Victory Getting Zionists Off Tablets; Organizing for Palestine Behind the Walls
Countering the Bourgeois Media
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, where the Palestinian resistance factions (of which the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was the largest) united in response to the continued occupation of their homeland by the Zionist entity, was launched on 7 October 2023. Since then, the brutal daily oppression by the occupation forces, and the continued desecration and assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque atop al-Haram al-Sharif in occupied Al-Quds continues.(1) In the last 15 months, there have been many occasions to have political discussions and pass out literature regarding Palestine in the hopes of bolstering the support for Palestine among the imprisoned lumpen here in the South Bay. I would never assume this to be an easy task, and it hasn’t been, but slowly but surely more people are breaking from the miasma of post-9/11 anti-Arab/Islamophobic sentiments (which itself is an accomplishment as this has been deeply ingrained in the Amerikan consciousness since the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror”).
Here in the majority liberal South Bay, the main sources that prisoners get their news from is the San Jose Mercury News newspaper and the local news channel, Fox 2 News. Like all bourgeois media, both have been reporting on the genocidal Zionist war on Palestine from the general viewpoint of the Democratic Party, that is, a pro-U.$., pro-i$rael view (with some small exceptions, most coming in the form of re-prints of articles by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and the occasional pro-Palestinian letter to the editor, though they have never printed any that I persynally have sent).(2) So on that note, it has been of paramount importance to combat the repetitive assertions of the usual incessant line, “the war began when Hamas terrorists (sic) launched a surprise attack on southern Israel (sic) …”, which is taken as unquestionable truth in line with the discourse of post-9/11 hysteria plaguing the psyches of those here on Occupied Turtle Island.
Being that the events of 11 September 2001 (9/11) are the main source of today’s generalized sentiments in a large portion of Amerika’s collective psyche, I believed it to be fitting to begin my organizing work by passing out and making available copies of Ward Churchill’s wonderfully insightful 2001 essay “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (Some People Push Back),” which echoes a quote made by Malcolm X shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. I chose this essay because it, more than any other short and concise work on the subject, blows out of the water the commonly accepted reasons, propagated by the U.$. government, on the causes of 9/11. Churchill centers the reasons firmly on the shoulders of Amerikan imperialism and neocolonial exploitation and oppression of the Arab world.
I paired this essay with copies I made of AIPS comrade Lila’s equally insightful and engaging article “What is Hamas?” (see Under Lock & Key No. 85). USW comrade Da Pale One’s October 2023 article “A Brief History on Palestine” from ULK No. 84 was also very helpful for laying a basis for those willing to challenge their preconceived notions on Palestine, and those who had no previous opinion on the region and its indigenous inhabitants and wanted to learn more.
The conversations I had regarding the above writings led to much more interest into what the actual truth is behind the Palestinian people’s valiant struggle against the ideology of Zionism and its settler-colonial project, and why it seems that Amerikan media has over the decades either been completely silent or ambivalently acquiescing to the will of the Zionist entity, protecting its blatant aggression and genocidal mentality towards the Palestinian people and its denial of their legitimate claims to the hystoric land of Palestine.
Who Supports Palestine vs. I$rael?
Though it is probably obvious, those who are most against Palestine in this jail are most of the Euro-Amerikans, as well as the bible-thumping Christians. On the flip side, the people I have been working with and who I have persynally found to be most interested are: the Vietnamese prisoners and the Samoans/Pacific Islanders. There are large communities of both in San Jose and, just like the New Afrikan neighborhoods and the Chican@ varrios, they are also subject to brutal occupation and surveillance by SJPD pigs and at times also catch the ever-watching gaze of the FBI, which has a main field office in the largely gentrified town of Campbell, west of downtown.
I have had many interesting conversations with Vietnamese prisoners, not just on Palestine, but also on the the genocidal Amerikan war against the people of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. I get a general feeling from these discussions that, though they are fiercely proud of their peoples’ decisive victory against the world’s #1 bully, imperialist Amerika, they are also troubled by the largely unanswered and undiscussed questions of, “What went wrong? What happened to our peoples’ beautiful vision of a future communist nation?” I am glad to see them attempting to answer these questions, decades after many of their family members fled the atrocities of the Amerikan military and their South Vietnamese puppets.
