COVID-19 x Palestine: Masking at Student Encampments
We are feeling energized, heartened, and so proud to witness student encampments building power in solidarity with Gaza. As we’ve seen violence levied against students and their allies these past few weeks, we are grounding ourselves in anger, resolve, and hope. Throughout these encampments we see examples of community care come to life. Students are making sure each other are fed, receiving medical care, education, and other forms of support. Part of this system of care includes students and others at encampments masking up!
Masking in these spaces is a political act that recognizes the ways in which Disability Justice and mitigating the spread of COVID-19 intersects with the struggle for Palestinian Liberation. When you attend direct actions or encampments, make sure to mask up. Not only are you protecting your identity from possible doxxing, you are also making the space more accessible for disabled, immunocompromised, at-risk organizers.
When COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out, Israel refused to provide vaccines to Palestinains in the West Bank and Gaza as a continuation of Israel’s decades-long blockade in the region. By limiting the ability of Palestine’s health system to properly function yet provide vaccines to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Israel furthers its project of settler colonialism. It is clear that part of Israel’s strategy is to eliminate Palestinians by denying them COVID care in addition to other medical treatments. This is one of many examples of the blatant disregard for Palestinian lives under apartheid.
Disability Justice challenges the politics of disposability which deems disabled people as inherently “less useful or productive” under capitalism and thus less valuable. As mass disabling events continue to take place in Palestine facilitated by Israel and the U.S., we are reminded of the ongoing pandemic as a continually disabling force at home and abroad. We reject the ableist idea of people’s worth as tied to their bodies’ ability to produce, and we refuse its normalization on all levels.
The biopolitics of genocide include attempts by the state to endanger the health and wellbeing of those who challenge its status quo. As Zionist violence against encampments via police, university officials, and counter protesters escalates, it is our duty to protect each other.
Read more:
COVID-19 Vaccination in Palestine/Israel: Citizenship, Capitalism, and the Logic of Elimination