Message To Detroit Conference for Palestine
I thank you, members and supporters of the Palestine Youth Movement and others gathering in Dearborn, thinking about what’s happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, and beyond. Before we begin, I ask you a very simple question: When have you ever seen the level of destruction that we are seeing every day in Gaza? I would guess that no one in this audience can describe the similar level of mass slaughter and destruction of men, women, children, homes, churches, mosques, and people, in such a short period of time. That should tell us more than we want to know.
When have you ever heard about Palestinians right to self-defense? Or the human right for all human beings to defend themselves wherever they are on the planet Earth? When it comes to Palestinians, we hear a state of exception where everything is allowed; everything except justice, except democracy, except food, except water, except life. There are prisoners struggling in the prisons in Palestine and in the United States. There was one Mahmoud Khalil who, because he led demonstrations, he was seized and thrown in the darkness of a prison cell for daring to support his own people. Thankfully, that brief entombment was lifted, and he’s able to speak, and that’s a wonderful thing. But there are thousands and thousands of Palestinians who every day endure military courts where their presumption of guilt precedes them before they even enter a courtroom. What kind of justice is that? Is that democratic justice? I think not.
Of course, there are prisoners throughout the United States who are Palestinian and they’re fighting for their freedom against a government that has outlawed support for Palestine, for political reasons. We’ve talked about Israel’s right to defend itself, have we not? How do you call an army that has inflicted that kind of carnage on men, women, and children; people running to try to feed themselves because of a humanitarian trap—away from their homes, isolated—hundreds, over a thousand killed, for running for bread?
When we speak about Israeli Defense Force, I wonder who speaks about an Israeli Offense Force? That would be more honest. When we think about prisoners in Palestine, we have to think about all of Palestine. It is not just in the prisons of Israel where people are confined. All of Palestine is an open-air prison in Israel because of the ever-present occupation that has denied them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. You know, those great things that Americans promise—and denied them everything, even life itself. The struggle must continue, and it will, as long as hearts beat around the world, as long as eyes see around the world, and as long as we love that which we call human.
—Prison Radio, September 9, 2025
https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/mumias-message-to-detroit-conference-for-palestine/