Black Lives Matter (BLM) Grassroots has issued a statement in solidarity with the “Palestinian people” in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.
Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, attacking on Saturday morning. Terrorists infiltrated Israel via land, sea, and air, and frantic footage from near the Gaza Strip showed civilians being murdered and kidnapped.
According to BLM Grassroots, the people who live in the Gaza Strip have been subjected to “decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence,” and their resistance “must not be condemned” but understood as a “desperate act of self-defense.”
The group asserted that the people living in the Gaza Strip were “resisting” a pattern of “settler colonialism” at the hands of Israel.
“Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting 57 years of settler colonialism and apartheid,” the group said.
“As Black people continue the fight to end militarism and mass incarceration in our own communities, let us understand the resistance in Palestine as an attempt to tear down the gates of the world’s largest open air prison. As a radical Black organization grounded in abolitionist ideals, we see clear parallels between Black and Palestinian people.”
The group went on to say that they “understand what it means to be surveilled, dehumanized, property seized, families separated, our people criminalized and slaughtered with impunity, locked up in droves, and when we resist, they call us terrorists.”
The group ended its statement with a recommendation for how to achieve peace, saying, “For lasting peace to come, the entire apartheid system must be dismantled. The war on the Palestinian people must cease.”
Riots, Looting in the US
Black Lives Matter and affiliated groups have a history of engaging in aggressive activity in the United States in the name of racial justice, with a Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer justifying looting as “reparations,” WBEZ Chicago reported in 2020.Ariel Atkins told the local public radio station that her group “100 percent” was in support of violent looters who vandalized portions of Chicago in the summer of 2020.
“The whole idea of criminality is based on racism anyway,” she said. “Because criminality is punishing people for things that they have needed to do to survive or just the way that society has affected them with white supremacist B.S.”
The activist went on to say later in the interview that “Winning has come through revolts. Winning has come through riots,” she said.
“The only people that can undermine our movement are the police, our oppressors, and then us when we don’t believe in the people that we’re fighting with,” she said.
Demonstrations in support of Hamas in the United States have prompted the Biden administration to focus on protecting Jewish people, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during her Oct. 10 press briefing.
When asked how concerned the administration is about clashes between Jewish and Palestinian people in the United States, Ms. Jean-Pierre said the administration believes it is important to make sure the Jewish community in the United States is protected.
“We’re always going to denounce any act of violence against any community, and certainly going to continue to show our support and going to be vigilant on that.”
