We All Deserve Freedom, Safety, and Protection
DON’T TAKE THE BAIT
This month, we share with you guidance from Uprise and ASO Communications on the atrocities in Palestine and Israel. While this is much bigger than the Wisconsin issues we usually try to focus on, there are thousands of Wisconsinites with family and loved ones in Gaza and other occupied places around the world, and we know all of our families deserve freedom and safety no matter where they live. Included in this guide are Wisconsin organizations that you should follow and support.
Here at All in Wisconsin, we stand in solidarity with those Wisconsinites, their families, and those in Palestine and Israel, specifically in Gaza, who seek the freedom, safety, and protection we all deserve. We reject the dehumanizing language being used to justify genocidal acts and demand that our leaders support immediate steps to help those in danger.
Wisconsin Groups to Follow and Support
Please follow these groups, as their events and calls to action are being updated frequently.
Guidance
The aim of this guidance is to offer language to inoculate against and rebuff dehumanizing rhetoric, name what people are facing in this moment of crisis, and demand immediate actions to prevent further atrocities as well as lasting solutions that support Palestinian and Israeli people. We must end military occupation and move toward freedom and safety for us all.
This is a serious, deadly, and rapidly changing situation, and we encourage advocates and others to use this narrative as a framework to add updated context and urgent demands.
Messaging Principles
Lead with humanity and the basic value of safety, naming that these attributes and desires are shared across races, religions and regions.
We know from years of research that the understandable impulse to detail the harms and horrors unfolding causes many listeners to turn away from the issue rather than engage and, ideally, take action. Of course, in the wake of atrocities and war crimes, we must acknowledge the devastation underway. This is most effectively done after first naming the humanity that connects us, across races, religions and regions. Doing so is essential to creating shared stakes, instilling the hope necessary to inspire action, and pushing back against the division that those who profit off of violence stoke.
Right now, the critical values to bring to the fore are life and safety. It’s also appropriate to express grief, care, and sadness for the families of those killed, hurt, captured, or subjected to violence – Israeli and Palestinian.
DON’T SAY “security” - this suggests military/policing solutions are the only appropriate ones.
DO SAY “safety” – this suggests a broader range of everyday human needs and solutions.
DON’T SAY “everyone is equally harmed,” “everyone is suffering the same” - these are inaccurate assertions of outcomes and not of values or beliefs.
DO SAY “we all want,” “we all deserve,” “most of us seek” - these describe aspirations and beliefs that are common across human beings.
2. Be specific in naming the culprits, creating a large “us” and a small “them”.
Particularly when addressing mass violence borne of dehumanization, using precise language is critical in calling out villains. In the case of Israel and Palestine, this means always specifying the leadership responsible for atrocities and not impugning all Israelis or Palestinians as a people. For example, using “Israeli military,” “Israeli leaders,” “Hamas,” and other specific named actors, as well as “Palestinian people” and “Israeli people” where appropriate instead of using “Israel” or “Palestine” as a stand-in for the specific politicians in charge of a current ruling faction.
A core tenet for progressives is to recognize the humanity in all of us and judge people by their actions, not their identities; to demonize an entire people based on how they worship, where they were born or what leaders in their communities do is fundamentally reactionary. It is also counterproductive to the task of persuading and mobilizing people of all backgrounds to demand change.
DO SAY “Israeli government,” “Israeli military,” “Israeli people,” “Palestinian people,” “Hamas”
DON’T USE “Israel” or “Palestine” as shorthand for a government, military, or ruling faction.
DON’T USE language that personifies the State of Israel, for example, “Israel isn’t serious about peace” or “Friend of Israel”
DO SHOW how specific people made choices that led to the immediate and long-standing problems
DON’T attribute responsibility to abstract concepts – for example,“occupation,” “terror,” or “Zionism.” People cannot organize or take action against ideas, but they can take concrete steps to alter the behaviors of decision-makers in power.
