 we're going to talk about Palestine. We're going to go back into the history a bit and kind of bring it to today and bring it to why does that matter here in Chicago? Like why are we even talking about Palestine? I would say that even if it didn't matter in Chicago, like it's still an important topic, but okay. So in order to understand Palestine and like the news today, or even to just put it in the proper context, we need to go back in history and learn about the Nakaba, but also even before 1948 and just talk about how Israel came to be. Because I think that would give people a lot of clarity as to why things are playing out the way they are today. So pre-1948, so 1948 for a lot of people is where this starts, but there's a little bit of history before that that we need to go over in order for us to like get the full understanding that we need. So a little bit of background. When we're talking about Zionism today, I want you guys to think in like this framework of settler colonialism. Basically what settler colonialism is, it's just like, you know, you know, traditional regular old colonialism where you like go to a country and like take it over and put your government in place. Settler colonialism has that settler aspect where the colonizers actually like want the land to live on for themselves. They're settlers, so they want to go settle there, right? So if we think about how that plays out practically, if you're colonizing a country, if you're a settler colonizer, and there's already people living in that country, but you have all these settlers that need to come and like live there, what do you have to do? You have to displace the people who are already living there. And in the case of Israel, it was very, very, very violent. It was either through genocides, like we're seeing today in Gaza, or mass expulsion of people. So Zionism, when we think of its foundations as a political movement, it was built on the foundations of white supremacy, of anti-autobus racism, and also of anti-Semitism. And these kind of sound like big like words that I'm throwing out like these big concepts. But I promise, like, once we start talking about how that actually manifests, you guys will understand more. Okay, so there's a man named Theodor Herzl, and he's very important to know when we're talking about how Israel came to be. He's kind of like the founder of Zionism as a modern political movement. He like sought to answer the Jewish question is what they called it. And it was kind of like the whole world just saying like, what are we going to do with like, he kind of just said, he used, he weaponized anti-autobusism and anti-Semitism to like make the case for the settlement in Palestine. So he kind of had this super reactionary response to anti-Semitism across the world, and thought, hey, I could actually use this in my favor. Like, all these world leaders are super anti-Semitism. Now I can actually like advance my political goals of like settling in a country, and I can weaponize this anti-Semitism to my advantage. So basically how he did that was using like all these big anti-Semitic political leaders and like kind of lobbying them in a way to get support for Jewish people to settle in Palestine. So the interesting thing about the way they actually landed on Palestine, it was very like strategic, and we can actually see that strategy still like continue on today. They were thinking of like settling in other countries like Uganda, Somalia, Argentina, but they landed on Palestine for very like strategic, geographical reasons. So like I said, there was a lot of anti-autobusism. And one of like the main points was that the Jewish state in Palestine would actually be like this barrier between Europe and like the savage Asia. So actually like a quote from Theodore Hertzl, like in his early writing, he said that if they settled in Palestine, they would be the vanguard of culture like for Europe. So they would like be like these protectors of like culture against the barbarianism of Asia. So like obviously super anti-Semitic, I mean super anti-autob, also anti-Semitic, and that he was saying, okay, the solution for Jews to be safe is to actually go and like colonize another country, which when you actually like see how that plays out and you actually think of that as a concept, like one, like I said, super reactionary and two, nobody is safe if you're going to go like take another country. Obviously, there's like the its own threats that are like associated with that. But there was this like huge trope of like a land for a people, a land without a people for a people without a land, basically saying that Palestine is this like empty country. So this is like actually perfect, like there's this empty country here, like why don't we just go all like live there. When in reality, no, there was Palestinians who were living there for generations, for centuries. But like I said, we see this strategy play out today. So they chose Palestine because, you know, they can kind of weaponize it. It's the holy land, right? You know, they can say like this is like our promised land, which is something that if not the number one like Zionist talking point that we hear. But in reality, if