[The following statement was published by Yogis for Palestine in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza as they continue to face Israel's ongoing genocide. For inquiries, contact Sheena Sood at sheena.sood1@gmail.com / yogis4palestine@gmail.com.]
In light of Israel’s ongoing siege and genocide on Palestinians in Gaza, we -- Yogis for Palestine, Tejal Yoga and our nascent global community of yogis -- use this year’s International Day of Yoga (IDY) to reimagine what spiritual and political solidarity with Palestinian freedom can look like in global yoga spaces. Rather than celebrate this holiday that the Indian government - and the Israel & U.S. regimes - weaponize as a “soft power” diplomatic tool to conceal their ethnonational imperial alliances, we are reappropriating it as a global act of solidarity with Palestinian, Kashmiri, and all oppressed peoples’ resistance struggles.
This week, from June 17th to 28th, as we mark over 623 days of Israel’s newest phase of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Yogis for Palestine and Tejal Yoga are continuing the tradition of politicizing International Day of Yoga for Palestinian Liberation. We called on practitioners globally to host donation-based yoga and meditations offerings in solidarity with Palestinian freedom and Al-Jawad Camp in Gaza, and hundreds of practitioners across 6 continents and 29 countries organized over 160 in-person, online, and hybrid offerings.
Last year, on June 22, Yogis for Palestine held our first IDY Action for Palestinian Liberation in Philadelphia, PA (U.S.-occupied Lenni-Lenape land). We were 259 days into the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza; and the Indian embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel (occupied Palestine) hosted a yoga day event that Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog attended. In India, PM Modi hosted “yoga day” festivities in Srinagar to flex his Hindu supremacist power over Kashmir, a region his government has furthered military occupation over since 2019. Rather than brush off these far-right ploys to appropriate yoga for imperial ethnonational gain, we named these contradictions and held space for grieving and healing while raising funds for Gaza.
This year, we invite you to once again reckon with yoga’s weaponization by these religious ethnostates as you strive to embody your practice toward a free Palestine and Kashmir. During this weekend’s IDY festivities, PM Modi hopes to set a new world record of over 500,000 people practicing together in one place by traveling to Andhra Pradesh while the Zionist colony hosts yoga sessions for harmony and wellness across its occupied Palestinian territories. In reporting on these “yoga days,” most journalists will play into the “om-washing” spectacle of depicting IDY as a harmless holiday meant to promote health and unity. These are the same reporters who condemn resistance struggles and are complicit in Israel’s siege, famine, and genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
As people across the globe prepare to celebrate International Day of Yoga under the theme of “Yoga for One Earth, One Health this weekend,” we remind ourselves that on Gaza’s portion of the planet, Palestinians have faced over 623 days of genocide. We remind ourselves that the Gaza Health Ministry has reported over 55,000 deaths but that these reports are undoubtedly a vast undercount. We remind ourselves that environmentalists qualify the Zionist colony’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s natural environment a form of ecocide, meaning Israel is intent on making Gaza uninhabitable. We remind ourselves that the carbon footprint from Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza exceeds the combined annual emissions of over 100 countries. If, in our yoga practice, we cannot acknowledge the planetary and medical disaster that we have created in Gaza, then it seems International Day of Yoga is not for one earth but for the possession of earth in the name of capitalist extraction and requisite dispossession of indigenous populations that makes this possible.
As of today, Israel has murdered over 232 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, some of whom we have come to know through their persistent reporting on our social media feeds. Before March 24th, many of us relied on journalist 23-year old Hossam Shabat’s dedicated reporting on the horrors in northern Gaza, until Israel deliberately murdered him and his colleague Mohammed Mansour, for documenting the genocide of their people. In his final message, Hossam pleaded for us to “not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
Regardless of if we make it to our mats each day, this year’s yoga day invites us to attend to the undeniable truth that journalists like Hossam reported on: the harrowing images of dehumanized Palestinian bodies blown to pieces and buried under the rubble; the massacres at aid distribution centers; the Wounded Children with No Surviving Family members; Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of tents, schools and hospitals; Israel’s imposition of catastrophic hunger and famine on Gaza’s population; and, of course, the steadfast efforts of Palestinians to cultivate sumud to survive. If, in our yoga practice, we cannot attune ourselves to the global health disaster that we are complicit in contributing to in Gaza, then it seems International Day of Yoga is not for “one health” but rather for the health of those deemed worthy by a global system of colonial apartheid.
For those who came here to reckon with these truths, we understand that simply practicing yoga and praying for peace, light and liberation will not end a genocide and occupation. Even as our Palestinian kin at Al-Jawad Camp share yogawith children in their camp to help them “understand their feelings” and “relieve the stress and psychological tension” they are enduring “due to the effects of the ongoing war on Gaza,” we know that militant political action is what will end the genocide on the children of Gaza -- the same militant action embodied by members of the Madleen freedom flotilla, by the caravan of Sumud convoy advocates intent on breaking the siege, by participants in the Global March to Gaza, and by frontline Palestinian resistance fighters who refuse to surrender their homeland to the Zionist entity.
As we come together with our respective yoga actions for Palestine to interrupt the status quo of depoliticizing yoga for religious ethnonationalist cover and instead attune our breaths and hearts toward principled action and unwavering solidarity with all occupied peoples and their lands, including the ones that we occupy, we invite you to extend your breaths to Gaza. We invite you to extend your breaths to Kashmir. We invite you to extend your breaths to Sudan, the Congo and to all occupied lands and people. May these breaths fuel our moral and spiritual duty to act in international solidarity with Palestinian people until their lands and their people are free.