoods within the diaspora to ethnic cleansing and siege abroad. National Students for Justice in Palestine stands with the San Diego community grieving the devastating loss of their loved ones. We mourn and honor every one of our martyrs, from the martyrs of the ICSD attack to Wadea al-Fayoume to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians martyred in Gaza.

THE NAKBA NEVER ENDED: AIRSTRIKES IN GAZA CITY As Palestinians marked the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, Gaza once again endured a night of relentless bombardment. IOF airstrikes targeted residential buildings in Gaza City overnight, killing at least 9 Palestinians and injuring more than 40 others according to initial reports. Omar Hamad, a writer from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza and founder of The Phoenix Library, described arriving near the site of the attack, “Today, before I even reached the bombing site, and from 200 meters away, I smelled the scent of blood, as if my mind knew it and could distinguish it among so many others odors of dust, sulfur, rubble, and gunpowder. Instantly, my mind flashed back to the countless scenes of blood I lived through during the genocide.” As Western institutions and governments continue to bankroll the ongoing siege, displacement, and genocide, our responsibility in the imperial core continues to grow. From the airstrikes on residential buildings paid by university endowments to the research our universities produce for weapons manufacturers, our institutions remain materially tied to the destruction of Gaza. The violence of the ongoing Nakba must not be normalized or allowed to continue for another generation. The Nakba must not remain continuous. We must unwaveringly resist and commit to Palestine’s liberation.

Today, we commemorate the 78th anniversary of the ongoing Nakba. The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” marks the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948, when the zionist entity forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, brutally and systemically emptied 530 villages, and carried out over 70 massacres in its campaign to establish a settler colony on Palestinian land. Though the Nakba is commemorated on May 15th, we understand that the ethnic cleansing campaign has never ended—it remains continuous and ongoing. Throughout the past 78 years, and more recently the past 31 months of heightened decimation, Palestinians have remained steadfast in the face of relentless violence and attempts of erasure, from enduring genocide, displacement, and siege in Gaza to escalating settler violence, land theft, incursions and raids, and detainment in the West Bank. Despite the colonizers’ persistent attempts, they will not, and will never, succeed in erasing Palestinian people. Despite the Nakba continuing for 78 years, the Palestinians’ desire to return to their home is not a dream but a future to be achieved through the struggle to free their land from zionist occupation. This future can only be achieved through the steadfast resistance, achieved through struggle, from the homeland to the diaspora. Generation after generation, until liberation and return.

Over the last 3 years, Gaza’s universities, libraries, and scholars have been systematically targeted in a deliberate attack on Palestinian life itself, all bankrolled by complicit Western institutions we attend and are graduating from. As students across North America graduate this Spring, we remember the thousands of Palestinian students in Gaza who shared our dreams and hopes, who we now continue the struggle in honor of. These are the names of a small fraction of the martyred students who would have graduated this year. We refuse to forget our martyred peers. No graduation until Gaza’s liberation.

Over one year has passed since the arrest of Tarek Barzouk. National SJP and the entire student movement stands firmly in solidarity with Tarek and every other political prisoner targeted by the state. To find out more ways to support Tarek and the campaign advocating for his release, follow @freetarekbazrouk to stay up to date. Free our prisoners, free them all, break down the prison walls!