you're looking at other countries to potentially settle in, do you actually believe that Palestine is your homeland and your promised land? Probably not. Okay, so a very, very, if I think probably the most important document in the history of the colonization of Palestine is the Balfour Declaration. Basically, what it is is one paragraph signed off by Arthur Balfour, who was the British Prime Minister at the time. He basically wrote this one paragraph and said, yeah, actually, yeah, you could take Palestine, you can all go settle there. At the time, the British were occupying Palestine. So it was like, from one colonizer to another, go ahead, you know, he just he gave them the green light. But I would like to point out that he did call it Palestine in the Balfour Declaration. So if anybody tries to tell you that Palestine didn't exist, even the colonizers call it Palestine. So I guess that's a win for us. But the Balfour Declaration, like the legitimizing, like the signing of this document was like a huge stepping stone. It was basically what they needed to like fully go settle in Palestine. And after that declaration was signed, Jewish immigration to Palestine expanded by 1931, 17% of the population in Palestine was Jewish. Okay, so that was all like, pre huge like colonial events that actually like of like Palestine actually being taken over that's like the pre history, a very important and like usually the defining marker of when Israel was established and like when the settler colonization of Palestine started happened during an event called the Nekba, which is actually not an event, it's something ongoing, but we'll get to that. So at Nekba was basically the founding of Israel, and it was a very violent event. So the Israeli state was founded upon the Nekba, or like the ethnic cleansing of 1948. And the Nekba isn't something that like when I talk about it, I want you guys to think about, okay, the Nekba is like the foundation, the Nekba is how it started, but the Nekba is still ongoing. It's not just something that started and ended in 1948. So May 15 1948 is Oh yeah, I will. May 15 1948 is the day of the Nekba. So to Israelis, it's Israeli Independence Day. Independence from who? I don't know, the British literally gave them Palestine. So, um, but you know, it's actually interesting if you think about one country's independence being founded on another people's genocide, it's exactly like what happened here in the United States. But to Palestinians, the Nekba actually translates to the catastrophe, because for us it was a very devastating moment in our history. During the Nekba, over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from Palestine and now are living as refugees in the diaspora, as well as like their descendants. 530 villages were completely destroyed. While I talk about this, you guys can kind of connect this to what you've been seeing in the news about Gaza, right? We'll hear about, you know, all these people being displaced to the southern part of Gaza, right? Or, you know, we'll hear about an entire neighborhood that was just like raised to the ground or, you know, bloodlines being erased. That is exactly what happened during the Nekba. Just think of it on a large scale across Palestine. Over 15,000 Palestinians were killed. So like we saw here when we watched that death toll in Gaza rise and rise and rise and we were all just shocked at the fact that that number kept growing. You know, that wasn't the first time that happened. You know, it started in 1948 when so many Palestinians were murdered and then just continues until today. And today, you know, we're seeing an intensification of that. During the Nekba, over 70 massacres occurred. So over 70 instances of just like hundreds of people being murdered at once. And in less than two years, over half of the Palestinian population was displaced. So kind of like picture the Nekba as like literally one day you see like the neighboring village filled with soldiers and tanks and you hear, you know, all this like gunfire and you see your people, you know, just the village right next door being having to flee their homes, you know, you see people dying and then, you know, you yourself have to get scared and you think, okay, I have to leave because that was the tactic of it. They would, you know, choose a village that was like up high on like a hilltop or a mountain and they would kind of make an example out of those people so that all the people in like the neighboring villages or below would witness that and be scared and flee because, you know, what else are you going to do? And that's what a lot of people did. So this is just an image of Diyar Yassin in 1948. It was where one of the massacres happened. It was just completely destroyed. And then this is a map of Palestine. You guys, I can't see it that well, but basically the blue and the purple is land that was taken from Palestinians. And then that like beige-ish around, I don't know, my colors, is like what was left of Palestinian land. Yeah. And then all these dots are like villages that were destroyed. I apologize guys, the projector just wasn't working out. We had two attempts. It just didn't happen. So the results of