On February 14, Valentine's Day, the corporate capitalism machinery will distract the general population with yet another consumerist "holiday" in which we are made to feel lonely, inadequate and/or obliged to spend money in order to demonstrate affection for loved one.

Apart from enforcing the idea of heteronormative and monogamous relationships, Valentine's Day has also come to represent the gross commodification of love and relationships. For some, the day will pass in spending money, for others - in wishing they were spending money, and still others - in wishing they could be with their beloved. 

Indeed, on Valentine's Day, there will be many partners and lovers who will suffer, being forcefully separated by racist policies and colonial borders. For Palestinians, this is just another fact of life that Israel enforces upon them.

So many Palestinians are unable to build their lives with their loved ones because they are simply banned from being in the same place.

One of the primary ways in which Israel prevents Palestinians from being together is through its racist and colonial ID system. Colonial and settler colonial entities have long employed different tiers of identification in order to divide and conquer native and indigenous peoples.

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