Since October 7, Gaza has been the focal point of Israeli attacks. Every hour, an average of 42 bombs are dropped in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)—not sparing shelters, schools, and hospitals. Every day, 264 Palestinian children and women are killed. However, these numbers fail to capture the enduring suffering experienced by 2.36 million Palestinians living under constant bombardment and military occupation.
The relentless attacks by the IDF in the past month have resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza. But Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and systemic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has been going on for 75 years—an uncomplicated truth in history outrightly denied.
The prevalence of anti-Palestinian propaganda in dominant institutions serves to trivialize the plight of Palestinians and demonize their struggle for national liberation. With imperial countries systematically dehumanizing the people of Palestine to stifle their growing resistance against colonization, neutrality has no room on discourses that involve trampling human dignity.
Nakba - The 1948 Palestine Catastrophe
The root of Palestinian oppression is colonialism, the political subjugation of a nation through occupation and resource exploitation. In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians, who lived in what used to be a thriving multi-ethnic nation, were displaced by the British and Zionist regime from their lands to create the Jewish state of Israel. This upheaval is etched in Palestinian history, known as "al-Nakba."
A closer look at Zionism, a movement aiming to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, reveals it is a colonial project backed by imperialists, Jordanian academic Joseph Massad explained. According to Massad, the United States and the United Kingdom support Israel’s settler-colonial policies through military and financial aid to extend their political and economic interests in West Asia.
To preserve dominance in the Middle East, imperial powers have vilified Arab and Palestinian nationalist movements that emerged in the 1950s. Using neutral terms or blatant labels of Muslims being “violent and immoral", state-backed media and callous mainstream reporting contribute to the rampant racism and islamophobia toward Arabs. By saturating media and other institutions and labeling Palestinian revolutionaries as terrorists withholding historical context, Islamophobia has intensified globally, and decolonization movements in the Arab region are demonized.
Part of Israel's strategy is to frame itself as a defensive force to deflect and excuse its atrocities against millions of Palestinians at the hands of the IDF. This, while pinning the militant group Hamas as the primary aggressor. This deliberate ploy by apartheid Israel, which is supported by the imperialist US and UK, seeks to shift public opinion against Palestine and justify their colonization that promises immense profit and control of the Arab lands and resources.
Jahadah - To Struggle For a Just Society
Dehumanization, the denial of full humanity and human rights to Palestinians, is implemented by the Israeli regime in many forms. Inside the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians are considered by Israel as "non-citizens." Subjected to economic, physical, and mental abuse, their rights, and how they live, are controlled by the repressive Israeli government. The Israeli military's Dahiya Doctrine employs disproportionate force, enforcing collective punishment by depriving civilians of basic necessities and bombing residential areas.
This 'othering' of Palestinians is hinged upon the colonialist-constructed idea of a 'backward Orient.' The Orientalist bias of the West fuels racist stereotypes, power imbalances, and colonial attitudes by imperial powers used to justify Eastern subjugation, according to the book "Orientalism" by Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said.
Efforts to deny Palestinians their humanity also manifest in Israel's deliberate distortion of Palestinian history and heritage. The history of Palestine before the Zionist colonization is continuously erased in Israeli history books. Attempts to put the emergence of Palestinian anti-Zionist resistance into proper historical context are uncritically labeled as antisemitism.
This systemic process of dehumanization is rooted in the interest in repressing the growing resistance of Palestinians toward decolonization to preserve Israeli dominion in the Middle East. But as the world watches the carnage that occurs in Gaza, the people of other colonized nations realize the same struggle and ought to commit global solidarity for liberation.
Intifada - An Uprising Against Oppression
Anti-colonial liberation must be done through ideological and material resistance. Questioning and rejecting dominant colonial ideologies, in complement with direct actions of challenging the power structures of institutions, is at the forefront of what should be done by colonized nations, according to Afro-Caribbean political philosopher Frantz Fanon in his book “The Wretched of the Earth.”
In the face of ongoing violence in Gaza every hour, an increasing number of people from all around the world march on the streets to condemn the gruesome attacks of the Israeli invasion. Over a month, we have seen protests and boycotts organized by the working class and the masses that continue to mobilize others to show their international solidarity with Palestine.
In our collective struggle to subvert imperial dominion, the Palestinians’ agency to liberate themselves and their nation should be an essential truth we should continue to stand in solidarity with. Because when dehumanization and genocide become the law of the land, resistance becomes a moral imperative. Thus, nations subjugated by imperialism must continue to unite to achieve their struggle for liberation and self-determination. ●
*Free Palestine in Arabic
