This year, the holiday season arrives with the hardships of displacement, homelessness, starvation, and lack of shelter from the cold. Churches across Palestine have cancelled their historic Christmas festivities in protest of Israel’s settler-colonial genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza to pave the way for grief and political action.
While succumbing to the sedative of consumerism is commonplace during the holiday season, this year, such distractions will not halt our commitment to our values of freedom and justice. We pledge to counter the colonizer’s Christmas capitalism with our mobilized solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Israeli regime and its imperial abettor, the United States, rely on the general public to remain distracted by consumerism so that they can continue to profit off of the genocide of the people of Gaza.
We, Queers in Palestine are steadfast in our presence in the streets and on our land, strategic in how we consume, and focused on the road to liberation. We are calling on everyone to join us in action:
- Keep Palestine central during the holiday.
- Keep countering the hegemonic colonial narrative: talk about Palestine in the family, friends and community gatherings.
- Resume the disruption of the flow of commerce: commit to a sustained boycott of Israeli products, institutions, and corporations complicit in genocide. Where we spend our money shapes our reality.
- Attend actions, keep taking to the streets and bring your loved ones with you.
- Raise the flag of Palestine wherever you are.
- Remember all those whom we have lost, support and aid the injured survivors and the grieving, and stand behind the ones who are steadfast in their resistance by all means possible.
Empires and colonial entities spend billions in the hopes that we may reach a moment of frustration and to convince us that we have no agency over our fate and political future. Capitalism sells us instant gratification, and we reject that notion which aims to pacify and debilitate those who are committed to the struggle.
The Palestinian liberation struggle is cumulative of the past 75+ years, and this past month we have witnessed massive ideological shifts in the global narrative, as well as heightened political mobilization around the world, as a result of the dedication of those who have remained steadfast and committed to fighting for justice.
Yet, it is imperative that we keep going, and to remember that no normal life and “business as usual” can go on while an entire population is being wiped out of the face of the earth. So we urge those standing in solidarity with us to commit to the daily practice of organizing which doesn’t take a break even during the holiday season.