Is it because it is a time where families have the freedom and leisure to come together?
Is it because it is one of your only breaks from work?
Is it because it is a joy for your kids to experience the holidays in full force?
Well...
Let me ask you this. But first let me set the stage.
May 14th, 1948. The First Nakba. A day of massacre for the Palestinians, but interestingly enough, a day of "independence" for Israelis. Leading me to believe that mass murder and independence are synonymous in our vocabulary, but I digress.
A girl I went to high school with and despite how badly I want to name drop, she will go unnamed, posted her trip to Israel on May 14th 2024, with a landscape photo of Israel from her hotel, along with the caption "Independence looks good on you."
Moment of silence for the bigotry we just witnessed, dressed up as a harmless 21 year old girl. Although, it really isn't that harmless, is it?...
I think we can all agree on what the elephant in the room is, but in this case she could not, so I then replied to the story post. Asking to be informed on what was meant by flattering Israel's dress of independence. Long story short, she was well aware of what led to Israel's so-called independence. So well informed that this person even used the Native American massacre, erasure is a better word, that occurred right here in this stolen home, in order to spark similarity to what Israel's independence day is all about. I'm gonna let that one settle for a second, yes you did read that right.
An open admission to knowing American AND Israeli independence was birthed out of the massacre of the indigenous population already present. Hence the word indigenous.
...
Unimportant to add but something quite comical is that Hamas' attack on October 7th was brought up to justify Israel's onslaught, a collective one at that, onto the people of Gaza. Shocker, but what confused me about this is that we were talking about an 'Independence day' that occurred in 1948. What does a singular event in 2024 have to do with that? I assumed one would then be able to identify where the illogical usage was but again, I digress.
As the reader should already be able to infer, this response did not leave me shocked, but gravely horrified. Horrified that it is common knowledge what Israel has done, what America has done to provide this lavish facade. A facade seen by everyone but only experienced by the millionaires and billionaires and any one else who plays puppet to the puppeteers of capitalism for a moment of fake happiness at the cost of a whole lot of real torment and horror forced onto another peoples. Because face it, we all know that is the true price for power, money, and control. Death. Death on a scale that wipes out not just any-body, but any idea, belief, culture that could minimize the goal of the conqueror.
My point with bringing up the extreme cognitive dissonance happening in the mind of one of my fellow high school colleagues, is to expose the cognitive dissonance happening in our own minds. In the minds of those who stand with anti-capitalism efforts, with those who stand with indigenous populations and their silenced story. From the looks of our Instagram stories about this very topic, most of us here all agree.
So let me ask you, why did we then go around saying Happy Thanksgiving? Why did we go Black Friday shopping? Why are we shopping at these sorts of stores even at all?
Why do we sit here, discover and discuss the intersectionality of capitalism, the prison pipeline, Black America and its similarities to the Palestinian struggle? Why expose all of these findings and realize that one event is so linked that any involvement in one only perpetuates the other? Why encourage others to see it too and shame them if they don't? Why do any of that, why even open our mouths on some righteous BS if we are just going to turn around and perpetuate the very thing we criticize? We, and yes I mean WE. We will sit here and talk so poorly of Christian people, or religious people in general. I am most definitely always included in that shit talk might I add. How they don't 'walk as Jesus would' or practice what they preach. Well, from the looks of this past Thanksgiving, neither do we.
Yet we wanna outcry for the Palestinians, while we are perpetuating our own instance of ethnic cleansing right here. We outcry for the children in Africa being forced to mine in the most dangerous conditions, but we buy the latest iPhone. We were outraged about the women and children stitching "help" into the tags of garments sold in stores like Forever 21, Shein, and H&M, yet we go buy their clothes? Knowing they will just end in a landfill? Don't even get me started on our outcry for climate change paired with our own lack of making changes in our own home.
Let me set something straight for everyone. No one is coming to save you and your family from the disasters of the capitalistic society we live in. You have to do it yourself.
To do so, you must care not about what is happening to you, but what is happening to others. Clearly, none of our life conditions have sparked enough immediate and daily change to our own routines but hello...? We have a front row seat to how the conditions of others lives have drastically changed, moved to being inhabitable with our own normal day to day activities, thoughts, conversations, etc., being a catalyst for its continuance. That too is clear to us, it is known we cannot run from that fact. By doing so, in our own indirect way that I argue is direct as fuck, we tell those affected people: your life must stay in its inhabitable state, so that mine can stay the way it is. So that I can go Black Friday shopping, so that I can have the perfect fit for this night out, so that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family. So that I can have a warm bed to sleep in at night. So that I can experience the convenience of life, which is in my opinion just mindless operation, at the cost of grave inconvenience onto another life.
First call to action, never let the word I ever come up again in a sentence. Erase it from our vocabulary. Right now.
To touch on the claim that we are perpetuating ethnic cleansing right here in America, while pouring so much sorrow into the Palestinian struggle. As we should of course, but minus the hypocrisy. Yes, allowing people to have a morphed idea of what the Thanksgiving holiday is really about, is a form of ethnic cleansing. We are erasing history, knowledge by allowing it to be erased. History and knowledge that are the only leg of hope for the populations slaughtered before us. We have no room to come for Zionists, when we are turning a blind eye to our own native population begging us to see them TOO. And not just see them and post about it and tell all your followers how educated you are, and how moved you are by their experience. No, they want us to do something about it, make ourselves uncomfortable. At the very least, stop celebrating Thanksgiving.
So the next time we inevitably celebrate one of these grief stricken holidays, lets shift our perspective. Challenge not just our families ideas, but our own. If they don't get it, shame them, educate them, in a nice way of course, but don't allow someone to hold that belief comfortably. Not even yourself.
America, Israel and many other places all around the world known and unknown to us are attempting to erase more than just the physical entity of these people. They want the thought of them gone too. Celebrating holidays like Thanksgiving is just another way to do that. We so easily are allowing ethnic cleansing to occur in our own homes, our own minds. We are the puppets, we need to realize that despite thinking other wise, the strings are still very much attached.
For the love of GOD, don't forget about watching the video<3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s
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