International Yoga Day: A Call to Action in Solidarity with Palestine #Yogis4Palestine

International Yoga Day: A Call to Action in Solidarity with Palestine #Yogis4Palestine

International Yoga Day: A Call to Action in Solidarity with Palestine #Yogis4Palestine

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[A statement calling on yoga practitioners to reimagine their yoga practice toward Palestinian liberation, “International Yoga Day: A Call to Action in Solidarity with Palestine, was published on June 21st, International Yoga Day, by a collective of yoga practitioners and Palestinian activists. The statement calls on yogis to condemn the deployment of yogic culture as a tool of repression and to pledge their support for the Palestinian-led Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israeli apartheid – and other indigenous struggles around the globe. It has gained signatures from yogis across the globe, including in Palestine, Lebanon, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, the UK, the US, Canada, and more. As people continue to invite more yogis to endorse the statement by embodying their yoga practice toward global solidarity, we share it here:]

We use International Yoga Day to call on yogis to reimagine what spiritual and political solidarity with Palestinians, Kashmiris and all oppressed people can look like within the embodiment of one’s yoga practice. As yoga teachers and students who strive to embody yoga’s commitment to interconnected healing and collective liberation, we cannot remain silent and breathe away the horrendous and brutal acts of settler colonial violence that the Israeli apartheid regime and Israeli settlers continue to enact upon the indigenous Palestinian population.

We call on yoga practitioners worldwide to assert their solidarity with the people of Palestine -- both in supporting the Palestinian-led campaign for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions[i] of the Israeli government and in disrupting the weaponization of yoga as a form of cultural propaganda for ethnonationalism.

While the Indian Government and its supporters have framed International Yoga Day as a peaceful day of awareness that pays homage to “ancient” India for bestowing yoga to the world, in fact, it is used as a tool of repression.[ii] The Indian Government uses it to rewrite India’s history and to obscure its right-wing, Hindu nationalist, and fascist agenda. While the Modi government enjoys strong support including among urban middle classes and many in the diaspora, the spectacle of large-scale yoga day celebrations that will take place in India today belie the crackdown on all dissent, including the massive ongoing farmers protests, and opposition by Dalits, Muslims, and resistance from Assam to Kashmir of the projects of Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism.[iii] In the spirit of collective liberation and with the intent to re-appropriate from Hindu nationalism and caste supremacy, we are calling on fellow yogis to commit ourselves today to a true internationalism that is rooted in global solidarity and principled action towards collective spiritual salvation. 

The Indian government is not alone in its deployment of yogic culture to conceal its violence. Both India and Israel, and their respective Hindutva and Zionist ideologies, find common cause in using yoga and spirituality as tools of cultural propaganda.[iv] In light of Israel’s most recent atrocities, this year’s International Yoga Day presents an opportunity for yogis to deepen our commitment and obligation to all oppressed people, including indigenous people whose lands are occupied by settlers in Turtle Island[v], Kashmir, and Palestine. We are heeding the call from Palestinian civil society to boycott the Israeli government and pressure Israel into ending its apartheid system of colonial oppression. We call on yoga, wellness, and trauma practitioners to use the momentum of this day of commemoration to purpose their yoga practice toward disrupting our complicity in Israeli apartheid.

We are aware of the yoga programs that are held for Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers[vi]; the Masada Sunrise Yoga, Ein Gedi Oasis, and Dead Sea Wellness Experience Tour[vii] that offers tourists a sunrise yoga session; and the Israel Outdoors’ Birthright Mindfulness & Spirituality 10-day trip for Jewish Youth.[viii] These projects exemplify how the Israeli government and tourist industry use yogic culture to “omwash” their reputation and weaponize yoga for the purpose of advancing a Zionist agenda at the expense of Palestinians having a right to return. They attempt to indoctrinate and rewrite history while displacing indigenous Palestinian narratives around their connection to the land. We reject the use of yoga as a camouflage for oppression and militarism. Yoga as a path to liberation requires being in solidarity with oppressed people in the global south, around the world, and in Palestine.

We enthusiastically support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, dignity, and self-determination. 

Finally, we condemn the US government’s and related media institution’s complicity with Israeli apartheid.[ix] The US government fuels Israeli settler violence by actively funding the Israeli military while the US media legitimizes Israeli’s war crimes. The historic and ongoing alliance between Zionism, Hindu nationalism, and US imperialism is found in the ongoing occupation of indigenous lands across Palestine, Kashmir, and Turtle Island.

As thousands of people flock to the public squares and yoga spaces on lands that their governments have stolen, to commemorate International Yoga Day, we call on yoga practitioners to refuse to breathe in the colonial propaganda that conceals a genocidal reality. Instead, may we breathe in and activate solidarity for all oppressed people’s struggles for freedom, dignity, and self-determination.