3. Ascribe clear motivations to the villains: desire to seize and hold power at existential cost to everyday people.
It is useful to express that the culprits are political leaders who are corrupt failures and have put their own desire for power above the shared needs of the people in the region – willing to burn everything to the ground because they have failed to deliver. To contrast this, the broad “we” – which includes people in the region and here at home – support solutions for the long-term, which benefit people who are Palestinian and Israeli alike.
DO SAY “corrupt failed governments and leaders”
DO NAME specific short- and long-term solutions and call upon those who can implement them.
DON’T REFERENCE “cycles of violence” - this makes violence feel inevitable and unstoppable.
4. Help your audience locate themselves in the story: show how the interests and needs of Israeli and Palestinian people in
the region are shared, avoid narrative traps that pit one group against the other, and show how the American
government is involved and can be part of a solution.
It is an explicit strategy of the far-right Israeli political movement to create a feeling that “Israel is a team you can root for.” The best way to neutralize this is to reject these dividing lines entirely.
Express how both urgent, short-term requirements, like immediate de-escalation, bringing hostages home, restoring essential services to Gaza and holding accountable those who target civilians, as well as long-term solutions, like ending occupation/apartheid and siege, are how we achieve safety and a better life for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Conversely, express how targeting innocent people will never achieve safety. As Americans, we can and should demand that our government support these goals and hold accountable leaders who do not.
Calls to end the long-time occupation and current siege should be framed as integral to achieving safety and ensuring people can live freely for generations to come; this is vital to countering opposition rhetoric that these absolutely critical demands are justifications for harming civilians in any way.
5. Close with a vision for the future and outline some steps we can take to get there.
A call to action in service of a clear theory of change is vital. For American progressives seeking peace, safety and well-being for all people and an end to violence and military occupation, we must bring this back to the responsibilities of our own leaders – calling out those here who are fueling and funding violent division and painting a picture of the world we can achieve by joining together.
Full Narrative
In America, in Palestine, and in Israel, no matter what our religion or background, we all deserve a life of safety and freedom for ourselves and our families.
But today, as people in Palestine and Israel mourn and seek safety, corrupt failed leaders are setting the region on fire and targeting ordinary people with war crimes. As we’ve seen here at home, in order to claim and hold power, they are trying to convince us that safety for some must come at the expense of safety for others.
We can demand that our leaders support immediate steps to help those in danger. Right now, that means preventing massive civilian deaths and restoring food, water, and electricity in Gaza, bringing people held captive home, and preventing any further atrocities and crimes against civilians, no matter what they look like or where they live.
We can also demand long-term solutions for people of the whole region, whether they’re Palestinian or Israeli, like ending funding of the Israeli military’s occupation and siege of the West Bank and Gaza and supporting people who simply want to live their lives and raise their families in peace.
By joining together in America, in the region, and all over the world, we can change course and ensure a life of freedom, safety, and belonging for every Palestinian and every Israeli.
International Groups Statements and Historical Education
We understand that this is a rapidly changing crisis and that many of us are frantically trying to understand the broader context. And with disinformation, historical revisionism, and colonized propaganda everywhere, we urge you to use trusted sources and lift up humanity. Here is what some well-trusted international humanitarian groups are saying:
Amnesty International: “Under international humanitarian law, all sides in a conflict have a clear obligation to protect the lives of civilians caught up in the hostilities.”
Human Rights Watch: "War crimes by one party don't justify war crimes by the other.”
World Health Organization: ”WHO pleads for immediate reversal of Gaza evacuation order to protect health and reduce suffering.”
Doctors Without Borders: "MSF calls on Israel to show humanity.”
UNICEF: “Children and families in Gaza have practically run out of food, water, electricity, medicine and safe access to hospitals, following days of hostilities and cuts to all supply routes. UNICEF is calling for an immediate ceasefire and for humanitarian access to allow for much-needed aid.”
Red Cross/Red Crescent: “We are deeply alarmed by the call for relocation in Gaza. Our volunteers refuse to leave and abandon those who need them most. They must be protected so that they can protect others.”
Social Media
IntoAction has created some gifs and graphics here that you may find useful in amplifying your messages.
