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WHAT’S THE MEANING OF SOLIDARITY?  
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Jewish Voice for Peace
July 10, 2024
Jewish Voice for Peace
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_ Defenders of Israel’s genocide know we’re strongest when we
work together. That’s why they are so intent on pitting us against
each other. Practicing solidarity helps us understand each other. _

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We often say that none of us will be free until all of us are free.
This is solidarity.

By acting in solidarity, we learn how our struggles are intertwined.
Being part of something larger cuts through our isolation. Solidarity
encourages us to share resources and knowledge, which keeps our
communities safer. And solidarity is essential to building the power
we need to win a world where all people — from the U.S. to Palestine
— live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity. 

Defenders of Israel’s genocide know we’re strongest when we work
together. That’s why they are so intent on pitting us against each
other.

CUTTING THROUGH THE ISOLATION

Practicing solidarity helps us understand each other. When we move
into struggle with and for one another, we learn that we’re not
alone, and we feel empowered to act collectively to build the future
we all want. 

For example, pro-Israel groups have deflected criticism of Israel’s
oppression of Palestinians through “pinkwashing” — by praising
Israel’s record on LGBTQ rights. Protesters
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Denver Pride cut through this false and dangerous narrative. By
asserting that the Palestinian struggle is “our” struggle, they
sent a clear message: You don’t have to choose between your gender
identity or sexual orientation and your support for Palestinian
freedom. 

Apartheid is fundamentally incompatible with queer liberation. Like
all Palestinians, queer Palestinians are being incarcerated,
dispossessed of their homes and land, and slaughtered because they are
Palestinian. While Israel is lauded as a bastion of tolerance, Israeli
police exploit queer Palestinians’ identities to blackmail and
entrap them. 

Solidarity means dispensing with false choices. If our struggles are
intertwined, then one person’s freedom can never come at the expense
of another’s.

SHARING RESOURCES AND KNOWLEDGE

When we work together, we can trade knowledge and skills. That’s
especially important in times of crisis. It’s also how we make sense
of our shared struggles and build a movement capable of uniting us.

Practicing solidarity makes us safer. During the 2014 Ferguson
Uprising, sparked by the police killing of Black teenager Michael
Brown, Palestinians thousands of miles away sent messages of support
to protesters being brutalized by police in the U.S., including advice
on how to cope with tear gas.

When we share our experiences, we learn that we’re being oppressed
by many of the same forces, and that we can resist them together. Our
movements get stronger as a result. In 2015, over 1,000 Black
activists, including Angela Davis and Black Lives Matter co-founder
Patrisse Cullors, signed a statement
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with Palestinians. In it, they spoke to the shared tactics of their
oppressors: 

_“Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against
Palestinians evokes the__ mass incarceration of Black people _
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Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our
children who pose no imminent threat. And while the US and Israel
would continue to oppress us without collaborating with each other, we
have witnessed police and soldiers from the two countries train
side-by-side.” _

Between 2015 and 2022, activists with the Black Lives Matter
movement traveled
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a number of occasions to Palestine, where they learned firsthand from
Palestinians about their struggle for liberation. These activists
built on the long history of Black-Palestinian solidarity, and a
mutual recognition that the forces of colonialism, acting through the
U.S. and Israeli governments, oppress both Black communities within
the U.S. and Palestinians in Palestine.

Recognizing that our oppressors are the same is what powers
intersectional organizing. It was in this context that JVP launched
the Deadly Exchange [[link removed]] campaign in 2017,
which seeks to end cooperation between U.S. and Israeli police forces.

FINDING STRENGTH IN UNITY

We are much more powerful when we act together than when we stand
alone. Acting in solidarity makes us more resilient and helps us
achieve our common goals.

Climate change is the most dire — and daunting — challenge we
face. All of our movements will need to come together to fight it. 

The movement for a free Palestine cannot be disentangled from the
fight for a liveable planet. The first two months of Israel’s
genocidal war on Gaza produced
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300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s more than
what _twenty_ “climate-vulnerable” countries can produce in an
entire year. 

The Israeli military had completely destroyed or damaged nearly half
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Gaza’s trees by March 2024. It has razed huge swathes of farmland
and destroyed orchards and greenhouses. The tens of thousands of bombs
dropped on Gaza have contaminated groundwater and soil, air pollution
has skyrocketed, and as a result of intentional fuel cuts, sewage is
flowing into the sea. Gaza’s ecosystems and biodiversity have been
devastated.

The estimated “carbon cost” of Gaza’s reconstruction
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staggering: Rebuilding the tiny enclave will likely produce 30 million
metric tons of CO2 and other “warming” gasses — around what the
entire country of New Zealand emits annually.

LIBERATION THROUGH SOLIDARITY

Our oppressors are the same: imperialism, white supremacy, and
capitalism, which are themselves intertwined. That means that our
struggles for liberation are connected. It also means that the fight
for a free Palestine is an inherently anti-imperialist,
anti-capitalist, and anti-racist struggle.

The U.S. provides billions in weapons and military funding to Israel
each year, money that could and should be spent on healthcare,
education, and housing, not arming an apartheid state; the same
weapons being deployed against protesters across the U.S. are being
used — and often tested first — on Palestinians across historic
Palestine; and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is fueling the climate
crisis. None of us will be free until Palestinians are free.

That’s why we reject the narrative that Jewish safety can ever come
at the expense of Palestinian freedom. We reject it not only because
we believe that Palestinians, like all people, deserve to live in
dignity and safety, but because _there’s no such thing as
liberation for some. _The only way forward is collective liberation.

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Jewish Voice for Peace
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* Solidarity
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