Teagan RiceA little over ten years on following the publication of a collection of some of Angela Davis’ interviews, essays and speeches into ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,’ we continue to inevitably grapple with autocratic political regimes, systemic racism, and above all the logic of capitalism that enables humanitarian crises for the sake of enrichening a technocratic and political elite.
As media attention has finally been granted to the genocide of the Palestinian people, it has been met with well-intentioned liberal outrage at Western governments’ inaction, albeit an outrage mitigated by the unnervingly widespread belief that their suffering began within the past few years. The cruelty being inflicted in Palestine is by no means a modern phenomenon, as evidenced most prominently by historical records of the then-freshly manufactured state of Israel perpetrating the Nakba, the mass displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, in 1948. The only clear difference in the present day is that whilst the genocide was previously propagated through the deprivation of resources, it has now escalated to an indiscriminate and relentless bombing campaign, and media coverage has increased accordingly – but still inadequately.
As long as Palestine has existed as a state, it has been defined relative to others. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it was placed under a British Empire ‘protectorate’ under a League of Nations mandate in 1920, under which it remained until 1948. Following its independence, the state faced a brutal civil war, followed by the establishment of the State of Israel, contingent on the Balfour Declaration (Balfour would only ever visit Palestine once, nearly a decade after issuing it) from three decades earlier, which would in turn mark the beginning of the Arab-Israeli War and the reversal of fortunes in the region.
The interceding eighty years have been defined by steady encroachment on Palestinian freedom punctuated by both attempts at peace and violent, debilitating conflict, which has culminated in the loss of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives since October 2023, and appears to be where the public’s perception of the Palestinian struggle largely begins. The burial of this information began in the aftermath of the Second World War, as the international order decided it had more important things to deal with, and has continued due to Western individualism, resource-hoarding and institutional racism. It therefore becomes essential that we revisit works from pre-October 7 such as Davis’, reminding as many people as possible that Palestine has always existed, that their struggle for freedom has not only been constant but will continue to be, and that it is our duty as moral beings to be their vocal allies in that.
Davis has acknowledged the increase in media attention towards Palestinian sovereignty in the last few years, with the position already expressed in her older writings only solidifying in light of this burst of new life within the pro-Palestinian movement. She wrote in 2024: “This is the first time in my own political memory that the Palestine solidarity movement is experiencing such broad support both throughout the U.S. and all over the world. […] We are in a new political moment, and we cannot — we must not — capitulate to those who represent the interests of racial capitalism and the legacies of colonialism.” Indeed, as world leaders bend the knee to the Israeli government, the onus is placed on the electorate to disavow the exploitation of ethnic minorities for capital gain. Even if the economy were benefitting somehow from this massacre, as opposed to its descent into the cost of living crisis that the UK continues to face, it should not need to be said that this is not even remotely a worthwhile exchange.
It was in a virtual interview in 2014 with Frank Barat that Davis wrote, “If, for example, we in the United States could force the Obama administration to cease its $8 million-a-day support of Israel, this would go a long way toward pressuring Israel to end the occupation.” An extraordinarily effective way to aid Palestine in ending the occupation is to isolate Israel on the world stage. With Israel having the steadfast support of key powers on the world stage and the unflinching adulation of the current United States administration, meaningful sanctions at this point seem like an ideal too far to reach. Instead, our only outlet to express our discontent is through collective action: boycotts, protests, and enough public pressure to convey that we as a nation do not support what is being enabled in our name and that we want it to stop.
It is a damning reflection of long-term public inaction that anti-Zionist activists have called for these relatively meagre measures for so long, and yet Israel continues to profit from the purchase of goods in Britain and Western electorates continuously elect leaders who actively arm the state. Following the October 7 attacks, US military aid to Israel reached its highest point since 1979, and this only increased upon Trump’s re-election as he rescinded what meagre restrictions the Biden administration had imposed.[1] Meanwhile in the UK, it is reported that the Labour government in the span of three months approved more weapons to the Israeli government than the Tories had in the entirety of their previous four years of leadership.[2] As easy as it is to claim personal support of Palestine and to disavow the actions of our own governments, democratic government is supposed to represent the wishes of its citizens. Individual stances lose their weight when Western electorates as a unit still vote for Zionist leaders and thus Zionism. If you are a British citizen, your Labour Party Member of Parliament eats lunch with his colleagues in the Labour Friends of Israel on your behalf.[3]
You can provide someone with all the information they need on a global issue, but ultimately you can’t force them to care. This proves problematic not only as a moral commentary, but more so as a commentary on wielding collective power. Former PM Keir Starmer is an apt example. Elected to the Labour leadership on an ostensibly socialist platform in 2020, in three short years he would argue Israel had the right to withhold water from the Gazan civilian population at the beginning of the current conflict in the region. Davis uses the alternative example of former President Barack Obama, whose successful presidential bid in 2008 can in large part be credited to a collective power, albeit one which was subsequently quashed following the development of the Tea Party in the early 2010s, rather than being used to pressure him into more progressive policy and to prevent atrocities such as his war crimes in Yemen and Pakistan.