We urge yogis to endorse the following CALL TO ACTION: 


We, the undersigned, pledge to:

  1. Support the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Israeli Apartheid state as called upon by Palestinian civil society
  2. Refuse to participate in wellness events and yoga retreats in Israel (occupied Palestine) that “omwash” settler violence and that are complicit in Israeli apartheid.
  3. Call out the co-optation of yoga by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and other imperialist law enforcement institutions that weaponize yoga as a tool of repression
  4. Commit to solidarity with Palestinians and all oppressed peoples around the globe who struggling for self-determination 

And since yoga is weaponized across the globe, especially by Hindu right forces in India, we also pledge to: 

  1. Divest from the related International Yoga Day projects that advance Hindu nationalism in India and the entrenched militarism in Kashmir.
  2. Challenge the Hindu Right’s claim on yoga in America, for example the Hindu American Foundation’s “Take Back Yoga” campaign[x] presents itself as decolonial but in truth, further entrenches a Hindu Nationalist agenda amongst South Asians in the diaspora.
  3. Commit to supporting and creating abolitionist yoga and wellness programs -- that are anti-casteist, anti-racist, and anti-Islamophobic that support Black, Indigenous, Palestinian, Kashmiri, and Dalit self-determination and liberation
 

Signatories


Individuals:

Sheena Sood

Cara H

Ruba Khader

Hanae Mason

Candy Alexandra Gonzalez

Sham Nayeem

Taylor Jones

Denice Frohman

Rachel Parsons

Adrieh Abou Shehadeh

Amanda Jo Wright

Walid Rabah

Sofia Rosenzweig

Mythri Jegathesan

Hesham Sallam

jasmin thana

Nadine N

Alae Jaber

Kim Shaker

Moe Alhaj

rahaf abuzaid

Jodi Huang

Katia Maarouf

Mariam Sulaiman

Tiffany Hequin

Dina Thomas

Nora Obeid

Anita Iverson

Hind Hubaishi

Faten Tchelepi

Stephanie Keene

Stephanie Keene

Fatuma Barqadle

Zayna Salloum

Sarah Craig

Lyndsay Boyle

Deepthi R

Robert Flores

Zahira Mous

Shahad Al-Ward

Marion Schneider

Nadia Ghosheh

Nicole McCray

Huda Imam

Harry Dime

Reem Ismail

Halima Usman

Adriana Akintobi

Cynthia Franklin

Marilia Santos

Ciara O' Gara

Dianna Abusharif

Steph Barrale

Rasha Husseini

Shane Wolfe

Keyonis Johnson

Aya Elsehaimy

Jamela Elayyan

Rima Abdo

Waleed Hasan

Sara Arafat

jean-jacques gabriel

Lucinaira De Jesus

Kayla Bell

Marcia Lee

Jessica Johnson

Vidya Mantrala

Kim Fleisher

James Marks

Kelly Green

Jen Woo

Sue Maali

Lori Curran

Amaney Abdallah

sudan green

Amanda Jones

Dara Bayer

Lea Y.

