Palestine: Uncomplicating the “Complicated”

Author’s Note: I would like to extend a huge thank you to all of the people who took the time to proofread this blog. Your insights were so valuable and much appreciated.

Though they have recently been gaining traction due to highly publicized events, international movements which stand in solidarity with Palestinian freedom and resistance are anything but new. Palestinians have faced decades of oppression, apartheid, violence, and genocidal efforts at the hands of the Israeli state. Though modern political discourse attempts to frame this issue as complex, too complex for the average person to understand or comment upon, it really isn’t. By constantly stating that the issue is very “complicated,” many may feel like they can’t engage with it, like it’s not their place. This discourse is tactical, effectively preventing resistance, conversation, change, and ultimately allowing violence to continue unchallenged. Denouncing genocide is not complicated, it is a necessity. It is our responsibility.

In the remainder of this post, I will address some of the narratives which prevent meaningful engagement with Palestine, hopefully encouraging all of us to reconsider the responsibility and power we have to imagine a different world, for all of our sakes.

Language Choice Matters

When speaking or writing about the situation in Palestine, or any global issue with vast political and personal consequences, language choice is essential. The language we use has the ability to completely reshape the way we understand a situation.

What happens when the media characterizes the genocide in Palestine as a conflict being fought by “two equal sides”? What stories get lost or purposefully forgotten when we perpetuate this narrative? What history gets buried? Who benefits?

When over 30,000 people have been killed since October, that’s genocide. When aid is blocked from reaching those who need it, thus creating mass starvation, that’s genocide. When Palestinians are being bombed in the same place that Israel claimed would be a “safe haven”, that’s genocide. Western media plays a role in normalizing and decontextualizing the violence that is (and has been) occurring in Palestine. Even in some of the articles which are linked in this blog, though they provide information about Palestinian suffering, frame it in ways which are at best unproductive and at worst purposefully misleading, normalizing violence as a “crisis” or describing Palestinians as “dying” rather than “being killed,” without properly establishing the origins or implications of this violence.

Pay attention to the ways in which you refer to what is occuring in Palestine, because it matters. Call it like it is: genocide.

Getting to the Root Cause Of Violence

When people are facing violence, oppression, and genocide, a response to that violence is justified. No matter how unpalatable it may seem to us in our relatively sheltered Western perspective, we must resist the narratives which paint these responses to genocide as independent acts of violence against an equal opponent. They should be understood as acts of resistance against a large, imposing, and oppressive force.

When efforts to perform “respectable” diplomatic resistance, such as the Great March of Return, are unequivocally denied, and when you, your families, neighbours, and communities are facing unrelenting violence, what are you left with? How else can you respond but through armed resistance? What else can be expected when Palestinian people have been continually violated and occupied while the world looks the other way?

If we truly wish to see an end to genocide and an end to civilian deaths across the board, we must demand an end to the root cause of the violence: the apartheid which is maintained by Israel. This context should be our focus. We must put pressure on both the initiators of the violence (Israel) and the allied Western governments, such as Canada and the USA, which allow the violence to continue through the provision of arms and funding. Both a permanent ceasefire and the end of arms sales are necessary first steps as we imagine and work towards a Palestine which is completely freed of Israel’s occupation and in which Palestinian sovereignty may be fully embodied.

Anti-Zionism is Not Antisemitic

https://www.tumblr.com/nicosnonsense/742361818363756545/i-am-jewish-i-am-an-anti-zionist-i-am-always-and

I have often seen pro-Palestine liberation movements equated with antisemitic movements as a means of discrediting them. However, the increasing number of Jewish people who are anti-Zionist provides strong evidence against this argument. The Jewish Voice for Peace provides a large, vocal example of an organization who actively works to challenge narratives which link Judaism (a religion) and Zionism (a settler colonial project with a historical connection to British Imperialism) and make them synonymous. The Israeli state, a state which is currently (and historically) built upon genocide and violence, should not be made synonymous with a religion and a people, Judaism, which stands for peace.

Denouncing Israel is not equivalent to a denouncement of Jewish people or the Jewish faith. Once again, this is another tactic which prevents us from challenging the violence that Israel perpetuates. We should be imagining a way forward in which the protection and liberation of one people does not mean the destruction of another. This is a better future for all, Jewish people included.

Palestinian Freedom is a Feminist Issue 

While much of the Western world looks away, Palestinian women and girls are facing egregious human rights violations, such as being sexually assaulted by military personnel, being denied menstrual products and lacking access to proper care for sexual health, including pregnancy. Mothers are not able to access pain medications during birth, and they cannot deliver in a clean environment which leads to infection risks, meaning both infant and maternal mortality rates continue to rise. All of these health crises are being further exacerbated by the bombing of hospitals in Gaza. Altogether, it is estimated that 9 000 women have been killed since October and 60 000 pregnant women in Gaza are currently suffering from malnutrition.

But this is of course not only an issue which impacts women. Palestinian men are often demonized the most by Western media, which uses racist rhetoric to equate them with terrorists and deny their humanity. Their rights to life and dignity cannot be forgotten either. All people are impacted by the violence enacted by the state of Israel.

Simply put, human rights issues are feminist issues. If you have ever considered yourself a feminist, you should be disturbed by Western (white) feminism’s continual silence on issues which emerge in the Global South and which impact Black and Brown bodies. And while many Western feminists remain silent on these issues, Indigenous activists continue to show up and speak out in favour of Palestinian liberation, citing shared experiences of displacement and resistance to settler-colonial rule.

What we need to recognize is that all of our struggles are intertwined, that just because we cannot feel the immediate impacts of violence across the globe, that does not mean that we aren’t still involved, that we aren’t still impacted. Palestinian liberation is a human rights issue, a feminist issue, an Indigenous issue. It reveals how interconnected we truly are. We are not free until Palestine is free.

Your Voice Matters (In Community)

*Note: This final section is heavily guided and inspired by the work of Dr. Ayesha Khan. I hope their work will move you as it has moved me.*

More and more we are convinced that our actions have a minimal impact on the world around us, that our individual lives don’t mean too much in the face of oppression. How do we cultivate hope? How do we allow ourselves to feel the immensity of these atrocities? In community.

I personally understand the deep-seated isolation that comes with being a person who lives in a hyper-individualistic culture. Community is not inevitable or natural or expected. It’s not something we’re taught to value or taught to cultivate, but when we find others who have the same convictions that we do, that we can lean on for support, that’s where we find hope.

Feel overwhelmed by the world? Find some way to reach out to others who feel similarly. Find out your individual skills and apply them to the movements. This is how we build the strength and hope to continue in spite of it all.

Speaking from personal experience, some of the most poignant moments I have had over the past few months have been at protests or events for Palestine. Go and find people around you who you can struggle alongside. These relationships will sustain us. They will give us hope.

May we never forget the power we have to imagine and live out a different future. Together.