Palestine is not Rosa Parks

 

Who are the Freedom Riders | Palestine is definitely not equal to Rosa Parks, but utilizing the symbolism of her historic presence can be beneficial and also risky to the Palestinian cause. Thus usage of her likeness and other popular figures of solidarity struggles should be used respectfully. Meanwhile Palestinians should be insisting upon the empowerment of their own leaders who qualify to stand on their own two feet without having to be likened to anyone.

FACT: A majority of Palestinians do not know what #FreedomRides is and this does not reflect well upon the holistic involvement and development of the struggle.

FACT: It is reliant upon the symbolic relation to civil rights movement, whereas Palestinians are seeking their own state, not normalization and absorption into a colonial enterprise whose laws are only meant to protect Zionists. This is not civil, this is a military occupation.

FACT: Recycling terminology from symbolic causes weakens the unique attributes of the Palestinian cause. The entire framework of Palestinian rights is not built on freedom and equality in a shared nation but is a result of exclusion due to colonialism and Zionism. Palestinians are not slaves who got dumped here by white supremacists. For the most part white supremacists of Zionism recruited people to populate their colonized land. So stop comparing this to Rosa Parks. Call her Huwaida Arraf, call him Badea Dwaik. They are Palestinians and have enough significance in their cause to stand independent and legitimate as our own figure heads in this pursuit. 

It is here that is the most dangerous point that activists seem to ignore. While desperately trying to make the illegal military occupation of Palestine relative to popular symbols of activism, they have desisted from the creation of language to sustain the Palestinian cause. 


Palestinians do not need to be called Bantustan. We do not have to be Mandela or Martin Luther King or Ghandi. Why is it that now we do not have faith in our own names and cultural heritage to create leaders?  Did Malcolm X wait for someone to label him before he made a name for himself and the cause? Of course not. That is the difference between then and today. Utilizing these references is fine to make the cause relative BUT it is time Palestinian intellectuals like EDWARD SAID who invented the term ORIENTALISM begin to own and create their terminology and symbols. 

FACT: Illegal settler buses should not be the vehicle of freedom, because no Palestinian is measuring themselves to the "rights" of settlers for they are ILLEGAL COLONIALISTS. 

FACT:  THE PALESTINIAN COMMUNITY IS NOT HOLISTICALLY ENGAGED. THE DIASPORA IS NOT ENGAGED. 

QUESTION: Who is engaging them, and how can it be done with the growing infrastructure of NGOs which prohibit and sedate the need for peaceful Palestinian resistance? Go ask anyone in Ramallah what Freedom Rides is, then tell me about POPULAR resistance.

QUESTION: How does Freedom Riders fall into the strategy of disassembling the colonial state of Israel? Is there a follow up step now that some are in prison and others paying tickets for their participation? How will the geopolitical regions of Palestine be engaged?

QUESTION; Who created Freedom Riders and what is their demographics? Are they inclusive of the really disenfranchised Palestinians, or the foreign educated ones? Is there international involvement and to what degree?

QUESTION: For the Popular Committees and the various organizations organizing, how inclusive are your efforts truly, and in what ways can we further engage our own communities?

QUESTION: How effective is the messaging when Palestinians do use symbolic figures as their relating point to the rest of the world?

They do not take notice because these "Official Permitted Forms of Non-Violence" mean nothing when they have to be "permitted," let alone is this a struggle  to be validated by so called liberals. If methodology and tactics must await validation, then Palestinians are being subjected to yet another class of decision makers who are deciding the route of their resistance. Where is the independence in thought, in autonomy? Palestinians, like all human beings, are capable and within their human right to create and validate within their own means and circles.


The lives of influential figures and movements are monopolized by "liberals" or anyone else for that matter for this reason of taking a role in deciding a people's direction. Where is the notion of self created resistance?And why must liberals take notice of the "form" when it is they who define the applicability of the form?  If they were fighting to achieve freedom why are you reasserting some kind of ownership, direction, and limited scope? Different groups have different agendas. The first thing Palestinians should be entitled to is idea creation, assessment, and engagement. If this means practicing a tactic by other struggles, this is fine. But to downgrade such a tactic to a branded type, is linear in thinking and demeaning to its original use and its new application. The fluidity of the struggle needs to be upheld in all Palestinian societal levels, and this is where such an action like Freedom Riders was lacking.


These symbols have gone so  for to be sources of profit for private agendas.  Look what they did to Mandela's name, they made it into some bougie clothesline.


It is time we recognize that this is NOT a fair world and that morality is not consistent. A political game is being played at the expense of Palestinians. And it is for this reason I call upon Palestinians and supporters alike to no longer make the relative symbolism the main factor in their media attempts, but instead as a unified front support our leaders as legitimate models for the world to recognize.

NOTE: Be mindful that Zionists do recycle repeatedly symbols of Holocaust to justify their own methods of oppression, as Finkelstein pointed out in the Holocaust Industry. It is very risky to also relate symbols to Paelstine if not exercised rightly or if it may seem they are exhausted and manipulated. 

Also note that Zionists have infiltrated the Civil Rights movement and have penetrated African American Communities, at least as my experience goes, growing up in a predominately African American community. However I have no statistics.