I’m not Israeli. I’m not Palestinian. Nor Jewish, nor Arab, nor Muslim. I’ve never been to Jerusalem, nor Ramallah. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go there. I have no relatives who live there, no family who ever went there, or came from there. I have a friend who lives there, but I only knew him when we were children in Calcutta more than forty years ago. I don’t remember what he looks like.
January’s revelations about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assisting with the design and installation of yet another border wall around Palestine, this one placed under the ground, is just the latest development in a series of relationships between: North American neoliberalism, U.S. domestic and foreign drug policy, structural anti-latino racism in the U.S., the Egyptian government, Mexico’s ruling elite and Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. To find connections between various international interests is not surprising but the links between, for example, Mexican classism and President Mubarak’s aversion to democracy are perhaps less known. How the occupation forces action from one and provides tools for the other is a connection worth exploring as is the potential for joint struggle between individuals and communities focusing on seemingly disparate issues amidst broader struggles for justice.