the Nakaba or that first instance of the Nakaba, one thing that came out of that was UN resolution 194, which basically said that Palestinians who were expelled from their homes had a right to return. Personally, you know, I don't think that Palestinians need the UN, which is the forum that has legitimized our oppressor for decades to tell us that we have a right to go home. We know we do. Palestinians have the keys to the houses that they fled from. But you know, it's just a little added pizzazz. If you just add that in there, it was also illegal that Palestinians are denied their right to return. Because those Palestinians who were expelled during the Nakaba are not allowed to return back to their homes because there's different people living in them. Actually, a lot of people can see the house that they were expelled from from where they're displaced at now in Palestine. They can see like the house that they were expelled from. Or you know, they can, they see photos of a friend of mine actually, her grandma's house in Jerusalem was taken. And there's like a huge Israeli flag on it now, which is like just disgusting. But most Palestinians were displaced into Gaza or the West Bank. So like a lot of these people that you see that are being displaced now in Gaza were already displaced before. They already went through trauma in 1948. And you know, and now they're going through that horrible act of colonialism again. But yeah, so the Palestinians that are in like Palestinian territory now that we see today are still refugees because they were displaced from their original home. And you'll, you'll find that in Palestine. There's a lot of refugees within our own country because, you know, you were displaced once in 1948. And then there was another act similar to the Nakaba in 1967. So there's people who were displaced at that point. You know, people just displaced because of Israeli violence in general. So yeah, a lot of refugees in Palestine and in the diaspora, which is like, you know, people who are Palestinian but not living in Palestine. And then there's the Palestinians that were left in what became Israel. We call it 48 territories because it's the territories that they took in 1948. So all those Palestinians who were forced to take Israeli citizenship are also like second class citizens in Israeli society to this day. They have different IDs, they have different rights. They're obviously heavily discriminated against for being Palestinian. There's plenty of instances, especially after October 7th of Palestinians in 48 territory being murdered by their neighbors, their bosses, simply for being Palestinian. But also what the Nakaba did and what this like breaking up of Palestine did. So after the Nakaba, you have like the West Bank, then you have Gaza, which is on a different side. And then there's like little pieces of Palestine, there's Palestinians living in Jerusalem, but there's no connection between all these places that Palestinians are living. So Palestinian society becomes like very fragmented. And you can imagine that over time, there's just like this disunity among Palestinians, not a true disunity, but more like a physical disunity. You know, obviously this is for a lot of reasons. And one is to, while like resistance, Palestinians can't overcome their oppressor if they're like literally not even connected. Okay, so that was the Nakaba. But like I said, the Nakaba is ongoing. And one of the ways that manifests today is within the occupation. So right now Israel occupies Palestine, right? There's the territory, 48 territory, like I explained, which is like Israel proper. But then there's the West Bank, which is technically Palestinian territory, but Israel controls the West Bank as well, as well as Gaza, as well as Jerusalem. So the occupation. So like let's get into what that means for Palestinians. So like I said, the occupation today, it's not like, oh, the Nakaba happened. Now there's the occupation. It's the occupation is the Nakaba living. Okay, so a big issue for Palestinians is the apartheid system. The apartheid system is not the only problem in Palestine, but rather it's like a result of our colonization. It's like kind of like one of the symptoms of it. Basically what apartheid is, it's like a system of segregation based on race. And the apartheid exists in Palestine in a few different ways. One of them is through settlements. Settlements are like where Zionists go and they literally like settle and they say, yeah, actually I live here now, which is what they did in 1948, right? But they'll do this kind of in like little ways across Palestine, slowly, slowly, slowly, inching, taking more land. They didn't stop in 1948. And even when I said in 1967, when like there was a similar event, it's not just then it's almost like a daily occurrence where like these settlements are being built and they just encroach more and more on Palestinian land. So this also fragments Palestinians further, right? Because if there's a settlement right next to your village, you know, you can't like go through it because you'll be killed for sure. So, you know, this is like, it suffocates Palestinian life and it also is like an ever present threat. Like