Black support for Palestine underscores the fight against empire, revealing how Israel’s violence in Gaza serves U.S. hegemony and white supremacy, with Palestinian freedom as a catalyst for global justice.
“If the Middle East were lost, most of the oil it now supplies to Europe would have to come from the Western hemisphere, which would be forced to reduce consumption or increase crude production anywhere from 20 to 30 per cent.”–illustrative cartographer, Richard Edes Harrison (1951)
When Palestinian resistance forces broke free from their open-air prison in Gaza on October 7th, 2023, many did not realize the events that would unfold–that we were all about to bear witness to the world’s first live-streamed genocide. Israel thought this would be business as usual, that they could continue their brutalization of the Palestinian people, and the world would go about its business—as it has for decades. Not only did they have to contend with the resistance on the ground in occupied Palestine, but the groundswell of support around the world, and specifically from within the imperial core that is the U.S. Much to the dismay of a white hegemonic system, some of that support conspicuously stemmed from within the Black community, which is traditionally targeted with well-orchestrated propaganda meant to cut us off from the global family, as the development of an internationalist lens by a critical mass of the population is a direct threat to the capitalist system.
Noticeable during the 15-month bombing campaign in Gaza, recently reinitiated, was the existence of international factions. Britain, along with the governments of the settler societies it spawned—the “five eyes” of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—sided with the youngest European settler state of Israel, regardless of the brutality of its actions. The masses in the Global South, which constitutes the majority of humanity, support a free Palestine. Just as alarming to the powers that be is the fact that support for the resistance emanated from within the halls of the very institutions meant to train those intended to maintain empire. In general, Americans give little attention to U.S. foreign policy, which operates on a continuum no matter which party occupies the Oval Office. A myriad of people residing in the US support Palestinian liberation, including many anti-zionist Jewish people. This essay explores the Black community’s relationship to Palestine.
WHY PALESTINE?
Palestine is the third rail of the U.S. body politic. Its geographic location provides the material structural relationship to land crucial to the maintenance of a hegemonic, pan-European project. The countries of Europe that participated in colonialism, land theft, and enslavement have almost no naturally occurring resources (mineral, or food) to sustain its lifestyle in the modern world. Just as the lights of Paris are produced by the uranium extraction from Niger (recently impacted by the assertion of sovereignty of the AES to nationalize its resources), the whole of Western Europe also does not have the oil needed to provide for the lifestyle it has created for itself under an exploitative capitalist system, (even more pronounced since cutting themselves off from cheap Russian gas).
Much of the West’s oil has traditionally come from West Asia, a.k.a., the Middle East (ME). Pipeline politics are the invisible infrastructure that masses of people never consider. The only way to guarantee the continuity of that oil flow is to ensure Western-friendly governments are permanently installed throughout the region. This is in addition to providing the military framework to ensure that no conflict, either intranational or interregional, breaks out to disrupt the flow (let alone any nationalist sentiment where a nation chooses to use land for the benefit of its own population). When Europe depends on an absent resource it needs to thrive, this requires complete control over land that is not theirs, which compels perpetual violence to maintain. Enter Israhell. As former President Joe Biden maintained over the course of his long career, Israel is of the utmost importance to the U.S. empire’s existence. Its strategic location places European power in that region to militarily ensure that the land is always used to the benefit of white Western hegemony.
One can better understand the critical role this sliver of land plays, bridging the African and Asian continents, by the coordinated response to October 7th of the West–with the U.S. and Britain at its helm. Although this latest round of genocide of the people of Gaza began under the Biden administration, after a brief pause, Trump demonstrates that his White House will not stray from his predecessor’s position on this issue in spite of any domestic problems, all with the entire world watching. If Europe loses any critical resources, the global pan-European project that began 500 years ago is at risk. Losing Israel means losing the region, because the oligarchic Gulf States governments flanking it are tethered to their existence by Western patronage. Without that region, the West loses control over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which according to the U.S. Federal government sees 80% of liquefied natural gas deliveries via that choke point, not to mention additional types of cargo. This would translate into an astronomical loss of corporate profits—which is why Yemen is also being bombed. This state of affairs explains why pro-Palestinian advocates are being targeted not only in the U.S. and the UK, but across the collective Western world, all in defense of a state openly committing genocide of an indigenous, non-white population. The escalated crackdown on organizers for Palestine has not only targeted student visa holders, but U.S. citizens as well.
