#imeu

please share! one of the students sent to emergency services is one of BFP’s former volunteers and my friend in real life!

[This post is a series of images from an infographic by the Slow Factory Foundation originally posted May 2021. The first image is a photo with text over it. The photo shows a massive fireball in the middle of a group of buildings, with a massive black cloud rising from the flames that is bigger than the buildings themselves. The building just behind the fireball is low, rectangular, and lit up bright orange. Behind that building, there is a city lit up at night. Hundreds of buildings stretching into the distance, a thousand glimmering lights.]

What is happening in Palestine is not complicated; it's settler colonialism & ethnic cleansing.

Debunking Misinformation around Palestine.

Myth ❌ Palestine and Israel are in "conflict."

Fact ✅ What is happening in Palestine is settler colonialism, military occupation, land theft and ethnic cleansing. A conflict means there is equal footing, which is not the case. There is an active oppressor (Israel) and an oppressed (Palestine). A colonizer (Israel) and a colonized (Palestine). This is not a conflict.

[Three images of headlines with the word 'conflict' crossed out in red ink.]

Note: According to the Congressional Research Service,

Israeli military occupation has been supported by US aid with $3.8bn a year paid for by U.S. tax dollars since 2016 for the next 10 years.

It's also supported by other colonial countries including Canada, Australia, France and Belgium.

Myth ❌ Before Israel came to Palestine, it was "just a desert" and Israel made the desert green.

Fact ✅ Before the occupation of Israel, Palestine had green, rich and lush land. In fact, Palestine respected the biodiversity of their Indigenous land: Palestinians were producing 92% of Palestine's grain, 99% of its olives and 95% of its melons to name a few.

Since Israel's occupation, biodiversity has decreased. Israel removed Indigenous plants from the land to plant European Invasive species. This phenomenon is called green colonialism, which has been discussed in depth by many, including Naomi Klein in "Let Them Drown."

Myth ❌ Sheikh Jarrah is the only neighborhood in Palestine that is in danger.

Fact ✅ Israel has been gradually stealing Palestinian land, destroying and ethnically cleansing entire Palestinian villages, violently displacing families and building illegal settlements on top them since the first Nakba ('catastrophe' in Arabic) in 1948, where almost 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed, Palestinian history erased and half the Palestinian population were expelled from their homes.

Myth (cont'd.) ❌ Sheikh Jarrah is the only neighborhood in Palestine that is in danger.

Fact ✅ Over the past few decades, the state of Israel has continued the settler colonial project, and Sheikh Jarrah is the latest and not the last neighborhood being violently threatened with dispossession, which Israel has no legal right to do.

[Images of a map showing the drastic decrease in Palestinian landmass from 1946 to 2019. In 1946, Palestine was 99% Palestinian land. In 1947, it decreased to 40%. In 1967, to 30%. And in 2019, less than 20% of Palestine is Palestinian land. The remaining areas are being encroached on by occupied Palestinian land, meaning occupied by Israelis. The rest is Israeli land.]

The mainstream media has been supporting these myths by spreading misinformation that conceal Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine by saying it's a two-sided conflict, framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism and normalizing the state of Israel.

To learn more about Palestine and the ongoing fight for liberation, follow Palestinian-led organizations, media and frontline activists. [@Instagram / Facebook]

@theimeu / Institute for Middle East Understanding ( IMEU )

@eye.on.palestine

@palestinianyouthmovement / Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)- حركة الشباب الفلسطيني

@jewishvoiceforpeace / Jewish Voice for Peace

@visualizing_palestine / Visualizing Palestine

@wolpalestine [Censored by Meta]

@mohammedelkurd / Mohammed El-Kurd

@muna.elkurd15 / Muna Nabeel Elkurd

@nouraerakat / Noura Erakat

Sources & Suggested Reading

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

Let Them Drown by Naomi Klein

Black Power and Palestine by Michael Fischbach

Orientalism by Edward Said

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

Palestine by Joe Sacco

"Zionist Logic — Malcolm X on Zionism" in The Egyptian Gazette, Sept. 17, 1964

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

Lisa Kashinsky at Politico:

