Fred Hampton, internationalism, and Palestine: an interview with Jeffrey Haas – Mondoweiss

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Fred Hampton, internationalism, and Palestine: an interview with Jeffrey Haas – Mondoweiss: Movement attorney Jeffrey Haas discusses his work exposing the police and FBI murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and his commitment to supporting Palestinian liberation.

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EXCERPT:

AJP: You do Palestine organizing in New Mexico. How did you get involved in being a Palestine solidarity organizer? 

Jeffrey Haas

JH: It was a natural development because the Panthers talked about human rights and equal rights and so when you’re open to that, you really don’t want to accept injustice anywhere. I had grown up in a reform Jewish congregation in Atlanta that wasn’t particularly Zionist, but we had heard all the myths about “if we give money, we’re planting trees to make the desert bloom,” not to hide what had been done to Palestinian villages. As I and many others took up the liberation struggles of Central Americans fighting for liberation, the issue of Palestine came up directly when we learned about what was happening in Guatemala. The corrupt junta was killing and putting masses of indigenous people in internment camps aided directly by the state of Israel. Why was Israel doing the dirty work of the US? Why did Israel continue to support the apartheid government in South Africa to the very end? It became clear that Israel was an apartheid state itself and had not only sided with other authoritarian colonial oppressors, but sought to benefit financially by selling the surveillance and military technology they used to repress the Palestinian people to other colonial and imperialist powers.

With the first attacks on Gaza in 2014, I helped organize a group called Another Jewish Voice of Santa Fe. There was also Another Jewish Voice of Albuquerque and we joined together. We continue to organize and raise issues, to protest as Santa Feans For Justice in Palestine. We put up some very explicit artwork on a very public wall depicting Israeli atrocities to Palestinian youth a year ago and raised a lot of awareness . . . and not unsurprisingly got some Zionist backlash.  We worked closely with the Red Nation because they are frequently drawing the connection between the struggles of Native Americans and the struggles of Palestinians against colonialism. A lot of the techniques, military gear and devices that Israel uses against  Palestinians have been taught to and acquired by  US law enforcement  and used against the Black movement in Ferguson and the indigenous-led Water Protectors at Standing Rock.