A few I follow to stay up to date with news, community organizing, and context.

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If Not Now -- for community organizing & learning. Stay in the loop on IG or via their newsletter. Find your local city chapter. They're "a movement of American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis."

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Palestinian Youth Movement -- for community organizing & activations like protests. Stay in the loop on IG. Find your local chapter. They're a "transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians dedicated to the liberation of our homeland and people."

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Standing Together -- for community organizing & learning. Stay in the loop on IG and via their newsletter. They're a "grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice."

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Pal Action US -- for direct action like blocking ports to disrupt arms shipments.

 

Jail Support / Bail Fund -- find your local versions via Google. Here's LA's. 

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News: Al Jazeera & AJ+

 

Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement -- get your money talking like folks did to protest apartheid and other civil injustices throughout history.

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Student movement: Students for Justice in Palestine (find local college chapters!)

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A good place to start. Digestible, powerful, and thoughtful in its contextualizing of Jewish oppression and trauma throughout history as well as the occupation and oppression Palestinians live through today. 

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Naomi Klein, Jewish-Canadian climate justice activist, released a book in September 2023 called Doppleganger. After October 2023, she released two chapters of Doppleganger for free online. In her own words, these chapters "wrestle with many tricky themes, including the persistence of antisemitism as an ancient conspiracy theory, and the dangers of a particular kind of trauma-forged identity politics as they play out in Israel." They "also get into the ongoing debates about how the Nazis were influenced by European colonial and racial segregation in the Americas—and how a failure to reckon with those connections shaped and misshaped Israeli history, and contributed to exiling Palestinians into an unbearable purgatory. Israel-Palestine has been described by many as the “open wound” of the modern world: never healed, never even bandaged. On October 7, 2023, that wound was ripped open in ways we cannot yet begin to comprehend."

Learn about the links between US policing and Iz. This is a great example of why you hear people saying that all liberation is connected -- it's because systems of oppression are connected.

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Stop Cop City is a movement fueled by racial justice advocates, Indigenous land defenders, and allies against Atlanta's plans to demolish nearly 400 acres of the Weelaunee Forest (Muskogee land) in a predominantly Black neighborhood to build a militarized police training center. "The plans include military-grade training facilities, a mock city to practice urban warfare, explosives testing areas, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad."

 

There are already several Cop Cities around the US (most build after 2020 as a twisted response to protests against police violence). Many, like the one in Atlanta, are directly tied to the IDF/IOF (Iz-i Occupying Forces) and to US-Iz relations. (ex: Cities like Atlanta have well-established programs that send cops to Iz to train with the IOF. They then use those same tactics on Americans, especially against the Black community.)

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"Led by Georgia State University, the [GILEE (Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange)] program facilitates direct training between Georgia Police and the IOF, in part by sending Georgia police to occupied Palestine in order to be trained in racist and hyper-militarized surveillance and policing tactics. The Atlanta Police Foundation has already invited the IOF to train at Cop City if it is built, and APD and Fulton County SWAT team members recently joked about 'capturing H*m*s t*rrorists' while descending upon squatters in an abandoned hotel." Read more here.

Learn about AIPAC and support the Reject AIPAC movement. This is how and why the political landscape is what it is -- it's a major reason why your and my tax money continues to fund Iz.

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AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the most powerful pro-Iz lobby in the country. Though they've always had tremendous political power, it's only recently (2022) that they began direct electioneering through a new AIPAC super-PAC, which focuses on defeating progressive Democratic who have spoken out in support of Pal. As you can imagine, campaigning against progressive candidates works against all the progressive policies candidates like these champion, both at home and abroad, like reproductive rights and racial justice -- it's all connected.

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AIPAC is backed by Republican billionaire mega-donors, and the PAC plans to spend upwards of $100 million on ads to defeat progressive Dems this election cycle. (Read more here and here.)

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In March, a coalition of progressive orgs (including Justice Democrats, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the Working Families Party, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Sunrise Movement), launched Reject AIPAC, a campaign that intends to spend as much money as it can to combat AIPAC's influence leading up to Nov. Read more and support them here.

This one blew my f**king mind. Such a powerful survey of the Iz lobby in America, the role Iz plays for many, many in the Jewish community, and the backlash anti-Zionist Jews face for speaking out.

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"Two young American Jews travel to Israel seeking a deeper understanding of the country they were raised to love. What they encounter profoundly impacts them, leading them to join a growing movement to redefine their community's relationship with Israel in this challenging and emotional journey. Coming soon to an even wider audience, stay tuned."

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Watch on Apple TV or rent on Amazon Prime.

This one is poetic. It doesn't shy away from showing you exactly how f**ked up the occupation is, but it focuses on life and because of that is a powerful reminder of what Palestinians are fighting for. It was filmed in 2022 in the occupied West Bank and was just released on June 6, 2024.

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"The film gives background to the current crisis in Israel/Palestine and brings to light the lives of people we met on our 2022 journey in the occupied West Bank. Their universally human stories speak of intergenerational pain, trauma and resilience.  We hope they touch your heart, stir compassion and understanding, and give rise to a pursuit for justice. For without justice, peace remains an empty slogan.

 

The film is our modest contribution towards our dream for an end to the occupation in Palestine, the attainment of equal rights and fair treatment for Palestinian people, and the spreading of healing for all intergenerational cycles of trauma in the region."

Comprehensiveee. I recommend the audiobook (free on Spotify).

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"A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history

 

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, "in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone." Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi's great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

 

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members--mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists--The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age."

 

 

 

I LOVE speculative fiction!!!! This is a spec fic anthology that spans genres. One of my favorite approaches to deepening understanding.

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"Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 - a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? [...] Covering a range of approaches - from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce - these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, and peace treaties that span parallel universes. Published originally in the United Kingdom by Comma Press in 2019, Palestine +100 reframes science fiction as a place for political justice and the safekeeping of identity."

My first introduction into Iz-Pal was this film in college. Watch free with a library card or .edu email.

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"Winner at the Sundance Film Festival, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit.

 

Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of village turmoil. Burnat watches from behind the lens as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, and lives are lost. 'I feel like the camera protects me,' he says, 'but it's an illusion.'

 

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards."

Reading this right now, too. Link above is to the free e-book by Haymarket Books. The first essay is by Refaat Alareer, Palestinian poet and author of the famous poem "If I Must Die," which he wrote for his daughter in 2011. Refaat was k!lled in an Iz airstrike in December 2023. His daughter was k!lled in April 2024.

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"Imagining the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid, Light in Gaza is a powerful contribution to understanding Palestinian experience.

Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. This distinctive anthology imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation.

Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment."

On Netflix (despite Iz gov's protests) and has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. One of the few (only?) narrative films on the subject.

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"After persuading her father to continue her education in the city, a Palestinian girl's dream is shattered by the harrowing developments of the Nakba."