Democrats still have a Gaza problem four months after Kamala Harris’ loss. A quartet of progressive advocacy groups are asking the Democratic National Committee in a new letter to better engage with pro-Palestinian voters, according to a copy shared with POLITICO — a sign that the party’s rift over the Israel-Hamas war could stretch into the midterms. In the letter addressed to DNC Chair Ken Martin and Executive Director Roger Lau, IMEU Policy Project, IfNotNow, Gen-Z for Change and Justice Democrats accuse the Harris campaign of taking policy stances and issuing voter-outreach directives that served to “villainize” and “ignore” Democratic voters who were opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza and wanted the Biden administration to withhold military aid to the country. [...]

They also want Martin to assess whether Harris and President Joe Biden’s stances on Israel and Palestine turned away voters, citing post-election polling from IMEU and YouGov that showed “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was the top issue for nearly 30 percent of voters who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 and someone other than Harris in 2024. The economy was a close second. And they’re angling to limit the influence of a powerful pro-Israel advocacy group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, by calling for a ban on super PAC spending in Democratic primaries — a signal of potential intra-party clashes over Israel policy to come. The DNC did not immediately respond to questions about the letter. Pro-Palestinian protests last year over the Biden administration’s handling of the war gave rise to a movement of “uncommitted” voters that opened a schism among traditionally Democratic constituencies and damaged Harris in some traditionally Democratic Arab American areas. Leaders in those communities have argued in the weeks and months since Harris’ loss that the then-vice president made strategic errors by refusing to give a Palestinian American a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention and shutting down protesters at campaign rallies who criticized her solidarity with Biden in supporting Israel.

Since October 7, anti-Isral propaganda disguised as a "social justice" movement has flooded Instagram.

Influential individuals and organizations are working together to systematically promote a deliberate disinformation campaign aganst Israel that ultimately benefits Hamas.

They use social media to propagate false narratives, specifically targeting young left-leaning Americans, and orchestrating what might be the most significant propaganda offensive against the Jewish community since World War II.

Polls have found that half of young American adults side with the terrorist organization Hamas, responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre of over 1200 Israeli civilians and capture of over 200 hostages. And that their actions can be justified.

One organization responsible for disseminating the most deceptive anti-Israel propaganda aimed at influencing Americans' opinions is the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

The IMEU is backed by millions of dollars from wealthy donors like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Rockefeller Brothers' father is John D. Rockefeller Jr., the "primary financier" of Nazi eugenics research.

The IMEU is extremely influential. They've gained hundreds of thousands of followers in just a few weeks. Their highly misleading posts get tens of thousands of Likes and Shares.

They accomplished this by copying the tactics of "anti-racist educators" on Instagram that launched the Black Lives Matter protests and riots in 2020.

In this 2021 panel, prominent anti-Israel activists explain how they use research from "Palestine Studies," a frivolous scholarship based on "decolonization" and Critical Theory, to create "social justice content" on Instagram to target American progressives.

IMEU Communications Director, Omar Baddar (salary: $100,000) explains their pivot from traditional media to social media, because social media offers greater control over the narrative.

He believes Palestinians should not be blamed when they instigate violence because:

"Israel as an occupying power is inherently the initiator of violence."

So, Israel simply existing is the real problem.

A key part of their strategy in targeting Americans involves drawing analogies to the USA's history of slavery and discrimination against black people:

"Jim Crow segregation is obviously something that every American understands, so explaining how the parallels between Israeli apartheid and that are very useful. For us, a central point is tying what is happening in Palestine to American moral responsibility."

Following these tactics, they saw a "massive explosion" in their following.

"The massive, massive, massive explosion in the shares and follows."

Their efforts succeed at deliberately misleading people and depriving them of key information and historical context that would allow them to better understand the nuances of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Public opinion serves as Hamas' most potent weapon against Israel and American progressives are unwittingly being used as pawns in a scheme that ultimately benefits the terrorist organization.

Full investigation:

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If it feels like western countries are in a re-run of the fanaticism and riots from three years ago, it's because they are. It's a shame they learned nothing from being conned by BLM propaganda.