if there's a settlement next to your village, every day you will probably think about the fact that those people can all decide to come to your village and settle there too and then your village becomes a settlement and you're forced to leave or you're killed. Settlements are illegal under international law. They're actually illegal under Israeli law too, but Israel still provides them with electricity and running water, even though it goes against their own laws. But you know, I don't think they really care for the law. But they're regularly condemned, even by like international forums, but they're super profitable. So nobody really cares. Like I said, settlements have electricity, water, roads there. The settlements are on like Google Maps. But if you go to a Palestinian village nearby, there isn't daily 24-hour access to water or electricity and the roads aren't paved properly. And you won't even find them like on Google Maps. You can't like navigate through a Palestinian village on Google Maps. Like if you get in a taxi in Palestine, you need to know where you're going, because you just have to tell them. But yeah, just like a lot of theft of natural resources, one of them being water. For example, the World Health Organization recommends that everybody has access to 100 liters of water per day. Palestinians receive about 70 liters. And then they're kind of like forced to like store water to fill in the gaps when they don't have enough. And this isn't just like, oh, this was in 1948 or this is how Palestinians in Gaza live. This is across Palestine. In the West Bank, Palestinians don't just have like access to running water all the time or like hot water. That's a different story. So here's just kind of like a visual representation of the land that's been taken by Zionists. The blue is what Palestine was in 1918. My laptop is like messed up, so I like can't see that number. And then now I think this is from 2020. That is what Palestine looks like. So as you can see, they've taken more than half, more than 70% actually. Then I just, there's just a few images of settlements. They just, they range in size. You know, some of them look like this. The first image, some of them look like cities. Okay, so another aspect of the occupation and another way Israel imposes its violence on Palestinians daily is through home demolitions and building permits. This is also kind of part of that apartheid system. But from 1967 to 2019, there was an estimated 49,532 Palestinian structures that were demolished by the IOF, which is the Israeli occupation forces. You might hear them being called the IDF, the Israeli defense forces, but they're not defending anything. So they're the Israeli occupation forces. Home demolitions happen on a regular basis in Palestine. In a neighborhood in Jerusalem called Silwan, they have a project to destroy 88 homes in order to build a park. So that's just doesn't make any sense. Recently, they actually destroyed the home of somebody that Alexis and I visited in Palestine. He lives in Silwan. And when we visited him, his neighbor's house was actually demolished right next to him. Obviously, as like an intimidation technique, you know, a way to scare him out of leaving, you know, they even offered him a blank check to build the home of his dreams so that he would leave. But he said, no, if you guys destroy my house, I'm going to bring a tent and I'm going to live here the next day on top of it. So that's just one example. But in other places, like in the, in Susiya, which is a neighborhood in El Khalil, you might know it as Hebron, but that's the colonizer way of calling it. So it's El Khalil. In this small village called Susiya, they actually, they live in like the tiniest homes, like probably the size of this room may be smaller and like the ceiling is way lower. But if they build their homes, even like a little bit bigger than that, rest assured, it will be destroyed within like an hour or like the next day. And there's a settlement like right nearby. So, you know, there's always that surveillance and there's always, you know, somebody to say, Hey, like somebody just built a house, a house. So what the people of Susiya actually resorted to doing was to build their homes under blankets so that they couldn't be destroyed in the process of them being built so that when the house was ready, or the structure was ready, they would take off the blanket and then they would have their house just like in an attempt to save any part of their home. But yeah, like I said, also like the allowance to build is like still within like, it's touched by the apartheid system. So Palestinians actually have like different building codes and regulations than Israeli citizens, which forces people to build illegal structures because, you know, if something happens to your house and you have to build, you know, and you're not able to then you're forced to do the illegal act of building without a building permit or an ACCA, for example, that's one place where they're really like doing their best to push Palestinians out. It's it's in 48 territory, but they're still Palestinians living there. There's like a vibrant Palestinian community. So in an attempt to