As knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists waged a slew of bloody attacks on Jews in Israel, and five months after bowing to anti-Israel boycotts by canceling a scheduled concert in the Holy Land, recording artist Lauryn Hill appeared in a short video entitled, “When I See Them I See Us,” in a show of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter and Palestinian movements.
Hill draws parallels between the two groups and endorses the video’s message of their common “struggle.”
Hill is seen holding up a sign that reads “Free All Political Prisoners” in the video, which was released by a range of African-American and Palestininian activists, featuring well-known names like political activist Cornel West, author of the The Color Purple Alice Walker, and actor Danny Glover.
The phrase “When I See Them I See Us” is repeated throughout the nearly three minutes of the video. One of the narrators starts off the clip by saying “every 28 hours a black life is stolen by police or vigilantes in the U.S,” referring to the Ferguson, Missouri incident last summer when Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson.
The Black Lives Matter “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative was quickly dismantled upon the revelation of Brown’s autopsy report, which showed he never had his hands up and was charging the officer when he was shot.
The video goes on to state that “every two hours a Palestinian child was killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer.” It does not mention the civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists, or the rockets fired at Israeli cities.
The video’s producer, Noura Erakat, is a Palestinian-American assistant professor at George Mason University and a human rights attorney. She spoke with old Al Jazeera recently.
While she claims to not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, citing her belief in “dignity for all,” she told Al Jazeera America that there was a natural connection between Black Lives Matter and Palestinian activism:
Here were two groups of people dealing with completely different historical trajectories, but both which resulted in a process of dehumanization that criminalized them and that subject their bodies as expendable. Not only were their lives more vulnerable and disposable, but that even in their death, they were blamed for their own death.
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