GLOBALISE THE INTIFADA

It’s a slogan used mainly in pro-Palestinian activism. The word intifada is Arabic for uprising or shaking off. It refers most famously to the two major Palestinian uprisings against Israeli control: the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993, which was mostly protests, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and stone-throwing, and the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, which was much more violent and included suicide bombings, shootings and armed attacks, resulting in over a thousand Israeli deaths and over three thousand Palestinian deaths.

The word globalise simply means to spread something worldwide. So, at its most basic level, the phrase calls for spreading the Palestinian resistance model globally.

People who use the slogan in a comtemporary context usually say it means building worldwide resistance to what they describe as Israeli settler-colonialism, US imperialism and connected systems of oppression. They present it as a call for international solidarity actions such as protests, boycotts, divestment campaigns, strikes, and direct action, and for connecting the Palestinian struggle to other anti-colonial and anti-racist movements worldwide.

The vast majority of those who chant it insist they are not calling for violence and that it can be carried out through nonviolent or civil forms of resistance. That's my take on it, and anyone who accuses me of using it as a call to violence is a fucking idiot - that includes you, Crisafulli.

The bottom line is that Palestinians have endured 77 years of illegal occupation, oppression, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, home demolitions, blockades, collective punishment, arbitrary detention and torture, and settler violence and that Israel has murdered tens of thousands of innocent, defenceless children over the last two years. We have the receipts.

Perhaps our ignorant, racist, and very much owned politicians and media should focus on the important issues, not on slogans they don't even understand.