Lauryn Hill appears in video equating treatment of US blacks and Palestinians

In May, the singer cancelled her show in Israel after succumbing to BDS threats.

By JTA
Updated: OCTOBER 18, 2015 07:14
Video comparing US racism and treatment of Palestinians
Musician Lauryn Hill and actor Danny Glover appear in a video equating the situation of Palestinians under Israeli rule with that of blacks in the United States — and protesting both.
The short video, entitled “When I See Them I See Us” and uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, also features Angela Davis, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Omar Barghouti and other prominent black and Palestinian academics and activists.
At the beginning of the video, two narrators intone: “Every 28 hours, a black life is stolen by police or vigilantes in the US. Every two hours, a Palestinian child was killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer” — a reference to the 2014 Israeli offensive aimed at stopping missile fire and tunneling by militants from the territory.
The video participants hold signs with various statements that refer to supposed oppression of African-American and Palestinian communities, such as “Money for schools, not prisons,” “We are not statistics” and “Racism is systemic.”
Various narrators list casualties of racial and political violence, such as Eric Garner and Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and make controversial statements, such as “They sterilize us without our knowledge. Mark our children as criminal. We say no to all forms of oppression, in US cities or on Palestine’s streets.”
The slogan “When I see them, I see us,” is repeated throughout the video.
Hill, who is seen holding a sign that says “Free All Political Prisoners,” cancelled a performance in Tel Aviv on May 7 after being pressured by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to economically damage Israel. Hill claimed on Facebook that she cancelled the show because she could not set up an additional performance in the West Bank.


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