Gebhard LLC

Irene Urmeneta

Fatima M

Jaye Crawford

Yasmin Mohammad

Diamond King

Carrington Jackson

Erica Steib

Sonali Sadequee

Farrah Rahaman

Aynna Rigby

Rishi Sharma

Eyas Mozart

James Vickers

Carol Monsur

Mariam Durrani

Brianne Murphy

Faten Abu-Isbeih

Kasturi Sen

Naoko Shibusawa

Kalista Anyika

Nayantara Banerjee

Hanya Imam

Karam Fairouss

Amaly Bibi

Nitzan Nili Vardi

Haja Dominike Radic

Jacinta Delora

Tariq Abulaban

Hajer Abuzeid

Irene Bright-Dumm

jac jac

Jessica Porter

Sharifah Al

Yara Kamal

Chris Jeter

Nutmeg Knox

Rhube Knox

Laila Kirkpatrick

Maisa Ferreira

Catherine Barry

Laila Arjeh

Renee Ross

Manara Marzuq

Sarab Samarah

Amani Abu Hashem

Sangeeta Sarkar

Amanda Scou

Fa Ra

Simran Uppal

Yasmin Ameen

Freshta Isci

Moneek Bhanot

Anne-Laure Honauer

Banan Kiswani

Abu Taher

Iman Hamidaddin

Greschen Brecker

Paula Bui

Samantha Suragh

Sundeep Sood

Alex Peer

Neelam Pathikonda

Luanda Nascimento

Charla Gray

karina trejo

Ann-Marie Brennan

Bianca Mase

Rimah Adams

Mouzam Makkar

Nigel Matshsll

Ragia Momtaz

Heba mahmoud Abdel Latif

Gerard Forlee

Iman Elsherbiny

Sophie Finn

Dayna Edge

Wasela Altaher

Lizzie Westman

Odette Beswick

Corey Reidy

Dorota Rozko

Lina Sawalh

Ava Samuels

Manny Garcia

Ammar Jadallah

Taghrid Khoury

Sinead Brady

Rana Barghouty

Anthea Mendonça

Anna Westerveld

Lyne Ismail

Manisha Dass

Elena Rodriguez-DePaul

Ryan Haas

Jenessa Williams

Christina Jackson

Jardana Peacock

Mari Morales-Williams

Samia Amery

Trishya Srinivasan

Reem E

Hala Asfour

Dua Hamed

Katie Bastable

Hafsa Mahmood

Sarah Ismail

Sheri Maali

Malcom Warner

Mouna Kheir

Vandana Sood-Giddings

Lila Habib

Caroline Helmore

Meryem Altundal

Sima Kanaan

Kaede Fujimoto

Vincent Hellinger

Harriet McAtee

Alina Friedman

Yusra Ahmed

Silvia Sanvito

Namita Kulkarni

Nicolita Garces

Litu Kabir

Melissa Shah

Fatima bibi Hassan Shaik

Dina Soliman

Maya Odeh

Rula Khalaily

Nihal Rashed

Leanna Azoury

Rashid Zakat

Nadiya Mahmood

Asma Zehouani

Tatiana Elghossain

Kinjal Dave

Amanda Valdes

Mary Schnorrenberg

Jalila Bell

Do Haav

Vaimoana Niumeitolu

Shaeeda Sween

Adrienne Csanadi

Alyssa Moukheiber

Jennifer Musial

Christine Grossutti

K Ching

Kaz Castillo

litu Kabir

Nisha Mody

Amir AzaiA

Mira Shihadeh

S. Shankar

Deva Leveillee

Bilal Abdelwahab

Eleanor Barba

Shesheena Bray

Halle Miroglotta

Maria Malek

jenny ryder

Julie Hoang

Brandi Goldsborough

Nor Shkoukani

Dr. Chloe Diamond-Lenow

Dylan Bernstein

Avery Soret-Johnson

Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn

Erin Polley

Masin Ouksel

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Aisling Conn

Gebhard LLC

Fatima Sulaiman

Bally Radatti

Makalla Thomas

Abdelrahman Sulaiman

Mai Alshafei

Rebecca Duncan

Malini Schueller

DJ Rallo

Organizations:

Yoga Warrior Tales LLC

Authentic yoga

Incense, Trap, & Yoga

Ashtanga Yoga Hong Kong

Party for Socialism and Liberation - Milwaukee branch

Sustainable Wellness

Fauna Embodiment

YogaFlowz Studio

Humm Beirut

Sheena Shining

Yoga by Nadiya

Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia

FunFitness, Inc. Personal Training


[i] “Cultural Boycott,” BDS Movement, May 9, 2016, https://bdsmovement.net/cultural-boycott.

[ii] Jyoti Puri, “Sculpting the Saffron Body: Yoga, Hindutva, and the International Marketplace,” in Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2020), 317–32, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190078171.001.0001/oso-9780190078171-chapter-018.

[iii] Sheena Sood, “Spectacles of Compassion: Modi and the Weaponization of Yoga,” Jadaliyya, May 4, 2020, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41048.

[iv] Rimsha Syed, “Zionism and Hindutva, Two Sides Of The Same Coin,” Wear Your Voice, March 17, 2020, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/hindutva-zionism-ethnonationalist-states-two-sides-same-coin/.

[v] “Turtle Island,” accessed June 19, 2021, https://www.deadlystory.com/page/culture/articles/World_s_Indigenous_Peoples_Day/Turtle_Island/.

[vi] Jessica Steinberg, “Yoga Mom Seeks Namaste for the IDF | The Times of Israel,” The Times of Israel, June 21, 2015, https://www.timesofisrael.com/yoga-mom-seeks-namaste-for-the-soldiers/; Shira Makin, “TikTok… Boom! Israeli Army’s Social Media Has ‘big Smiles’ and Soldiers Doing Yoga. You Know What’s Missing,” Haaretz.com, October 13, 2020.

[vii] “Masada Sunrise Yoga, Ein Gedi Oasis, and Dead Sea Wellness Experience Tour - Tourist Israel,” accessed September 8, 2020, https://www.touristisrael.com/tours/masada-sunrise-yoga-ein-gedi-oasis-dead-sea-wellness-experience-tour/.

[viii] “Mindfulness & Spirituality in Israel,” Business, Israel Outdoors, accessed June 19, 2021, https://www.israeloutdoors.com/choose-your-trip/specialty-groups/mindfulness-spirituality-israel/.

[ix] Syed, “Zionism and Hindutva, Two Sides Of The Same Coin.”

[x] “Has Yoga Strayed Too Far From Its Hindu Roots?,” NPR.org, accessed June 19, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134822766/Has-Yoga-Strayed-Too-Far-From-Its-Hindu-Roots.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412