push Palestinians out, they're just like not granted building permits to like renovate their homes. So if they do, that's used as like leverage to take their home away from them, or if they actually like, follow the unfair system and they don't build, they don't renovate their home, their home, you know, over time, your home needs, it needs like renovation, it needs to be like reinforced, but you know, it leads to unsafe conditions for Palestinians in their homes because they can't they can't reinforce their homes. So they will literally come destroy it. You know, this obviously is a discriminatory system, Amnesty International called it collective punishment. But yeah, we don't, like I said, we don't need like any other source to legitimize our struggle, because you know, we live it and we recognize it. Okay, so I think probably one of like the most insidious aspects of the occupation, and one of the ways it imposes itself in like the most suffocating way on Palestinians is restriction of movement. Palestinians in Palestine in their home country, you know, whether they were born there, their parents, their grandparents, they are not free to like simply move around Palestine. One, they're not allowed into Israel or 1948 territory. They're also not like allowed to travel on the same roads as Israelis. So Palestinians actually have separate roads than Israeli citizens. And they're much worse, and they take a lot longer to get to your destination. And they'll know if you're a Palestinian on an Israeli road, because you actually have to have a different license plate, if you're Palestinian. Not only do you have to have a different license plate, but you have to have a different ID. Yeah, that's like, clear cut racist state, right? I mean, like you can't really get around that different laws for people, different ways to move. Not only that, but there are checkpoints throughout Palestine, hundreds of checkpoints, where, you know, if you drive through, they say you want to like go from like one village to another, but there's like a checkpoint in the middle. If that checkpoint is flooded with people, you probably won't be able to go through, or you're going to have to be there for hours at some point, in some cases, or, you know, you're subject to just random searches of your person, of your bags. And, you know, Israeli soldiers could find any reason to turn you away, they'll look for a reason to turn you away. Oftentimes, you might have heard this Palestinian women have had to give birth at checkpoints because they're there for so long, and they're not able to be let through. Obviously, this has a lot of damaging effects on Palestinian life. One, you know, if somebody is like, say, trying to reach health care, and they're not able to do that because the checkpoint stopped them, you know, that's one thing, you know, it affects their health. It affects their mental health, their social life. If somebody is not able to see their family, or they're discouraged from seeing their family, like over time, this has very damaging effects on somebody's mental state. And that's just like one of like the non-tangible things. But, you know, another case could be like people having to miss class, not being able to go to school entirely, not being able to go home from school. Just think about, you know, the so many places that you go that you travel around Chicago just like in one day. Imagine that you have to cut all of those like errands, you can only pick one, because you just simply do not have enough time to get around all the checkpoints to see all the people you want to see because, you know, there's all these restrictions on your movement. And, you know, also like later at night, the situation obviously becomes way more unsafe for Palestinians, just because they could be subject to violence by Israeli soldiers, but also settlers who are violent and are not separate from like the violence of Israel, you know, they perpetuate it, they actually sustain it. So that's probably one of the most suffocating things. Actually, since October 7, Palestinians in the West Bank have like not been able to leave like their villages. Somebody I know who lives in Bethlehem, Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, shout out to Jesus. He has only left his village one time since October 7 for six hours. And, you know, he told me he's like, I feel so suffocated, like I'm suffocating here. So, you know, just like imagine that just imagine like being confined to like Pilsen, like Pilsen is great, but imagine like every day for months not being able to leave. So probably one of like the most obvious signs of apartheid in Palestine is the apartheid wall. If the different license plates, if the different IDs, if the different roads weren't enough, well, there's a wall literally there to tell you that this is a state built on racism, a system based on racism. Israel calls it like a security fence or like a security barrier. But, you know, this is obviously like just like settler colonial words for like racism, we're just, you know, they're racist. They don't want Palestinians to live among them. It literally separates Palestinians from Israelis. But, you know, it also has like