On a final note, both the people of Vietnam and the people of Samoa have had firsthand experience with European colonialism and Amerikan hegemony. The fact that they are able to connect their peoples’ struggles to the relatable struggles of the people of Palestine is a success that I am willing to celebrate.
Prison Tablet Propaganda Continues, With a Victory
A barrier that those organizing for Palestine behind the walls, have had to deal with since Al-Aqsa Flood is the Christian Zionist prison ministries whom, as comrade Firewater noted in ULK No. 87, “have a monopoly on [the] tablets … [that] needs to be broken up!”(3) I want to thank both comrade Firewater and comrade Triumphant very much for their insights on this topic in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Before writing my original article on it, comrades in California began submitting multiple complaints related to the education app on Our tablets, “Edovo”, which allows ministries like the right-wing evangelists who product the “Real Vida TV” podcast from their studio in Tyler, TX, to continue to upload content that radiates conservative Christian or Christian Zionist rhetoric and beliefs. Much of this messaging is equal parts antisemitic, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, queer and transphobic and anti-immigrant. Thankfully, in apparent response to this deluge of complaints, Edovo removed all of Real Vida’s content from their platform, which is as much of a win as We could have hoped. A more long-term goal would be to get MIM content on our tablets for a refreshing counterpoint to Our enemies’ propaganda.
This removal of Real Vida from Edovo does not account for the fact that on other tablets and apps in other states’ jails and prison systems, Real Vida continues to be available as Triumphant and Firewater have noted from the Texas prison system. In research I conducted after reading both comrades’ responses, I found out several things. Firstly, the tablet app called “Pando” is indeed, as Firewater suspected, created and maintained by “right-wing evangelist kooks” as I was able to ascertain from watching a podcast interview with the main creator of the app, Isaac Holt.(4) I further learned that the apparent go-to excuse for Pando refusing content from providers is because “they only want to upload high-quality Christian content”(4), which apparently means refusing content from Christian organizations and denominations with a more liberal/progressive worldview like Unitarian Universalists.
I also heard a radio show/podcast that our TX comrades are likely familiar with called “The Prison Show” (which airs every Friday night from 9-11 PM central on KPFT 90.1 FM out of Houston). They recently uploaded about 50 of their previous episodes to Edovo, from December 2023 to November 2024. In several episodes they discuss the ridiculous game of stringing along and avoidance that both TDCJ and Securus Technologies played with David Collingsworth (the current producer of the show) for over four years in the shows quest to get on the tablets so everyone across TDCJ and in other states could tune in. He also spoke about their meetings with Pando executives who asked them to sign a mandatory contract that all content providers who want to get on their app are required to sign, that states that in order to be allowed to upload content, you must agree that all content will emphatically “preach the word of Jesus”.(5) This ridiculous prerequisite should tell you all you need to know about Pando, its CEO Jake Bodine and what they and the TDCJ are trying to promote: an endless cycle of brainwashed evangelic “field ministers”, of which I’m told TDCJ already has a great deal of.
Origins of Zionism and Christian Zionism
Central to the understanding of the land of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle is understanding the twin ideologies of Zionism and its mostly Amerikan cousin, Christian Zionism.
Both ideologies are antisemitic in nature and began that way from their respective origins. Zionism, like any other settler colonial project, is based in the genocidal erasure of the indigenous inhabitants of a land, in this case the Palestinian Arab people, and the self-indigenizing of the settlers. The strange thing about Zionism is that far from being helpful to the Jews, both ideologies are grounded in antisemitism. This can be hard to grasp for people, as one would think that something supposedly in favor of the Jews couldn’t possibly be antisemitic. The truth however, as with most things, lies in its hystory.
