PALESTINIANS

“While African slavery, torture and even organ-harvesting are still happening in various parts of the Arab world, there is no other nation or territory mentioned in regards to its treatment of Black people in BLM’s divestment demands. Not one. But the notion of Israel itself is a questionable matter for BLM activists,” he added.

Rejecting the Zionist notion that Jews deserve their own state, Henderson argued: “I think that everybody deserves a right to live and walk in their full dignity. The challenge with Zionism... is that it is impossible to come to a place where people are already indigenous, displace them, and say that it’s okay for you to displace them, to terrorize them, to split up their families, to incarcerate them... for the sake of you having a state just for you own.” She added that her opinions on that particular subject are her own and she doesn’t speak for the movement.

“I don’t think anyone’s arguing that everyone should be packaged up and moved away. I think what we’re saying is there needs to be a democratic process where Palestinians’ needs are centered, because they’re the ones that are under attack,” she said.

“I don’t think we can accept that for Zionism just because we know the long history and struggle of Jewish people. We need to recognize that if the Jewish people want to be free, then they need to free themselves from Zionism, too,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, an activist affiliated with Dream Defenders, a grassroots advocacy group for people of color.

The east Jerusalem-born Abuznaid, who now lives in Miami, accused some Israelis of “continuing Hitler’s work,” a statement from which neither Matthews nor Henderson distanced themselves during our conversation.

“We’re looking to struggle with those left-leaning Jews that understand that in order for us to all be liberated... we need to be real about the issue. And settler colonialism is wrong, no matter who’s doing it,” he added.

BLM actively encourages the BDS movement, from which it sees implications for its own work in the US.

“We hope to take some of the same strategies and implement them in the United States,” Matthews said.

“We work off the black radical tradition and we work intergenerationally, and it’s like civil rights activists and organizers of civil rights past,” said Henderson, who’s been involved in an array of humanitarian causes. “They advise us, they support us, they heal us, they check us when we’re wrong.”

Right or wrong, these activists are determined to bring their brand of social justice to America and beyond. •