Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello Shares Views On Palestine And Gets Misunderstood
Rage Against The Machine’s guitarist who’s also known for his activism, Tom Morello, recently posted a caricature on his Twitter account and showed his support for Palestinians, but his message attracted a lot of haters who condemned him for his stance.
As you probably know, in the past month, Israel has been making the headlines of worldwide news due to their increasing violence against Palestinian citizens. The hostilities started at the end of April after Israel imposed unnecessarily strict restrictions on gathering during Ramadan, which in Islam is considered to be a month of prayer and fasting.
Following that, there was a march organized by the far-right Israelis who walked through the Old City shouting ‘death to Arabs.’ Tensions started increasing and were further fuelled when Israeli authorities tried to forcibly dispossess numerous Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in order to give them to Israelis.
After Palestinians started resisting Israeli forces, the violence increased. Gaza has been under attack for a week and the Israeli airstrikes have killed approximately 190 Palestinians, including 58 children and 34 women. In the meantime, over two weeks ago, the Democrats in the House of Representatives approved that they’ll provide unconditional military aid to Israel which led to numerous protests.
In his recent tweet, Tom Morello showed his support for Palestinians by creating a parallel between Palestinians and Native Americans. The caricature that he posted depicted victims of violence and dispossession repeating claims made by the Israeli government and numerous media outlets, such as ‘there were casualties on both sides.’ While some understood the message of his post, others criticized him for oversimplifying the matter.
Here’s what the evicted Native Americans say in the caricature:
“- Don’t judge, this conflict is actually really complicated
– We shot arrows, they have a right to defend themselves
– There were casualties on both sides”
To which a Twitter user replied:
“I agree with you politically a lot, almost always. But to suggest that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that simple is just wrong. There is a LOT to criticize about the Israeli government, but the situation of the Pilgrims and early Jewish settlers/refugees can’t be compared.”
And another fan said:
“Exact same logic. Basically ‘God told me this land is mine.'”
Another user replied:
“It doesn’t really work when there are too many people who are just gonna go ‘that’s right’ at that cartoon to be honest.”
You can check out the tweet below.
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) May 16, 2021
