Physical DIsability & Palestine

We mourn all of the martyrs in Palestine who have been killed in this genocide and the ongoing violence of occupation. We offer the following perspective, rooted in Disability Justice, as further evidence of our communities’ interlinked struggles towards liberation. 

Militarism and war are mass disabling systems that affect individuals on physical, mental, social, and spiritual levels, and also disproportionately endanger disabled people. Because of this, we see Disability Justice as an anti-militarism and anti-war/occupation framework. 

In Gaza, Israel is bombing hospitals, decimating healthcare infrastructure, restricting the flow of humanitarian aid, killing aid workers, and utilizing chemical agents like white phosphorus, to enact a genocide against Palestinians. There is currently no safe place for Palestinians.

As queer and trans Asians, these actions are horrifically familiar and represented in our own experiences of colonialism, imperialism, militarism, and genocide. The disabling of medical systems, starvation, and chemical warfare are forms of violence that have echoed throughout the history of Asia. 

When looking at videos of white phosphorus deployed by the IOF, we remember how the U.S military sprayed over 80 million liters of Agent Orange and other chemical herbicides over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s.

When watching Palestinians killed while trying to access an aid truck, we remember how between 1-2 million Vietnamese civilians starved to death at the hands of Japanese occupation in the 1940s. We remember how the Myanmar government and security forces starved the Rohingya by not allowing them to farm rice in their fields and restricting food aid. We will not forget how the Myanmar government shot and attacked the Rohingya, leaving these genocide survivors with long-term disabilities.   

When we see the bombs drop over Al-Shifa and Nasser Hospital, we remember how the U.S. government conducted nuclear testing on Indigenous land in the southwest, bombed Bikini Atoll and dumped waste in the Marshall Islands, so that they could bomb over 200,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima, 90% of physicians and nurses were killed or injured, 42 of 45 hospitals were rendered non-functional.  

Our communities are violently familiar with the impacts of war, militarism and occupation.