A TON of rubble isn’t required to silence the cries of Palestinians being buried alive – the complicity (or at best, the appalling apathy) of our politicians and media is enough.
It was 23 years ago, during the intifada – an Arabic word meaning to “shake off”, referring to the Palestinian civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation – that I met with a handful of people working to further the Palestinian cause.
We all recognised that Palestinians were facing grave injustices – more than 50 years of land theft, oppression and gross human rights violations – but none of us knew exactly what – if anything – could be done about it.
Mainstream media and politicians worked hand in glove to portray Palestinians as the aggressors and as terrorists intent on destroying Israel, which they pushed as the only democracy in the region.
As a mixed-race Scottish-Palestinian, I too was a criminal by association. My keffiyeh – which gave me a deep sense of connection and identity as a Palestinian – was only worn at home. My voice was silenced and attempts to present the facts were met with perplexity and disbelief.
Our task of cutting through the propaganda was huge.
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It’s now 2024 and the Israeli occupiers are still able to paint Palestinians as animals and savages. At the start of the recent bombardment of Gaza, Israel’s minister of defence Yoav Gallant, declared it was imposing a “complete siege on the Gaza Strip. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
This was reported far and wide with little or no challenge from politicians and the media in the global north who continue to work tirelessly to provide cover for Israel as it ploughs on with its task of forcibly displacing, killing, maiming, and starving the people it has brutally occupied for decades.
What has been allowed to happen to Palestinians remains one of the most gross injustices against a people on our planet today. An Orwellian rewriting in which the victim is perpetually portrayed as the oppressor and the oppressor as the victim. Gaza alone has endured massacre after massacre, only for our government’s support of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine, its land theft and its brutality to increase.
In Scotland, and in all four corners of the world, ordinary people continue to watch in horror at the reality of our upside-down world.
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Just as the recent conflict did not start on October 7, neither did the Palestinian struggle. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has always been a deliberate Zionist strategy. Its limits were never the military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israel is a settler colony – a product of racist imperialism. The eradication of a people – as we are witnessing in real time in Gaza – has always been part of the plan. The survival of Palestinians in the West Bank also hangs in the balance as the occupation ramps up the imprisonment and killing of Palestinians in record numbers there too.
The theatrics of Westminster as to whether and how a genocide that has already claimed the lives of over 30,000 Palestinians should end serves only to make crystal clear that the moral compass of our leaders is broken.
As we mark International Women’s Day in recognition of the achievements of women, we must pause to consider the plight of Palestinian women.
One example out of the many I could have chosen refers to “peacetime” in Gaza, where Palestinian women living under a blockade imposed by Israel were forced to undergo caesarean sections without spinal anaesthesia.
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Being unable to produce breast milk due to severe malnourishment or provide formula milk for newborns due to a lack of basic supplies further perpetuates the cycle of misery. Would anyone else in the world accept this? The ultimate paradox of bringing life into the jaws of ethnic cleansing?
Palestinian women, however – despite being oppressed and starved, enduring bombing raids and the torment of overhead drones – remain defiantly strong.
The case of our hero Amira Al-Assouli deserves attention. A Palestinian doctor residing in Egypt, she left the safety of her home to return to her occupied homeland to aid her people. Footage captured her braving Israeli sniper fire to rescue an injured man. This Palestinian woman, in the face of oppression and trauma, is a symbol of bravery, courage and selflessness.
She is not alone.
As I look around me at the people marching in the streets every week in their thousands, I see every age, colour, and nationality. Man, woman, and child unapologetically wearing keffiyehs in an act of solidarity. I think back to a time when wearing one in public was virtually unheard of.
Change has come and the grand swell of public support is firmly on the side of Palestine. It’s high time our politicians took heed and it’s our job to keep up the pressure. For the sake of Palestinians and for the sake of justice everywhere.
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