Zionism, at its core, began as a political ideology, grounded in the antisemitic belief that the Jews did not belong in Europe and therefore should be removed from Europe to some other locale. The land of Palestine was also not the first place that Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, proposed to remove all of the Jews to, as Herzl considered locations in Uganda in East Afrika and South America before landing on Palestine.(6)
This removal to Palestine was of course fully backed by Britain, culminating in the oft-cited Balfour Declaration of 1917 written by Lord Arthur Balfour, himself an antisemite, with strong backing from other British and Amerikan antisemites like Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman. Britain was the major imperialist power vying for control of the region at the time, with France a close second.(7) This is the same Arthur Balfour who was quoted as writing in an August 1919 memorandum, “The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs [the actual number at the time was at least several hundred thousand more] who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.”(8)
Having an ostensibly European outpost in the Arab world was also thought by the Amerikans and Western Europe to be a strong tool for holding the spread of both Islam and communism at bay.(9)
As the horrors of the Nazi genocide became apparent and as European Jewish refugees continued to flood out of German-occupied Europe aside other groups singled out by the Nazi regime, instead of accepting these refugees into U.$.-allied countries, they were vehemently refused and forwarded on to seek refuge in the New Yishuv (in Hebrew: settlement/community, a name for Jewish community) created by the Zionists in the land of Palestine.(10)
The Old Yishuv of Jews had been living in Palestine long before the creation of Zionism and the First and Second Aliya (Zionist-sponsored immigration waves of Jews to Palestine beginning in 1882). It bears mentioning that the Old Yishuv was, until the end of 1945 and WWII, majorly against Zionism and the hopes of the Zionists of creating a Jewish state on top of and instead of Palestine. However, this mostly changed after the world was made fully aware of just what the Nazi regime planned and carried out in regards to their so-called “Final Solution” to the so-called “Jewish problem”.
Finally, after the initial 1948 Nakba (“the catastrophe”, or ethnic cleansing of Arabs) and into the present day, the Zionist entity has supported, partnered with, trained the military forces and death squads of, and aligned themselves with some of the most genocidal and virulently antisemitic regimes and individuals in recent decades. These range from Somoza and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan generals and Central American dictators (11) to recent interactions in late 2023 and 2024 between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other i$raeli leaders and Elon Musk, a purveyor of antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric and conspiracy theories, all in the name of Zionism apparently.(12)
The ideas behind Christian Zionism were around long before Herzl’s ideology in Christian Europe. Christian Zionism, like its cousin Zionism, is predicated on antisemitic tropes about the Jews which date back to the Christian belief that the Jews (in the biblical form of the Pharisees, an ancient Jewish sect) are responsible and to blame (and to be hated for eternity) for the death of Jesus. As I’ve discussed previously in ULK, Christian Zionism is led in Amerika primarily by sections of the Christian Right, mostly consisting of right-wing evangelists.(13) These evangelists descend from the Protestant sect of Christianity that seceded from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation and adhered to the doctrine of Martin Luther, a staunch antisemite who authored the antisemitic work, “On the Jews and their Lies”, in 1543.(14) Hitler and the Nazis were admirers of Martin Luther, as exemplified by a 1933 Nazi propaganda poster that read, “Hitler’s fight and [Martin] Luther’s teaching are the best defense for the German people.”(15)
Christian Zionists see the Jewish people as simply a pawn in their deranged so-called “End-Times prophecies”, believing that the only Jews who are “redeemable” in their eyes are those who accepted Jesus as the “messiah” and their “lord and savior”, thus converting to Christianity and leaving their own religious beliefs behind. They call these converts “Messianic Jews”. According to these “prophecies”, those who do not convert will burn in hell with the rest of the non-believers, as the true believers ascend in “glorious rapture” with their “messiah” Jesus Christ to the pearly gates of Lala Land. In short, those “washed in the blood of Jesus” are worthy and all others are the scum of the Earth. The largest specific grouping of those who hold these hateful and outrageous beliefs in the United $tates are known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a right-wing Christian nationalist movement of around 3 million Pentecostal and evangelical Christians whose ideology also commands adherents to capture the so-called “Seven Mountains” of societal influence – education, religion, family, business, the government and military, the arts and entertainment, and the media.(16) They are an organization that we, as revolutionaries, should keep an eye on, especially in lieu of the “Oompa-Loompa Man” and his MAGA fanatics taking control of the presidency and both houses of Congress this year. Trump recently and ominously warned of “all hell to pay” if there is not a peace deal in Palestine by the time ey takes office.