THE NARRATIVE
Historically within the U.S., there exists a decades-long history of those fighting for Black liberation who developed a broader perspective in analyzing our material condition within the belly of the beast. Unfortunately, many people remain focused on our internal experiences as though they operate isolated from the rest of the world. Analyzing our circumstances within the heart of empire causes confusion when we don’t see the connections as one global, functioning system run by the descendants of the same people who first began colonizing the globe centuries ago. When some activists —such as Ethel Minor, secretary to Malcolm X at the time of his assassination and later communications coordinator for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee —turned their lens outward, a picture formed that revealed a direct relationship between the actions in which the U.S. and its collaborators engage abroad that produce adverse conditions inside the U.S. Minor’s article, The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge, was key. Just like Ghassan Kanafani saw the struggle for Palestinian liberation as tied to the broader global fight against imperialism, exploitation and white hegemony, so too did Black people inside the imperial core once we looked.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza reveals much about the mechanisms in place allowing Israel to maintain itself as a state, specifically the enormous propaganda network operating via tech corporations and governmental bodies around the globe. Also revealed are the specific ways that Black people residing in the U.S. are targeted. The American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s lobbying organization, recruits members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Cory Booker to support their cause, and spends millions to unseat others who dare to advocate even milquetoast support of the Palestinians. Free propaganda trips allowing Black youth to visit sanitized areas of Israel have taken place for decades. Just as Zionist Jews defunded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1967 for the letter they issued doubling down on their position in support of the Palestinian people, Black students at Harvard were doxed in 2023 for the same reason. Zionists openly discuss the need to target Black people and propagandize us for the purpose of gaining political support for the Israeli project.
Due to U.S. wars and interventions, there are citizens from across the globe residing in the U.S. Why focus on Black people? One can surmise that Zionists are the faction of whites heavily overrepresented in Black civil rights groups serving as the branch of white supremacy meant to infiltrate and ensure our focus remains domestic, thereby preventing a large and visible anti-imperialist confrontation from taking place within the core. Black people fighting for liberation from the internationalist left perspective from decades ago until now have consistently supported the Palestinian cause. There’s a reason for this happening in spite of understanding the role of empire in creating violence and destabilization throughout the African continent in places like Congo and Sudan; or Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean; central and South America; and throughout the Global South. A material analysis of our condition at home leads to understanding the primary gears that make empire tick. Palestine is the linchpin that will cause it to collapse.
Black people in the US should be very upset with a government that ensures its policies create disproportionately substandard outcomes for every aspect of life that matters—access to clean water, healthy food, guaranteed shelter, affordable healthcare, educational attainment, etc. However, we should be particularly angry at the U.S. public’s ignorance of foreign affairs being used by white supremacy to gaslight us into supporting positions that usher in, and further entrench, our oppression via the backdoor while we are asked to stand guard in the front of the house. Subjugation of Palestinian land, and therefore its people, is crucial to the maintenance of the global pan-European project with the U.S. at its head. It’s why the collective West persists with genocide. While Europe still needs oil and other key minerals for its survival, Palestinian land is also needed to maintain white supremacy. What is to be done? The linchpin must be pulled, which requires a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea!
Terri Frick (she/her) is a Gen-Xer who was born and raised in New Orleans, LA, and lived in San Francisco for 20 years (where she graduated from SFSU’s Black Studies department)—responsible for sowing the seeds of her radical development. Her career has been working with youth in college access in both the non-profit sector and in charter school networks. She joined AAPRP last year and is a member of a nascent BAP Louisiana, which is in the process of building out ways to expand in the community.
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