As we write this, Palestinians face unrelenting and unprecedented settler violence.

For the last two decades, 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in a dense open-air prison, besieged by Israel in violation of international law. Two thirds of the population in Gaza are refugees that were forcibly displaced from other parts of Palestine. Half the population are children, and the vast majority are impoverished. Completely surrounded by a militarized barrier, Gazans are denied freedom of movement and regular access to food, water, and healthcare by a protracted Israeli siege. In 2018, the United Nations deemed Gaza “unlivable,” and since then Gazans have experienced multiple bombardments by Israel, intensifying an already untenable situation.

This is not a “conflict.” This is a deliberate act of settler colonialism and genocide.

Settler historians in the United States have long framed the history of US settler colonialism as a “conflict” between two equal sides: cowboys and Indians; settlers and savages. Dakotah scholar Elizabeth Cook-Lynn reminds us there are no two sides to a story of colonial dispossession and genocide. There is a clear perpetrator: the settler state. Settlers invade and destroy in order to replace. Like the US, Israel is a violent settler nation that should be condemned for its crimes against humanity.  

Decolonization is the only form of justice for the crimes of settler colonialism. Those who advocate for Native liberation from US occupation must also advocate for decolonization in Palestine. And those who advocate for decolonization in Palestine must also advocate for Native liberation from US occupation. 

It should be clear to tribal leaders and all Native people that we are on a parallel path with Palestinian people struggling for land back and decolonization. Native nations and people face the same settler colonial violence that has descended upon our Palestinian relatives. Two-hundred years of US federal Indian law forms the basis for the imperial foreign policy the US now uses to support Israel in its genocide of Palestinians. Let us not forget that Native water and land protectors have always been labeled as “terrorists” when defending our homelands from US colonial aggression.