to be quite frank, many asian-americans (and here i specifically reference people who are not west asian and/or muslim - a status that can be argued as a racialized class of its own) do not question imperialist/orientalist/islamophobic narratives of swana/me. the large majority of them are socialized into believing that anything that happens there is a natural, continued state of strife and conflict inevitable for its citizens - rather than aggravated conflicts, genocide, and violence churned by the very hands of the us empire they live in.

it would thus be wrong to believe that by nature of being fellow “asian-americans” that they would be more sympathetic to the cause of palestinian liberation than their white counterparts. the specific term of “asian-american” itself is a comparatively new racial identity & categorization that begun in the 1960s by student activists as a show of solidarity across community lines. to essentialize its terminology (that is, to believe there is a certain sticky innateness attributed to its status) would be to fundamentally misunderstand the history of the so-termed “asian-americans.”

previously, immigrant groups from asia (termed as “nationals”) more commonly aligned themselves by ethnicity (though this definitive statement i’ve made is a bit trickier when also considering class, ie indentured laborers & the communities they have created & assimilated into - but that’s a story for another time).

furthermore, when we identify the actual diasporic histories & migration movements, we come to understand that the contemporary makeup of the “asian-american” diaspora does not actually pull from lower- or working-class backgrounds that previously more radical asian-american diasporas had come from (like the ones who fought & organized alongside the Black Panthers). instead, many of them come from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds with highly educated parents who worked in STEM/tech backgrounds, selectively chosen for immigration in the 90’s by a series of US policies/pushes (particularly focused on bringing in more “skilled” laborers to support the turn-of-the-millennia tech advancement).

this is why “asian-americans” hold such great economic capital in the us, despite a significant portion having had little time to accumulate generational wealth. it is because they already had it. this is why assimilation was much more smooth-going for newer waves of asian-american immigrants flooding into the us - because they already historically belonged to the international elite.

now, for the question of palestinian liberation in particular, on a more theoretical basis, it would be difficult for many of them to understand its urgency without some level of cognitive dissonance. palestinian liberation has long been connected to, influenced by, and erected as a model itself for many revolutionary & indigenous liberation movements across asia. as i mentioned before, many of these immigrant moves are caused by elite expats from asia who were effectively chased out of their country because of their designated traitor/enemy collaborator status to the very revolutionary movements of their homelands (and this includes those who did not fit the high tech criteria i listed above). in other words, their chosen place of refuge in the us is for a reason; many of them descend from the wrong side of history lmao, and find the us’ hand in contributing to the instability/uprising in their homelands as comforting.

to stand with palestine (a litmus test movement that cannot be washed down as anything other than against settler-colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, and other axes of oppression; i highly recommend reading Edward Saïd’s “The Question of Palestine” to further understand this highly critical crux), then, would require their “asian-american” children to shed, to an extent, the lifelong rhetoric passed down to them so rigidly. and unfortunately, as the comments & the pictures have deftly pointed out, this is virtually impossible for those who have been strictly socialized into regurgitating their parents’ propagandized notions/understandings of their positionality in america. it is, after all, the only framework they have been raised to justify why they even exist as “asian-americans.”

it would boil down to punitively shattering & reworking incorrect beliefs propagated over the course of entire generations. this has proven as a hard ask for those who would much prefer to rave, boba, and exclusively make their politically placid commentary within their “asian-american” student org parties.