more tactical purposes like it's used to annex more and more Palestinian land. The border of like the annexation or like the apartheid wall is like longer than the border of Israel. So, you know, it's obviously cutting into Palestinian land. You know, it cuts off farmers from other farms. It blocks easy access to schools and like health services. And it really just like solidifies Israel's monopoly on like space and movement in Palestine. Because, you know, like, there's a wall, you can't get to the other side. But yeah, the wall is expanded around like illegal settlements as well. So like I said, even under Israel's own law, settlements are illegal, but, you know, they'll still incorporate them, you know, they'll still build the wall around it so that they can actually like, you know, be with their people. So that's just that's just clear as day example of apartheid. And yeah, they like to call it a fence. But as you can see by this picture, that's not a fence. That's a wall. And a lot of places it's made of stone and brick. Interesting fact, American companies who were involved in building the wall on like the US Mexico border, built some parts of the wall in Palestine. So there's a connection there. Another aspect of the apartheid system is in prisons. I know I keep saying apartheid, but like I said earlier, the whole of the problem is not the apartheid. It's more of like a symptom of the occupation. So like, if this apartheid system was gone tomorrow, the occupation would still exist. Thus, you know, the problem would still exist. The settler colonialism would still be there. So don't think like, you know, apartheid, if it's gone, like that's the that's the problem, we solve the problem. No, that's kind of like, it kind of waters down the actual whole of like the struggle in Palestine. But I just use apartheid to mean that there's a discrepancy there. So in prisons is like a huge way this shows up, there's clear discrimination against Palestinians, obviously. So in August of 2019, there was like 5000 or actually, before October 7, there was like about 5000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Since the number has doubled to over 10,000. Just to give you guys an idea of how easily and how entitled Israeli soldiers feel to just snatch Palestinians up and throw them in prison. A lot of them. So I think so the figure before October 7 that 5000 number, there was, I think, about 300 children in Israeli prisons. So, you know, it's not just like adults either, they're also just big Palestinian children, they don't care. I think that when a Palestinian boy is like 12, they probably see them as an adult at that point, or at least that's how they act. But a lot of these people in Israeli prisons are in administrative detention. So basically what that means is that you don't know why you're in jail. You don't know what the charges, your lawyer does not know what the charges, and you're in jail for an indefinite amount of time. So you don't know how long you're going to be there. Oftentimes they'll have people detained in like six month cycles. So they'll serve six months, and then they'll be like another six months. And then they'll say another six months, another six months, another six months. And you know, they don't really know when that that will end. They, like I said, don't even know why they're in there. They're denied a trial. This is illegal under international law, but you know, not that that matters. But a really like brutal aspect and like kind of like psychological like torture aspect of the way that Palestinians are detained is that oftentimes they'll, it'll happen in like the early morning, like four or five a.m. And Palestinians will essentially be kidnapped from their homes by Israeli occupation forces. They'll just come in their house, sometimes just like put a bag over their head, blindfold them, and just take them somewhere and boom, like now you're detained. You're in administrative detention. If that's not kidnapping, I don't know what is. I think that's like the textbook definition of kidnapping. And then the sentencing rate for Palestinians is 97%. So you know, it's not like if you do have a trial, you're going to have like some sort of chance. You know, the judge is a Zionist. The paperwork is in Hebrew. You, they don't really understand like the system that they're a part of. And you know, everybody that's a part of it is part of the settler colonial project. So how can you even expect there to be an ounce of justice for Palestinians in Israeli prisons? And you know, sometimes like the arrests will be because of like a social media post that somebody posted like in support of Palestine, which like obviously Palestinians are going to support their country like, you know, so you know, there's like, it's just obviously a discriminatory system. But beyond that, it's like super violent and unjust. Okay, so let's talk about Gaza before October 7th. A lot of you guys probably might have been introduced to Gaza after October 7th, which is honestly a shame because it's like a really amazing place. But even before October 7th, Gaza was deemed the largest open air prison on the planet. And the UN actually declared that by 