Tag: Thanksgiving

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It’s time to decolonise Thanksgiving by Layla Darwish

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Our people can relate to the genocide committed against Native Americans who, like Palestinians, coveted their land until it was stolen from them. No group was more familiar with the fertile land in America than its indigenous people, who taught the white European colonists how to successfully harvest it. These colonialists in turn enslaved the Natives, and subsequently brought black slaves from West Africa to further “develop” the land and the country. This process is quite similar to the one where Jewish refugees (at first) came to Arab Palestine from Europe and were taught by indigenous Palestinians how to cultivate the land in the Mediterranean (something European Jews were not accustomed to). Palestinians enthusiastically welcomed Jewish refugees and helped them settle, until Palestinians were ultimately betrayed by the Zionist Movement. This resulted in genocide, with many Palestinian families murdered and led to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes (and for many the forced migration from the region), and eventually the confiscation of Palestinian land which is still occurring today. This entire process in Palestine is a systematic colonisation as it was for the Native Americans.

Continue reading at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211119-its-time-to-decolonise-thanksgiving/

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‘No Thanks, No Giving’ in the Time of the Coronavirus by Benay Blend

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

In the year of the coronavirus, when Americans mourn that their celebrations will be missing extended family members and friends, due either to their deaths or restrictions put in place to prevent more deaths, it would be good to remember that the original settlers were uninvited guests, intruding on land which they would steal from its inhabitants.

Refusing to tell the real story of Thanksgiving implies committing genocide again. By erasing the history of Indigenous people—whether Native American or Palestinian—we side with the oppressor who wants to literally remove the people who are native to the land.

“We talk about the history because we must,” said Mahtowin Munro (Wampanoag), a co-organizer for the 50th National Day of Mourning in 2019. 

Continue reading at https://www.palestinechronicle.com/no-thanks-no-giving-in-the-time-of-the-coronavirus/

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Sayed Kashua presents: The Palestinian version of Thanksgiving

The teacher read out a text about the tremendous difficulties the pilgrims encountered – about the exhaustion, hunger and disease – and the little pilgrims started to spin around, one after the other, falling gently onto the soil of the promised land. Then little children with feathers on their heads – Native Americans, they were called – arrived and helped the pilgrims get up, recover and stand on their feet. The natives showed the pilgrims how to work the new earth, what to do with corn and what pumpkin is, how to hunt and which animals they could eat.

I was naively waiting for a Nakba in the next act, and I was very proud that my son was one of the pioneers. But instead of perpetrating genocide, the pilgrims held a large meal from the harvest of the land, and invited the natives to eat with them in a great celebration as a token of gratitude.

Continue reading at http://www.haaretz.com/.premium-1.628921

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.
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Making Thanksgiving Real: Rejoice in Our Ability to Challenge the Pervasive Injustice in American Society by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The greatest injustice to recall on Thanksgiving is the genocide perpetrated by European settlers against the Native Americans, successfully wiping out most of them over the course of some 200 years of ruthless expropriation of their lands, their means of livelihood and food, and their self-respect. At the Thanksgiving dinner it is particularly appropriate to invoke the memory of those natives, and recommit ourselves to doing all we can to ensure that no other people gets similarly treated. Sadly, the Palestinian people may be facing a similar expropriation as Israeli settler daily expand their settlements on Arab lands.

Continue reading at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/making-thanksgiving-real-_b_6224838.html

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.