Groups like the Proud Boys have been relatively inactive since the Capital riot on 6 January 2021, mostly due to fracturing after their leadership was locked up. In addition, other white supremacist/nationalist formations, like the “White Lives Matter” crowd, the virulently antisemitic Goyim Defense League, Identity Evropa, Patriot Prayer, Blood Tribe, Nick Fuentes and the “Groypers”, the so-called “Active Clubs” and many others (some of which have been reported as trying to worm their way into the Palestine solidarity movement with antisemitic signage, chants and pseudo anti-Zionist discourse, i.e. anti-Jewish rhetoric masquerading as being pro-Palestinian or anti-i$rael) may feel they have some wiggle room to recruit and organize after Genocide Joe leaves office and MAGA becomes the “law of the land”. These concerns stem from discussions I’ve had with some of my outside comrades that have been active in the Palestine solidarity movement recently in college campus “Liberated Zones” and in the streets.
Concluding Thoughts
As the Palestinian resistance continues on, steadfast in their struggle for liberation and return and in fierce opposition to the genocidal logic of Zionism and settler-colonialism; as the Lebanese resistance takes time to restructure their leadership apparatus in lieu of the aggressive Zionist assassination operation of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the majority of the political and military leadership of Hezbollah; as the brave members of the Yemeni Ansar Allah party continue their assault on the Zionist entity and their widely successful operation to throw innumerable monkey wrenches into the gears of the imperialist war machine and a global capitalism in unshakable support of the Palestinian people and their resistance; and as uncertain possibilities open up in Syria, all of Our eyes should continue to be firmly focused on Palestine and the Levant. The Christian Right’s “stand-in messiah”, Trump 2.0, is threatening there will be “hell to pay” if the Palestinian resistance doesn’t return the i$raeli citizens taken during Al-Aqsa Flood. Trump may also take revenge against the Islamic Republic of Iran for allegedly plotting to assassinate him before the election.
May we all continue to learn from the steadfast courage of the Palestinian people, and may they find swift victory against the Zionist entity in the coming year.
Glory to the Marytrs
Freedom to the Prisoners
Healing to the Wounded
Revolution until Victory
Notes:
1. Hamas Media Office, January 21 2024, “Our
Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”,
www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PDF.pdf
2.
Nicholas Kristof, November 24 2024, “Warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest also
implicates United States”, San Jose Mercury News
3. Firewater and
Triumphant, October 2024, “Christian Zionism Tablet Propaganda Helps
Keep Support for Palestine Small”, Under Lock & Key 87 (Fall
2024)
4. Inside Out Podcast, Season 1 Episode 7, “The International
GPT Version”
5. The Prison Show, September 27 2024, KPFT 90.1 FM
6. Edward W. Said, 1992, “The Question of Palestine”, Vintage Books, pg.
23; and Ilan Pappé, 2022, “A History of Modern Palestine” (3rd Edition),
Cambridge University Press, p.47-48
7. Noam Chomsky, 2014, “The
Fateful Triangle - The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians”,
Haymarket Books, p.96-97
8. Said, op. cit., p.16-17
9. Ibid,
p.29
10. See generally, David S. Wyman, 1984, “The Abandonment of
the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945”, Pantheon Books
11.
Chomsky, op. cit., p.29-31
12. Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, 2024,
“Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism”,
Melville House, p.219-220
13. Grim, July 2024, “On Christian Zionism
and the Prison Tablet Propaganda Machine”, Under Lock & Key 86
(Summer 2024)
14. Burley and Lorber, op. cit., p.82
15. Facing
History and Ourselves, June 2022, “Nazi propaganda depicting Martin
Luther”,
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/nazi-propaganda-depicting-martin-luther
16. Burley and Lorber, op. cit., p.160 and p.163-164
