Keep Palestine Light on your Tongues: Tareq Radi at Washington, DC rally

Tareq Radi is a Palestinian-American organizer with USPCN in Washington, DC, and founding member of George Mason University’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA). This speech was given at the national rally for Palestine on August 2nd in DC.

Today we stand in solidarity in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Falisteen.

As the number of martyrs increases, our anger and sorrow rightfully deepens.

We find ourselves asking what can we do and How can we help?

Before Oslo the diaspora was once connected with the resistance back home.

Today, our generation’s narrative has been deeply affected by the Zionist narrative and the language that has been imposed upon us.

We are made to believe that we must strive for peace rather than justice. They replaced our struggle for liberation with endless negotiations.

They try to soil the words that we hold dear. Shaheed, Martyr, and revolutionary.

We will always hold these words sacred, because they belong to the oppressed!

They empower us and strike fear into the hearts of cowards.

We are a people of resistance and we need to rebuild our culture of resistance!

We did not trade our right of return for pragmatism.

Some of our “leaders” may have traded in their kuffiyehs for silk ties, but our shabab & sabaya are still in the streets exercising their right to resist colonial domination!

We must reprogram the language we use to describe our struggle.

By surrendering to the language of Peace we have handcuffed the means in which our people back home can resist. We open the door for the world’s most violent country to criticize our tools of liberation.

And for this reason, in this country, resistance will start with the tongue!

In being mindful of our language we will protect and reinforce our narrative.

We are made to believe that we must separate our nationality from our other identities.

This is a symptom of repression.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an academic, health care provider, an athlete, or any other professional, your right to resist has been etched into your DNA.

Destroy the false boundaries that divide your identities and Keep Palestine light on your tongue.

We must ask ourselves how has this occupation gone on for 66 years unchecked. Why is it that we have the facts and righteousness on our side and yet are always portrayed as the aggressors.

One reason is because we haven’t developed a consistent narrative that is socially acceptable to circulate these facts.

We’ve had the Zionist narrative so imposed on us that we inadvertently reinforce it.

Being pragmatic does not make us enlightened.

There is nothing intellectual about compromising your beliefs.

We’re told that talk of our right to resist should be kept to the dinner table and amongst  our families. Meanwhile we have to sit back and listen to the constant affirmation that Israel has a right to defend itself.

The only reason the Zionist entity gets away with its ludicrous rhetoric is because 1) they are unwilling to deviate from their narrative and 2) because we play an audience to it.

We must resist the Zionist entity at every turn. They must know that their presence is not welcome anywhere that values justice. I don’t care what the setting may be, there is no room for a diversity of opinions on issues of human rights!

Cultures of resistance foster accountability and if you support the death and destruction of another people well then you should prepare to face the consequences.

The Zionist entity is trying to extinguish our hope, but they don’t realize that with every bomb dropped and bullet fired the fire in our heart grows hotter.

That fire is going to reach a point where it can no longer be contained and when that happens we will throw off the yoke of colonial rule and their colonial privilege will be reduced to ashes.

Some of our brothers and sisters think Palestine will be liberated by appealing to those in the state department, department of defense, or on the Hill.

Palestine will be liberated by our youth and our allies!

No oppressed people have ever been liberated by the state. The state is inherently repressive by its very nature.

We may be standing in front of the White House, but know that I am not here speaking so that Obama may hear me.

Obama isn’t doing anything for the Black kids being killed in Chicago, and he won’t do anything for our kids in Palestine.

This is a call to keep Palestine light on our tongues.

This is a call to reclaim our narrative!

This is a call for the annihilation of mental colonization.

This is a call for the equality of all and the supremacy of NONE!