any coherent movement on the left needs to be anti imperialist so let's start by centering that. the "where" i think needs to be locally, the lefts celebrity obsession with national politicians has held us back immensely so I don't think spaces that mirror that will help us.

this thinking = the democrats never move forward and continue with their losing strategy of becoming 2000's era neocons. Refusing to end a genocide and focusing on "reaching moderate republicans" instead of working class people is why they lost. All Stein votes to Harris don't flip a single state.

Free Palestine

The situation is dire but not hopeless, Im not trying to peddle in despair. There are beautiful projects happening despite the difficulties associated, and an incredibly dignified community happy to welcome visitors, even ones like me from a country complicit in the violent occupation against them.

The settlers themselves think they have a divine right to the land and that their violence and theft is justified (sound familiar, US citizens?)

There are illegal settlements popping up all over the West Bank as well, these are universally recognized as land theft and completely illegal but these settlers have the backing of the Israeli military and the US blocks any organized international opposition.

a system of open air imprisonment based on your racial identity and where you were born imposed by a tiered system of id cards that you’ll be asked to show at gun point at any given time when moving about your own country.

I’ll also say that I have never been more sure that this is Apartheid. The giant razor wire topped walls littered with gun towers and cameras cutting through communities, separate roads for Palestinians, constant checkpoints to get anywhere,

This flew in the face of every discussion I had had on the topic with Israelis. When I refused to play a party in Israel recently the DJ told me that basically I don't know shit and Palestinians & Arabs “Hate me & want me dead"

The contrast couldn't have been starker once I was through and was helped every step of my trip by incredibly gracious locals who helped me find the right buses, change money at the best rate, and get a quick fresh squeezed orange juice for the bus ride to Bethlehem.

The treatment from Israeli soldiers was what I can only describe as a dehumanizing scorn, pushing people through metal detectors, closing the gates / stopping the lines for long periods with no information, hours upon hours of waiting.

I entered Palestine through the Allenby bridge crossing which is generally only Palestinians, this was not my initial plan but in the end I’m glad I saw this tiny sliver of life under occupation.

Or “it’s too complicated for me to ever form an opinion”. A brutal occupation against a largely peaceful populace is a much harder sell than what is portrayed as a necessary response to a pressure cooker of violent upheaval.

One lie begets the other really, western media perpetuates the idea that there is that there is no “normalcy” that we need to free from the occupation, we’re lead to believe that all of Palestine is constant chaos and violence, and this is the lie that leads to an attitude of “well what can be done?

It’s so much worse in that the Israeli occupation is much more dehumanizing, brutal and imposing in person, even as someone who has been trying to be as aware as possible of Israels atrocities.

I keep coming back to the contradiction of it being both much better and much worse than we’re shown from outside. Better in that once you make it past the checkpoints, there's beautiful and incredibly welcoming communities living peaceful lives in ways we have been made to believe are impossible