What Preceded the Killings in Israel and Gaza Was Not “Peace” — It Was Apartheid

What Preceded the Killings in Israel and Gaza Was Not “Peace” — It Was Apartheid

By Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba , Truthout/HaymarketBooks Published October 10, 2023

…. As Native and Black activists and organizers, we know what it is like to be subject to a state of ongoing violence and precarity that is characterized as “peace.” As Mariame has written, Black women in the United States have been treated as though they have “no selves to defend” since the days of slavery. For Black people, taking any action to defend one’s life often comes at the expense of one’s freedom. And just as systemic violence against Black people is invisibilized into the norms of so-called peace, so too is the mass disappearance of Native and Black women, whose abductions and murders have rarely resulted in a national fixation, as was the case for Gabby Petito, a young white woman who suddenly went missing during a road trip in August 2021.

In stark contrast to the thousands of Native and Black women whose abduction and murder has failed to generate mass outrage or attention from corporate media and white-dominated social institutions, Petito’s sudden abduction sparked mass concern because — due to her whiteness — the preciousness of her life was never in question, in the eyes of society. Fear for her well-being and grief for her loss came naturally to our society, in a way that it didn’t following the disappearances of the thousands of Native and Black women who met similar fates.

We see parallels between this disparity and the manner in which Israeli losses have resulted in a global outpouring of grief and concern, while the murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, surveillance, torture and coercion of Palestinians throughout decades of apartheid have gone unmourned by so many who now demand justice in the wake of Israeli deaths….