Why Palestine has my full support as a Kosovar-Albanian.
An article exploring the historical parallels between Kosovo and Palestine, and the moral obligation I feel Albanians have in supporting the Free Palestine movement.
For the past month now, the world has watched by while the Palestinian people continue to be ravaged by Israeli air strikes on Gaza, indiscriminately killing civilians, with a death toll that is increasing rapidly on a daily basis.
However, this experience of state sponsored violence is not a new occurrence for the Palestinians. The Palestinian people have been experiencing occupation, dispossession, apartheid, and violent systematic oppression for the last 75 years, displacing millions over several decades.
Amidst this humanitarian catastrophe, there have been a variety of debates arise in the Albanian community. Questions about whether Albanians should or should not collectively support the Palestinian plight has been spread across Albanian social media. The discourses produced around this issue have been very frustrating to watch and engage with. Many have presented arguments entirely removed from historical context, making claims lacking in the necessary empathy we should all be applying to what’s happening to the Palestinians.
I find that the opinions of some Albanians are connected to a wider issue of anti-Arab sentiment and Islamophobia present in my community. However, there is one argument regurgitated by Albanians about why some don’t support Palestine. This concerns Palestine’s reluctance to recognise Kosovo as an independent state. As a researcher of Kosovo’s history, and as avid a supporter of Kosovo’s right to self-determination, I find this position to be simplistic, negating historical context and how geopolitical structures impact people and countries.
The issues of Kosovar and Palestinian self-determination are presented as inherently polarised to one another on a world stage. But as a Kosovar-Albanian I am quite frankly sick and tired of the surface level analysis of this issue. How can two groups so desperate for self-determination be so against each other when they seek the same goal?
Well, this relates to the allyship both Kosovo and Palestine have established internationally. Western influence in Kosovo post war is clear, and Palestine’s historical allyship with countries outside of the western sphere of influence indicates how this perceived polarisation can be argued.
When I look at the plight of my own people and the Palestinians, I understand why both states sought solidarity from those countries around the world willing to give it to them — regardless of whether these powers were well intentioned or not. What I find deeply troubling is the way in which these geopolitical structures have made it seem that both Kosovo and Palestine as anti-colonial movements of self-determination from their very conception, should be opposed to one another. Our plights for self-determination are paralleled in many ways, issues arise precisely due to the arbitrary geopolitical lines aimed at dividing us as colonised peoples. This line has clearly established a binary, where imperialist powers reside at either end, using these plights of self-determination around the world as pawns for their own geopolitical agendas.
There are many reasons why I continue to support Palestine as a Kosovar-Albanian. The first and for me the most important reasons are related to my own personal history. I am the descendent of ancestors that have experienced displacement intergenerationally. Parts of my mothers and fathers’ family descend from refugees known colloquially as ‘Muhaxher’ in Kosovo, this community of people were permanently and violently displaced from their native lands, in present day Southern Serbia, in the late 1800s.
This experience of displacement continued in my family, conveyed in the experiences of my mother’s uncles who were intimidated out of Kosovo and fled to Turkey in the 1950s due to the brutality of the Rankovic regime, that had its foot firmly on Kosovo’s neck in the early days of the Socialist Yugoslavia. My existence in Britain comes as a result of the most recent experience of displacement in my family. The 1990s and the violence immersed in the former Yugoslavia pushed my parents out of their native homes once more due to threats of violence, systematic oppression and having to face daily conflict.
So, when I started researching Palestinian history, I noticed clear parallels in our historical experiences. Palestinian experiences of intergenerational displacement, having an extensively large diaspora due to these traumatic experiences, and being forced to forge an ethnic identity entirely removed from your native land resonated with me intensely. How could I as a Kosovar-Albanian, after all my community has been through, be politically or morally aligned with a narrative that believes that Palestinians aren’t entitled to the same right of self-determination my community now enjoys. It would be entirely contradictory and very hypocritical of me to hold that position, and I feel obliged to remind other Albanians of this.
Removing all personal justifications about why I support Palestine aside, I want to address the clear historical parallels Kosovo and Palestine have. Firstly, I want to clarify that Kosovo and Palestine have their own distinct historical experiences in particular regional contexts. There are individual experiences both countries and peoples have faced, and this article does not take away from that. This article also does not take away from the current plight of Palestinians, this piece is focused at educating my own community. Having researched both histories, there are clear symmetries, and I present these to formulate an argument about why I believe Albanians should support Palestine.
