Palestine is not complicated
Over the last 12 months, we saw how powerful a tool social media was to mobilise communities into fighting for justice and human rights. Black Lives Matter is case in point. We all saw the footage. Literally everyone was tweeting, posting, and talking about it. My heart felt a deep sense of hope for better days. Finally, the democratisation of the media. Finally, voices are not silenced.
But over the last couple of weeks, I have realised how real and true advocacy for some is a token gesture. One where we can pick and choose whose human rights are more important, and who is allowed to fight for their right to exist.
The plight of the Palestinian people weighs heavily on my heart. What kills me though, is the silence of people who, after George Floyd had his last breaths squeezed out of him, claimed to be for justice and truth, while Palestine continues to suffocate.
I was lucky to grow up in a household where the news of the day was discussed openly and honestly. I knew how media spin works, and who decides which stories get airtime. At the same time, I fooled myself into believing that this issue shouldn’t be discussed because it’s ‘complicated’. I refuse to do this anymore.
I’m pointing my attention to liberals, particularly those who marched in force in solidarity of our Black brothers and sisters across the ocean in the United States.
“The topic of Palestine is not complicated.”
If you truly did your homework about systemic injustice, inequal distributions of power, disproportionate use of force, how barbaric it is that a Black kid can be shot to his death for reaching for his skittles, then you would also realise that the Palestine conflict is not complicated. If you can understand how systems of oppression work in other settler colonies such as America, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, you can understand how it works in Palestine.
The liberation of African Americans, something we all want, is directly linked to the freedom of Palestine. They are both silenced and subjugated by the same forces who profit off their oppression. Their silencers are funded, and support reinforced by the same institutions.
They don’t tell you this though.
When we speak about injustice in Palestine, we are met with “you’re anti-Semitic”, “…but Hamas does this” or “Israel has the right to defend itself”. This is the language of the coloniser. These are buzzwords used to deflect from the fact that Israel continues to break international law by illegally confiscating Palestinian land, targeting journalists, and killing civilians. Palestine’s borders are consistently being encroached and occupied. If Israel has the right to protect their borders, so does Palestine.
Is Hamas perfect? Of course not. But these are not two equally armed armies. Israel is a nuclear superpower that receives $3.8billion in military aid from the United States. They have the most advance missile defence system in the world. Hamas uses homemade weapons. As Trevor Noah put it, Hamas brings a knife to a gun fight. Still, they bomb hospitals and cut medical supplies into Gaza and blame it on Hamas. The world believes them.
And if you do believe them, let me tell you about media censorship. Social media watchdogs have reported that tweets and Instagram posts supporting Palestine continue to be taken down. The application’s algorithms also give these posts less traction. They claim it’s a technical glitch, one that apparently only impacts hashtags about saving Sheikh Jarrah and freeing Palestine.
Israel also took down a building in Gaza that housed Al Jazeera, the Associated Press (AP), private businesses, and residents. They claimed the building was home to Hamas officials, a claim they have yet to provide evidence for even at the request of the CEO of AP. Targeting journalists is a war crime. Amnesty International is not allowed into Gaza to investigate these crimes.
They don’t tell you this either.
“Unequal balances of power make it easy to paint one side as the perpetrator while they fight against their oppression. Sound familiar?”
When we talk about Palestinians, the reality is that we are talking about a people whose country was literally wiped off the map, were made refugees on their own land, and forced to live in an Apartheid state. Any attempt to rebel against the occupation is met with the power of the fourth largest military in the world.
We know already that we have no right to tell African Americans how to respond to their oppression. Why does this rule not apply to Palestine? Who would sit in silence while a colonising force controls your movements, controls the import of your food and medical supply, and every few steps of yours is met with a checkpoint? If, after almost 80 years, an army storms your village and tells you to get out, and that your property now belongs to them, would you not throw a stone? Does defending your home and property make you the bad guy? The problem is that the dehumanisation of Palestinians is so deep that their self-defence is seen as aggression.
Now do you see how “both sides are wrong” sounds very “all lives matter”? All lives don’t have power, freedom, security and resources.
I have not even scratched the surface of this topic, and this piece is already too long. I’m tired of explaining, in 2021, why genocide is bad. I’ll end by reminding you that one of the wins of oppressive institutions is that they make the truth so hard to say that people just prefer to give up and go about your daily business.
“I urge you to take a good, honest look at what justice means to you. Who, in your mind, does or doesn’t deserve to live in freedom? Human rights, by its own definition, applies to every single person on this planet. We don’t get to decide whose rights matter more based on which activism is in fashion.”
[below] Photographs of Gaza City pre-1948 by Kegham Djeghalian,
showing life in the city before it was transformed by war via Vice
Words — Latifa Daud
Images — Kegham Djeghalian via Vice
