March
2, 2024
Amid
the genocide in Gaza, some of my Western friends have expressed their sympathy
for my family members in Gaza whose house was destroyed and who have endured
repeated displacement. They have also expressed their empathy with Israelis and
called for peace.
I
am a Palestinian scholar currently based in the U.K. In 2014, I moved to London
from Ramallah in the West Bank where I used to live, separated from my family
in Gaza, my place of birth. I have been separated for years from my family due
to the blockade of Gaza, and both my children and I were deprived of any
connection to our family roots in Gaza. We were not granted permits by the
Israeli Ministry of Interior to visit Gaza. Even in critical moments, such as
when my father had surgery in a Jerusalem hospital, I faced challenges in
obtaining a permit to be by his side.
This
geographical segregation of our space has instilled a profound sense of
captivity within us. My personal experience informed my research area, which
focuses on captivity and resistance within the context of settler colonialism
in Palestine. While I haven’t experienced incarceration, living under
occupation is similar to existing in an open-air prison. Within a militarily
colonized space, Palestinians find themselves confined to de facto prisons and
cantons due to the constraints imposed by the absence of freedom of mobility.
They are denied freedom of movement due to closure, checkpoints and a
segregation apartheid wall.
In
response to several discussions and conversations with the Western friends who
have expressed their sympathy (mainly friends in Germany), I want to reflect on
what the conditions for true solidarity are today, and how we can break with a
colonial international discourse and liberal media that present the actions of
October 7 in a vacuum without context, as if the current war began on that
date. This dehistoricizing of Palestinians dehumanizes us and enables the
current genocide.
I
have a German friend who lived in Palestine and married a Palestinian. She
conveyed to me that German schools focus on the Holocaust and that before
moving to Palestine she only learned about Jewish history. Meanwhile Germany
has politically embraced the Israeli state, including the current genocide it
is inflicting on Palestinians. This support is often seen as an effort to
cleanse Germany’s Nazi past. Several German politicians have claimed that
ensuring Israel’s security is a fundamental national interest (“Staatsräson”)
of Germany since October 7. As a result, the country has consistently taken a
stringent stance against pro-Palestine voices.
In
many Western nations — not only Germany — the Palestinian narrative is largely
neglected, skewing the historical perspective. The issue here involves two
distinct but interconnected topics — the horrific Holocaust for which Germany
and its collaborators bear responsibility, and the creation of a Zionist
colonial state at the expense of Palestinians resulting in their displacement
and expropriation of their lands. The tragedy of the Holocaust has been misused
to justify the colonization and dispossession of Palestinians. Zionism, not
Judaism, is at the center of this issue. Palestinians have been subjugated to
every form of torture and annihilation as part of Israel’s political project of
domination and extraction. This is not a religious problem, and conflating
Judaism with Zionism is a tool used by Israel to justify its genocidal violence
and scare people from speaking up for fear of being considered antisemitic.
Can
you imagine if you were subjected to colonization, your home destroyed, your
family killed and forced into exile to become refugees? Many of my German
friends emphasize the importance of envisioning a solution and discussing the
future, but a comprehensive understanding of Palestinian history and
Palestinian suffering of colonialism is also essential for reaching a
resolution. A solution can’t be found if we don’t know the origin of the
problem and the current reality on the ground. Palestinians sought a two-state
solution through their acceptance of the Oslo process, but Israeli violence
continued through the construction of illegal settlements, the confiscation of
Palestinian lands and the refusal to release Palestinian political prisoners,
which hindered any progress.
I
understand my German friends’ desire to express sympathy with Jews and the
Israeli hostages. However, I feel it is equally crucial to extend your sympathy
and solidarity toward the thousands of Palestinian hostages who have been held
in Israeli prisons for many long years. In January 2024, the number of
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails reached 8,800. Since October 7, Israeli
authorities have escalated the detention campaigns against Palestinians. Two
thousand nine hundred ninety detention cases have been being documented by the
Palestinian Prisoner’s Society in the West Bank and Jerusalem in October alone,
and since that time at least six Palestinian prisoners have died in prison with
evidence pointing to beatings from Israeli soldiers and medical neglect as the
likely cause of their deaths. Political prisoners and their families were
subjected to violent assaults and attacks by the Israeli authorities during
detention operations including threats of killing, violent beatings, field
interrogations, threats of rape and the use of prisoners as human shields.
The
families of Palestinian prisoners are used as hostages too. I’ve documented in
my book, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes, the policy of
administrative detention used by the Israeli authorities whereby Palestinian
detainees are held without charge or trial for unidentified reasons, as
justified by “secret files.” The detention order is frequently renewed, and
this process can be continued indefinitely. In response, Palestinian detainees
have engaged in hunger strike to protest administrative detention in order to
achieve freedom.