2020, Gaza would be uninhabitable. So, you know, when you think about the fact that it's 2024, and people are without like food and water, obviously, if the UN deemed it uninhabitable by 2020, like, what is it today? But in 2007, Israel placed a siege on Gaza, a blockade. It was kind of like a collective punishment because they had a democratic election and they elected Hamas. So Israel was like, you know what, that wasn't that wasn't in the plans. So they put a full blockade on Gaza. It was two, it's 2.1 million people and they're in 100, like 141 square miles. It's 25 miles long. So it's not big. And there's 2.1 million people living there. And because of the siege that Israel placed on Gaza in 2007, there was like pretty much a complete restriction of movement in and out of Gaza and goods in and out of Gaza. So nothing could, nobody and nothing could come in and out of Gaza without Israel's approval, which obviously, you know, makes it super hard to live. You know, if your occupier is putting a siege on your, on Gaza, you can't imagine that they're actually going to like have some sort of humanity and like letting people in and out or letting goods in and out. And that's why Gaza was declared uninhabitable by 2020 because Israel was already like setting up these conditions for the people in Gaza to die, essentially. The unemployment rate before October 7th was at 55%. And they had electricity for about like three hours every day. So the conditions were already not good. They were really bad. In 2020, in 2014, 44% of all explosives that were used by Israel were used against Gaza. Like I said, this 141 square miles, 44% of their explosives were used there. So, you know, it's a place they go to cause a lot of destruction. They're mowing up the lawn. They do it periodically. They just come in just buy them just to make sure they yeah, yeah. As you all are probably familiar, like there's been multiple bombardments on Gaza. There was, you know, I think the most recent before this one was in 2021 or maybe it was 2022. So if we move to today, Gaza, obviously, since you guys are here, you've probably like kept up with the news and like you at least have some idea of what's going on there. But in Israel's current genocide campaign against Gaza, which is ongoing till this day since October 7th, there are over 30,000 people who have been martyred, which is vastly underestimated number, considering that thousands of people are stuck or lost under the rubble who have not been able to be rescued or they just weren't found, which is like probably the most haunting part of the genocide right now. Just all those people who just spent their last moments alone, scared, not knowing if anybody was going to come save them. Right now in Gaza, nobody has access to reliable or safe, reliable or safe access to clean water or food. And over 1.7 million people in Gaza are internally displaced to Rafa in southern Gaza. And every single one of Gaza's 36 hospitals have either been partially damaged or completely destroyed every single one. So clearly this is an act of genocide, right? If you are starving the population, displacing them to a point where they can't even physically fit on the part of the land that they're trying to move them to, purposefully damaging all their healthcare infrastructure so that people can't be saved if they're injured. You know, only 12 hospitals right now remain partially functional. They're definitely not functioning at full capacity. You've all heard stories of people having to have like amputations without anesthesia, C-sections without anesthesia, miscarriage rates have gone up 300%, people being murdered while carrying white flags. I don't think I need to convince you guys that the genocide is happening. It's pretty obvious. Okay, so why are you all here? Why does it matter what's happening in Palestine and what type of connections can we draw from Palestine's colonial colonization to here in Chicago? So like I mentioned earlier, Chicago itself is colonized land the way that Israel is a settler colonial state. The US is a settler colonial state just the same. That's why we send them $3.8 billion every year to their military because one settler colonial state is going to support another settler colonial state because their interests are hand in hand. I like to say that Israel is like just a military base for the US in Palestine because that's just kind of like how they play it out. But if we think about in Pilsen, for example, we see a lot of gentrification and gentrification is like essentially like a continuation of colonization. It's just like the form that it takes when like it gets to this point. This is like very apparent in Pilsen. We've seen like rent just continue to increase and increase and increase on the local community pushing them out just the same way Israel intimidates, intimidates, intimidates Palestinians so that they're pushed out of their land. And they do in the same way to make things expensive, make it uninhabitable for Palestinians. And like we see like that happens here too. And it's also because like it's for like the same settler colonial interests. So all the like these foundations of the state of Israel that I explained