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toc1n0

you wanna do overtime? idk man seems kinda gay to me. who you staying for? other men?

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hyumjim

So much going on here I don’t have time to unpack. Beginning with the fact that I read this as Obama at first

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On Monday, January 9, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, banned the display of the Palestinian flag in all public spaces.

This order is one in a recent string of escalating attacks on Palestinians by the newly formed ultra-rightwing Israeli government.

The Israeli minister wrote on his personal Twitter account that he “directed the Israel Police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the State of Israel. We will fight terrorism and the encouragement of terrorism with all our might!”

For Palestinians, this is only the latest step in Israel’s execution of its Jewish nation-state law, which creates a legal framework for cementing Jewish supremacism in Palestine.

A policy of erasure

In June of last year, the Knesset successfully passed a new bill that would ban the Palestinian flag in Israeli-funded institutions. The rightwing Israeli MK, Eli Cohen, justified the move by labeling the Palestinian flag as an “enemy flag.”

Although the banning of the Palestinian flag is not a recent endeavor, the ushering of an entire police force to intervene against an act involving the display of a piece of cloth is unprecedented.

Ben Gvir’s latest move is a severe escalation in the use of Israeli impunity to erase Palestinian visibility, especially following the Unity Uprising of 2021, which witnessed the collective mobilization of Palestinians across geographical and socio-cultural barriers imposed by Israeli apartheid practices.

In March 2022, Israeli authorities officially launched Operation Break the Wave, which included the allocation of 180 million NIS ($52,256,340) to the Israeli Police. 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and featured the most extensive armed and unarmed resistance against Israeli colonialism since the Second Intifada.

The recent criminalization of the colors of the Palestinian flag is a continuation of this recent Israeli onslaught. And it is a form of erasure against the Palestinian people.

“It’s erasure and a form of criminalizing every act of Palestinian resistance and identity,” Linda Tabar, a Palestinian professor of international relations at the University of Sussex told Mondoweiss.

From Nazareth, Tabar reflected on the recent escalation in light of what it means for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship within the Israeli state. “It’s a form of trying to negate Palestinian life,” Tabar said, “they’re suffocating us.”

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