Palestine Defines Us
What do the ongoing war crimes being committed in West Asia mean for us as a species? Any honest study of world history will find many instances of large-scale cruelty, prejudice, stealing and destruction. But we have defined them as such. For example, slavery is not written about just as an occurrence. It is categorized as an affront to humanity. While there may be some defenders of that abominable part of human history, it is by and large considered an evil. In other words, slavery is not mentioned positively in society.
Similarly, apartheid in South Africa is not seen as something we as humans can be proud of. It is considered a heinous crime against humanity.
Names of people like Hitler who caused large scale misery to others are used to point out what inhuman behavior means, what actions we must not engage in if we want to retain our humanity.
When we look at our journey as a species, we find good and bad and even if we do not recognize it immediately at times, we have been able to tell what is good from what is bad.
Sometimes, we don’t see it or do not want to see it because we may be the beneficiaries of the injustice that is happening. At other times, it is how things are presented to us by people who seek to manipulate us.
But whenever we have looked back at our history with honesty, we have been able to see where we went wrong.
Palestine is different. It is different because what is happening to it – what has been happening to it for almost eight decades – is a death of human values on a daily basis but the most powerful actors in this constant tragedy refuse to accept it as wrong.
One might say that this is nothing unusual, that the ones who gain from an injustice will never admit it to be injustice. But this is different. Why? Because unlike the horrors of history, genocides of recent times or even contemporary wars, this is a continuously occurring tragedy which is both history and the present. And unlike the horrors of the past, this has not been hidden from public view (despite strong efforts to hide it) given the technology we process to capture and transmit images.
Consider the killing of a journalist, Shireen abu Akleh by the Israeli army. She was reporting from Jenin on May 11, 2022 as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) was conducting a raid there. Despite wearing protective gear and a vest that prominently displayed the word “PRESS,” she was shot in the head. Her colleagues have gone on record saying that the Israeli forces specifically targeted the exposed parts of the journalist to kill her. The IDF initially claimed that she was killed by a Palestinian gunman. But independent investigations corroborated Shirin’s employer Al Jazeera’s claim that she was shot by an Israeli soldier and that no Palestinian gunmen were in her vicinity. Under international pressure based on evidence, the IDF later accepted that there was “a high possibility” that Shireen was “accidentally hit” by its soldiers.
However, a UN inquiry has recently concluded that Shireen was killed by the Israeli military who “used lethal force without justification under international human rights law”.
There is a pattern in Israel’s attacks and denials. Israeli state attacks Palestinians on a regular basis. We must remind ourselves and others that October 7, 2023 is not the starting point of what is happening in the region.
It is imperative to look from 1948 onwards to understand if the Israeli state has been fair and just to the people who were already living in the area that it has occupied. It is equally important to know how much land Israel started with in 1948 and how much it occupies today and how it has acquired it. Last and not least, has Israel followed the laws, treaties and regulations that it was supposed to?
We can clearly see that year after year since 1948, Israel has engaged in violent and illegal actions against Palestinians. It has also denied these as violations by insisting that it is doing so in self defense, which is what every colonial power claims to justify atrocities.
Israeli propagandists have taken colonial lying to another level. Consider these words* by Anton Abu Akleh, the brother of murdered Palestinian journalist Shirin Abu Akleh:
“This is the same story that is repeating itself. The day that Shireen was killed, we saw several narratives … six or seven narratives giving false information, false video footage from different places, saying that Shireen was targeted by Palestinian militants. That proved to be totally wrong,” he said.
“We see the same thing happening with the hospital. They announced that they targeted the hospital, and a few hours later, they removed this tweet ... from social media, and they started blaming other militants and other organizations of doing it, which is totally wrong.”
Anton Abu Akleh is referring to the attack on October 17, 2023 on the al-Ahli Arab hospital in northern Gaza killing over 500 Palestinians.
This brings us to a dominant trait in Israeli state’s attitude - victim blaming. From a psychoanalytical perspective, this could be a self-protective technique. By blaming Palestinians for its violent actions against them, perhaps the Israeli state wants to exonerate itself from the inhumanity it perpetuates. But in another psychoanalytical analysis and something that the Israeli state and its supporters have repeatedly and openly said is the belief that Palestinians are not people. To be precise, the Zionist propaganda which is officially meted out by the Israeli government calls Palestinians animals and worse.
We know what this means for Palestinians. But what does it mean for Israelis? Not just for the Israeli military or other state actors but for the general Israeli public? What does it mean for us who are neither Palestinian or Israeli? What does it mean for the human race as a whole?
As a peace educator, I can see this not ending well for any of us in the long run. It is damaging to our psyche as a species that the violence in Palestine is a constant in our living memories. This is not just any place on earth even though that should not matter. This is the geographical focus of the origin of three major religions of the world and an inspiration for other religions as well.
Connected to it is the perceived major feature of this problem – religious conflict. For people who believe in coexistence of different religions, this is an extremely dangerous feature. Of course, any honest assessment of the situation will make it clear that the Palestinian struggle for their land was not a religious struggle because there are Jewish and Christian Palestinians too. They too have stood firmly in defense of their motherland. But because the Israeli state has insisted on its injustice as being divinely ordained and has attacked any opposition as anti-semitic, we have come to accept it as a religious issue.
This should be strongly contested. We must insist on two plain truths – Zionism is not Judaism. There are many Jews all over the world who oppose Zionism. Secondly, the occupation of Palestine has violated the rights of all Palestinians including the Christians and Jews of Palestine. Indeed, many of them have been at the forefront of the struggle against Israeli apartheid. I would need another newsletter to talk of Palestinian Christians and Jews, their prominent role in society and administration. But for the purposes of this article, let me just underline that the Palestinian liberation movement involves deeply the non-Muslim Palestinians. We, as peace lovers, must reiterate this in our conversations to take the focus away from religion in this problem because it takes away from the basic issue here – fascism.
Corollary to this is my last point which is of special significance for the rest – the implications for non Israeli and non Palestinian people. Once it becomes clear that in our lifetimes we are continuously seeing a situation where the annihilation of a people is being justified and defended in the name of a divine right, the doors will fling wide open for the normalization of fascism. This goes against everything that we as a species learnt from the two world wars we experienced.
The United Nations which was founded to protect and promote this knowledge – the knowledge that the idea of superior and inferior races is inhuman – has been ignored and ridiculed on the issue of Palestine every single time. What it means is that slowly but surely we are normalizing fascism, apartheid and genocide. It is no wonder then that Zionists have found their friends in other supremacist philosophies such as Hindutva. But one should never forget that hate knows no bounds. Today it may be Arab Palestinians, tomorrow it may be Indian Muslims and the next day it may be Hindu Americans.
I urge you to look at Palestine as an issue of human values and conscience more than anything else. No matter how physically or ethnically distanced we are from Palestine, it will come to haunt us just like other assaults on human values have in the past.
Join me and others on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 Nov, Wednesday, 8 pm India. We look forward to seeing you there. Click here to register.
Peace,
Shirin
Peace Needs All of Us!
* Source: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/for-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh-s-family-israel-denying-gaza-hospital-attack-same-story-repeating-itself-/3027322
