Israel deserves
every bit of the global public criticism it is receiving
Israel has only
itself to blame for the the public outrage against its apartheid reality
and the horrific war on Gaza.
Rami G Khouri
Distinguished Fellow at
the American University of Beirut, and a journalist and book author with 50
years of experience covering the Middle East
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/2/israel-deserves-every-bit-of-the-global-public-criticism-it-is-receiving
The ongoing explosion in public activism in the United States and the world for a ceasefire in Gaza
and equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians is a battleground as important
as the military face-off over Gaza in this century-old conflict.
It reveals the eroding efficacy of traditional
pro-Israel propaganda in the face of more visible and explicitly apartheid
policies by Israel and widespread, technically proficient mobilisations by
pro-Palestine and pro-justice movements. It also signals how people across the
globe recognise the Palestinians’
suffering and their
battle for national rights as among the last anti-colonial struggles in the
world.
Signs of this trend were visible even before the
October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed
and about 240 taken captive. But the unprecedented and brutal Israeli
counterrampage against civilians and all institutions of life in Gaza that
followed — killing 15,000 people and displacing almost 80 percent of the
population — has clarified Israeli policies and their long colonial vintage and
turned global sentiment against Israel’s aggressions.
That public pressure in turn forced even backers of
the war in the West to reluctantly push for a week’s truce and negotiated
exchanges of detainees by Israel and Hamas before the fighting resumed on
Friday.
Perhaps the most compelling of the political
developments that are now in flux and will shape the world’s view of
the war and the configuration of the region has been
the steady stream of students and young professionals in the United
States and beyond standing up for equal rights for both Palestinians
and Israelis. They have done this through global mass actions like
demonstrations, legal suits, strikes, media campaigns, and public expressions
of support by athletes, artists and others in society.
Not surprisingly, this has sparked countercampaigns by
pro-Israel groups in the US and globally to shut down the voices of
pro-Palestine activists and to criminalise elements of Palestinian identity
itself — like displaying the Palestinian flag or wearing the keffiyeh headdress.
Many public discussions and meetings on the issue have been barred, and people who
express any kind of sympathy for Palestine – even if in old social media posts
– have been dismissed from their jobs. The ultimate cruelty was Israel banning
public shows of joy by families and communities for young Palestinian prisoners
freed from Israeli jails during the truce — a ban which, unsurprisingly, most
Palestinians ignored.
Many reasons explain why public sentiment in the US
and globally has been shifting away from a traditional, heavily pro-Israel
stance to a more even-handed position that seeks to end Israel’s occupation and
military savagery against Palestinians and demand accountability and redress
for the past century of Zionist settler-colonial excesses in all of historic
Palestine. These include notably Palestinian ethnic cleansing and forced exile,
refugeehood, occupation, statelessness and fragmented nationhood.
Rising public support for Palestinian rights reflects
Israel’s harsh, often criminal policies, which are now visible for the whole
world to see every day – including the brutality in Gaza that jurists and
scholars increasingly evaluate in the context of genocide.
Partnerships stitched together by Palestinian
activists with progressive groups across the world have also amplified the
calls for justice.
This expanded rapidly after the Black Lives Matter
movement heightened people’s awareness and focus on social justice demands that
persist among subjugated and colonised people in many countries. People across
the world have made the connection between history, Zionism, Israel, the
Palestinians and the consequences of how the US and United Kingdom totally and
enthusiastically support Israel’s actions. Most of the world that suffered and
remembers the pain and ignominy of Western colonialism instinctively recognised
the Palestinians’ ongoing resistance to Israel as the world’s last
anti-colonial struggle and seek to support it in any way they can.
Young people and university students lead this new
wave of activism for social justice because on their cell phones and computer
screens they see the damage being done to people’s lives everywhere by 19th
century-type colonial policies, whether against African Americans in Missouri,
Palestinians in Gaza or Jenin, or ethnic minorities in other countries.
When credible reports by international groups like
Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch describe Israel’s policies to
control Palestinians as apartheid, the world’s conscience – led by its youth
and students – kicks into action to rid us of this scourge. Equal rights for
Israelis and Palestinians is their goal, as happened in South Africa after
decades of nonviolent and occasional military struggle.
Not surprisingly, this global wave of activism for
Palestine has elicited some wild accusations that the protests – especially in
US universities — are motivated by anti-Semitism or support for Hamas. This
reflects more than anything else the desperation of Zionist and pro-Israel
groups who recognise and worry that their traditional propaganda in
the West is flailing.
Other arguments are being made about why the global
wave of action for universal social justice and ending settler-colonial
occupations is not sincere. Some say that activists unfairly pick on Israel but
ignore other governments that treat people harshly. Others argue that Israel
treats its Palestinian citizens well because a few of them are in parliament or
that Israel is a good place because it respects LGBTQ rights.
Diversionary propaganda like this will mount, but it
will fail as it has been failing in recent years – because the pain, cruelty
and criminality of settler-colonial apartheid grab the attention and drive the
activism of all decent human beings everywhere who want to work for a better
world.
Israel does have many impressive qualities in
science, education, agriculture and other fields, but they are
drowned out by its soul-grinding settler-colonial apartheid reality
we see on television daily.
So we march in the streets for social justice and
liberty for all as good people have always done to fix their world’s weaknesses
and right its wrongs.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s
own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