Currently
there are negotiations underway to stop the genocide in Gaza, with a key focus
on the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian political prisoners from
Israeli prisons. But Israel is reluctant to release the Palestinian political
prisoners. Is it not worth considering that the nearly 2.5 million residents of
Gaza essentially have been hostages for the past 17 years, living under an
inhumane and illegal blockade? So, the situation goes way beyond just the
Israeli hostages.
Advocating
for Palestinian liberation does not make a person antisemitic, and Palestinian
armed struggle should not be equated with terrorism. The Palestinian subjects
whom I interviewed while writing my book emphasised in their stories that they
are engaged in a struggle against a settler-colonial regime that dehumanizes
them, forcibly uproots them from their land and threatens their existence on
their indigenous land. They argue that they have the right to resist and defend
their existence, and that they are engaged in legitimate resistance to
colonization.
The
history of Israeli violence against Palestinians, predating the recent events,
underscores the motives behind the ongoing genocide. Since the establishment of
the colonial project in Palestine, resistance by Palestinians has been
criminalized regardless of tactics (nonviolent resistance efforts have also
been brutally repressed and criminalized) and regardless of the resistance
group’s orientation. (Secular, leftist and Islamic political groups have all
been criminalized.)
The
Israeli actions and discourses show that this current war is not a response to
Hamas’s action on October 7, but rather a war aimed at the annihilation of
Palestinians as a people. In the West Bank, where Hamas is not in power,
settlers and Israeli forces have killed more than 500 Palestinians in 2023,
accelerating their project of ethnic cleansing and annexation.
The
Israeli Zionist media discourse has been adopted by Western media and claims
that Israel is the victim. Is it a victim when it pushes forth with this
genocidal war against civilians and displaced Palestinians in Gaza who were
already refugees? What defines the fascism that pervades our modern world is
the fact that Western imperial governments and the Arab regimes in thrall with
the United States are complicit in this genocide.
Why
are the killings and injustices that Palestinians have been experiencing for
seven decades at the hands of Zionist settler colonialism not recognized as
acts of terrorism? The war in Ukraine concerned the Western world, but the
dominant powers in that same world do not show any solidarity with the
Palestinians. Is this because Ukrainians are perceived as civilized white
victims while Palestinian are regarded as “human animals?” Western media and
politicians have supported the genocide in Gaza by claiming that Israel has a
right to defend itself. What about the right of Palestinians to fight
oppression and the Zionist project? Palestinians are active victims and have
always resisted their dehumanization since the establishment of the Zionist
entity. In their struggle they have been displaced and killed, yet they
continue to resist and stay steadfast.
The
following passage from Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel Gaza Weddings illuminates how
Palestinians experience Israel’s attacks on them as a clear expression of a
colonial desire to annihilate all Palestinian people, regardless of their
political background:
If you were with Hamas, Israel kills
you. If you were with Jihad, Israel kills you. If you were with Fatah (secular
party) or Sha’biyah [the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] or
Demoqratiyah [the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine] (leftists
parties), Israel kills you. If you were with the resistance, Israel kills you.
If you were with surrendering, Israel kills you. If you were with Abu Ammar,
Israel kills you. If you were against him, Israel kills you. If you open the
window to see what’s going on, Israel kills you. If you were walking down the
street or sleeping in your bed or minding your own business, a rocket comes
from the sky and kills you.
Given
my family’s experience during the genocide and the suffering of all my loved
ones in Gaza and the resulting trauma, it is challenging for me to envision
peace with a settler-colonial state that consistently perpetuates violence
against us on daily basis. Despite the Palestinian desire for peace with
Israel, as evidenced by their acceptance of the Oslo process, peace efforts
have been sabotaged by Israel’s continued killing of Palestinians and the
continued construction of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
I
wish more people across the world would heed the Jewish advocates for
Palestinian rights who are powerfully arguing that “Never Again” — a pledge to
fight the sort of fascist ideologies that led to the Holocaust — means “Never
Again for Anyone.”
These
Jewish activists recognize that in the fight against fascist ideologies it is
vital to support the Palestinian rights to freedom and self-determination. To
gain a comprehensive perspective it is important to follow Palestinian news and
what some Palestinian journalists on the ground publish and share on an
everyday basis on Instagram and other platforms, and to follow the Jews for
Palestine who are critical of Israel. I believe understanding the pre-October 7
history is important for grasping Palestinian suffering and assessing Israeli
goals.
I
appreciate that many of my Western friends have started to learn about
Palestinian experience, and that they are showing solidarity with Palestinians.
I thank them for their courage in exploring a new perspective on the situation
in Palestine. I hope one day they all can visit Palestine to see the reality on
the ground.
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