to you guys, we can find them in one way or another here in Chicago and even more specifically here in Pilsen. We see like economic opportunities being taken away from Pilsen residents because a different company with more money comes in and can like afford like a better storefront on a better street. And you know this like over time just pushes longtime Pilsen residents out because you know they just can't afford to keep up. And you know as more and more people come to Pilsen and move to Pilsen, other people are going to be pushed out the same way kind of like settler colonialism works right like if you have a settler in a way you know somebody has to leave to make space for that settler. And they won't do it and like say that in your face violent way that Israel does. But you know they'll do it in a probably like a more like subtle way like make things super expensive, make people you know not be able to afford to live here, make people scared of homelessness, of starvation because you know that's what's going to happen if they try to keep up with like the rising costs in Pilsen. And it also just like waters down Pilsen's rich culture like the same way it does in Palestine. So like hummus is one thing that's like super just like just Israelis love hummus and it's just it's like not that serious to us you know what I mean but you know so like that same way they'll like try to take what's yours and like water it down and like say like no I belong here like I swear like I've been eating hummus my whole life like no no you haven't. The same that happens you know in Pilsen too we see like that the rich culture of Pilsen just being like watered down by like these businesses that come in that don't actually like want to serve the community here or just like landlords that don't care about the people who are like filling their homes and like building their community. So there's a lot of connections here like I said Southern colonialism it's going to follow a rubric so like you'll you'll see these little like examples and like these little ways that it manifests like we do in Palestine. And you know and don't think that just because it's not as in your face with the violence that it doesn't exist or that it's not valid because it did come from that place right. At one point it was that in your face violence and you know a lot of indigenous people were murdered in the US in order to build the country that we live in unfortunately. And also in that same way like we're just like not supported by our government here to feel secure to feel like we're actually not going to face homelessness or we're not going to face starvation starvation. And like I said the US government gives Israel 3.8 billion dollars every year. So this is most definitely our issue like you know we definitely should care about the fact that they're taking money away from us so that Israelis could have free health care. We don't even have free health care we don't even have affordable health care. And in this unlike it doesn't even just stop at the 3.8 billion like the Congress has been trying to give Israel close to 18 billion dollars since like November but it's like their own incompetence that stopped them so like it's kind of good. It's just like it's just political things it's just wrapped up with other aid that they don't want to authorize so that's the only reason why they haven't given Israel additional aid. Even though we've seen what Israel does with the money that we give them they buy weapons to commit genocide. Yeah our government still sits and says no actually I think 18 billion dollars is reasonable. It's ridiculous. So I think like the biggest conclusion and like the biggest training that like we want to do for our brains like out at the end of this like presentation is just like rethink Zionism like the way Zionism is presented to you the way the state of Israel is presented to you try to just like like throw that all away and just like take in like what I'm telling you. The concept of a Jewish democracy in Palestine is inherently flawed. It's hypocritical and it was made possible by creating an artificial Jewish majority in Palestine. Palestine is not a land without a people for people without a land. Palestine is the home to generations of Palestinians who put so much effort and so much care into cultivating that land and raising Palestinians who actually love Palestine and who actually want to see it succeed and who won't just bomb it and destroy it because you know if it's actually your land if you actually care about it you wouldn't just like completely destroy it you know completely uproot every tree you know. So that's like I think the biggest conclusion we can draw and you know you'll see a lot of propaganda online but you know I think that even when we talked about the foundations of Zionism we kind of heard some propaganda right weaponizing racism and anti-Semitism to create a state it's only going to keep manifesting in that way and we see those tactics today we see them you know try to make the case you know they're kind of like they're kind of struggling now to really like keep up their like reputation because they've definitely lost control of the narrative.