Today is May Day, otherwise known as International Workers Day. First started to commemorate the Haymarket Affair, a date in which strikers in Chicago were bombed while protesting for the eight hour work day, the day has come to be recognized internationally as a testament to the strength, victory, and struggle of the working class. The fight of the worker amidst class struggle can be found in its most potent form in national liberation struggles across the world. The struggle to liberate one’s land from foreign occupiers is the most potent manifestation of class struggle, manifesting as a struggle between the occupier and the occupied. This can take the form of economic subjugation, as we see today across Africa and Latin America, or the form of settler colonialism, which we see today in Palestine and Lebanon. The global liberation of the working class will not be achieved without first the guaranteed right of national sovereignty granted to all oppressed people across the world, from Palestine, to Lebanon, Iran, Cuba, and all victims of imperialism. Our struggles should not be understood as disparate struggles but rather must be viewed as interconnected fronts in the same struggle against a global system of imperialism which places the class interests of a few over the rights of those across the world. Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Today marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, established in 1974 to mark the release of the first Palestinian prisoner. On this day, we remember the struggle of those stuck behind the concrete walls of zionist prisons, paying the ultimate price for their dedication to the Palestinian cause. We remember those still suffering like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah, who remains in prison simply because he chose to continue his work in saving the lives of those who lived through the genocide in Gaza. We remember Marwan Barghouti, who is continuously tortured and belittled by his oppressors. We remember Walid Daqqah, who struggled behind the walls until his last breath and remains an unshakable symbol of the Palestinian cause even in death. As he wrote, in words that reverberate amid the present moment, “It’s hard to be optimistic and believe in life when there is so much destruction and death in our region, but the refusal of death is a fragile faith in life. And fragile faith is preferable to surrender.” As laws are passed that permit the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and while Israeli politicians like Ben-Gvir continue to mock and defile those trapped in zionist prisons, the state of our prisoners becomes more dire and demanding of us each day. From Turtle Island to Palestine, the prison system targets those who dare to defy oppressive state structures and subjects them to unbearable conditions. It’s the responsibility of the movement to ensure that our prisoners are never forgotten and that the struggle is continued until the walls of every prison fall.

The Lebanese state entering talks with the US and Zionist entity follows a disturbing pattern of Arab regimes capitulating to Zionism in direct contrast to the will of the people. Talks of ceasefires have not deterred the Zionist entity’s bombing and occupation of Gaza. Lebanon is no different. As so-called leaders of Lebanon concede ground to Zionism, the population overwhelmingly rejects this dangerous move and its implications for the sovereignty of Lebanon. Zionism will not stop until it occupies and ethically cleanses Lebanon. Zionism is a threat to all people who desire liberation. The Lebanese government betrays its people and its existence by entertaining “negotiations” with the Zionist entity, upholding the status quo that has plunged millions into uncertainty and instability at the behest of the United States and its proxies.

On this day, 78 years ago, Zionist terrorist militias of the Irgun and Lehi— with support from Haganah— massacred more than 100 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin. The Deir Yassin massacre is a flashpoint in collective Palestinian memory, as it catalyzed the mass ethnic cleansing and systematized expulsion of Palestinians through the Zionist project’s Plan Dalet. Thousands of Palestinians, fearing the same fate as the villagers in Deir Yassin, fled from surrounding villages including Qalunya, Beit Iksa, and Al-Maliha and across Palestine. While the massacre is often recalled as an unequivocal instance of Zionist colonial terror, the record must illuminate the heroic resistance of the villagers of Deir Yassin and surrounding Palestinian villages. Armed with rifles, they withstood Zionist terrorists until their last breath. Additionally, the Deir Yassin massacre and its perpetrators must not be cemented as an isolated event with isolated actors. While the genocidal crimes of the Zionist entity continue, they are being committed by the very same terror militias that slaughtered the residents of Deir Yassin vis-a-vis their institutionalization within the iOF and Zionist government. Following the first Nakba, the Irgun was officially incorporated into the iOF on June 1st, 1948. That same year, Lehi members flooded into the iOF following its official formation, solidifying the Zionist project’s allegiance to terrorism as a strategy to fulfill their colonial endeavors. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, leaders of Irgun and Lehi respectively, served consecutively as prime ministers of the Zionist entity, enshrining this genocidal history as the entity’s perpetual present. As we witness the expansion of the Zionist project beyond Palestine and into Lebanon and Iran, we must view these continuing massacres as the culmination of the ‘Greater Israel Project’— a scheme birthed long before the atrocities of the Nakba and those who committed the Deir Yassin massacre. We must oppose Zionism wherever it contaminates and remain rooted in the memory of Deir Yassin and all those expelled during the Nakba as we advance towards our ultimate goal— liberation and return.