In the 20th century, both Kosovo and Palestine had executive decisions made about its land by external western powers. In Kosovo’s case, decisions made in the Conference of London 1912–13, allocated Kosovo to the newly established Serbian state, despite the majority of the population (who were Albanian) being against this. In Palestine’s case, the Balfour Agreement of 1917 saw the British support the establishment of a Jewish ‘homeland’ in a land that was already inhabited by Palestinians, that had their own state aspirations.
Analysing the ethno-nationalist narratives presented by Serbia and Israel regarding both Kosovo and Palestine also present clear similarities. Serbia has perpetuated a slogan for some time now that Kosovo is the “Serbian Jerusalem”, emphasising religious connotations to Kosovo, often based in highly nationalistic narratives. Israel too believes it can occupy land and people, justifying its human rights abuses by weaponizing religious text, and a supposed “God given” right to land. A reminder that modern states cannot and should not be formed around religious narratives, as they are often inherently divisive and establish clear social hierarchies.
Serbia, much like Israel has also historically used the demographic picture of Kosovo hundreds of years ago to justify the forceful integration of Kosovo into Serbia in the modern day. This state structure then emphasised the notion that all Serbs, regardless of where they come from, have an inalienable right to Kosovo — a propagandistic narrative that undermines and aims to delegitimise those native to the land. Israel has entrenched a far more expansive scheme of settler colonialism, where to this day an American born Jewish person can claim Israeli citizenship upon arrival, instantly having more rights than those Palestinians born and raised in the land.
The fact that both Kosovar-Albanians and Palestinians are majority Muslim has also been weaponised against them, aiming to use the Muslim identities of both to deny the indigeneity they have in the lands they are native to. Dehumanising and animalistic connotations have been narratives both Serbia and Israel have used against Kosovar Albanians and Palestinians, indicative of the coloniser - colonised dynamic.
Serbian ethno-nationalistic narratives from the late 19th century and all throughout the 20th century presented the notion that Albanians were “the most barbarous tribes of Europe”, and that we were “prehuman’s who spelt in trees”. These narratives have significantly established themselves within Serbian society, so much so that the very term Albanian, in its original form “Shqiptar” was appropriated from the Albanian language by Serbian society. It was then given entirely bastardised connotations of inferiority, backwardness, ugliness and more.
Palestinians also face this level of dehumanisation, as we can currently see with the western world’s media portrayal of them. Israeli defence minister was recently quoted as saying“we’re fighting human animals” when speaking about Palestinians. This dehumanisation is supported in the world of Israeli social media, where there is currently a trend for Israeli Tiktokers to dress up in a dishevelled way, with fake blood on their bodies (often including their children in these videos), mocking those Palestinians experiencing indescribable levels of trauma right now. This truly conveys how state sponsored propagandistic dehumanisation can infect an entire group’s ability to feel empathy for others.
The Israeli state has historically been dehumanising the Palestinian people to justify the systematic violence they have been perpetrating against them. As we can seen through several points of history there been many systems dedicated to the dehumanisation of other human beings. This was tactfully done to alleviate any psychological guilt or accountability that enters a human being when they have committed a grave crime like murder. Therefore, Israel has manifested a social system that does not view Palestinians as having the same humanity they do, allowing them to easily justify their murder, displacement, occupation and indiscriminate bombing.
Both Palestine and Kosovo have experienced massacres, land expropriation, settler colonialism as a way to forcibly change the ethnic demography, mass intimidation, a lack of political, educational, social representation and more. Furthermore, seeing some Albanians be so indifferent, or against the Palestinian movement for freedom is disappointing. I will continue to ally myself with all colonised peoples, for my moral compass is not dependent on the geopolitical structures established arbitrarily in our world, enforced by powers that don’t really care about us. I choose to care about humanity, and I desire to see a world where all people have access to the rights they deserve and the self-determination they require.
In closing, I urge all Albanians supporting Israel at this time to rethink their position. Please think more critically about what exactly it is you are endorsing, because it seems many of you do not understand the implications of supporting a system that is enacting a similar of form of state sponsored violence we as Kosovar Albanians experienced all throughout the 20th century.
Free Palestine.
