trump means war with his jerusalem declaration: why it’s important for blm to stand with palestine

“Palestine under Israeli occupation is the worst possible example of a carceral society.” — Angela Y. Davis

It’s not as if the United Sates has been facilitating peace in the Middle East in all this time, prior to Trump. To the contrary, the U.S.’s interference in the conflict has been biased in favor of the Jewish Israelis, while Palestinian Arabs fight for the land that they, too, are entitled to.

Over the better part of a century, the United States, the UN, Britain, and others have abetted Israel in the removal of Palestinians from Jerusalem, a move that some describe as ethnic cleansing, in order to establish a Jewish majority in the Holy City. You know, kinda like that time the British cam—nevermind.

What does this have to do with the Black Lives Matter movement? A whole lot.

To say that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is complicated is an understatement.

While the historical background of the regional disparity goes back thousands of years, let’s just stick to the first public show of support for Zionism in the 20th century.

Created in 1920, the British Mandate for Palestine reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration (of 1917) which established Israel as “national home for the Jewish people” after WWI, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. After that, with the help the UN’s Partition Plan for Palestine proposal, there was a call for independent Jewish and Arab states that surrounded an internationalized Jerusalem. The Civil War that resulted from this “arrangement” after the British troops redrew has been pretty much ongoing ever since. Including the 1948 Palestinian exodus which saw the displacement of n more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs. While the 1948 Palestine war raged on, laws were passed preventing Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes.

This exodus and the ones that followed during the on-going conflict are the results of both White Supremacy and Zionism. Not White Supremacy in a KKK way, White Supremacy in the Christian Evangelical way that mandates the return of all Jews to the Holy Land in order to trigger the End of Times. Seriously.

Which brings us to Donald Trump’s announcement this week that the United States intends to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Jewish Israel—never mind the Palestinians who have birthright claims and a historical legacy over the same territory. Never mind the fact that Palestinians and Arabs alone, for the most part, have been the ones forced out of their shrinking homeland for at the very least, the past century.

Declaring Jerusalem for anybody or for both countries was supposed to be a reward incentive for a compromise between the Palestinians and Israelis. Now, the United States has declared the City for its friends…just because. Sending yet another message to Arabs and Palestine that the West couldn’t care less about their rights, culture, and or profound Arab and Islamic heritage tied to Jerusalem.

As the world continues to push Palestinians further back on the map, one can’t help but wonder if the West is trying to push them all into the sea.