Interestingly, in 2012, Davis referred to Obama as identifying “with the Black radical tradition.” Her meaning here is somewhat opaque and opens up the difficult question of how to reconcile an election that was a marker of radical progress at the time with the fact that the elected candidate himself was utterly centrist and described Zionism as “fundamentally just” and “necessary.” The conclusion one might reach is simply that no government can be relied upon on its own to enact justice, as even those who initially seem progressive will ultimately concede to appeasing those upon whom their re-election may rely. Collective action once again resurfaces as both essential and urgent, to enlighten them as to what the electorate truly wants: an end to the carnage in Palestine and the end of the government’s unconditional support of the Israeli administration’s genocidal rampage.
How, then, is it possible to mobilise a large enough group to wield that kind of pressurising power, if not through merely educating them and relying on their empathy or moral code? According to Davis, it can be done through the contextualisation of these issues by drawing parallels with other parts of the world, so that we view them as ‘our issues’ rather than ‘their issues.’ After all, the occupation of Palestine does affect us all. It sets a precedent that the citizens of a country do not have to be their government’s first priority, that some ethnicities are more ‘worthy’ than others, and that we cannot expect the world’s help when facing injustice. The way to combat that precedent is by providing our help, now, when it’s more pivotal than ever. There is no one solitary hero, or to get Hegelian, a ‘world-historical individual’, who will swoop in and fix things, but there are eight billion people in the world, the vast majority of which have agency they can use to support those suffering.
It is easy, too, to dismiss Palestine and to turn your attention elsewhere. A common argument against providing foreign aid is the idea that we should solve our domestic issues before adjudicating the rest of the world’s problems. This is the wrong approach: there is no freedom in the world unless there is freedom from all oppression. One of the main takeaways from Davis’ work, as she intended it in 2015, was that all of these global struggles are interconnected. At the time, American police were receiving training from Israel in anti-terrorist measures (and had been since 2002, a practice which continues today), and the tear gas canisters used against anti-racism protestors in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 were the exact same as those used against activists in Palestine during the 2010s. This is only one example of how no struggle exists in isolation. There is no such thing as an individual anomaly, a ‘rotten apple’ so to speak, as governments can frequently be relied upon to support and even fund each other’s oppressive regimes. This is as true today as it was then, as seen in the fight against patriarchy, against systemic racism, against extractive capitalism, against the genocides in Palestine, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Davis more than once echoed Martin Luther King’s statement that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and indeed we should all feel threatened that injustice has been allowed by the world to thrive to the extent it has in Palestine.
Don’t, however, mistake ‘injustice’ as referring specifically to Israel’s violation of international law. While that is in fact what’s occurring, it’s a dangerous argument given that it comes close to equating legality with morality. Slavery was once legal, apartheid was once legal, and to this day, Israel’s own high court of justice often rules that its own actions, such as its ‘house demolition policy’, are legal. Nations should not be allowed to mark their own legal and moral homework. Davis reminds us that Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist list until as late as 2008: throughout history, terrorism recurs as a weapon that oppressive governments (even ones who, by way of being white and Western, can masquerade as democracies) can wield against political opponents and ultimately use to silence them. It was also Mandela who said in 1997, as he spoke at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.” He exemplifies Davis’ idea that “nothing happens in isolation,” which she particularly emphasised regarding the links between the struggle against racist violence and the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation, and lends credence to her view that we must fight for the liberation of the oppressed in every corner of the world in order to truly achieve it anywhere.
‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ leaves us with a striking question: “Don’t we want to be able to imagine the expansion of freedom and justice in the world?” We have made substantial social progress since the publication of this book, and even more so since some of the events Davis details, this is true. That does not mean we have no progress left to make, domestically or elsewhere. For lack of a better phrase, why not imagine that the sky is the limit? And why not imagine the sky being the limit everywhere? It is not enough, anymore, to carry the personal feeling that Israel’s genocide in Palestine is wrong. It is not enough to look on helplessly as your government funds it and feel that there is nothing you can do. The book ends with a series of imperatives, issued by Davis in a speech at a Turkish university in 2015: “We cannot go on as usual. We cannot pivot the centre. We cannot be moderate. We will have to be willing to stand up and say no with our combined spirits, our collective intellects, and our many bodies.”
[1] U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts | Council on Foreign Relations
[2] UK Labour approved more weapons to Israel in three months than Tories did in four years – Middle East Monitor
[3] Starmer: No Gaza ceasefire without return of hostages | The Independent
Cover Image from Wikimedia Commons
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