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Black Lives Matter voices solidarity with Palestinians

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The US-based Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has fully expressed solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people seeking freedom from the Tel Aviv regime in the occupied lands.

“Palestine is in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and vice versa… because we see and understand our struggles as similar,” Janae Bonsu, leader of the institute for Black Youth Project linked to BLM activists, said in a statement on Thursday.

“You have to choose what side you’re on. You’re either for freedom or you’re not,” Bonsu added.

She noted that BLM activists and pro-Palestinian groups are agreed on a common cause in opposing what they describe as oppression and systemic racism.

“We need to see our struggle as one; the form is different, but only subtly. The essence is very much the same,” another activist in the movement was quoted as saying.

Since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

Nearly 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently being kept in Israeli detention centers, many without charge or trial.

The file photo shows Israeli forces detaining a Palestinian protester during clashes in the West Bank village of Turmus Aya, north of Ramallah. (AFP)

 

The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States was formed after the acquittal of the officer who shot dead black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012.

The shooting sparked mass protests across the US and intense discussions over race relations in the country because Martin was unarmed when he was shot by George Zimmerman.

Also, a new wave of protests began after unarmed African American Michael Brown was shot in August, 2014 by officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, Missouri.

The fatal shootings of Brown and several other black people by white police officers led to months of protests across the United States.

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